Gitmo Is Killing Me | Hacker News Reader

Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

1,333 pointsbcn521 comments

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless.

I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen and if you aren't makes me physically ill.

As a country, in many ways we deserve the disdain directed at us.

That said, we are not only Gitmo, and we actually do a lot of good things for the world. We just need to get our government to respect our borders.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana...

Obama's second full day in office. How is that a reversal? Congress then blocked any and all money which the administration would need to take action to close the base. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196

This is the closest he's come to keeping his campaign pledges to reverse the idiocy of the Bush era, but he failed, and then he even reversed his own executive order in 2011. Like suspension of habeas rights, like warrantless wiretaps, like drone warfare, like the TSA, President Obama didn't make these things, but he still chooses to use them. A lot.

Obama was the only hope people like me saw for reversing the 9/11 death spiral, and he blew it. End the war in the Middle East? Naw, let's escalate it instead. Reform the Patriot Act? How about I reauthorize it as-is. End indefinite detention of Americans without trial? No, continue indefinite detentions without trial and/or execute Americans without a trial. Transparent government? How about secret laws instead. Stop rousting foreigners? Nope, let's ICE record numbers of immigrants. Veto NDAA? Sign NDAA! Veto CISPA?

The trends in the Obama administration are the exact opposite of what people voted for. His legacy is more power for ICE and TSA; more power for national security agencies; more intrusive government; more war; more unprincipled, reactionary policy making. Zero upside.

I get why people defend their candidates in the face of conflicting evidence. Obviously people believe their candidate, no matter how bad, is better than the alternative. But Obama's a lame duck. There's no reason to shield him or blame this on someone else who's already out of office, though don't get me wrong here: Bush was a truly horrible President. It doesn't solve the core problem, which is the we need a leader in 2016 who will lead us out of this spiral. Unfortunately neither party is worth a damn right now.

I never understood why people got mad at Obama for not closing Gitmo. The president is not the king. He/she still needs approval from Congress to get most shit done. In the case of Gitmo, his initiative got blocked by politicians who were too worried about what voting yes would mean for their own political careers.

For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault.

"For anyone who actually understands politics, the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault."

I disagree. For anyone that understands politics understands that things can get done by applying a significant political push. I think Obama symbolically tried, then threw his hands up in the air in defeat when he got some resistance from Congress. I assume this is because the political chips he would lose by pushing harder on closing Gitmo are chips he was not willing to lose.

Meanwhile, CISPA, which was already defeated once, is making its way through Congress again. It's a perfect example of "political push" (and if you read between the lines, that means "money").

Actually he could have issued an executive order to release the prisoners unilaterally. That would have pissed off Congress of course but as the Commander in Chief the original rational for imprisonment came from the White House and thus could have been reversed. That he didn't do that in response to the Congressional back pressure proved to me that he didn't have the leadership to follow through.

"...the failure to close Gitmo was not Obama's fault."

I recommend this Salon article by Glen Greenwald from July 2012

The Obama GITMO myth: New vindictive restrictions on detainees highlights the falsity of Obama defenders regarding closing the camp

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/

Then Obama was counting on many people not to understand politics when he chose to make promises on things he wouldn't have the power to change.

Below shows that Obama can indeed take action to take prisoners of gitmo to trial. any reason he hasn't done any of this?

It looks like the document 'blocking money' in fact describes what the president would need to do to bring people to trial and even free them.... Am I missing something? Why hasn't he done this it seems pretty straight forward... I know hes a busy guy but I would put this shit high up there on my priority list...

(Found in the full bill at http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196, I just did a search for 'Guantánamo', its at the bottom (the 11th appearance of the term)

--------------------------------------------

c) None of the funds made available in this or any prior Act may be used to transfer an individual who is detained, as of the date of enactment of this Act, at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, or the District of Columbia, for the purposes of prosecuting such individual, or detaining such individual during legal proceedings, until 45 days after the plan detailed in subsection (d) is received.

--------------------------------------------

Subsection d goes on to list what is needed.

(1) The findings of an analysis regarding any risk to the national security of the United States that is posed by the transfer of the individual. (2) The costs associated with transferring the individual in question. (3) The legal rationale and associated court demands for transfer. (4) A plan for mitigation of any risk described in paragraph (1). (5) A copy of a notification to the Governor of the State to which the individual will be transferred or to the Mayor . R. 2346—63 of the District of Columbia if the individual will be transferred to the District of Columbia with a certification by the Attorney General of the United States in classified form at least 14 days prior to such transfer (together with supporting documentation and justification) that the individual poses little or no security risk to the United States

On days like these the US is Guantanamo Bay. The US is poverty and regular people without a home. The US is bad health care, as in only the rich can afford it. The US is drones, fired at civilians in the dead of night. The US is oil, as in that they want it all. The US is guns, like the ones likely to be pointed at you if you get robbed. The US is x-rays at the airport.

And finally, the US is the land of the free.

Yes, you're right. The US is not perfect, which makes it exactly like a prison full of extraordinarily rendered un-tried suspects.

This is not the kind of content I come to Hacker News for.

Unfortunately, you won't always find content you're looking for. It's just statistics. The article is political in nature and the comments are likely to be as well; if it's not what you're looking for, you may safely ignore it and rest assured that it's a statistical anomaly that won't undermine the entire community.

the article, or the opinion espoused by the commenter you replied to?

In other words, you come to HN for one aspect of the Political world , and not all of them?

Myself, I don't come to HN for ANYTHING in this thread. It's all interesting, in it's own right, but has little to do with 'hacking'.

But, then again, civil liberties are a set of issues that can broadly affect us all.. maybe that was the grand position of whoever thought this was HN worthy.

I don't know. Maybe it's beyond us all, and the OP has some insight as to how the whole GITMO situation can be solved with functional programming and 'high-availability clustering solutions', and he's just trying to nudge us into finding the solution.

One can be hopeful.

I didn't downvote you because I didn't agree with you (even though I don't), but because your comment is underspecified, un-argumented, and thus without any value.

You just have.

The US is the computer and internet that complete you.

Is there no way you could have a computer and internet and yet still respect human rights? Or is it really all or nothing?

> That said, we are not only Gitmo, and we actually do a lot of good things for the world.

Indeed, it is not just Gitmo, if only, and it's not just the US. Lots of EU governments are complicit in the whole rendition (what a word, kidnapping would be the appropriate term) program as well and there are/were more places in the world where people are being held without any sort of process, to be tortured and disposed of, either by killing them or by turning them loose years later without even an idea of who their captors were.

But those other countries do not claim moral high ground in the same way the US does on so many other issues, or claim to lead the world with respect to values such as freedom and democracy (of which the right to a fair trial can be considered a part).

From the time I spent in the USA I think there are at least two parts to this. There is a certain degree of triumphalism based on the outcomes of the Second World War and Cold War but more interestingly (or perhaps importantly) it is used to convey a sense of optimism and foster nationalism that is targeted at immigrants and intended to get them all pulling in the same direction. Nobody wants to move to a country and hear "Welcome, but it is probably as crap here as the place where you came from".

I have lived in the US for my whole life, and there definitely is an Exceptionalist doctrine, particularly among the Republican party. However, the ideas of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny go back much farther than WWII, all the way to the Puritan ideas of "civilizing" Native Americans to "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!" to Roosevelt's imperialism and on. It's so ingrained in our national history that it's barely even questioned (any surprise why there has never truly been a viable Socialist movement in America?).

Your point about immigrants is interesting, though I'm not really in a position to comment on it. I can tell you, though, that a good portion of the US is very hostile to immigrants, and we have had a history of hostility (take a look at the Chinese Exclusion Act, for an extreme example). Our current political discourse is also very anti-immigrant, too, and the path to citizenship is very lengthy and difficult.

Yes they do. All countries claim to be the best.

That is patently false. I'm Greek, and I don't know any Greek (except maybe some right-wing fascists) who believes that their country was the best. Mindsets range from "it's shit" to "it might not be great, but it's my country".

Seeing Americans in movies go "best country in the world!" sounds absurd to us, and "you can't do this to me, I'm an American" sounds ludicrous.

The fact that everyone considers their country to be the best really seems to me like an American generalization. I've lived in the UK and I've had friends from a multitude of countries, and not one of them considers their country to be the best, unlike my American friends.

In EU, a number of ministers have been disgraced enough to be thrown out of politics when their cooperation with USA "extraordinary rendition" came known.

Where is the outrage in USA about Gitmo - which high-ranking officials have resigned in shame (or been thrown out for being shameless) about keeping these torture centers?

Really? I've never once, despite living in the EU for my entire life (in various countries), heard anyone claim the country they live is anything like "the land of the free".

No, not at all. And many rightly recognize that "best" is an absurd term to apply to a country.

What people will say is, "This country is the best for me" or "We're not perfect, but I love it" or "We have our ups and downs, but I'm proud to be here." Often people will say, "My country is the best" in the same way they say, "My wife is the best."

When I came to the US I was shocked at how many people openly, earnestly, unconditionally claim America is the best, the greatest, #1, etc. "On any objective scale, especially morally, America is the unqualified best." It's crazy.

in a post imperialist, post empire Europe we've grown beyond needing to swing our dicks around in a pissing contest. Some countries more than others it's true, but generally speaking there are better things to do than spend our time claiming our particular demesne in superior to all others.

American Exceptionalism.

I've been following the advice of another front-page story (don't follow the news) for a while now so I'm really curious which / how EU governments are complicit in this. Do you have some pointers for more information on that?

One place to start is the Wikipedia article about the subject. I do not know how accurate the sections about all countries are but the section about Sweden seems correct (we used to do renditions until it was stopped in 2006 after the UN called us out on having violated the torture ban).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the...

