Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Polonius wrote:

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
So keep the blame where it belongs.

Ah, you mean the heavily Democrat controlled congress from 2009 til 2011?

I'm glad to see we can focus on what's truely important: partisan bickering.

Yep. Given the chance to stand up for the American justice system and human rights they chickened out.

Cowardice is a bipartisan issue.

I'm odd that way, my enemy is Congress which has been disfunctional for years. They only seem to pass a budget every other year and never on time, and they haven't for what, 3, 4 years?

If I ran my life the way they run the country I'd be dead or in jail.

Term limits for all congress people? After a certain point, you just don't get a say anymore.

Also, somewhere in the last page the quotes got seriously messed up. I never said "keep the blame where it belongs."

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:Term limits for all congress people?

Term limits probably won't help. Ultimately they serve to increase the influence of parties by limiting the ability of individual legislators to learn how to maneuver inside a legislative body, forcing them to rely on advice provided by partisan organizations. There are nonpartisan organizations that provide similar functions, but as someone who works for one I can tell you that they tend to be more expensive, and therefore less attractive to legislators without the kind of long term exposure necessary for major fundraising.

I'm talking about 8-12 year term limits. I think that's long enough that you would have a pretty good idea of what you were doing before you passed the reins as it were.

We Brits are kind of lucky in this regard, our civil service stays regardless of who's in power, so there's no 'learning the ropes' transition between governments. Although our most recent budget is apparently an amalgamation of ideas that have been floating around the treasury for years.

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:I'm talking about 8-12 year term limits. I think that's long enough that you would have a pretty good idea of what you were doing before you passed the reins as it were.

End Gerrymandering districts and 'safe seats' that give Congress it's 95% re-election rate. Congressional districts must follow county lines. If one county has enough people to justify more than one rep, they're elected at-large.

Term limits.

More involved voters, especially at the primary level. (I know... I know...)

'Blind' elections where Candidates' party affiliations are not listed.

Once the fiscal year ends Congress may not leave the capital building until they pass one (based on how the Cardinals elect a Pope).

Not sure how to balance the whole lobbyist/access/money issue. But those steps would be a start.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:I'm talking about 8-12 year term limits. I think that's long enough that you would have a pretty good idea of what you were doing before you passed the reins as it were.

End Gerrymandering districts and 'safe seats' that give Congress it's 95% re-election rate. Congressional districts must follow county lines. If one county has enough people to justify more than one rep, they're elected at-large.

Term limits.

More involved voters, especially at the primary level. (I know... I know...)

'Blind' elections where Candidates' party affiliations are not listed.

Once the fiscal year ends Congress may not leave the capital building until they pass one (based on how the Cardinals elect a Pope).

Not sure how to balance the whole lobbyist/access/money issue. But those steps would be a start.

I'll counter with this - Allow any of their constituents who can get 500 signatures (of other constituents) to challenge the congressperson to armed combat to either first blood or death. Give the congressperson choice of weapons. Then drown the lobbyists. In fire.

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:I'm talking about 8-12 year term limits. I think that's long enough that you would have a pretty good idea of what you were doing before you passed the reins as it were.

It depends on how its set up. Several states already have term limits in their state legislatures, ranging from 8 year lifetime limits across both houses to 12 year consecutive limits in each house. In every case, though, you end up with a legislature that's more chaotic due to the absence of well defined procedural norms and strong leadership. You also see, as I said before, stronger political parties, excepting states in which one party has been historically dominant (this is most obvious in OK). If you want a really, really good example of term limits gone wrong, look at California, their legislature is an utter mess.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
End Gerrymandering districts and 'safe seats' that give Congress it's 95% re-election rate. Congressional districts must follow county lines. If one county has enough people to justify more than one rep, they're elected at-large.

Term limits.

More involved voters, especially at the primary level. (I know... I know...)

'Blind' elections where Candidates' party affiliations are not listed.

Once the fiscal year ends Congress may not leave the capital building until they pass one (based on how the Cardinals elect a Pope).

I agree with the bold, but I'm not sure the budget measure would work especially well.

Looking back, I want to note that in some posts I was using the term "prisoner of war" rather loosely. I briefly considered not using the term, but I wasn't sure if it might be confusing for Dakkaites not familiar with the different classifications used in the Geneva Convention and the US. Polonius is right that many, if not all, of the prisoners in Guantanamo do not technically have prisoner of war status, even if they were detained as enemy combatants.

