NEWS: Al-Qaeda Suspects "Disappear" In U.S. Custody

before you go: it means that any non citizen can be held indefinately with next to no justification or evidence. this includes citizens of the U.K. this means if they don't like you you may be held in U.S. prison until such time that the department of homeland security sees fit to let you go... thus far, the justice department has brought charges against very few detainees the DHS caught up in its immigrant dragnet for (in some cases) no violation of U.S. law - entirely in the name of the plenary power of congress and national security.

I'm not complaining that I'm being "got at", because I really couldn't give a fuck what any of you think of me. What's pissing me off, is that I've said (several times) that I don't want to continue the discussion, but people keep quoting me or asking me things, and I don't want to ignore them.

Yes, I fully understand that, and again, I would willingly be detained under those laws if the same laws and detentions also meant others were being detained. I'd willingly sacrifice my freedom if the process prevented even one terrorist attack.

it appears that you don't want to address issues that people bring up - issues that call into question some of your assertions. one could infer from this that you don't want to consider opposition to your points, which may call into question why you posted them in the first place in a public forum. and TFOK makes a adept point: if you choose not to respond to the issues people raise, you are by no means compelled to participate.

ok. i guess that is the point of contention. i, personally, do not see the efficacy or necessity of detaining people who haven't done anything against the law. it's unamerican at best, and at worst the beginings of a facist state. who wants that?

It may appear that way, but it is not the case. My opinions are offensive to people here, so I'm not going to keep repeating them and cause more offence. If people disagree with me, fine, I couldn't care less. I don't agree with them. TFOK is simply trolling to get a rise out of me, but it will not work. On both of your 'advice' I shall ignore any further comments posted here.

this thread makes me sad.

it makes me sad because no matter how fucked up things get, there will always be people siding with the oppressors. they could start disappearing americans for protesting, and you'll find a stockula type applauding their actions via fox news soundbites about how our streets are safer without such miscreants wandering around.

and that's just the tip of the iceberg... just wait to people start paying to have thier own babies fps chipped. smile for the fucking cameras.

get in the van, sir.

No, they don't understand it could ever happen to them, they're the one's the government is protecting, they could never be perceived to be terrorists.

"Give me liberty or give me death." It means nothing to these people, these people that glorify the Revolutionary War, but have no concept of the freedom the revolutionaries were seeking. The oppression of government is at the core of the constitution. Due process of law, double jeopardy.

In short pull your head from your ass and see the forest for the trees.

Holding people you can't prove commited a crime is wrong, and no Mister President we won't just "trust you."

Really, what I can't get around, is that anyone, subcribed to this site, would be for oppression.

stick around. this won't be the first shocker you read from members.

i'd keep an eye out for
stockula, specifically. he's always comedy gold.

First, never in my remarks did I say the words Arab or Muslim. No where in my remarks did either word even happen to be accidently hinted at.
But I do admit to using the word Jews, so perhaps you were confused. I was attempting to draw a parallel between your treatment of the terrorists, and Hitler's treatment of the Jews. Both you and Hitler are dehumanising a group of people, for the same reason-- to make killing them okay and to ensure group cohesion (if you're not with us, then you're against us, and anyone against us is vermin and will be killed).
Sure, you're not using the racial or religious facade, but the idea is the same.

Regardless of a supposed terrorists' ethnic or religious beliefs, s/he is a human being and deserves the rights implied by belonging to our species.

By stating that I either have to believe all terrorists should die or there should be no limit to terrorist activities is a scare-tactic attempting to make me make a choice between the two, and I refuse to fall for it.

All human beings should respect the lives of all other human beings, and when the lives of human beings are not respected, then I can completely agree that there should be some judiciary measure to insure vicarity, but not so harsh and cruel as to violate those person's rights as a HUMAN being.

What ever happened to due-process? The laws in place now that restrict due process are unconstitutional and violate American human rights imperitive and the Geneva Convention, and I don't care one lick if someone in some other country has those same laws or not, as Americans it is our mission to uphold the tenets of our society.