> not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!

How are you so sure of that? McCain's neither a saint nor a philosopher-king: his personal narcissism seems to rival Obama's, and he often seems to be successfully flattered and managed by those around him. But he erratically takes stands on principle, and he also has personal experience of both torture and prolonged imprisonment. And in fact he took an anti-torture position which, while it wasn't absolute, was well out ahead of other Congressmen and presidential candidates and was hardly calculated to win votes.

There's also the fact that whatever about McCain's personal inclinations, he or any other Republican president would have been under much sharper pressure from others on the issue. The people and institutions who were shouting so much about detention and torture and drone strikes under Bush and then became silent or muted under Obama (or indeed rushed to bestow on him a Nobel Peace Prize) would have continued shouting under McCain.

his personal narcissism seems to rival Obama's

I realize that the view of Obama as a tremendous narcissist has become a right-wing meme, but it seems so odd (kind of like the related view that he's a know-nothing who can't speak without a teleprompter, though that one seems to have died down since the election). I'm curious: how did the narcissism meme get started, and what evidence is cited for it, other than that major politicians tend to have major egos?

I'm not trying to make a political point. I don't follow the sources on this and would like someone to explain to me how the people who believe this came to believe it and what arguments they advance for it.

(p.s. I think you may have misread the GP, who meant that McCain would not have gotten their vote instead of Obama.)

The teleprompter thing started to die once the entire field of Republican candidates was winnowed down to the single non-crazy one who was perfectly happy to use a teleprompter.

I thought they all used teleprompters. Who doesn't?

Seriously? Obama's ego really does give appear to be at the upper, Blair/Sarkozy end of the big-politician scale. I could consider an argument that appearances are deceiving here; but no-one with two eyes could look at Obama's personal background and career to date and fail to see how it might, at least, leave someone else with the impression that Obama's unusually prone to feel the world as revolving around him.

> (p.s. I think you may have misread the GP, who meant that McCain would not have gotten their vote instead of Obama.)

Yes, I did misread it, thank you.

The real reason there would have been a chance under McCain is that the press, the Democrats in the Congress, and rights groups currently co-opted by the current administration would be all over his ass to close it.

Instead we have a deafening silence from all these groups that used to squawk daily about Gitmo and other government abuses while the other guy was in office.

This would be the same McCain who, just in December, shot down the idea that Gitmo prisoners could be transferred to the United States, right?

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/11/84379.html

Sure. As I think I made clear, I would have little confidence in McCain's willingness to reliably do the right thing in any given situation. (Taking it as read for the moment that agreeing to bring Guantanamo detainees to the US would be the right thing at this point.) But with the combination of stronger external pressure, (maybe) more cooperative Congressional Republicans, and whatever McCain might have felt like doing once President, it seems possible (very far from assured) that he might have made more progress down the military-tribunals route than Obama has made down either that or the US-trials route. (It would be harder to see McCain reversing his consistent opposition to US trials for the detainees.) The strongest reason to think otherwise would seem to be scepticism that anyone could really make the military-tribunal option work efficiently.

The problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility. Introducing them to the justice system would require the same.

As every American should know, Congress holds the purse strings here and has denied said request. The President has no power here.

The president can pardon them, the president can use private money to move them. The president can be on the news every night making this an issue.

> The president can be on the news every night making this an issue.

This is why the legal technicalities are irrelevant. The President has the ultimate bully pulpit, and it sure ain't getting used on Gitmo.

Something like a quarter of Americans also think the President is a crypto-Muslim. In the Wall Street Journal, today, for UN ambassador John Bolton and Bush Admin. legal adviser John Yoo are arguing that the administration signed up to a UN treaty intended to curb the global arms trade is really a cover for destroying the 2nd amendment and confiscating Americans' guns.

I am, frankly, surprised that that nobody in the House has offered articles of impeachment so far. (checks) Well almost, but it died q uiet death in the House Judiciary committee: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.CON.RES.107:

This is one of those cases where only Nixon can go to China.

Private money from where? Which account does that get drawn on?

Are you saying that the president should have authority to order spending of non-government money?

No, you don't move them. You release them, all.

You have not charged them with any crimes for the past 10 years and have not put them on trials. The problem is not the location of the prison. The problem is you are shitting on Habeas corpus.

You don't need funding. Just send them home.

They shouldn't be in any detention center – there is no legal reason to detain them.

> You don't need funding. Just send them home.

They would immediately try take legal action against the American administration through any and every international court available. Having been detained without sufficient evidence there is a case to answer, the US and their cohorts (let us not forget that several governments including ours in the UK have been shown to be complicit in rendition actions that deliberately circumvented international law) can't try ignore the issue with the "enemy combatants" and other such reasons without looking like complete hypocrites given how loud they shout when someone they care to defend is detained without what they consider to be sufficient evidence (Iran holding several naval officers for instance). Even more embarrassing: some of the people they are refusing to let go home to face/demand their own country's justice are American - they don't even want their own legal system anywhere near this.

tl;dr: Just letting them go would certainly not be cost free, financially or in terms of local and/or international reputation.

If they were sent home, very many of them would be instantly killed, imprisoned or worse. For many of them, Gitmo is probably a lot better than they'd be facing at home.

It seems unlikely that Congress micromanages the budget of the Department of Justice to the degree that it could not initiate prosecution of detainees in the civilian legal system. Whether that would be a reasonable solution is debatable, but it's certainly within the President's authority to attempt.

There's always the nuclear option: threaten to release the detainees if Congress doesn't provide funding for another solution.

This back and forth has happened many times. The Defense Appropriations bills that have passed Congress have forbid the President from using fund for any of these activities.

There is no nuclear option. Veto is not an option.

What people don't seem to understand is that this isn't a failure of democracy to act: this is what the American people want. We don't care that Guantanamo is open and we'd rather see it stay open than give these people a chance at a fair trial.

We are a government by the people, of the people, and the people have spoken.

The President has the power and the obligation to publicly speak against this on the world stage.

He can also, you know, exercise HIS right to free speech and say "Speaking as Barack Obama, this shit is ridiculous."

Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/

It's continually amazing how many people, especially Americans, think that the President is a king.

> The problem is that to close Guantanamo, you need funding to a least move the prisoners to another facility

You need funding to keep Gitmo going too. I seriously doubt that would be a problem.

There is another option, keep them in Guantanamo but improve conditions to at least normal prison standards in the US. I can't believe that would be more expensive than maintaining their current regime.

Sounds like you are proposing that we ignore the fact that they never faced a legal proceeding, and just give them fluffier pillows while we hold them indefinitely.

Yet they are willing to spend millions on upgrades to the place.

This is not a situation where we should be outraged at a president breaking his promise (yawn), but a case of an executive order not being carried out.

We should not gloss over the fact that Obama's 'promise' (or rather, executive order) to close Gitmo came after the election. One of his very first acts as president in fact. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/20/obamas-first...

The question we must ask is why did it not close? And, if Obama can't close this abomination, then who can?

The same people that prevented it from closing, Congress.

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

This is absolute nonsense. The US president, wrapping himself in the role of commander in chief, does just about anything he wants if it's even loosely connected to war or security, with or without congressional approval. Surveillance. Torture. Black sites. Assassination. Drone murders. Infinite detention. If he wanted Gitmo closed, he could close it. Congress won't give him the budget? Fine, he could order the closing as a military operation. He doesn't want to take the political heat. I voted for him (2008), but he is without testicular fortitude on this issue.

Alas, naïveté in the political system. How I knew you.

Who did you vote for in 2012? Ron Paul?

Guantanamo has nothing to do with congress. It was effectively authorized in this 2001 executive order:

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/mo-111301.htm

Rescinding that executive order doesn't make magic happen. There is the process of closing down and what to do with the prisoners that matters. It's sounding like Congress is tying the President's hands by restricting his ability to use funds (funds that Congress authorizes) towards those goals. If you're in the US and you want this to happen, I would look towards your representatives in Congress, and research these bills.

This rings similar to the 'legalize marijuana' issue. Making it legal 'tomorrow' would be a massive undertaking because of all of the infrastructure that's in place with the assumption that it's illegal.

Sometimes decisions/actions seem 'easy' on the surface, while the devil is in the details.

Well I think he could put a bit more public pressure on them then. I really don't hear him bringing it up too often.

It's in his comments on every appropriations bill. You just don't care.

Let's all be honest: we don't think about Guantanamo. When people bring it up we'll hem and haw and say, "gee, that's just terrible," but we don't give a shit. Take it out of the spotlight and it may as well not exist.

Yep, that's exactly it. When this link popped up on HN, I read the article and though "wow, that's horrible. Something should be done here!". But tomorrow my mind will be full of other concerns, and a Yemenite I don't know who has been detained without charge or trial for 10 years on a military base far away by a government that is not mine is simply not on my radar.

Sad, and shameful, but true.

dublinben:

Can you substantiate your claim that Congress is responsible for this?

Seems like Obama is the Commander in Chief and is the head of the Executive branch...

For example: http://www.webcitation.org/5jPWyaCDq

In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison. The 90-6 Senate vote—paired with similar House action last week—was a clear sign to Obama that he faces a tough fight getting the Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with his plans to shut down the detention center and move the 240 detainees.

That's from 2009, but it's been an ongoing problem with defense funding bills since then.

This section of the Wikipedia article does an excellent job of explaining President Obama's actions to close the detention camp, and how Congress interfered. They've made it impossible for the President to lawfully transfer the detainees to any US state or foreign country. There is realistically no way for the President to release them without being able to transfer them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guant%C3%A1namo_Bay_detention_...

It's more likely he's apathetic to the issue.