The difficulty of classifying prisoners who were detained as non-uniformed fighters and insurgents is where the Geneva Convention starts to show its age, and is certainly an issue with Guantanamo and the prisoners being held there, since many insurgents in the current conflicts sort of blur the lines of the different categories used in the Geneva Convention. That said, I still don't think charging every one in Guantanamo with a crime and putting them on trial is the best way to deal with the issue, because even if many or all of them don't have technical prisoner of war status under the Geneva Convention, that's still basically what many of them are.

Polonius wrote:Neither domestic criminal law nor international war crimes law really cover insurgents.

My co-workers and I used to have this argument all the time, and this is what it ultimately boils down to. We need to come up with some sort of international legal framework for dealing with insurgents (and by that, I don't mean building a facility that's intentionally designed to be "in legal outer space" - that's not really an adult way to handle things).

I think the continued existence of Guantanamo bay is possibly the biggest American failing in recent history in my mind. Setting up a place where there is no judicial oversight, where people are held indefinitely with no charge, I feel these are betrayals of who we are as Americans, as well as our most cherished belief in the rule of law.

I'd prefer the 9/11 planners be put on trial and be sentence to life in supermax - no death penalties, no matrydom, just a cell with rapists, murderers, and the other common criminals.

AustonT wrote:To my knowledge the constitution does not grant rights to the citizens of other countries.

The suspension clause does not indicate it applies to citizens only, so RAW they have it. This was FAQ'd by by the Supreme Court in Boumediene_v._Bush.


But now we're way OT.

AustonT wrote:

LoneLictor wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Barack "The Failure" Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconsitutional thing imaginable. People are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

I made your post bipartisan. You are welcome.
To my knowledge the constitution does not grant rights to the citizens of other countries.

Sure it does, it grants rights uniformly to all people (in its current incarnation) on American soil.

A couple minor points.

1. A few folks have stated you capture people to 'keep them off the battlefield'. Well disregarding the fact that 'the battlefield' in this case is hard to define, that is A reason, but not close to the only reason. I can't think of a war I've read about where patrols were not sent out to capture a enemy soldiers in order to get intelligence on enemy disposition and intention.

2. Someone mentioned that one difference in GITMO was that it removed detainees from theater. I submit that is NOT different. The US had plenty of German prisoners in camps in the US during WW2.

There are a lot of myths being passed as facts in this thread in regards to how detainees are treated in GITMO.

CptJake wrote:A couple minor points.

1. A few folks have stated you capture people to 'keep them off the battlefield'. Well disregarding the fact that 'the battlefield' in this case is hard to define, that is A reason, but not close to the only reason. I can't think of a war I've read about where patrols were not sent out to capture a enemy soldiers in order to get intelligence on enemy disposition and intention.

Perhaps I should clarify. I didn't mean that the sole purpose of capturing enemies is to keep them off the battlefield. You are correct that getting information from prisoners is a big part of it. What I meant was, after capturing them, you lock them up and hold them, rather than releasing them, to keep them off the battlefield. It's not the only reason or sole motive for capture, but is one of the reasons why they're not simply released after interrogation.

I also realize that the battlefield is hard to define, but I wasn't referring to it just in a physical sense. Perhaps a better way to phrase it would be to keep them from fighting against US or coalition forces, to keep them from waging war, or to keep them from planning or performing terrorist acts.

LoneLictor wrote:Linky

I guess Bush can't go on vacation to Malaysia or any countries that extradite there (assuming any countries extradite there). Considering the crimes that Bush was convicted of, Obama could probably be convicted too. He's still running gitmo. But yeah, this news probably won't affect Bush much.

The US have committed several war crimes since at least WW2 and nothing was done about it, no reason to change that practice now.

PhantomViper wrote:
The US have committed several war crimes since at least WW2 and nothing was done about it, no reason to change that practice now.

Ignorance or trolling?

Take a look at how many US troops have been investigated and prosecuted over the last 10 years for various ROE violations. You may not like the outcome, or you may wish to see political figures indicted, but your claim that 'nothing was done about it' is at best an asinine statement.

CptJake wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
The US have committed several war crimes since at least WW2 and nothing was done about it, no reason to change that practice now.

Ignorance or trolling?

Take a look at how many US troops have been investigated and prosecuted over the last 10 years for various ROE violations. You may not like the outcome, or you may wish to see political figures indicted, but your claim that 'nothing was done about it' is at best an asinine statement.

At Haya?

I'm not talking about your internal justice system, I'm talking about the international war crimes tribunal.

