WASHINGTON - In a stinging rebuke to President Bush's anti-terror policies, a deeply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign detainees held for years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.
Five of the Supreme Court Justices formed a majority giving detainees at Guantanimo, access to our court system. The Justices are as follows, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, John Paul Stevens & David Souter.
In forming their opinion, what they have succeded in doing is making it extremely harder on the President of the United States, to carry out the War on Terror. The ruling handed down by the Justices forming the majority is totally wrong. Enemy combatants ARE NOT entitled to access to our court system, nor should they be. Enemy combatants are just that, they are the enemy fighting our soldiers on the battle field.
People want to talk about supporting our troops. Four of our Supreme Court members support them but unfortunately the did not comprise the majority. The ruling as handed down by the majority is a slap in the face to every soldier who wears a uniform. The Constitution has been trampled upon, it definitely puts our National Security at risk.
The best way to describe this ruling handed down by the Supreme Court majority is TREASON , because that is exactly what it is.
Posts: 2277 | Location: Martinsville, IL | Registered: 06-03-02
LR why was it necessary to send these men to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be detained, rather than to the US mainland or other US sovereign territory?
There were some 750 detainees. About 500 have been released over the years. Why have they been released? Did they stop being "enemy combatants"?
Of the remainder, many have not been charged with any offence (hence the habeas corpus argument) Do you say they are guilty of crime? The obvious charge is conspiracy to murder or incitement to murder. Why are they not charged with those offences, or any?That would resolve your concerns at a a stroke. Or are you worried that American juries [or courts] might acquit some or all of them?
Fred-The Guantanamo Bay facility is already set up and is utilized quite well. There is no need to close it down to move it elsewhere.
Our court system is already busy enough as it is. We don't need to be bringing in enemy combatant issues into it. Our courts are not equipped for this. The military tribunals already set up is trained & should be who processes these cases.
You have pointed out 500 detainees have been released over the years. Thank you for pointing that out. It shows the system already in place is working. As for you questions on why they were released, I am not the one to ask. Like you, I wasn't there when they were released. I would have to trust our military officials knew what they were doing when they released them.
Posts: 2277 | Location: Martinsville, IL | Registered: 06-03-02
The Supreme court has just remembered us who's in charge of "judging". Following Fred's argument:
Who said they were guilty in the first place? The President?, some Captains or Generals?
The court of laws are specifically there to do that. They showed Bush that is not in charge of finding who's guilty and who's not guilty, If they are well let it be it and sentence them.
Anyhow it will take years before anyone of them will be heard in such court of laws. But I agree with the ruling that Bush and his boys are no judges and they have to follow the rules like everyone else. A victory for us in our legal system.
Posts: 6238 | Location: u.s.a, south Florida | Registered: 06-03-02
Originally posted by Lighteningrodd: Fred-The Guantanamo Bay facility is already set up and is utilized quite well.
Why was it set up in Cuba?
If it hadn't been, it's likely you'd not be arguing this now, because these men would have had habeas corpus long ago.
The answer is that, if it were on US soil the detainees would have habeas corpus rights. If it were on Cuban soil the Cubans could release the detainees.The lawyers employed by the Administration knew that. They hoped to argue that because the site was leased it was not US territory, being on Cuban land, but not foreign either since Cuba had granted a lease for quiet enjoyment.It is this blatant dishonesty that the Supreme Court objected to in 2004. So then Congress passed a law which, in effect, attempted to change the constitution by specifically depriving those in Guantanamo of any rights.
The point is that "enemy combatant" is an invention of the Administrations' lawyers.It's not a category known to international law or any other law. They don't want to argue that they are prisoners of war. They don't want to argue they are criminals, with the rights of criminals.Any American citizen kept as an 'enemy combatant' is not, of course kept for long. They are granted full rights and are sent back to the US mainland to be dealt with according to law.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the government has just narrowly won a vote in the House of Commons whereby 'terror suspects' may be detained without charge for 42 days. It was 28 days.
How long do you, LR think it proper to keep these men without charge? Ten years, twenty years, life, what? When would you end their custody? What circumstances would have you release any ?
How on earth could saying that the constitution also applies at Guantanamo mean 'trampling' on it?
