A great many Americans seem to think that any person who is being held as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay deserves to be there, because he is a terrorist—and he must be a terrorist because, after all . . . he is being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The case of Huzaifa Parhat suggests otherwise.

Should all the members of Congress, including HRC, who signed on to the resolution authorizing Bush to use force and engage troops in Iraq also be held accountable for their poor decisions? 

Bush wasn’t flying solo in that regard.

R. Smith,
I don’t believe Bush is responsible for all that has gone wrong with this country.  He is the president and he and Cheney ought to be impeached.  Okay, let’s say investigated which may lead to impeachment, is that good for you?  Do you want a president Obama to have the powers Bush has taken for the executive branch?  Signing statements and torture and over a million dead in Iraq in a war based on lies okay with you?  You said you recognize Bush’s faults.  Why shouldn’t he be held accountable for his poor decisions?  It is not true everyone thought, as he may have, Saddam Hussein was a threat to the U.S.  Millions marched before the invasion of Iraq.  MSM ignored for the most part.  New acronym is CFM for Corporate Fawning Media.  You do know four companies own all of the media in the U.S now, don’t you.  What stations do you watch?  Sorry, I am angry at where we are now and I honestly don’t know what to do other than holler and protest.  Don’t recall women getting the right to vote by writing their congressman.  I can’t buy my congressman off and can’t find work and am trying to keep my house afloat.  I’m not alone, but guess a lot don’t have luxury of internet and some probably have written off the RTD years ago.  I’m not in the minority, R. Smith.  We just haven’t come together to let others know it, but we’re working on it.

Rain,

Open mindedness is a two way street. I recognize the failings of the president. The difference is, I don’t build an obsessive, paranoia driven freak world around it. I understand people make mistakes but that blaming all the worlds problems on one man is more about avoiding ones own personal failings than it is about cartoonish plots to rule the world.

As for not coming here because of people like me....the same could be said of people who complain that their 4th of July celebration was ruined by some banner waving “Impeach Cheney” zealot.

Like I said. It’s a two way street. At least off campus anyway.

R. Smith, I was paraphrasing W’s “It’s just a god damned piece of paper” when referencing the Constitution of this country. 
Sorry to be seen as pedaling toxic filth by you.  Others may be more open-minded and learn a little or respond because they have more to share. 
I don’t often come here, and you remind me why I hesitate to visit. 
To Bart - Thank you for getting this article back online.  It had disappeared and I called you and you or someone else fixed it.  My paranoia diminishes for the moment.

China Inspired Interrogations at Guantanamo

http://www.truthout.org/article/china-inspired-interrogations-guantanamo

Scott Shane, of The New York Times: “The military trainers who came to Guantanamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of ‘coercive management techniques’ for possible use on prisoners, including ‘sleep deprivation,’ ‘prolonged constraint,’ and ‘exposure.’ What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.”

‘If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.’—Thomas Jefferson

The only people having show trails are the leftists who run Canadas Human Rights Commission, although I see they’ve run like scalded dogs from their inquisition of Mark Steyn and McCleans magazine.

Not because they know they are wrong. Far from it. They’ve dropped the cases because too much public attention was being brought to bear on their Stalinist tactics....tactics admired and copied by leftists here in the US, especially in gov’t and educational institutions. They slithered away to lick their wounds and scheme up a new way to lord over those they disagree with.

Maybe that’s why I don’t care what happens to the occasional innocent afgan or iraqi who gets locked up in Gitmo.

If the left isn’t going to recognize it’s own totalitarian power fetish, why should the right?

tit for tat.

The term “enemy combatant” was coined because the enemy we are fighting is not part of an established or recognized military organization. At least not according to Geneva Convention. That’s the treaty liberals love when we capture people but conveniently forget when their “freedom fighter” heros start lopping off heads and hiding rocket launchers in hospital parking decks. They’re not POW’s and they’re not common criminals. They’re enemy combatants. Just because a few military “experts” say otherwise means nothing. Jim Webb and Wesley Clark are proof enough that the promise of cash and power will eventually scrape a few mercenaries for hire off the bottom of the barrel.

So save your smug moralizing for the day when you clean up your own house. Abandon your speech codes, race baiting, sensitivity training, class hate mongering and all the other toxic filth you pedal and maybe then you can lecture the “right” on morality.

Until then...like the lady said...F ‘em.

Unfortunately, many American conservatives mouth a lot of rhethoric about freedom, wave flags, get upset about flag lapels and have no clue about concepts of due process or the history thereof. They cry about the left taking away freedom with no concept of wjat they are talking about. Its what one author called the Paranoid Style in American Politics run amuck.
Various tribunals from Nuremberg to the trials of the Serbian leadership have allowed due process for war criminals.Why should America tell the world it is “fighting for freedom “ then impose drumhead justice, Sopviet style show trials show trials ? And then we can act with an air of superiority to the “backward Muslims “

F the law, so says the president.  You and 28% of the country agree with you, from what I hear.  We are looking at very dark times, financially, as well as constitutionally.  What exactly do have against habeus corpus?
And Shine, did you take the time to watch the hearing?  Am so tired of debating with people that don’t know what they are arguing about.

Rain says she “tried to find the judiciary hearing on detainees where every panelist agreed the term ‘enemy combatant’ should be done away with forthwith.”

I think the terrorists should be done away with, forthwith. Habeus corpus...BAH!

Tried to find the judiciary hearing on detainees where every panelist agreed the term “enemy combatant” should be done away with forthwith.  Panelists were military and civilian.  Reasons varied, but basically said it was a non military term was injected to confuse.  Link below another hearing re the Uighers.  Don’t know why whole link doesn’t show.  You can look it up at CSpan.org archives on June 4.

http://www.cspan.org/search.aspx?For=detainee hearing

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