What was his solutions? Moving the detainees to another facility? Or did he actually want to give them trials and send the innocent ones home?

Move them to another facility on U.S. soil. And presumably hope the Supreme Court would then "force" his hand on moving them into the domestic judicial system. I will be snarky because it's late, and I'm annoyed this topic is on hn: President Obama loves nothing more than to vote "present".

No state will have them. Literally.

>>>>>>>>I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have.

It's really not that easy considering most people say these people should be covered under the Geneva Convention and given a military tribunal to determine their guilt. Unfortunately, the convention was really adopted for conventional warfare, not the sort of loosely organized terrorists we're currently fighting.

Also keep in mind a large percentage of these people who claim to be innocent have returned to the battlefield after being released from Gitmo:

"A declassified document made public Tuesday showed that up to 25% of all former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, subsequently engaged in terrorism or insurgency"

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/07/guantanamo.detainees/index....

And here's a list of other Gitmo prisoners who have been released and involved in terrorist attacks:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/327926/gitmo-detainees-...

>>>>>>As a country, in many ways we deserve the disdain directed at us.

No, not really. Considering when something bad happens anywhere in the world, nobody calls Canada, nobody calls Turkey, nobody calls Sweden. They call us to fix it. They call us to send billions in aid. They call us to take care of their crazy saber rattling neighbors. You think we deserve the disdain, but can you imagine the world without the billions in aid, without all the military aid we give other countries?

1. I would "return to the battlefield" too after being treated like they are, even if i had done nothing before. What makes you think Gitmo is not the cause?

2. If the convention is outdated, update it. It's not like the US is pushing the Hague and others to convene treaty proceedings to get this done. Until the US actually takes any steps to try to fix this "problem", i take it as just a BS excuse.

3. You have a very strange view of what happens, one I can only imagine is contributed to mainly by local media. They do in fact, call Canada, Turkey, Sweden, and others. These are rarely, if ever, unilateral actions. Due to some folks i'm friends with, i've actually occasionally traveled with some of these kinds of delegations, and I assure you, none of this is "better call big brother US to beat these guys up".

4. They would never declassify a document that shows them having been wrong until at least 20-25 years after the fact.

Agreed, especially on #2. Let's have a new international war treaty that assigns basic human rights to all people

>>No, not really. Considering when something bad happens anywhere in the world, nobody calls Canada, nobody calls Turkey, nobody calls Sweden. They call us to fix it. They call us to send billions in aid. They call us to take care of their crazy saber rattling neighbors. You think we deserve the disdain, but can you imagine the world without the billions in aid, without all the military aid we give other countries?

Citation needed, please. There's a lot of countries and a lot of people outside the US, and the idea that they are all calling on the US to solve their political and international relations problems sounds a bit silly to me. Did you know France has had military operations Mali since 2012 without the advice, consent, or involvement of the US, for instance? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_%282012%...)

Here you go: http://gbk.eads.usaidallnet.gov/data/fast-facts.html

"The United States remained the world's largest bilateral donor, obligating approximately $49.6 billion—$31.7 billion in economic assistance and $17.9 billion in military assistance. By comparison, the United States obligated $37.4 billion and $14.5 billion, respectively, in FY2010."

A 25% recidivism rate is pretty good considering that many might have gone to the "battlefield" as payback for their improper imprisonment. Also, it is disingenuous to conflate terrorism with insurgency as both have different motivations and "scope of battlefield."

So-called insurgents were only a threat to local presence of Americans and not interested in sticking overseas or be a part of a broader movement against America. Just because they are fighting for their country from their perspective doesn't make it right to say they are the same as terrorists.

You also have to take into account for the loss of goodwill and reputation across the world for hosting Gitmo; particularly when it has possibly radicalized more people simply by having something to point to when a terrorist recruiter propagandizes about the 'evilness of the US' and the merits of attacking us.

Just to compare, a quick google search shows that the U.S. recidivism was around 70%. It might have improved or not since the study period, but it does perspective on the issue.

Source: http://bjs.gov/content/reentry/recidivism.cfm

A 25% recidivism rate is miniscule considering we have been told for forever that these prisoners, all of them, were the "worst of the worst".

But your general point is a good one: Is someone who joins a not-very-nice local militia really a terrorist just because US troops or lackeys happen to be nearby? The US gov't is playing too many words games IMO.

Here's an interesting thought experiment: Imagine you are Obama, newly elected president. Under what conditions would you reverse yourself and let Gitmo stand? What information would you have to become privy to that you weren't before in order for you to change your mind?

Great idea. Here's some ideas to toss around. Maybe..

- We cannot have a proper trial for these men because many were actually innocent but should we turn them loose now we would lose a huge amount of face (but whose face would be lost under an incoming president?)

- We cannot have a proper trial for these men because many were actually innocent but now we have turned them into such dangerous killers, that, given their freedom they would now pose a significant thread (it seems unlikely to me that untrained non-killers could've learnt the skills of trade craft while under this type of detention regime).

- We cannot have proper trial for these men because if we did then in the nature of an honest trial, certain secrets would come out and that can't be allowed.. (seems more plausible?)

What else?

For me, I think your third point would do it if (and only if) I had been shown that the workings at Gitmo saved tens of thousands of lives.

It would also be a secret worth keeping (from your enemies) that Gitmo was working to that extent.

The fact that you will have no chance of accomplishing your other policy goals if you do.

Interesting- I hadn't thought of that. It then begs the question: why would his opponents not want to close it down?

That it's, among other things, what they wanted to hear to elect me, and that I'm elected now, and can't in any way be held accountable for idle promises, and that standing firm on that principle is more important to my handlers than a bunch of bleeding hearts.

But he was held accountable for his promise, he was elected again 4 years later. It didn't seem to matter.

I consider this the weakest possibility, and your writing smacks of bias such that I fear you are incapable of actually analyzing the problem.

First, I would return my nobel peace .

The double standard is Constitutional. The Constitution was never contemplated to give rights to foreigners not on U.S. soil. Indeed, every society has different rules for "its people" versus "other people." It's one of the things that makes war possible.

> The Constitution was never contemplated to give rights to foreigners not on U.S. soil.

Or to anyone. The Constitution is supposed to limit what the federal government can do, not grant any rights at all. When it was written, the assumption was that those rights were already held.

Held by who? Held by the citizens of the sovereign states, not every human.

No, Obama is cool! He plays basketball and does reddit AMAs! And he's black, too!

Don't waste time pushing the blame on Presidents, they're but sock puppets for Congress.

The real problem is the legislature. Fill Congress with enough third-party seats, and maybe, just maybe we can get out of this mess and take back our country from the filth that runs it right now.

> The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen and if you aren't makes me physically ill.

I also think that is profoundly unjust, and unfortunately it is not simply a question of being a US citizen or not: US citizens who are arab or muslim are more likely to be suspected of acts that could be considered to lie within the vague legal category of Terrorism. So it seems that non-muslim and non-arab people (whether US citizens or european citizens or otherwise) are less likely to be subjected to exceptional treatment, to be detained without trial or be killed in extra-judicial assasinations etc. It seems the divide is more on a racial/ethnic line than a US-citizenship line.

It is absolutely not a racial/ethnic thing. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_v._Rumsfeld.

They found a Saudi who was a U.S. Citizen (born in Louisiana), fighting in Afghanistan, and took him to Guantanamo. The Supreme Court ordered him released, and the government complied.

Why is it unjust to spend limited FBI resources focusing on high risk groups?

Do you think they should be monitoring bridge games at nursing homes?

Do you think that Arab and Muslim Americans have never been involved in domestic terrorist operations?

Some people are not considered "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law". That is what I find unjust. I can accept focusing on "high-risk groups" (although one should question how this definition of a high-risk group is constructed), monitoring them, and trying them in court. What is unjust is punishing them without a fair trial.

You're making very strong allegations towards a group of humans solely based on their ethnicity or religion.

For me it was Obama's vote to give retroactive immunity to telecom companies that spied on Americans illegally. He wasn't even running for president.

Also as a general rule, look at a man's actions not his words and promises (more so if they are in politics) <- should be obvious.

Now as you say -- big deal, what are other alternatives? There are not viable alternatives. So I just didn't vote.

Unrealistic expectations.

I think it's funny that you vote for Obama because you think he's a good guy with a good vision for America, then when he gets into power and makes a decision you think is morally contemptuous, your first though is that 'he wasn't who I thought he was'.

What the fuck do you know about national security, SoftwareMaven? You're a programmer on Hacker News. You're not privy to the shit that Obama is privy to.

How do you know your idea of what is moral is also what would be good for society as a whole? How do you know that Obama isn't simply responding in a reasonable way to the reality that you have no conception of.

Also, throwaway so I don't get called a fascist nazi or whatever.

> Also, throwaway so I don't get called a fascist nazi or whatever.

Don't worry, I just consider you a coward for that.

If you seriously want to call someone out, do it from your account and stand by your words.

(I'm not gitmothrow.) I did that back during the Scwartz debates on HN, right after he died, using my primary account, which had thousands of karma at the time. Within a week after the incident, most of HN had calmed down and was saying the same things I had been saying.

But by that point my account had been super-ultra-hellbanned. I couldn't even post. It wasn't until another user's complaint about being hellbanned made the front page that my primary account was promoted to merely being dead.

The point is: people use throwaway accounts because the HN community has demonstrated that it is simply not safe to use your primary account to say something controversial unless you have tens of thousands of karma.

If only I could be as brave as you.

Hi, future generations!

Political prisoners are being raped with food intubators to prevent themselves from committing suicide in America's secret torture prison, with the express consent and approval of President Obama, the American Congress, and the numerical majority of the American people.

