Bradley Manning,an Army private accused of supplying Wikileaks with over 700,000 classified document and video clips, was arraigned last month but offered no plea. Two days later he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and yesterday, the U.N. official overseeing the investigation pronounced that “Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation“ to which he was subjected at Quantico including five straight months of isolation. The investigators have filed three different complaints about the Obama administration obstructing them. Christ what a mess.
Is there a source that has actual substantive information about the UN investigation's findings? You left "I believe that" off of the beginning of your quote from that guy, and that's all there is in the article you linked. I can't find a source with any more information about it.
The Manning case is a symptom of a larger problem in US law enforcement, in which our perfectly adequate legal procedures are circumvented for absolutely no legitimate reason. The case against Manning is -- to my understanding -- pretty open-and-shut. There is no reason to go through any of this shit. This is why we have laws. Instead, our government has opted for, essentially, stripping him of any form of process, even military process, and torturing him. I cannot fathom why, unless they want to make an example of him. If this were to make it to a regular a civilian court at this point, there's a good argument to be made that the mishandling of the case might mean he walks. I have no idea whether the same strictures apply to military courts. I'm also worried that this is symptomatic of a larger trend in which government officials are beginning to realize that, if they opt not to follow the law, no one is terribly likely to do anything about it. We saw this with the FISA issues a few years ago, and we're seeing it now as well as then with respect to indefinite detainment without charge. When you start to ignore someone's right to defend themselves against charges, you start down a very dangerous road. This is all old hat, of course. Bradley Manning has been getting cheerfully fucked by the state for quite a long time now. Unless there's new information, I'm unclear on the intent of the thread, unless it's to revitalize interest in the case. Which isn't unreasonable, since Manning has been out of the news for some time. EDIT: hurr. I read gud. The arraignment is news. Of course, after all the time he's spent in solitary, the damage may be irreversible. There need to be real, direct consequences to this kind of abuse. Not just "oh, fine, we'll let him go, then," because now it's too fucking late.
Well, it was the "UN special rapporteur on torture Juan Ernesto Mendez" who said it so he would know. As for the report it hasn't been released yet, the Obama administration is denying Mendez unrestricted access, again, this was just a preview of the report and another complaint about that. Here's a neat link to a bunch of info Manning gave Wikileaks
A Guardian article with more description of the UN's opinion, focusing on the known tortures and as noted above that the US management of access to the prisoner and privacy is completely unacceptable. If you're interested in the particulars of US intransigence on this issue, here's the follow up addendum from Mendez (the US starts on p74) (More here, if someone wants to dig further). It's worth noting that the US is actually stonewalling the procedure itself by not putting in place the conditions of open access necessary for Mendez to even conduct the visit that is necessary, although it's possible that recent internal criticisms of the Supermax lifestyle may open a door into that (huge, under-the-radar) aspect of human rights abuses even if it does nothing for Manning. I doubt it, though, because of the many issues that the US requires as fit places to express its feelings of sovereignty and exceptionalism, the ones that have to do with how we punish people have always been at the top of the list.
I consider that the Obama administration has kept the Guantanamo Bay facility open and running as it was, has been the greatest disappointment of his presidency. The Constitution and the various Amendments exist to protect both good and bad citizens from the predatory practices of the government. This "enemy combatant" (and yes, I know technically the term has been abolished) bullshit is just ridiculous.
While I agree, Obama did attempt to close Gitmo, no? The ratfuckers in Congress won't let him. I have many other disappointments that I do lay at the President's feet, of course.
Despite campaigning on shutting it down, he gave it a half assed attempt early on, but never really tried to leverage the Democratic majority in Congress to rule in his favor. He sort of gave up on closing it for good when he chose to reauthorize the Defense Authorization Bill in 2011. But more problematic is under his administration they continued to detain citizens without trial, and sign these retarded Memorandums of Understanding that restricted access to legal counsel. It's less the physical place and more the continued and in some cases expanded use of those violative policies that bugs the everliving shit out of me.
Push or not, I don't think he ever had the capital to shut down it. The Democratic Senate just freaked the hell out. Drones are pretty much all Obama's fault by contrast.
