It don't gitmo better than this

[Thanas]

http://www.vice.com/read/it-dont-gitmo- ... entpage=-1

[Edi]

Yup, nothing surprising in there, just more confirmation of things already known and that the claims of the US government about gitmo are all bullshit.

[Mr. Coffee]

Goddamn it, Thanas... That's a terrible pun.

[Thanas]

Goddamn it, Thanas... That's a terrible pun.

Article title. Not my idea.

Yup, nothing surprising in there, just more confirmation of things already known and that the claims of the US government about gitmo are all bullshit.

I'm guaranteeing you that in the end the US will have locked up people without trial, apology and recompense for decades and nobody inside the USA will give a shit. Meanwhile, some people will still cling to ignorance and repeat mindless propaganda claims like "ENEMY FIGHTERS" and stuff.

What was interesting to me was the pure culture of paranoia and chicanery surrounding the guards though. Stuff like opera glasses for reporters were suddenly banned after being allowed for several months....it reads a lot like the "designed unpredictability" of the Stasi to keep subjects in check because you couldn't predict what they would do.

[Mr Bean]

What was interesting to me was the pure culture of paranoia and chicanery surrounding the guards though. Stuff like opera glasses for reporters were suddenly banned after being allowed for several months....it reads a lot like the "designed unpredictability" of the Stasi to keep subjects in check because you couldn't predict what they would do.

Nothing so sinister Thanas, the guard in question was likely new or had not noticed them before and decided to simply take them on his own authority. MP can do that sort of thing and the CoC means unless it's crazy they will back him no matter what little rule he makes.

Remember the hunger strike started once the rotations started at Gitmo and the new people came in eager to crack down and enforce discipline while the old crew had gotten accumulated to the fact that yes these people were prisoners but they were innocent and due to be released never. Tone from the top can change a lot of things. If someone gets friendly with a prisoner and the boss does not punish them that sets a tone. On the flip side if someone gets friendly and they come down on them like a ton of bricks... well that's another kind of tone the other way.

OAN:It's funny how much Fox complained about Fox's apology tour when that's one thing Obama will never do about his own serious mistakes... because after all he does not view the Gitmo situation as a mistake. Just like he does not view so many other things as mistake.

[Edi]

Thanas:

Won't take a bet against your prediction. It's a foregone conclusion. I also agree with the assessment about the Stasi methods. The amount of doublethink those people have to engage in just astonishing.

At this stage it is also no exaggeration to say that anyone who has served in Guantanamo Bay since the prisoners were brought in there is a war criminal.

[Edi]

What was interesting to me was the pure culture of paranoia and chicanery surrounding the guards though. Stuff like opera glasses for reporters were suddenly banned after being allowed for several months....it reads a lot like the "designed unpredictability" of the Stasi to keep subjects in check because you couldn't predict what they would do.

Nothing so sinister Thanas, the guard in question was likely new or had not noticed them before and decided to simply take them on his own authority. MP can do that sort of thing and the CoC means unless it's crazy they will back him no matter what little rule he makes.

That doesn't wash. Everything they are allowed to bring in is already cleared beforehand in at least five different stages, so if they make it that far and then the guards pull that shit, it's either being a deliberate asshole for shits and giggles or being a deliberate asshole because of orders. Their paranoia about security and everything else renders the otherwise available option of incompetence of screening procedures an impossibility.

[Mr Bean]

That doesn't wash. Everything they are allowed to bring in is already cleared beforehand in at least five different stages, so if they make it that far and then the guards pull that shit, it's either being a deliberate asshole for shits and giggles or being a deliberate asshole because of orders. Their paranoia about security and everything else renders the otherwise available option of incompetence of screening procedures an impossibility.

Court room itself is not going to be general guards from Gitmo but a hand picked squad who does nothing but that. Also the clearance for gitmo is when you arrive, when you go into the camps and then into a secure area like the courtroom. Note that spiral notebooks were only banned inside the courtroom not in the wider camp itself.

*Edit
Each level is going to be a different group and possibly a totally different CO.

[Thanas]

And what would be the reason for banning spiral notebooks, other than to screw with reporters?

[Mr Bean]

And what would be the reason for banning spiral notebooks, other than to screw with reporters?

To screw with reporters
I'm not saying the restrictions were not to screw with reports just that it's not a deliberate effort to be unpredictable. They are just trying to imposes stupid rules to see what the reporters react and try and make them stay away. After all in an ideal world no one shows up to report on Gitmo but the camp is still open to reporters.