Love, 2013

Not much of a secret, is it?

Dear future generations,

Clueless middle class Western programmers on Hacker News believed everything some guy in prion said and thought they understood national security realities better than the president of the US.

And they made a bunch of brave comments. Much karma was exchanged.

Love, 2013

"Dear 2013,

Nostalgia tells me that your time was a simpler time, when people cared about politics/kids had morals/people were nicer. Also I learned in history class that Barack Obama was a great president who took the first steps toward universal healthcare. They talked about Guantanamo Bay for part of one day. The necessities of war are horrible sometimes; too bad they had to do that."

Seriously though, this is just one of the things that will be glossed over and never really talked about by future generations, similar to former practices such as the US's sterilization of minorities, or engineering bloody coups in Latin America to instill brutal dictators. Or our injustice to Native Americans.

Maybe in the US, but elsewhere the Latin American coups and Native American genocide are not, and will never be, "glossed over".

our version of universal healthcare isn't that impressive..

Now you guys invent a time machine and come to tell us which of these two commenter is right.

Although technically they both can be right, what we are interested to know is if you future guys, like us, consider the right to a free trial as a fundamental and unbreachable right in any circumstances.

Sure, we believe you can kill enemy combatants, but if they surrender, we believe they have a right to a free trial within 60 or 90 days of detention.

So come back and tell us how our government is able to flounder the most fundamental rules and principles of law.

'Someone deserves the right to a defend himself in court and face specific charges before being thrown in a dungeon for life, being tortured and denied even the right to die? Ha- what a naive perspective.'

It must make you feel very clever and worldly-wise to dismiss people thus.

This is the most obvious of obvious human rights violations. It’s blatant. How anyone can defend it is beyond me. Holding someone for years without trial is barbaric and disgusting.

I can put up with your smug, cowardly, evil war nerd horseshit, but not when it's from a throwaway.

Fuck you, fuck this encroaching Reddit-flavored nonsense, thank you HN, and goodbye HN.

Guantanamo Bay is like the witch hunts in the medieval ages in the sense that when somebody was accused of being a witch there was no meaningful recourse.

Gitmo is the same. Most inmates have not been tried, some have been tortured (and are hence considered "untriable").

For a country that claims to follow the "rule of law" this is a strange affair to be in. The "rule of law" way of out this is to bring these people to the US, and try them. If they cannot be convicted they are free. I believe that the long term cost/risk of not doing this is higher than any potential damage the inmates could do.

Witch hunts were primarily a phenomenon of the early modern period, not the middle ages, during which both the political authorities and the Church repeatedly cautioned against blaming e.g poor crops on supposed witches.

Also, I believe about half of witchcraft trials ended in execution - I'm not sure what the comparable rate is for Gitmo (although obviously there are no trials).

Perhaps witch hunts were just performed under a different name. See also:

the Medieval Inquisition (1184–16th century)

the Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834)

the Portuguese Inquisition (1536–1821)

the Roman Inquisition (1542 – c. 1860)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

The medieval inquisition was indeed a witch hunt in the figurative sense but it did not hunt witches. It was primary occupied with hunting heretics (particularly Cathars). Its involvement in hunting witches started in the late 15th century at the very end of the middle ages.

I think he was using "witch hunt" in a generic term like we use it today.

The defenders of Gitmo in this era will be remembered by our descendants with the same shame and disgust we feel when remembering the slave holders and segregationists of the previous eras.

I hope that the defenders of the legal theories that allow people to be held without trial for many years get their fair share of the blame. Gitmo itself is bad, but the legal theories that let almost anyone be held there without due process are worse.

I understand that it looks bad if people released from custody in Gitmo return to action in 'violent non-state actor' groups. But is looking bad in the media worth human dignity? There's a reason that US citizens have rights like due process (and you can see why everyone should get them, including Gitmo prisoners): If you can't prove it but refuse to let the defendant maintain the freedom that should be associated with presumption of innocence, you get incarceration of the type described in the original posting.

I hope so, but it doesn't seem to be happening: after John Yoo finished his work at the Bush DoJ, he got a cushy position at Berkeley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

Actually, as the wikipedia entry states, he has been on Berkeley's faculty since 1993. His return to Berkeley after being seconded to Bush's DoJ was met with heated resistance and continual protest (e.g. waterboarding enactments outside the law school). As a tenured professor, though, he couldn't be tossed out.

I understand that it looks bad if people released from custody in Gitmo return to action in 'violent non-state actor' groups.

Just for the record, if you're a victim of one of these released prisoners, it would be more serious for you than simply bad press.

If that is something that needs to be taken into account, we should all be locked up, just in case we do something wrong in the future. If a prisoner has done something wrong charge and try him, otherwise he is innocent and should be released. If we dismantle that principle, we are in far greater danger from our own than from any external force.

How can you judge? "On the record", even!! Isn't one of the major problems that it's unknown whether these people are even guilty of anything or not? No trial, remember? So how can you suddenly know and decide "for the record" what any one of these prisoners will do if they get out?

Is the man in the article lying then? He says he's innocent. Of course he would. But who are you to decide one or the other?

What do you mean "almost everyone?" The only people in Guantanamo are foreigners. The Supreme Court struck down the other "theories" in a series of cases starting with Hamdi v. Rumsfeld: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_v._Rumsfeld.

Well, Wikipedia estimates the world population at ~7 billion people, and the US population at 315 million. So, "almost everyone" in the world is not an American citizen.

> But is looking bad in the media worth human dignity?

Of course not. But, is you looking bad in the media worth someone else's human dignity? That's a much easier sell.

I'm not defending gitmo, but why wouldn't we remember its defenders the same way we remember those who have suspended habeas corpus in previous eras [1]?

[1] Abraham Lincoln : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_Sta...

Maybe Civil War is a slightly different context, just throwing that out there.

Perhaps, but America is still operating under the context of two massive skyscrapers plummeting to the ground from an attack carried out with almost military precision. It's not as if Bush Jr. just woke up one day and decided that it was time to whip up some secret prisons. So if "context" is a defense then there's at least a little of it to spread around here as well.

Lincoln was not the man we make him out to be. The Emancipation Proclamation was purely political. Lincoln wanted to split the country and pick up the bigger half.

I suspect that, if not for the Emancipation Proclamation, we might call Lincoln a bad president.

I suspect that you have no idea what you are talking about and like many others on the internet, like to marginalize good people with your 20/20 hindsight.

What does that even mean? What would Lincoln gain by splitting the country in half? Do you even bother thinking about points before you make them?

People barely even register Japanese internment, and those were actual Americans.

The hypocrisy of the New York Times in printing this is shocking. The newspaper which did so much to whip up hysteria during the years of the Bush administration now trying to raise concerns about the inmates of Guantanamo is shockingly cynical. It's a shameful state of affairs that our political process is so broken we cannot deal with this situation in a civilized fashion, with investigations, trials and an end result. Instead we live in an Orwellian state of perpetual war, one which the New York Times was happy to goad us into back in the days when they actually sold newspapers and profited from a nation's feelings of hurt and lust for vengeance.

The hypocrisy of the New York Times in printing this is shocking.

As opposed to thinking it but refusing to print it because it would involve conflicting with something they printed four or eight or twelve years ago?

I would hope that a newspaper could be trusted to reverse the opinions it prints.

The events you've outlined don't require intellectual dishonesty at all. It's possible to have thought war was a prudent course of action in 2003, then to have changed one's mind by 2013.

I think it's pretty well documented by now that the NYT advocated for positions which they knew to be false and passed on information they knew the source of but failed to notify the reader of in ways that deliberately misled readers, during this period. So, while you're right that one can hold one position then the other, I think that doesn't invalidate their mendacity.

Also hypocrisy is still a valid description of advocating a position which created this suffering then pointing out that this suffering is terrible and that someone should do something.

However, I do think (see my comment later in the thread) that it has to be remembered that hypocrisy isn't the worst sin one can commit, and if they can be as effective in moving us to the next phase in all of this as they were in pushing the agenda forward which led to this situation in the first place that's a net good thing.

Not to mention the question of whether a newspaper have "a" mind...

They may not have a mind but they have a voice. And the NYT has or at least had a particularly influential voice.

they have editors, and the editors are there to give it a cohesive voice, which implies a mind.

Eh, false memories. I distinctly remember the day after 9/11. Real people greeted it with maybe a sad shrug. I remember talking to a janitor who predicted war with Iraq. (He knew guys in the military who got phone calls right after.) Shrug. Whatever. It was only the media that kept up the hysteria.

The janitor and the New York Times were on the same page. Shrug. I still don't care that much. Those guys at gitmo at this point could seriously prove embarrassing, either through talking or blowing themselves up. That doesn't effect me, but TPTB are risk-averse.

In this case I think the hypocrisy is positive; I would much rather NYT be hypocritical by speaking out against Guantanamo rather than holding their old position.

Yes this is a great point. One thing that I don't want to fall into the habit of doing, and I got close to in my initial point, in my disgust for their hypocrisy is something I see as a problem in modern politics. Hypocrisy isn't the greatest sin in the world, but we sometimes act like it is and make the consequences of hypocrisy (or changing your mind) so great (electoral defeat) that people will hold onto a bad policy and continue bad or harmful action in favor of not flip flopping or being hypocritical. So you make a good point, and it's better that they at least attempt to remedy some of the harm they have contributed to, than hold onto a morally bankrupt position.

Hypocrisy and changing ones mind aren't the same thing. To me hypocrisy implies playing both sides of an issue at the same time, or disingenuously trying to appear to have changed your mind, when you're pursuing an ulterior motive. Maybe the NYT is doing this, I don't know. But if so, it's more than simply changing their minds.