It's the administration, with its dangerous new ideas - that (a)'enemy combatants' have, or lack, whatever rights the administration decides and (b)the administration decides who is or isn't an 'enemy combatant' - that is trampling on the constitution. (And that's not to mention the Bush administration's take on 'unitary executive theory)
To take just one example (from hundreds) Sami al-Haj was held, without formal charge (although apparently he had been 'trained in the use of cameras') or trial at Guantanamo for six years, and then released without explanation. What principle of justice, or even of practical advantage in fighting terro, was being applied there?
Guantanamo has been a disaster, in terms both of bringing people to justice and also of the US's reputation and safety.
'Powell said the use of torture and denial of habeas corpus at the prison for suspected terrorists at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo has diminished America's standing in the world. "It [Guantanamo] is not a seen as a place that is consistent with what America says justice will be."
Powell said the harshness of Guantanamo has also given "cover to a lot of really bad people around the world who say: 'Hey, don't lecture me, look at what you're doing.' "
Powell said that torture, including water-boarding, should stop at Guantanamo and that terrorism suspects should be given lawyers and afforded all the rights of the American criminal justice system.'
Just the other day,I read about bush's comments regarding some wanted Serbian war criminals; he spoke about how evil they were. What I found so odd was that some of the crimes the International Court has charged them with (basically ignoring the Geneva Conventions) are the same Conventions that bush says do not apply to him and the US. Yet they were fighting inside their own country rather than invading another coutry when they committed the crimes. How can what he said be justified with what he has done? Is there part of the Conventions that I don't understand? Does it say somewhere that the administration of a country can simply declare that what others do as a crime are not a crime when his country does it?
I am also one who is curious about the trampling of the Constitution. Having read the document hundreds, if not thousands of times, I don't understand. I'd like to see the specific portion that was trampled upon.
I'd also like to point out that the convenience of Guantanamo ("Fred-The Guantanamo Bay facility is already set up and is utilized quite well. There is no need to close it down to move it elsewhere.") simply didn't exist until the prison was set up to hold these people. It did not exist before. Further, if it is such a good thing, why is bush on record as saying that he'd "like to close Guantanamo down"? (But then, I may not be the brightest bulb in the pack, becasue I though that, since he is the one who opened it, who ordered the prison built there, he had the authority to close it as well.)
"Our court system is already busy enough as it is."
Too busy to adhere to the Constitution? Interesting concept of justice.
"As for you questions on why they were released, I am not the one to ask. Like you, I wasn't there when they were released. I would have to trust our military officials knew what they were doing when they released them."
SO a few years in prison is right for suspected terrorists? Or did the facts not hold up, and it was determined that at least some of them were not really terrorists in the first place. Any guess how many who weren't terrorists when "detained" converted while in "detention" and are now killing US military? Who is to blame for their conversion? Do the deaths of those military personnel fall on the heads of those who caused their conversion? Who is doing a better job of recruiting terrorists, al Qeada of bush? (And, will bush gets al Qeada's Man of the Year award for his efforts in swelling the terrorist ranks world-wide?)
Three final questions -
How did the "$60 billion war" end up costing the US an estimated $2.5 trillion ?
Is al Qeada still in its "death throes" as cheney said a couple of years ago? Does anyone realize that al Qeada has a longer death scene that any of Marlon Brando's?
And finally -
Where is Osama bin Laden, the guy behind 9/11? I thought I gave an excellent description the last time I asked this question. How many 6'5' 160 lb. Arabs with foot-long beards are there in the world? DO they all walk with a cane?
Posts: 17241 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
There's nothing new. Not for the first time in British history we tried jailing, without charge or trial, people who were, in your Administration's jargon, 'enemy combatants' in Northern Ireland, from 1971 to 1975.
LR and others might care to read the following link.We indulged in techniques of interrogation and treatment of detainees which you'll find strangely familiar. The results were familiar too. The policy was entirely counter-productive. It encouraged the enemy. It recruited sympathisers both to the IRA and to their enemy, also murderers ( the Ulster Volunteer Force). It turned much of the population against us and made neutrals into sympathisers. It lost us sympathy abroad ( many Americans believed it was wrong, being lovers of justice and freedom.) It set the peace process back years. It provided 'martyrs' to the terrorist cause.
Oh, and we tried to justify it.