I can fault him on a lot of stuff with the war on terror, but he literally did everything his office had the power to do. You should be offended that congress was so freaked out about SuperCriminals that they actually added language preventing him from even using any funding source to move the prisoners. Dude can't legally even launch a kickstarter to fund moving them to normal prisons. It wasn't a dem/rep thing. It was that the whole congress basically went "yeah, fuck gitmo! Wait, you mean the prisoners don't simply cease to exist and we'd have to give them to willing supermax prisons in the states? HOLY SHIT THOSE PEOPLE HAVE SUPER POWERS AND WILL TERRORISM THIS PLACE UP!" and proceeded to make the single most fuck you strict bill I've ever seen. Dudes can leave loopholes the size of trucks in every other aspect of government, but the minute we talk about gitmo they've rules lawyered it the fuck up to make sure there's absolutely no wiggle room. edit: none of this has anything to do with the bullshit he's continued w/r/t the trials, and only addresses closing Gitmo itself. He had nothing left to try there, his office's only choices were to ask congress to do it, or to unilaterally move the prisoners. They said no to the first, and cut him off on the second with a giant fuck you. The actual trial stuff is unmitigated bullshit, though I recall some bullshit with getting civilian trials also being fucking stupid in congress, but I think that was just hot air and not actually legislation.
According to that conservative bastion, WaPo, the administration never pushed Congress to act to close Gitmo. Despite saying it was during the campaign, it just turned out not to be a priority for the administration. Article is worth a read. However, closing or keeping Gitmo open is focusing on the smaller issue here. I'd love Gitmo to be shut down, but more importantly, I'd like my government to follow the Constitution when it comes to honoring the civil rights of both their own citizens, and foreign nationals. The Obama administration continues to act in a contrary manner. For example, Bush had a fucked up policy around suspending/denying habeas corpus rights, and basically creating a scenario where the US could abduct people, and hold them indefinitely without any judicial oversight. So there was no external review of whatever minimal evidence existed to hold these people (see below). That's fucking Nazi bullshit. Obama campaigned in 2008 very strongly against this specific policy. However...under his administration, they've not only kept that policy, they've embraced it. Here's a good review of the issue from a very irritated constitutional and civil rights litigator on Salon : I like to think I live in a country that respects due process and the rule of law. Currently, I don't.
Dan Carlin the had a very interesting podcast recently about Bradley Manning. Well worth listening to.
Problem is that the war on terror isn't an actual war. We're fighting a bunch of bandits and mass murderers. Neither of whom are traditionally considered combatants.
I'm a little curious why the handover of Bagram was halted, and I imagine it will come out in the near future (considering it was less than a week ago), but I suspect it has something to do with our stickier prisoners. Part of the issue we have is that this isn't actually a war, and it's mostly happening places we shouldn't be, and politically it's suicide for the entire party if we just let everyone go and pay out some reparations (and also doesn't guarantee the next party in charge won't just pick them up again) The trial bullshit is total bullshit, but there's a really odd lingering question of what we do with the people we absolutely should be sticking in jail for long periods of time, and which people those are. Most of the folks we picked up since shortly after 9/11 have nothing to do with attacking US soil, and are only guilty of attacking US forces on foreign soil. Which isn't actually a crime in combat, it results in you being released after hostilities have ceased. But we have no hostilities to cease, and should just be getting the fuck out and letting them go like they were normal POWs. But again: political fucking suicide. I both want Obama to stand up and do it, but I also don't want the subsequent years of GOP rule on the executive and both houses when the same people who were all NIMBY about Gitmo closing wind up being bat shit crazy about us letting a bunch of hostiles go after being at pseudo war for so long. We should be hovering at around 70-80% approval for even closing gitmo, but last time I looked it was distressingly lower than that, and a terrifying segment of the population was totally okay with indefinite detentions in general. We stepped in a huge mess by not declaring some form of war, and then taking a whole mess of prisoners. Because for the life of me I can't figure what you'd charge a foreigner with if the country they were caught in doesn't want to charge them with shit. And if the host country doesn't want to charge them with attempted murder or terrorism or whatever because they're not that fond of the US military being there, then we really shouldn't be there in the first freaking place. tl;dr: I'm not sure how we fix this mess without a huge shift in public opinion, or one of our political parties falling on their collective swords for a decade. Or our supreme court getting their shit together and fixing this from a legal standpoint once and for all.
And we're fighting them in places where we have no legal jurisdiction. Which was the entire argument with Bagram's handover: the military was concerned that the local courts were just going to let people walk. The issue is that it's pretty much exactly what should happen with the evidence presented, and they should only be convicted if guilty of local law. We're basically trying to create international law and enforce it. Which is a bit of a laugh considering how concerned this country gets about One World Government every time the UN says something's bad.