A) It is not hypocritical to change ones opinions given time and new information. Hypocrisy is doing something you advocate against while you are an advocate against it. Believing otherwise is to argue against the scientific method itself.

B) Is it even a conflicting opinion to think a certain war may be just, but some actions taken as part of that war are unjust? One example of such a situation may be the Japanese internment camps in WWII. Many people argue that the war itself was just, and worth fighting, while the Japanese internment camps were a grave mistake.

Perhaps they thought the Iraq war was righteous thing, while thinking the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay far from just.

C) To be Orwellian is to deny the past. Has the NYT ever claimed they didn't take a stance that they did? Have they denied printing those words that supported the war? If they haven't rewritten history they haven't been Orwellian.

Please don't cry wolf on things like this, because we need to credibly make these arguments when something really is Orwellian.

I wonder if this indicates a change in the NYT's moral leadership, or if Washington is ready to close gitmo and wants to drive public opinion in a way that'll make it more acceptable politically.

I suppose we'll be able to tell by whether the NYT starts asking the hard questions on drones in the next few months.

And by the way, I'm all for hypocrisy when it means moving against the cruelty and injustice of the past.

>>The newspaper which did so much to whip up hysteria during the years of the Bush administration

I lived through those years, I don't recall people running around the streets of American cities in a state of hysteria.

I remember those times as well. I remember how they convinced so many people that the biggest issue facing the United States was Saddam Hussein ... Even liberals were buying it, or prefacing their statements with "I know he's a bad guy who has to go right away, but..." It was pretty crazy.

Or, how about that they successfully convinced the American voter to elect more Republicans in 2002 because ... Saddam. Makes no sense right? But it worked. It was successful enough to convince the opposition party to also support the war.

Let's not forget that Dick Cheney's office leaked a fake story to the New York Times, then cited that story as a reason for going to war... People forget that now, and just how fucked up it is.

Iraq span multiple presidents:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcript...

"The international community had good reason to set this requirement. Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them."

We all lived through those years - or anyone old enough to be commenting on here did - and I disagree. I think the media climate, which is what we're talking about when we are discussing newspapers, was absolutely one of hysteria. The march to war and the support for remedies such as Guantanamo. If the American media landscape and political climate was not one of hysteria when we made such terrible choices then it speaks far worse of us than the alternative.

Sure there was hysteria, right down to color-coded threat level alerts and people duct-taping their windows to protect themselves from chemical and biological attacks.

Even prominent or well-known people were afraid to speak out for fear of reprisal (a valid fear: see Dixie Chicks and Bill Maher).

Maybe because I am British I have a very, very low opinion of the media, newspapers in particular, but...

Welcome to the world of the media and press.

Obama could order it closed tomorrow.

Congress could refuse to fund that action but it would still be ordered closed and his hands would be a tiny bit cleaner.

But he likes his drones and gitmo now, so that's pretty much it until Hillary becomes president and I think she likes the idea of gitmo too.

January 22nd, 2009:

"EXECUTIVE ORDER -- REVIEW AND DISPOSITION OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT THE GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE AND CLOSURE OF DETENTION FACILITIES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base (Guantánamo) and promptly to close detention facilities at Guantánamo..."

- http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana...

"The bill also prohibits any spending on detention facilities in the U.S. for present-day Guantanamo detainees."

- http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=741&sid=2226350

So if that is a standing order - then they are operating Gitmo in clear defiance of a direct order by the President of the United States?

Gitmo is a prison run by the military, and he is the Commander-in-Chief, so every day any soldier performs any duty there - they are in clear violation of command?

Seriously? How does a country operate like this?

Not exactly. The order concerns shutting down the prison on the base within one year, not the base as a whole. More importantly, it is contingent on the law and appropriations (i.e. money) to have any teeth. Within months, that part of the order effectively became impossible to fulfill.

You're leaving out the part where he restarts military trials again, a few months after your referenced executive order stopped them: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8052999.stm

Closing it would mean having the prisoners moved elsewhere, but not a change to how they are being dealt with. That's the real issue; the location isn't what matters.

> the location isn't what matters.

The location is what allowed it to exist in the first place. It matters a great deal.

Due process could be instated at the current location, or the detainees could be moved to another location and be treated exactly the same. The location is not the problem.

He could also order due process to start tomorrow.

Maybe there are a few issues with sending people back to their countries, but certainly not in all cases.

> He could also order due process to start tomorrow.

The correct course of action, obviously.

> Maybe there are a few issues with sending people back to their countries, but certainly not in all cases.

Well, as Commander in Chief, he could just order the Marines to cut a hole in Gitmo's perimeter fence and shoo the prisoners into Cuber though it. I'm sure Fidel and Raúl would be pleased to handle their homeward travel arrangements, albeit not quietly.

Hell, Obama could even save some postage by having the Marines entrust the prisoners to a deliver a $4085 check to the Treasurer General of the [Cuban] Republic, in payment of Gitmo's annual rental[1].

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/17/idUSN17200921

That would be devastating hit on US gov reputation, all this people available to the press.

I think they are just hoping meteor will hit this place eventually and wipe it out without any concern on their part.

He wanted them tried in E.D. Va. Virginia had a shitfit, then every other state said: "no fucking way you're trying those terrorists in our state."

No U.S. jurisdiction wants to play host to these people to give them a trial.

If there is no clean accusation: let them go where ever they want to go and compensate them for the time in jail. That would be the normal way democracies should deal with such things. If there is a clean accusation, they can be brought to any other jail in the US.

It costs money to run Gitmo, not to stop running it. How would closing it require more money?

Not necessarily more, but it would require a different distribution. Money would need to be spent to relocate the prisoners. Congress has blocked that reappropriation.

Quoting Wikipedia:

On May 20, 2009, the United States Senate passed an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346) by a 90-6 vote to block funds needed for the transfer or release of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[14] President Obama issued a Presidential memorandum dated December 15, 2009, ordering Thomson Correctional Center, Thomson, Illinois to be prepared to accept transferred Guantanamo prisoners.

On January 7, 2011, President Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which, in part, placed restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland or to foreign countries, thus impeding the closure of the facility.[17] U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates said during testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee on February 17, 2011: "The prospects for closing Guantanamo as best I can tell are very, very low given very broad opposition to doing that here in the Congress."[18] Congress particularly opposed moving prisoners to facilities in the United States for detention or trial.

/quote

In short, congress passes bills to prevent Obama from closing Gitmo. Obama signed one or more of those in order to balance other political agendas. The annual Defense Authorization Act is a particularly politicized bill that congress is known to use as an offensive weapon.

Does congress control how Gitmo is run? My understanding is that the President is in charge of the how (execution of the law), and congress only controls the what.

In Canada we remember with shame the WW2 Japanese internment camps. Gitmo will be this generations great shame. Marriage equalization, and reasonable pot legislation are happening... But gitmo remains a black mark. Due process should not be malleable.

Did you know that due process was violated in WW2 and WWI and many other major wars?

With this story of Guantanamo Bay and the story of children born into prison camps in North Korea, as a mere software engineer, it makes me feel hopeless as to how to help.

If you're in the US, pixelcort, may I invite you to consider the Downsize DC effort? (http://www.downsizedc.org/)

Here is a quick summary of what DownsizeDC.org is about:

We believe the federal government has grown too centralized, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, smaller government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes. We want to end laws and programs that don't work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states.

The strategy of Downsize DC is to leverage technology to make it easier for people to make their voices heard to the State. They make it easier to contact your Senate and House representatives regularly.

The primary bill DownsizeDC is advocating is the Read the Bills Act -- make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law. That action alone would slow down the legislating machine.

The other one is the One Subject at a Time act -- make each bill deal with one subject at a time, instead of bundling subjects, which would make it very clear about politician's positions on various issues, and let each issue stand on its own merit.

Isn't this topic -- the question of how to close Guantanamo Bay -- a prime counterexample to the virtues of "mak[ing] it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law" and "mak[ing] each bill deal with one subject at a time"?

Wouldn't such requirements make politically unpopular things, such as touching Guantanamo Bay in any way, even more difficult to handle?

This article doesn't strike me as fertile, favorable ground for this topic at all.

Not that one would say this, but if the counterargument were to be, "this movement would have prevented Guantanamo in the first place," then (1) but I live in the world we have now, not a hypothetical world that we don't actually have, and (2) maybe so, maybe not.

make it law to read aloud each bill before signing it into law

Not only is this the stupidest solution to a complex problem i've ever heard, it's depressing that some people take it seriously.

Maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but I think it's stupid not to read bills out loud at least once before they become law.

In our House of Commons the procedure is to read each bill, out loud, three times before it is passed. Then it gets sent to the Senate where it's also read three times (mind you the Senate typically rubber stamps everything).

So every law in Canada has been read out loud a total of six times, and (assuming they're present) every member of the legislature has heard it three times.

What do you consider the problem?

Let's say government growing out of bound (and government's power growing compared to an individual's power) is a problem. One way to curb that growth is to slow down the functioning of government.

But if you don't consider monotonic growth of government a problem, then we are very far apart indeed. =)

It's pretty overwhelming at times because it seems so big, far away, impenetrable. But there are some contributions you can make pretty easily:

1. Financial support to the organizations fighting for whatever your believe in. (See: Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International)

2. Talking about it. If our politicians think we don't care, there's no pressure to do anything.

Build better proxies/tools of resistance, generally fight authority, just be a hacker and be on the lookout for ways to empower the downtrodden.

The hacker instinct is to get around the system and fight authority. There's another hacker instinct, too, which is being totally and absurdly pedantic. Maybe there is an idea here.