All these people presented a threat, on our version (likely so in many cases)
The Boumediene case takes its name from Lakhdar Boumediene, one of six Algerians who became legal residents of Bosnia in the 1990s. Bosnian police arrested them shortly after 9/11, fearing they might be plotting to attack the U.S. embassy in the country. Three months after that, the Supreme Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered their release for lack of evidence. But no sooner were they free than police in Bosnia took them into custody and handed them off to the America military. From there, they ended up in Guantánamo. - Time. Inc
Let's see...In late 2001, they were arrested because the Bosnian police thought they might attack the US embassy. But the Bosnian Supreme Court found a lack of evidence. Then the US grabs them, and has held them since at least 2002, six years ago. But we have done nothing in the way of trials or tribunals in this case. What is the evidence that would justify holding them? If it existed, wouldn't there have been some action taken in that direction by now?
I also found this interesting;
Justice Scalia added that the U.S. is "at war with radical Islamists," and that the Boumediene ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed."
Perhaps Tony should get a copy of the Constitution ad read it. The US cannot be legally at war with anyone, since Congress has most definitely not declared war, something required by the Constitution. Scalia has claimed to believe that the Constitution should be interpreted as meaning what it looks like it means, and what the authors meant it to mean when they wrote it. Except, I guess, when it better suits his purpose to see things differently. Obviously, this (and other similar statements and rulings) shows Scalia to bend his principles to fit his political position, a scary thing in a US Supreme Court Justice. Or maybe he just doesn't understand that when the Constitution gave the power to declare war to only Congress, it meant that only Congress could declare war. Maybe it's just a reading comprehension problem. Or, in light of what a Depression WPA poster [Available on the AnswerPool Gift Shop (bottom, right)] says, maybe it's not that he's really dull, it's just that he needs his eyes examined. Or something.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
Posts: 17241 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
' It shouldn't be necessary for the Supreme Court to tell the president that he can't have people taken into custody, spirited to a remote prison camp and held indefinitely, with no legal right to argue that they've been unjustly imprisoned -- not even on grounds of mistaken identity. But the president in question is, sigh, George W. Bush...
..."The nation will live to regret what the court has done today," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a dissent, warning that the ruling "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Everyone hopes he's wrong, of course. But if the only thing that mattered were security, why would we bother to have an independent judiciary? Why would there be any constitutional or legal guarantees of due process for anyone? We could just lock up anyone who fit the demographic profile of the average armed robber, say, or anyone with psychological traits often displayed by embezzlers.
The Guantanamo decision will create headaches for the federal courts. The process of granting hearings to the detainees will be messy, imperfect and at times frustrating. I'm confident that in the end the system will work. George W. Bush may not trust America's basic values and highest ideals, but I do.'A Victory for the Rule of the Law
So far no one here has shown how this stupid decree by the Supreme Court is right in any way.
Someone show me where in the Constitution there are provisions giving the captured enemy rights to our court system...it simply isn't there. Yet we have five renegade judges who literally made law on the bench.
Read the part of the Constitution that speaks about the Supreme Court. When it says something is the law, it is the law.
While you are looking, please check out the part about declaring war. Why is it you aren't up in arms about the obvious violation there? The Constitution isn't a bill of fare. You don't get to select parts of it to be the law and ignore parts of it.
Don't cite a source for your position then deny that same source's authority in the same post.
The law of the land isn't what you or I or any one citizen wants it to be, LR, it is what the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court says it is.
Posts: 17241 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
I, too, believe the Supreme Court has made a particularly poor decision. In my opinion, it has overstepped the notion of a balanced government. However, it acted within its authority.
Posts: 7903 | Location: in the backwoods of North Carolina | Registered: 06-07-02
John Major expressing the truly 'conservative' view:
'If we are seen to defend our own values in a manner that does violence to them, then we run the risk of losing those values. Even worse, if our own standards fall, it will serve to recruit terrorists more effectively than their own propaganda could ever hope to...'Conservatism vs. authoritarianism
From the article in which he's quoted:
'This skepticism of Government power -- which lies not only at the heart of most key British reforms over the last 8 centuries but also at the heart of the American Founding -- is precisely what has been missing almost completely from the American Right, for which there is now no federal government power too great or too unlimited to embrace. The American right-wing faction which now dominates the Republican Party is defined largely by their insatiable lust for limitless government power in virtually every realm -- spying, detentions, interrogations, and war-making...