At least the Obama administrations fucked up perfect world.

[Simon_Jester]

And what would be the reason for banning spiral notebooks, other than to screw with reporters?

Same reason staples were banned: "You could put someone's eye out with that length of wire!"

I work in a bureaucracy capable of pretty much the same kind of idiocy. There may be a few policy-setters who actually enjoy it, but in the general case it's just the unthinking reflex to ban whatever might cause a 'problem,' before it actually does cause a problem the bureaucrat would have to deal with. Preserve the status quo, ensure that nothing changes, ensure that no one makes waves or causes a public scandal.

This leads to deep indifference toward the press's ability to do their jobs, because the one thing most likely to change conditions at Guantanamo is press attention. Even without Stasi-like tactics of premeditated unpredictability, that's enough to explain random, thuggish confiscations of press supplies.

[K. A. Pital]

I saw that too, once. At an American embassy they suddenly without prior notice (a few people already passed the checks) said that all girls should remove their shoes. And why?

Cause you could hide a spring knife in the shoe nose which would be activated by pressing on the heel, then the knife would fly out and hit the whatever person in the neck, killing him or her. A guard has graphically demonstrated that with his hands and laughter. Then he was watching at how people were taking off their shoes with a smile.

That's bureaucracy.

[Batman]

I'm not sure the geometry on that works out to begin with, but why does that only apply to girl's shoes?

[Simon_Jester]

Idiocy, or (shudder) someone using the "I have a license to be an idiot and the bureaucracy will back me up" to indulge in a fetish.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm not sure the geometry on that works out to begin with, but why does that only apply to girl's shoes?

I guess the reasoning was that a high heel is an easy trigger or something. I was kind of shocked at that moment, so I didn't ask the guy why he did it.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I'm guaranteeing you that in the end the US will have locked up people without trial, apology and recompense for decades and nobody inside the USA will give a shit.

Thanas, I dont often say this to you but...Fuck You. There are plenty of Americans who do, in point of fact, give a shit that the US government and military have decided to abrogate every human rights treaty it has ever signed, and elected to sink into depths of sadistic depravity that would give the soviet union a run for its money. I am one of them. I would appreciate it if you refrained from painting every US citizen with the same sort of malignant brush that my homesick abortion of a government paints any Arab who happened to have been in Afghanistan in 2001.

You want to sneer at the US government? Go ahead, I will join you in the sneering. Do you want to malign the portion of our population that actually does consist of ethically reprehensible troglodytes? Please do. I happily endorse such endeavors, because such people deserve it.

But dont sit there and tell me that no one in the US gives a shit, because all that is required to negate such a statement is one person, and there are more people than that who have a conscience here, and they deserve better. Afterall, they have to live with what the government does in their name.

[Thanas]

My apologies, Aly, but it gets real easy to forget about the small hundreds of Americans who care enough to actually protest this, or maybe about the small thousands of people who demand change. They clearly don't matter in the political landscape of the USA and nobody actually feels threatened by them.

What they are doing is good and sorry for tearing you with the same brush, but for the purpose of this discussion, they might just as well not matter.

[fgalkin]

I'm sorry, I know Gitmo is terrible and all, but

At 21, he hired an immigration lawyer to file his residency papers. The lawyer told him to leave the country while the papers were processed. Not wanting to return to Algeria, Nabil bought a fake passport, and then took off to England.

London can be a rough place for immigrants without the proper paperwork. Going broke while working off the books at a pizzeria, Nabil took the advice of a friend from his mosque: in Afghanistan, living was cheap, papers were superfluous, and you could study the Qur’an while the bureaucratic wheels churned in France.

Do they really expect us to believe that a guy who preferred living illegally in England to going to Algeria decided to just up and move to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, one of the worst places on Earth at the time, without knowing anyone or speaking the language, because "living was cheap?"

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Mr Bean]

Do they really expect us to believe that a guy who preferred living illegally in England to going to Algeria decided to just up and move to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, one of the worst places on Earth at the time, without knowing anyone or speaking the language, because "living was cheap?"

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Yes because it was pre 9/11 and Afghanistan was considered a backwards county cruel to women and Muslim dominated. Remember he's male and Muslim... Not exactly a bad kind of person to be in pre 2001 Afghanistan.