Sometimes the first world chooses leaders who are, at day's end, okay with a some of the horrors of barbaric legal systems (usually in exchange for increased security or the illusion thereof). One solution might be to be politically pedantic (seriously!) and not let them get away with even a bit of it.

Unfortunately if people can go to jail for increnting a variable in a public URL, any effort of this nature is sure to draw the fire of United States law.

I don't even live in the place, and it still scares the crap out of me.

Tell me about it, I grew up in Pinochet's Chile and it worries me deeply how our government is ignoring the constitution and bullying its way around the same way Pinochet did back in the 80's.

With its treatment of gitmo detainees and persecution of wikileaks' Julian Assange, the US is lowering itself to the constitutional level of a run-of-the-mill banana republic.

Somehow it strikes me as odd that the executive can go around starting wars, one of the most costly (blood & gold) behaviors a gov't can engage in, and one that explicitly requires the approval of congress, without congressional approval, but when it comes to closing a torture dungeon it's 'well gee whiz I'd love to but mean old congress won't let me. Sorry- my hands are tied!'

horseshit. There's more than one way to skin a cat and with the unchecked might of the US military (which is basically what the executive commands these days with our spineless-vis-a-vis-war congress), I do not believe the president couldn't figure out a way to dissolve Gitmo if he wanted to. He doesn't want to, this torture happens because Obama wants it to happen.

EDIT: I'm probably wrong here in my first paragraph ^

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milita...

Fair disingenuous so say the President started wars without congressional approval.

My statement that wars were started "without congressional approval" may be wrong. That said, I still do not believe that it's outside the president's power to shut down gitmo. As many other commenters here have pointed out, he could simply order marines to free those prisoners with no charges to Cuban soil; this would cost no money at all; congress would not be able to prevent it. Could the president not do this?

Furthermore, he promised to do so repeatedly during his campaign. Was the president, a constitutional scholar, merely mistaken about his powers as the executive?

I apologize for muddying the waters with discussion of other presidential actions.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana...

Obama issued the order to close the prison his second full day in office. Congress then blocked any funds whatsoever from being used to close the prison. http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/111/senate/1/196

No, the president can't just release prisoners into Cuba because A) Cuba is a sovereign country and the US doesn't get to just deposit individuals there, terrorist or not. B) The president literally cannot pay for any operation, at all, to close the prison.

I suggest you read up more on the issue before forming such a strong opinion.

Reading things like I can't help but understand why some groups of people can hate America. (I am Australian)

It's the entire Western sense of superiority (I'm American). Gitmo is America saying that the rules we hold ourselves to don't apply to "others." It's hypocritical bullshit, and we deserve what we get because of it.

But it's not just the US (or just Gitmo) -- read about the treatment of refugees in Australia (tl;dr: it's better than Gitmo, but not good by a long shot -- http://mitahungerstrike.wordpress.com). And I don't mean to pick on Australia, because the Australian government is no more (or less) guilty than the governments of much of the developed world, I just want to make a point that we all are having terrible things done to other human beings in our names.

It's a damn sad state of affairs.

I don't think it's better than Gitmo at all.

Refugees, including children, are held in prisons. Sometimes for many years. All without trial. Why no trial? Largely because they have not committed any crime -- it is quite legal to seek asylum.

This is wedge politics, pure and simple.

On the subject of Australia and Refugees, a relatively recent book called "The People Smuggler"[1] is a fascinating read. It's the story of an Iraqi man, called Ali Al Jenabi, and how he ended up ferrying people from Indonesia to Australia.

[1] http://www.thepeoplesmuggler.com/

It doesn't take a propagandised population to hate Western people, it takes a propagandised population to be surprised at that hatred.

Good, we could use more enemies. Gitmo is a very expensive way to manufacture them. It's only effective if it pisses off a lot of people.

So much for the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The declaration of independence is a document with zero legal force. It's a bunch of nice sounding words to justify our attempt to separate from the British, nothing more.

> It's a bunch of nice sounding words

I suspect the founding fathers put a lot of thought into those nice sounding words in the hope they would define a nation.

Those nice sounding words where powerful enough to start a civil war over the topic of slavery and basic human rights.

However, in a way I think you are right. Those words may well have lost there meaning and been devalued by big business and big money :(

Maybe today they are indeed just words, but the end result will be the USA has lost a lot more than just a bunch of words :(

It may not be a legal document but it certainly more than just a "bunch of nice sounding words." I hear this argument get trotted out all the time as if the only way to value a document and how it should inform policy is if it is a legal one.

The missing amendment: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Americans are created equal..."

All me/women are created equal but in reality some are more equal than others.

As always history repeats :(

Edit: It truly disappoints me how human rights always run a long second to personal interest.

Further: Given a big enough of a profit it is easy to turn a blind eye. That simple fact is a massive problem for humanity going forward. Greed before humanity is now a reality.

> "that all Americans are created equal..."

Except the ones the executive branch orders to be assassinated: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/us-targeted-killing...

I know for a fact that much of these claims are completely wrong and, being told by a detainee, are completely biased.

Detainee's that refuse meals are required to receive their nutrients in liquid form. They have the option to drink this themselves. When they refuse, they are put in the feeding chair which restrains their arms, legs, and waist. It does not restrain a detainees head whatsoever.

When a detainee refuses to drink the liquid themselves, and refuses to go to the restraint chair themselves, they're carried to the chair by a Forced Cell Extraction team. ERF is a term that the detainee's created themselves. There are 6 guards, not 8, and it is for the safety of the detainee, as there is one guard to handle each body part (2 legs, 2 arms, head), and then one at the door to ensure that the detainee does not escape. Every FCE is video taped to ensure that safe and humane practices are being followed.

They do this for this exact reason. Publicity. We wont send them back to Yemen because we don't want their heads to be severed by their Government. No one wants this place to be open. Don't be foolish, America. Don't be gullible, America. We are still the good guys.

You know this for a fact? Not to be too cynical here, but do you have a citation for any of your claims? Who is able to review these taped feedings in order to confirm that they're being carried out in a humane way? Could I, as a citizen do this? Could a reporter for the NYT? The absurdity of the censorship at the KSM trial makes me think your claims would be hard to verify. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/secrec...

And frankly, your nationalistic sign off makes me less inclined to believe you without references. "We are still the good guys" is kind of vapid.

Nobody wants these people. 15 American lawyers went to Yemen to expose the lie that Yemen didn't want these people back. No one from the Yemeni govt would meet with them. We haven't gotten rid of them because we don't know anyone who is willing to accept them. Go ahead and read it in the Yemeni Observer. http://www.yobserver.com/front-page/10012301.html

This is correct.

This starts with a false assumption. There is absolutely no justification for force feeding a non-consenting person who is aware of the consequences of their actions.

So you'd let the guy die? So that the NY Times could blow that up into a bunch of bullshit, too? Right. That makes you a better person.

As for citations... Are people required to cite first hand accounts?

Publicity for their situation - which is terrible.

A prisoner's attempt to get publicity does not influence the morality or legality of practices at Guantanamo Bay.

Yeah it's for their own good, the same way Bradley Manning had to be naked in his cell for his own good. Yeah right </sarcasm>.

Subject's DoD dossier: http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/43-samir-na...

This is a fascinating insight into what the DoD thinks the story is, and a frightening example of why fair trial and due process should be required to incarcerate people.

Who are these "medical personnel" performing these acts? I am a physician and I can tell you that force feeding these people is against our code of ethics. The physician overseeing their treatment should be 'outed' so that we can report this behavior to his/her licensing board.

Atul Gawande covers something very much like this in his book "Better."

WHo are the medical personnel assisting with executions? WHat are the arguments for and against participating in the death of a human being?

I totally agree with you. However, I can easily see how those physicians can justify their actions to themselves. "Do no harm" can be extrapolated in many ways by cruel people suffering from delusion.

> When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

Sorry but this account is troubling. He went to Afghanistan during the Taliban extremely insane cruel anti-woman Islamist totalitarian regime and expected a better life? That's like someone saying he traveled to Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime and expected a better pay as he didn't know anything about Cambodia at the time. This alone takes the credibility away from this story for me.

The rest is an account about how they are force feeding him because of is voluntary hunger strike. Anyone knows how hunger strikes are handled in other penitentiaries? Not sure they can just let the prisoners die.

> Sorry but this account is troubling. He went to Afghanistan during the Taliban extremely insane cruel anti-woman Islamist totalitarian regime and expected a better life? That's like someone saying he traveled to Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime and expected a better pay as he didn't know anything about Cambodia at the time. This alone takes the credibility away from this story for me

While it might sound "insane" to you because of the stark contrast to your own life, you fail to put yourself in his shoes.

You know, not everyone was born into your (or my) privilege, freedom and education here in life.

If you've lived your whole life in poor, rural Yemen with only limited local media as your one window to the world, maybe Afghanistan, a fellow Arabic/Muslim state isn't such bad a place.

I'd say it's equally insane for, say, a Frenchman to travel to the United States while they operate secret military prisons with complete disregard for human rights.

Nitpick: Afghanistan isn't an Arabic country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun_people

"Sorry but this account is troubling. He went to Afghanistan during the Taliban extremely insane cruel anti-woman Islamist totalitarian regime and expected a better life? That's like someone saying he traveled to Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime and expected a better pay as he didn't know anything about Cambodia at the time."

And this is enough to condemn him to an indeterminate amount of time in prison without a trial? If we have compelling evidence of wrong-doing then we should grant him a trial. Let the actual judicial process decide his punishment, rather than an arbitrary declaration.

If we don't have enough compelling evidence then we should release him. The entire point of habeas corpus is to prevent people from being held for extended time on the mere suspicion from arbitrary authorities.