I couldn't imagine what diplomatic solution we put forward when it came to the Barbary Coast. Lawless area, undergoverned by the Ottomans. And we had no jurisdiction to boot.
It was prior to a number of treaties we are party to, and also involved a declared war? edit: they also both ended with a mutual exchange of all prisoners.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Act wasn't a declaration of war? Or are you operating under the mass delusion that Congress has forsaken many of it's key powers? There are many examples of the US using the army to operate as police in foreign territories, Pershing Expedition to hunt for an infamous bandit, along with some other punitive expeditions, police actions, etc. Congress could effectively allow the FBI and the US army to start arresting people in Canada, and they would have jurisdiction, but the Canadians won't like it.
It's not a declared war against a specific target, hence why we're not taking POWs. The barbary pirates declared war on us, and we took POWs, and returned them after the conflict. The Pershing expedition was again prior to Geneva where all of this was formalized as to shit we weren't supposed to do. Congress can authorize the Army to arrest folks in Canada, but they wouldn't have jurisdiction unless we declared war and started taking POWs. This is the entire concept here: the Canadians can't show up here and start arresting folks or we'd arrest them for doing something frankly illegal. But in your examples, they're either pre-Geneva, or involve us being at war and taking POWs. That's the entire problem we have right now: we're declaring they're not POWs, we're not at war(* ish! Basically we're saying they can't be POWs because they're not part of a country's army or flying colors), and we appear to have no intention of releasing them when we cease the war on terror( which again: not really a war with anyone, so how exactly would you cease hostilities?) edit: just to be clear, the whole concept of international terrorism raises a ton of questions about how you effectively fight crime in an international arena. It works with places like Europe for the most part because everyone has similar laws and wants continued diplomatic relations, so if someone bombs you and runs across the border, the arrest him and send him back most of the time. It's difficult when the target country either doesn't want to do so, or lacks the capability to do so. I'm not saying this is an easy situation to be in, but I am saying that at the moment we've basically fucked up so badly at it that we should probably call the whole thing off. Especially since pretty much nobody left alive has much of anything to do with the actual attack this was all theoretically a response to.
I do not think the Barbary Pirates declared war, they committed acts of war, there's a subtle difference. The define and punish clause makes it quite clear that the Federal Government has universal jurisdiction regarding certain matters. You make the civilized world sound so uncivilized pre-Geneva. Interestingly, no one realizes even after the Geneva Convention, the Nazi treatment of Yugoslavian Partisans was fundamentally legal in accordance to international norms. Afterall, they were not uniformed. The world view established by the Treaty of Westphalia was a legal fiction designed to cement the rights of states, not protect human dignity. There are several ways to fight international crime, although it depends on your willingness to combat international crime. Right now the value of non-American life is pretty low, so the United States is financing several dictatorships, and actually put one in power in Afghanistan to fight against the Al Qaeda organization and it's affiliates. Here's a nice primer: http://www.npr.org/2005/12/06/5011464/will-terrorism-rewrite-the-laws-of-war
The Barbary pirates did indeed declare war. Their custom dictated that one declare war by chopping down the enemy's flag pole, which they did at Tripoli and was recognized by the US as a declaration of war. I'm not trying to make pre-Geneva sound uncivilized. I'm trying to say that post Geneva a lot of shit we used to do is no longer valid due to treaty. So using pre-Geneva examples to show off things Geneva says don't do anymore seems completely nonsensical, unless you're advocating we withdraw from Geneva. edit: I mean, I can talk about how slave owning was fine until after it wasn't anymore, but that is kind of a silly topic about actions taken today.
You're going to have to explain why you think you have jurisdiction to come into Canada and arrest people and why we can't do the same. I'm half convinced you're an idiot.
The Geneva Convention was in 1864. The 2nd Convention was in 1906. The Pershing Expedition was in 1916. The Nazi reprisals against Yugoslav Partisans was in the forties. The Geneva Convention wasn't some document that was drummed up recently. There is a lot of historical actions the US and other nations have taken against international criminals. International crime isn't a new concept. It came about the minute criminals grew a pair of legs and walked across an imaginary border. Edit: Actually you Canadians can do the same. But you may not do it or we'll shoot. It also works vice-versa. This is why extradition is typically done out of token respect to Westphalian principles. Edit2: Perhaps you people should examine the difference between codified international law and general international law? Israel did abduct Eichmann afterall.
