Civilian trial of GITMO detainee results

[ShadowDragon8685]

The worry isn't the 99% who don't go out and seek vengeance, the worry is the 1% who will.

Yep, all those people who've been mistreated for 7-8 years will surely pose a formidable threat to the security of US citizens. Have you noticed that since 9/11 Al-Quaedas efforts at terrorizing the US have been less than impressive? What additional threat could a bunch of physically, mentally broken and impoverished individuals possibly pose?

If given a multimillion-dollar payday and/or free entry onto U.S. soil, the threat is not as inconsequential as you believe.

Sure, we could just drop them off with $200 in some random third-world hellhole and they probably won't be any more damaging than the propaganda damage that Gitmo is already generating...

But if, as Thanas says, they get a huge compensation (and not that I'm saying that someone falsely imprisoned for a decade doesn't deserve something, because they do,) or free entry into the country as you suggest, they could pose a lot of threat if one of them is fanatical enough to have kept the faith (or developed the fanatical faith) while in prison, or just vengeance-minded enough.

All it takes is one guy having the fortitude and wherewithal to see it through to the word "boom" and the shit hits the fan.

Woa woa woa, hysterical much? Calm down, bub!

More like terrified.

I'm sorry but "my livid fantasies draw a horror scenario of total republican dominance" doesn't quite justify punishing people for things they haven't done. Appeal to Consequences and all that.

I didn't say it did, but the consequences in this case are potentially dire.

It's not those people's fault if your populace is so stupid and sheepish that they might go totalitarian police state in a fit of irrational hysteria at the merest of provocations. Despite experiencing several disappointments, I also still have a bit more trust in the mental clarity of US Americans.

No, it isn't their fault, but you have to bear in mind that there's at least some people in there who are almost certainly guilty who will have to walk or nearly walk because the alternative is admitting evidence which was gathered through torture. It never should have been gathered that way.

And never, ever, place any faith in the mental stability, clarity, or intellectual prowess of the "average American," let alone the American who actually makes it to the polls.

That argument can be used argue against releasing anyone from prison ever too.

Not quite. These circumstances are exceptional, faced with letting sworn enemies of the country go free, quite possibly those who have actually acted against the country before. Not only letting them go free, but letting them go free inside the country, and possibly with a huge payday to boot!

It would be akin to letting a serial murderer walk free because the cops roughed him up, and handing him back his gun and ammunition on the way out of the court-house because the seizure that found it was improper.

Just keeping them locked up without trial until they all expire of old age is untenable, and criminal in its own right. But I don't see a way to make this right that isn't tantamount to being enablers if one of them does successfully pull off an attack.

[Metahive]

Lots of assumptions but not so much actual arguments here, ShadowDragon. Again, I don't count your livid imagination and hysterical irrationality as evidence. Just as I don't count political convenience as sufficient enough a reason that innocent people should be punished. I don't give a rat's ass that you think US Americans are such stupid and fearful sheep that innocents should be sacrificed to keep those sheep from doing anything stupid. That's just cowardous immorality and patronizing condescension in one neat package.
Next time, something more concrete please, like extrapolating general trends from sufficient, past collected data, how about that? No more coulda' shoulda' woulda', that doesn't cut it.

[FTeik]

To give you one example: The only sources we have about the atrocities the romans commited during their invasion of Gaule are Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico”. I doubt, those few gaules left after the romans were done with exterminating and enslaving them were important enough to write home about, if they tried to get revenge. Most likely such incidents would have been documented as limited enemy-contact, robbery- and murder in case of civilian victims, or just barbarism, but not acts of revenge. A court-file would probably read: Roman merchant Tullius Varus murdered by Obelix, a slave he purchased in Gaule. Sentence: Crucification.

Trust me, Gaul really is a bad example for the kind of thing you want to claim.

As for the Jewish "revenge" stuff - even if we accept these claims at face value (which I will not do), they still rather prove my point - that over 99% of the survivors did not join revenge groups. Now, are we done nitpicking here?

Originally I never even said all of them would be seeking revenge. What I was saying was, that most of them were probably satisfied, that some kind of justice had already been served, by Germany covered in debris, Goering and co. sentenced in a trial and all the other things I mentioned (What isn't the case with the US)- of course, for some of them that wouldn't be enough.

Out of interest, could you elaborate on Gaul being a bad example?

[Thanas]

To give you one example: The only sources we have about the atrocities the romans commited during their invasion of Gaule are Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico”. I doubt, those few gaules left after the romans were done with exterminating and enslaving them were important enough to write home about, if they tried to get revenge. Most likely such incidents would have been documented as limited enemy-contact, robbery- and murder in case of civilian victims, or just barbarism, but not acts of revenge. A court-file would probably read: Roman merchant Tullius Varus murdered by Obelix, a slave he purchased in Gaule. Sentence: Crucification.

Trust me, Gaul really is a bad example for the kind of thing you want to claim.

As for the Jewish "revenge" stuff - even if we accept these claims at face value (which I will not do), they still rather prove my point - that over 99% of the survivors did not join revenge groups. Now, are we done nitpicking here?

Originally I never even said all of them would be seeking revenge. What I was saying was, that most of them were probably satisfied, that some kind of justice had already been served, by Germany covered in debris, Goering and co. sentenced in a trial and all the other things I mentioned (What isn't the case with the US)- of course, for some of them that wouldn't be enough.

Fair enough, but I really doubt that anybody who has been tortured for seven years is really itching to do anything harmful to him ever again, especially when he now has a nice cozy comfy life courtesy of the taxpayer to lose.

Out of interest, could you elaborate on Gaul being a bad example?

I'll do so in PM not to further breakup this thread, Shadowdragonnumbersretard has done so badly enough already with his hyperventilating.

[Thanas]

In other news, Hillary Clinton calls for civilian trials to continue.

Addressing the issue on the heels of the Ahmed Ghailani case, in which the Guantanamo Bay detainee was convicted on one charge related to the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, Clinton said the system is better than military commissions.

“If you look at the comparison between terrorists who are now serving time in our maximum security prisons compared to what military commissions have been able to do, there's no comparison,” she said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press.” “We get convictions, we send people away in our civilian courts at a much more regularized-- and-- and predictable way than yet we've been able to figure out how in the military commission.”

The Ghailani case rekindled the debate over civilian trials for terror suspects, as he was acquitted on all but one of the nearly 300 charges. Yet, Clinton called the civilian court system the “best system in the world.”

“It is good enough and strong enough to either convict and sentence the guilty, or even execute where appropriate, and where you can't convince an American jury, which is certainly obsessed with terrorism, maybe there's a question about the strength of the case,” she said.

Of course, Obama is silent on the issue.

[Phantasee]

I like her choice of words: "obsessed with terrorism".