What's the point of having a judicial system if we can send arbitrarily selected people around it and deny writs of habeas corpus? What will you do if one day an authority finds something you've done suspicious and throws you in jail? The protection afforded by writs of habeas corpus should apply to all of us, or it's a meaningless protection.

The world is so hard in many places that people actually flee to Yemen.

http://www.unhcr.org/50f5377e11.html

> extremely insane cruel anti-woman Islamist totalitarian regime

Afghanistan was under the secular, socialist leadership of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan until the CIA launched Operation Cyclone and began funding Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda and Taliban predecessors, in order to overthrow that secular, socialist government. Sylvester Stallone made action films like Rambo 3 where he fought alongside Islamic jihadists to overthrow the secular Afghan government. Now some poor guy trying to make a living you pontificate about because he went to a country which was exactly like how the US tried to make it? But they're totalitarian...I guess whisking people off to detention centers with no evidence, no recourse to trial is the democratic way.

You can read the history of Obama's and Congress' battle here:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/pr...

This is very sad ... but what do you think is the reason they can't close this center since 2008? Who is responsible for this state of affairs and what can be done?

I make no apologies for Obama- he should have closed Gitmo.

Yet, there's one tiny tiny possibility that I have considered for why he hasn't. Before becoming president, you make promises, have goals, and overall think you know what you're going to do on day one.

However, after inauguration you go for your first big debriefing with the CIA, FBI, etc... The things you learn there completely change the course what you want to do, or can do. You find that we were constantly in significantly more danger than any citizen could have anticipated.

Now, I don't find this to be likely, but just something I've considered. Why in the world would have Obama gone from wanting to close Gitmo, to being pretty much against it? Politics alone don't seem to cover it, since pretty much everyone wants it closed. Logistics? It doesn't seem that hard...

Presidential candidates have been getting security briefings since Eisenhower: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...

So it's not the case that there was a huge cache of information that he didn't have access too until entering office. It could have been the case that there were some details that weren't made available to him, but that seems unlikely to amount to anything that would lead to a complete reversal of policy.

Oh interesting. Well that blows that theory out of the water.

It's not like he's getting full cooperation from congress on this.

Who cares whose fault this is? It has to end now. If you feel overwhelmed but still want to do something, the least you can do is to support Amnesty International.

Lot of things mentioned here are not that easy. To legally bring citizens of other countries in American justice system and have them fair trial you need to have respect various treaties - many of which may simply require sending them back to their respective country to be handled by their own governments which usually is not the best thing especially for terrorist suspects. The next best thing however might be have them as prisoner of war kept out side of US justice system.

What is missing here is other side of the coin, however. Keeping people in Gitmo takes money, planning, book keeping and plenty of other administrative hassles. Even though there was no trial it is hard to imagine that military doesn't do any accounting of these people and they are just kept there, fed, clothed every day without any justification or reasoning. I know govt can't be trusted from wasting taxpayer money but it looks over the top that such a high profile place will keep people for 11 years straight without any convincing reasoning. Without response from govt to this story we only know one side.

>Lot of things mentioned here are not that easy.

It's US' burden to solve the Gitmo issue, whether it's easy or hard. America can't keep telling people that it's the land of democracy and freedom, and ignore Gitmo at the same time.

>To legally bring citizens of other countries in American justice system...

Gitmo is 100% American. If you think what US did there is outside of jurisdiction, it's fuckin politics and not reality. Stop ignoring the facts and face it.

>The next best thing however might be have them as prisoner of war...

Either there's no war or it's already over. Those people in Gitmo are there because US don't know how to clean up it's own shit without facing international humiliation when the press arrives at the door of the released prisoners.

>Even though there was no trial it is hard to imagine that military doesn't do any accounting of these people and they are just kept there...

So you're OK with a system if military or let's say a central authority decides if someone is guilty or not, without giving the man his right to defend himself. Where do you draw the line? Is it OK if military tells you that your friend is a terrorist? How about you father? "it is hard to imagine that military doesn't do any accounting of these people", after all.

> Lot of things mentioned here are not that easy. To legally bring citizens of other countries in American justice system and have them fair trial you need to have respect various treaties - many of which may simply require sending them back to their respective country to be handled by their own governments which usually is not the best thing especially for terrorist suspects.

Bureaucratic considerations are of no consequence. The reputation of the United States of America is at stake.

It's 2013. These cases need to be resolved. The innocent should be sent home with apologies and fat Treasury checks. The guilty should be executed. And Gitmo should go back to being a Caribbean naval base with a cheap annual rent[2].

I can't say if the current case is valid, but I am reminded of the case of Ahmed Errachidi[1], Guantánamo Prisoner 590, who turned out to be a London chef who had journeyed to Pakistan in 2001 and was kidnapped by crooked Pakis and sold to the credulous US for $5000. Errachidi was finally sprung in 2007. But you have to wonder how many similar cases there are.

[1] http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2011/09/16/ahmed-errachidi-...

[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=atTyCI8ZwboC&pg=PA243&#...

As a non-American - can I ask an American to submit a white-house petition. Perhaps as a form of the least that can be done.

It's been tried. Somebody should probably try again.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/close-guantanamo-d...

That's not a formal petition, it's a post on a website

It's strange that the result of the petition is apparently not public. I would expect this kind of petition to largely meet the signature threshold.

I wouldn't. Due process for people who are perceived to be terrorists is not actually an especially popular viewpoint with the majority of the American public[0].

The rest of the world wants due process for these detainees. Most people in hacker communities tend to lean far more libertarian or liberal than the average American and want due process for these detainees. These are not the people who determine the outcome of elections.

[0] http://www.gallup.com/poll/124727/americans-oppose-closing-g...

I just sent my congressman an email outlining that I would like to see everybody given a trial and either deported or moved to a federal prison.

I would recommend that others reach out to their representatives and do the same. I imagine that if we, the people, do not make any noise about this then we are going to get more of the same.

"First they came for the Yemeni, but I was not one so I thought nothing of it. Then they came for the Afghani, but I was not one, so I didn't mind. ... Then they came for my neighbors, and I hid. ... By the time they came for me there was no one to stop them..."

...so I told them "Hey, you forgot about the Iranians, and I can tell you where they are!"...

It's time to release these innocent men.

America, this is fucking shameful.

Wait, didn't Obama close Gitmo?

Oh, that's right. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I think the most important part about this OpEd is the comments appearing here and elsewhere: Lots of righteous indignation for this poor fellow who claims that he's completely innocent of any charges brought against him and if he could only talk to someone they would understand. He feels the need to kill himself to prove a point, such conviction.

What do they say about a prisoner and his crime? oh yeah: there's no such thing as a guilty prisoner in Jail.

From the article:

"I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial."

There haven't been any charges brought against him, and his life for the past DECADE (10+ years) has been stuck in a fucking limbo.

The US Government won't even let him commit suicide by way of hunger, so in essence he has absolutely no hope or choice as it currently stands.

Once again these are things he is claiming, I haven't done any research into his situation and I doubt anyone here has either. All I'm saying is that taking the word of someone who is in prison for possible terrorism is a mistake.

Clearly there was someone who felt this dude was dangerous or else they wouldn't have flown him halfway around the world to "sit in limbo" there are prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's MUCH cheaper to keep prisoners there, the only ones flown to cuba are those deemed "a higher security risk".

A hint at possible charges is hidden in the third paragraph of his plea for attention: "Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden..." he of course qualifies this by saying it's not true. But if true is fairly serious because it would imply he was highly trusted if he was a personal guard for OBL.

Again I haven't done any actual research into his situation but he most probably doesn't deserve nearly half the self-righteous indignation that everyone here is displaying.

TL:DR: This dude was at the wrong place at the wrong time; and unless the US Government can prove otherwise, they should either release him, or if he is a terrorist, it would be a net-win if they just let him die of hunger (As their reputation w.r.t Gitmo has already been sullied).

In a parallel universe, I claim that you are committing conspiracy to overthrow the reigning King. You say you were just walking by the forest to check out wildlife. I say nonsense; I have the power to capture you. The extent of your crime is that you were in the forest.

I then capture you and throw you in a dungeon/prison, parade you naked, urinate you, rob you of basic dignity, flog you when I have a bad day or just for my amusement. I also feed you the same bland food daily.

This is your reality [1]

I do this continuously for 20 years == 7300 days in a row. You either start growing crazy or realize it would be better to end the misery yourself. At this point you have been robbed of the aspirations you had to contribute to scientific discovery by cataloguing flora and fauna. You realize that you haven't seen your children for ~20 years. Because you have been labeled an enemy of the state, your wife was thrown out of the city limits, etc. You choose the only option that is remotely viable: deprive yourself of nutrition till you die.

I rob you of that choice. YOU DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING CHOICE NOW. I strap you to a cot, and force feed you a disgusting liquid diet for the next N years of your life. You live like this for the rest of your life or till I decide otherwise.

Because in this scenario, I have power, I can do whatever I please in the name of protecting the life of this King.

[1] As an experiment, lock yourself in a room for a day/week with some bland nutritious food & pots & pans for bodily functions. No books, no computers, no phone or music players, or any other distractions. For added effect, wear noise canceling headphones & blindfolds. And just chill. Repeat this for a long period of time, and you'll either want to kill yourself because your existence has been reduced to nothing, or you'll go crazy. In reality you'll get pretty restless and bored within the hour.

> Once again these are things he is claiming, I haven't done any research into his situation and I doubt anyone here has either. All I'm saying is that taking the word of someone who is in prison for possible terrorism is a mistake.

So you are happy with "guilty until proven innocent" and "as he might be guilty, we can't give him the chance to prove otherwise because he might fool the legal system" as a moral precedents?

If there is evidence charge him and give him a fair trial, if there isn't admit so and let him go.