I'm sorry if this seems to ramble, but I can't see what I've typed after I've typed it...

It would be nice if there was a reasonably open process for figuring out whether they were or were not guilty. I kinda think that's the fundamental issue.

You speak out.

you can vote out the regime that continues to subvert human rights and due process for starters.

Er, saying "they all do it" is both a cop-out and a denial of reality.

The reality in question here is that this administration is orders of magnitude worse than what preceded it. Shrugging one's shoulders at this fact is hardly a compelling response.

adopting this "they're terrorists, fuck 'em" attitude is both immature and misinformed if discussing the situation in the prisons in iraq. most of the people rounded up and thrown into those prisons were rounded up because the US was offering cash rewards for information.

i think that's become as well established a way to get unreliable information (especially in a war-ravaged nation) as is torture/forceful interrogation (as mentioned earlier in this thread).

people with vendettas or people simply looking for a little extra dough are reporting neighbors they don't get along with as well as religious figures with whom they disagree. in recent weeks, many prisoners have been released because no evidence of their guilt or malevolent associations could be established. these were professors, clerics, businessmen and the like.

if all of iraq were terrorists and revolutionaries, they'd have long ago deposed hussein themselves (which is historically the way that most *lasting* and *effective* revolutionary shifts in power occur). the fact of the matter is that they simply are not a bunch of terrorists and radicals. don't forget that iraq was a sovereign country. they had a standing army whose job it was to defend their country. they were not on the offensive in this war. since their invasion of kuwait, they invaded no one. they did little to deter the illegal and non-sanctioned over-flights. they were involved in nothing which has been proven to have warranted any war. they were simply invaded (illegitimately, i might add to the chorus of voices stating that) and had every right to defend themselves against the invaders (who happened to predominantly be reluctant american kids).

also, this incessant need to associate iraq with terrorism and then make the spurious extra-dimensional leap to connecting iraq with september 11th says more about the naiveté of americans and a bleacher's worth of sundry other global citizens with stifled skills in reading comprehension and geopolitical history than it does anything about reality.

american soldiers who are there seem to support the notion that they shouldn't be, that they're not fully trained to be handling many of the jobs they're given and that they're not adequately outfitted by this country to be involved in the brand of warfare they're involved in. i support their reluctance 110%. they're also the same folks who'd be the first to tell ya that most of those iraqis in those prisons are not the bad guys they're claimed to be.

call me an apologist. call me what you will. the only apology i'll make is for the massive failure of the american public education system and the susceptibility of this country to the same sort of blind nationalism that it feels it has to stomp out across the globe.

*edit: this issue of the US disappearing people isn't even a strictly iraqi issue. look at all of the arabs/muslims being detained in overly zealous fashions for up to 36 months without charges in this country. now pockets of them are being released as innocent too. not a single member of any terrorist organization was rounded up in those sweeps. all that happened was that the government polarized the american arab/muslim community and quashed many potential opportunities of people coming forward with information that they might have had about anything that the government might be curious about because they scared the shit out of a whole community of innocent people.

the DOJ and CIA are both out of control. when tim macveigh killed a tenth of the number of folks killed on september 11th, i don't recall his family being detained and disappeared. when the weather underground turned themselves in after destroying scores of state and federal buildings, i don't recall their families being disappeared. is american terrorism somehow more acceptable and less deserving of paranoia and extremist reaction than is global terrorism? the thing about terror is that it's by and large conducted by independent groups. i cant think of a single global religious or social group that doesn't have scores of bad seeds in it.


[Edited on Oct 24, 2004 by visitord]

Hear, hear. Finally, a voice of reason in a sea of madness.

to prove that they have actually been involved in terrorism. otherwise you could accuse anyone of being a terrorist. without due process, you could be killing/punishing completely innocent people, and no one would ever know.

if they have a fair trial, and they are proved to be terrorists, then they will be punished accordingly. a fair trial is not going to impede punishment, it's going to fairly implement it.