...how and why would any American object to the mere requirement that our Government prove that someone is guilty before we imprison them indefinitely or execute them? That is all that yesterday's Supreme Court ruling required -- not that detainees be released, but that their guilt be proven in a fair proceeding. The fact that the Right is so enraged by this basic requirement vividly reveals the authoritarian impulses which define them.'
quote:
...this stupid decree by the Supreme Court...
How on earth is a court's decision that the executive should follow the constitution in keeping to the principles of habeas corpus a 'decree'? When Bush invented the term 'enemy combatant' and imprisoned the people he thus labeled without charge, trial or explanation for years that was government by decree.
Someone show me where in the Constitution there are provisions giving the captured enemy rights to our court system...
"Captured enemy"? Constitutionally, captured enemy would be prisoners of war, with rights guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, which the US is a signatory to, and the President is constitutionally obliged to follow.
On the other hand, if these aren't enemy soldiers, but terrorists, then they are criminals, with constitutional rights to a fair trial and so on.
Bush by decree created the new idea of 'enemy combatant' - a term which doesn't seem to have any constitutional backing at all - and decided unilaterally that US law didn't really apply in Guantanamo. (He also seems to have decided by decree that torture is an OK way to obtain evidence, which has completely compromised proposed trials, tribunals or whatever of those held at Guantanamo.) The court has told him he can't do that - something defenders of the constitution ought to be grateful for.
Bush created this mess, by not taking the constitutional route in the first place.
No,we are most definitely not comparing like with like. The 42 days detention without charge is to give more time to the police to collate and examine the evidence available after a person has been arrested.It is not a general power to detain.
Under British law a person arrested must be charged or released within 24 or, exceptionally, 36 hours.To extend that, the police must apply to a magistrates' court who may allow a further 36 hours. (Throughout their detention the suspect has safeguards including the right to a free lawyer and cannot be questioned without the lawyer being present) After that the suspect must be either charged and brought before a court as soon as possible or released.Where the offence suspected is a terrorism offence, the police may obtain permission to detain for 28 days before charge or release but must charge the person and bring them before a court as soon as they are possessed of sufficient evidence to justify a charge.In all other respects the suspect has the same rights as any other suspect
The government is worried that the time currently available may not, in some cases, be sufficient for the police to analyse computer records and the like found in the possession of, or relating to, the person arrested, and for a decision to be made whether to charge the person or let them go.
Tony Blair wanted 90 days for this purpose . He was defeated in Parliament. A number of experts said that 28 days is sufficient. No case has yet occurred in which 28 days was needed.Two cases required 26 days investigation. The many highly qualified opponents of extension beyond 28 days included former Law Officers ( =Attorney General etc) and the Director of Public Prosecutions. Gordon Brown wants 42 days instead of 28.It's this which exercised David Davis [post above] and John Major.It passed with many of Gordon Brown's Labour Party MPs refusing to agree to it. (For various reasons, it not likely to pass into law)
Your President wants to detain people indefinitely, however they come to be in custody.In Britain we are discussing the rights of someone arrested on suspicion of being involved in terrorist organisations and terrorist plans (inciting terrorism, having materials relating to terrorism, concealing or aiding such criminals etc) and how many days they may be detained before release or charge.
Your Supreme Court thinks like we do.No Prime Minister and no Parliament or Court here would countenance the arguments of the Administrations' lawyers but, naturally, the situation would never arise in the first place.
The Sunday Times is reporting that President Bush is determined to capture Osama bin Laden before he leaves office.Special forces of the US and Britain have received orders to make this a top priority.
"Bush is swinging for the fences, hoping to make a home run" said an intelligence source (obviously not a British source )
I hope he succeeds. Few things in life would make me happier than seeing bin Laden tried, convicted, and sentenced to a glass cell in Ft. Riley, Kansas, watching reruns of Jerry Springer and American Idol for the rest of his life.
(Note that he really didn't put forth much of an effort until he read reports of the questions on AP asking "Where's Osama?" Ah, the power of the press!)
Posts: 17241 | Location: Lincoln Place, Granite City, IL, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
It's maybe not a good idea that bin Laden be captured on Bush's watch. Given his past record, the Decider would probably come up with some novel and half-baked form of trial or punishment so grotesque that he'd end up making the terrorist look good.
'An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.'Wrongly jailed detainees found militancy at Guantanamo
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