> but he most probably doesn't deserve nearly half the self-righteous indignation that everyone here is displaying.

You might be right, you might be wrong. But how will we ever know one way or the other without evidence presented? This is the sort of thing we in the west regularly chide other regimes for, and we are doing it ourselves making complete hypercrits of ourselves - this is why people who care about such things are getting rather indignant about the whole thing.

It doesn't matter if he's guilty or not, he could be Hitler for all I care. He should be charged and tried, not tortured for 10 years.

Should he be?

What are the official laws regarding a POW? Certainly not that of naturalized citizens...

After skimming the UN Laws for POWs[1] and reading the parts that seemed to deal with internment and time length, it's not really clear to me why he should have to be tried.

Once he's be associated with the enemy he can be held until the end of Hostilities at which point the "host" country can decide when and how to exchange him with "ex-enemy" . That last part will be a little difficult because I don't think Al-Qaeda takes many prisoners.

That said, they might be violating laws regarding torture but that's a whole nother ball of wax.

[1]http://www.un.org/arabic/preventgenocide/rwanda/text-images/...

If he is a POW he should be released since the war was over 10 years ago.

Being in prison is not the same as being tortured.

You may be thinking of Abu Ghraib

It doesn't look like anyone on this thread has even tried to look for what this man is accused of doing and why he's in Gitmo in the first place. You can find a dossier from the US DoD of this man at the NYTimes' own website:

http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/43-samir-na...

tl;dr: Member of al-Qaida, bodyguard of Osama, fought in the front lines against US and coalition forces, consistently lied to interrogators.

I'm not sure what kind of court he would be 'tried' in considering he's not a US citizen.

> I'm not sure what kind of court he would be 'tried' in considering he's not a US citizen.

I wasn't aware that to be tried in court citizenship is a requirement.

You're right, I don't think citizenship is a requirement. I guess this was my vague way of saying that these prisoners are in a legal gray area as to what court they would be tried in, what their legal rights are, and what would constitute a 'fair trial'.

This seems to be actively debated in the upper echelons of US law and politics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#L...

You know who else did hunger strikes ? Some old chap named Gandhi.

Nice!

Gandhi also preached and practiced something called "Peaceful Protest" this guy is accused of "associating with"/guarding UBL.

If he is accused, then surely discovery and a trial are in order.

Even nazis got trials.

Firstly, Osama (not Usama) Bil Laden.

Secondly, 11 years without trial or even a concrete charge against "an accused terrorist" would be something USA and its citizens would be appalled about if Russia or China did so to their "terrorists".

Thirdly, I am against hunger strikes when they can be avoided. Simply because they can turn political and in turn can be abused. Gandhi did abuse it a bit. Indian politicians and activists do it a lot. But eleven years of being held without solid evidence or being charge is just fucked up. This is being done out of desperation and fatigue rather than ideology.

Legally, these guys are non-lawful enemy combatants. They have put themselves in a legal grey area, not by committing crimes, but by committing acts of war. Many, if not all of them have been trained, if captured, to try to disrupt the legal system by any means necessary. They are fighting a war.

Here is what happened to some German non-lawful combatants during WWII: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pastorius

About 1/3 of detainees released have gone right back to the fighting: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/03/latest_gitmo_...

And these were the low risk ones.

According to the US Constitution, it is Congress that establishes courts (except the supreme court) and decides what their purpose is. The President does not get to decide this. Military commissions have been accordingly established by Congress to try the detainees. The current President halted this process. Thus the detainees are in legal limbo until either Congress establishes a different court to hear the cases or the President decides to comply with the current law.

I posted a new We the People petition about this issue: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/close-guantanamo-b... .

Here goes my respect for obama, for democracy which he stands for, for the whole nobel peace prize community. Now I know why Gandhi never won it. He would have felt disgraced today.

US is a disgrace to human rights, a hypocritical country who brings democracy to the world

    In 1971, while in Lefortovo prison in Moscow (the central KGB
    interrogation jail), I went on a hunger strike
    demanding a defense lawyer of my choice
    (the KGB wanted its trusted lawyer to be assigned instead).
    The moment was most inconvenient for my captors because my case was due in court,
    and they had no time to spare. So, to break me down, they 
    started force-feeding me in a very unusual manner -- through my nostrils.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12...

Another example of the hypocrisy of our goverment which claims to champion ideals like freedom and equality before the law.

As long as there are innocent people like this suffering grave injustices in gitmo, as long as drones are killing innocent Pakistani villagers, as long as the U.S. brazenly continues to financially and militarily support Israel, the president and every member of congress have blood on their hands.

Let me tell you something, these clowns in office couldn't care less about your or me or the homeless guy on the street. They care about being famous, having money and power and going on free vacations paid for by John Q. average tax payer!

The leadership of this country is made up of citizens of this country. I think John Q. average tax payer would do the same thing if he were in office. Our leadership is a representation of us. The government is made up of US Citizens. We can't just blame the government for it's bad decisions, because in truth it is our decisions.

If we want to change the government, we must first change ourselves. How kind are we to our neighbors, who live across the street?

Listen, people in office have a much greater responsibility than you or me to make the right choices because their decisions affect all of us and that's also why it's incumbent upon us to make these crooks accountable for their actions and to criticize them because, in the words of Howard Zinn "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

It's a shame that the president of our country is out throwing lavish birthday parties for himself inviting useless celebrities and paying a guy $100,000 to play the music. Are you freakin kidding me???? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/obamas-birthday-bas...

It mystifies me why this is still going on. I'm sure the President sees the injustice of what's happening. If he doesn't have the political capital to shut the entire operation down, can he at least let selected detainees go free?

I understand what the author is saying. However, the title is wrong. He is killing himself with the hunger strike. Gitmo isn't doing that.

What concerns me is that as I understand it, my own country (UK) has been complicit with these detentions. I'm also concerned that the UK and other developed nations have similar black-ops illegal detention centres too, Guantanamo is public knowledge. Are there other centres?

'MURICA as it's finest ! Well done !

Why does HN link to this propaganda?

Dissent is a powerful and useful thing.

If you feel this is article is a lie and part of a wider political strategy, then present your case. Making sweeping statements without context or reason will not win you friends on HN.

FYI HN doesn't control the links, its users post links and vote on them.

Political articles are off topic on Hacker News.

Firstly, this is not a political article per se. It has political connotations like most things, including hacking.

Secondly, it most certainly "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Even worse the quality of comments are very similar to reddit or at least reddit during its decline. These types of political articles are what usually work their way in first as the site degrades.

This is disgracefully inhumane.

I am always puzzled about the cognitive dissonance between this and all the (justified) outrage over the Shoah. It's still happening, even in the United States (let's not even talk about Africa, North Korea, etc).

What's the full story? Why was he detained? Is he actually a terrorist? There can't possibly be absolutely no other side to this story.

Proud to be an American.

rule of law, right to fair trial, upholding dignity of human kind and the farce of democracy. Feed the rabble with trivia they need to know and all is well.

What did you expect him to say? I am guilty of contributing to terrorism and the purposeful killing of innocent woman and children civilians?

I like how everyone here takes this guys word for everything. It is all a government conspiracy that has put him in there. After all, the US government likes to round up random people around the world and put them in max security detainment as kind of a boredom fighting game right? Go on death row in any detention center in the world and you'll get the same story from about 95% of the inmates there. The government set them up. They are all innocent.

I think that it is always wise to look at everything that your government does with a certain level of suspicion and cynicism, but I also wouldn't bet money on a Gitmo prisoner's "honest" word either.

> I like how everyone here takes this guys word for everything.

It's not very different from the alternative, which is taking the word of whoever put/keeps him there without trial.

Now one of these parties is well-known for enacting cruelties on human beings in situations exactly like these, and the other we really don't know anything about, at all.

Therefore the only right and humane thing to do is to give the latter some benefit of the doubt.

> After all, the US government likes to round up random people around the world and put them in max security detainment

Well yes, such fuck-ups have happened before, as a matter of fact:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/14/usa.germany

And that's just the first example I pulled from the top of Google. There's many more. So truly, there is ALL the reason to assume at least some of the Gitmo prisoners are innocent and kept simply because they are the result of a fuck-up nobody wants to own up to.

> but I also wouldn't bet money on a Gitmo prisoner's "honest" word either.

Why? What do you know about why they are there? There's been no trials, they are only prisoners because the people keeping them say they're guilty of something. So you can't use the fact they are prisoners to decide their honesty, that would be circular reasoning. Both parties have an interest in lying that is almost completely independent of guilt: One has been kept in a secret prison for 11 years subjected to inhumane treatment, and the other side wants to keep a lid on the whole Gitmo thing (maybe even especially if they weren't guilty).

Also, 11 years, man. As I said, you don't know what he did, you don't even know what he's being accused of. Stepping aside from the (very real) possibility of him being completely innocent, what if he did do something, maybe it was terrible, or maybe it was something small and stupid that in no way warrants being locked up in Gitmo for 11 years. And in a year from now you'll have to argue that all those people are guilty of a crime that warrants at least 12 years in a terrible prison, and the year after that, and after that, etc. All the while not having a single clue what these people did, what they are accused of.

It's pretty obvious that at least one of the sides here is guilty.

> "I am guilty of contributing to terrorism and the purposeful killing of innocent woman and children civilians?"

How do you know this? Has he had a trial?

Citation needed.

Your comment is what happens when you let authority be your truth instead of letting truth be your authority.

If he is guilty then why hasn't he been tried? 11 years is an awful lot of time for the prosecution to get their case together.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

When I first saw the title I thought "git", this must be some derivative of git and the author didn't like it.

What does this have to do with hacking?

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