A) Geneva convention on POWs (and other folks picked up in combat zones): 1950. At least reference the right one in a thread talking about the treatment of prisoners? B) Eichmann's abduction caused an international incident entirely because that's not the legit way to pick up a criminal living in another country. Israel full well knew it wasn't legit, and disavowed government involvement in the affair for a while and tried to pass it off as vigilantes. Storming into another country and kidnapping someone because they broke a law in a third country: not really legit. You're essentially confusing "can resist/retaliate militarily" with "totally kosher". If we nipped over and picked up Israel's PM in the dead of night for some software piracy charge, there'd be political hell to pay. But nobody could actually stop us. That doesn't however give us the right, only the ability.
The other problem is that while some of those people being held are likely totally innocent, I bet they sure want to take up arms now.
Turning people who like us or are just indifferent to us into bitter enemies seems to be an American tradition.
A: I guess prior to 1950 prisoners would be maltreated on a regular basis? B: Governments don't have rights. They only have abilities. I suppose there would be hell to pay. Since there was hell to pay for Waco, I guess the federal government doesn't have jurisdiction within the United States? Your arguments are extremely illogical. Regardless of whether or not an opinion poll shows that the government shouldn't have taken an action, True, but the people we aim to destroy are pretty much mass murderers and bandits. Ignoring any effects on their families.
A) They sometimes were, hence the convention where we agreed to not do that shit anymore. B) That's one opinion, but kind of the reason that we make things like the UN to attempt to prevent shit like this. Waco was a shit storm, and arguably should have been because the actions taken were questionable at best. You arguments are only logical in the sense that might makes right. We have laws, and we have agreed within our laws to follow certain international treaties. We're violating those laws. That's the fucking problem. Moreover, kidnapping people in other countries violates the law in those countries quite often. The problem area is that we're strong enough that very few people can actually pick a fight with us over it, so we basically get to do whatever we want. That doesn't make it right, it just makes it easy to get into shit situations. It's the same problem we have internally where our checks and balances system breaks down because some of the checks don't feel like it. What we're disagreeing with you here is that "can do ___" is innately equivalent to "has the right to do ____", with a side order of using really fucking old references from prior to us legally agreeing to stop doing things. We've ratified the conventions and are in violation of them and trying to wing it on a creative interpretation of the rules to allow for indefinite detention. The third convention clearly explains what you do with POWs and civilians. The fourth clearly explains what you do with people who aren't POWs and are fighting as what we currently call "unlawful combatants", and the international court has previously pointed out that there's no middle ground where you can make shit up. Either you hold POWs until combat has ceased (and then hand them over), or you charge them with a crime and hand them over to the civilian legal system. End of story. The wonky spot we're in is that we're unwilling to provide evidence that would stand up in a civilian court, and we're unwilling to just let them go later, so we've made up this completely insane third state where we can just hold you forever and our own laws be damned because actually doing this properly would be hard and we might find some folks not guilty. You can keep arguing that we should keep doing this indefinite detention shit because "who is gonna stop us" type mentality, but it doesn't stop it from being against our laws to be involved in it at all.
I see. It appears that you do not grasp the Kissingerian worldview of the world, in which might actually does make right. There is no world government. Only other national governments can make other national governments accountable to various agreed upon precepts. Here's some real questions for you: What course of action should the United States have taken against Libyan sponsored terrorism? What course of action should the Cubans have taken against American sponsored terrorism? Or should we frown upon Libya, and the United States, respectively for violating international law? What we're disagreeing about is that states have no rights, they have powers. And it is through these powers they negotiate with other states as to what should be done with those powers. I'm not arguing we should keep doing this because we can't be stopped, but I'm pointing out your argument is fundamentally flawed.
This assumption says more about you than it does about anyone else in this little derail. I have a good grasp of your argument and it's implications. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. It's not a hard concept to grasp, nor is it a new one, I learned this crap in high school, which is fitting since you seem to be making this argument as if we were a bunch of high school students just waiting to be enlightened and once we hear the truth we'll come round to your point of view. It doesn't work like that. You'd know that if you had any grasp of your audience.
Might only makes right until you find a problem you can't fix by blowing people up or locking them away.
[quote="Kildorn, post: 522737, member: We're basically trying to create international law and enforce it. Which is a bit of a laugh considering how concerned this country gets about One World Government every time the UN says something's bad.[/quote] It's also hilarious since we've defined the opposition in this war as not being "traditional combatants" subject to existing international laws of war, so those regular international rules of war don't apply, yet now we want to put international rules of war-justice in place. As long as we don't reference existing once that ruin completely our ad hoc legal framework in the process!