When people talked about Afghanistan they were considered the same as Pakistan or Tajikstan. It was not a den of evil and terrorism until 9/11

[fgalkin]

Do they really expect us to believe that a guy who preferred living illegally in England to going to Algeria decided to just up and move to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, one of the worst places on Earth at the time, without knowing anyone or speaking the language, because "living was cheap?"

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Yes because it was pre 9/11 and Afghanistan was considered a backwards county cruel to women and Muslim dominated. Remember he's male and Muslim... Not exactly a bad kind of person to be in pre 2001 Afghanistan.

When people talked about Afghanistan they were considered the same as Pakistan or Tajikstan. It was not a den of evil and terrorism until 9/11

This is a country where they hanged TV sets from trees and having a Western book was tantamount to a death sentence. They guy didn't want to go to Algeria, but went to a place that is far worse than that? Because he could study the Qu'ran there? As opposed to anywhere else in the world?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Mr Bean]

This is a country where they hanged TV sets from trees and having a Western book was tantamount to a death sentence. They guy didn't want to go to Algeria, but went to a place that is far worse than that? Because he could study the Qu'ran there? As opposed to anywhere else in the world?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Because Afghanistan was not monolithic no more than any significant sized country with multiple ethnic groups is? Because the country never was 100% Taliban controlled, because even the worst of the Taliban offensives against decency where conducted in one part of the country not the entire country.

Because Pashtun are not Tajik, and Tajik are not Hazara and the last thing a Hazara wants to be is confused with a Uzbek or a Turkmen?
Because Afghanistan is lines on a map and not a solid country. Because in 2001 the Taliban controlled only 24% of the entire country while claiming control of about 60% which is easy to do in a country consisting of mostly nothing.

[fgalkin]

Maybe that's why I specified Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, then, eh?

He was in Kabul and when the war started, Tora Bora

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Mr Bean]

Maybe that's why I specified Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, then, eh?

He was in Kabul and when the war started, Tora Bora

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

And again Taliban ruled is not the same thing as Taliban controlled and Taliban claimed. Kabul is an excellent example of this unless you want to tell me Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips were prime Taliban recreuting companies. Further as I've noted before and you've ignored the ethnic divisions are everything in Afghanistan. Want to go to Kabul I can show you to the Hazara districts were until 2007 you could be wined and dined and be cheated only slightly when buying trinkets. Or you could follow me half a mile away to the Pashtun quarter where we could show up in one those delightful internet videos of men with bags over there heads who are held hostage for years within about half an hour.

Even in 1998 when the Taliban was at it's height they only controlled about half of Kabul. The city is and remains a giant interlinking series of racial ghettos with the only thing that changes is which group gets the nicer bits.

*Edit
Also need I remind you that our government believes his story and they talked with the people who sold him to us as "Taliban".

[Simon_Jester]

He might have had some weird or shady reason for going to Afghanistan, but it still makes no sense to stick him in a prison camp for decades on the grounds that some completely random people fingered him as Al Qaeda, especially if they had no possible way of knowing that.

The huge cash rewards for turning in Al Qaeda members were, in hindsight, a very very bad idea. Especially if we were planning all along to imprison those people indefinitely. Life in prison for an actual senior Al Qaeda member isn't at all unreasonable- but making it impossible to release innocent people from the same prison, and then using a method of capture that is very likely to sweep up Abdul the Plumber along with the actual bad guys... ugh.

[Alyrium Denryle]

He might have had some weird or shady reason for going to Afghanistan, but it still makes no sense to stick him in a prison camp for decades on the grounds that some completely random people fingered him as Al Qaeda, especially if they had no possible way of knowing that.

The huge cash rewards for turning in Al Qaeda members were, in hindsight, a very very bad idea. Especially if we were planning all along to imprison those people indefinitely. Life in prison for an actual senior Al Qaeda member isn't at all unreasonable- but making it impossible to release innocent people from the same prison, and then using a method of capture that is very likely to sweep up Abdul the Plumber along with the actual bad guys... ugh.

It is not even a bad idea in hindsight. It is just a bad idea. I suppose hindsight might be relevant in the sense of being aware of history. The Spanish Inquisition and Salem MA come to mind, wherein people turned in their neighbors and people they did not like because they received that person's property. A lot of innocent people had torture and an auto de fe inflicted upon them. I guess history does repeat itself.