Your country has committed several acts during and after WW2 that could easily be called war crimes or even crimes against humanity, but since you were on the victors side in WW2 and are a superpower since then, you've never even been indicted for them.

This isn't a judgement or anything by the way, its just the way that the world works! Both the USSR and China have committed similarly criminal actions and have "enjoyed" the same lack of consequences. Human rights and all that crap always takes a backseat when the interests of powerful nations is at stake.

PhantomViper wrote:

CptJake wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
The US have committed several war crimes since at least WW2 and nothing was done about it, no reason to change that practice now.

Ignorance or trolling?

Take a look at how many US troops have been investigated and prosecuted over the last 10 years for various ROE violations. You may not like the outcome, or you may wish to see political figures indicted, but your claim that 'nothing was done about it' is at best an asinine statement.

At Haya?

I'm not talking about your internal justice system, I'm talking about the international war crimes tribunal.

Your country has committed several acts during and after WW2 that could easily be called war crimes or even crimes against humanity, but since you were on the victors side in WW2 and are a superpower since then, you've never even been indicted for them.

This isn't a judgement or anything by the way, its just the way that the world works! Both the USSR and China have committed similarly criminal actions and have "enjoyed" the same lack of consequences. Human rights and all that crap always takes a backseat when the interests of powerful nations is at stake.

Last time I checked the US was not a member of the International Criminal Court. And for good reasons.

CptJake wrote:
Last time I checked the US was not a member of the International Criminal Court. And for good reasons.

Your point being? That you are not a member because if you were you could theoretically be prosecuted with all the crimes you guys commit?

Nah, you can continue to rape and pillage all you wan't, no one really gives a damn...

dæl wrote:They should do the same to Blair, i'd happily drive him to the airport.

Definitely agree with that, although I would prefer that he travelled by catapault

PhantomViper wrote:

CptJake wrote:
Last time I checked the US was not a member of the International Criminal Court. And for good reasons.

Your point being? That you are not a member because if you were you could theoretically be prosecuted with all the crimes you guys commit?

Nah, you can continue to rape and pillage all you wan't, no one really gives a damn...

The US doesn't recognize the jurisidiction of foreign courts in that manner. Plus if you tried to grab a President I'm pretty sure US marines would be eating crappy MRE's inside whats left of the Hague shortly thereafter. We're just protecting you from yourselves

Polonius wrote:

A Town Called Malus wrote:So if they are not PoWs they must be found guilty of a crime to be incarcerated and so must stand trial.

Based on what law?

Traditionally, non-uniformed forces, be they commandos, partisans, insurgents, or whatever have enjoyed zero legal protection.

If you fire on soldiers when you aren't a soldier, your life is forfeit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dæl wrote:So because they don't fit certain criteria they are fair game?

Under international law, yeah.

The United States Supreme Court begs to differ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasul_v._Bush - Federal judiciary has right to hear wrongful imprisonment cases from GTMO detainees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdan_v._Rumsfeld - UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions (as incorporated in the UCMJ) apply to GTMO detainees
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush - GTMO detainees have right to habeas corpus

Hordini wrote:Looking back, I want to note that in some posts I was using the term "prisoner of war" rather loosely. I briefly considered not using the term, but I wasn't sure if it might be confusing for Dakkaites not familiar with the different classifications used in the Geneva Convention and the US. Polonius is right that many, if not all, of the prisoners in Guantanamo do not technically have prisoner of war status, even if they were detained as enemy combatants.

The difficulty of classifying prisoners who were detained as non-uniformed fighters and insurgents is where the Geneva Convention starts to show its age, and is certainly an issue with Guantanamo and the prisoners being held there, since many insurgents in the current conflicts sort of blur the lines of the different categories used in the Geneva Convention. That said, I still don't think charging every one in Guantanamo with a crime and putting them on trial is the best way to deal with the issue, because even if many or all of them don't have technical prisoner of war status under the Geneva Convention, that's still basically what many of them are.

The best solution would be to push for a fifth GC, but that won't happen until the US really starts seeing its international influence decline. Right now we're going to sit pretty on the pedestal of "We have the most guns."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:
I'd prefer the 9/11 planners be put on trial and be sentence to life in supermax - no death penalties, no matrydom, just a cell with rapists, murderers, and the other common criminals.

It worked well against the IRA.

Frazzled wrote:The US doesn't recognize the jurisidiction of foreign courts in that manner. Plus if you tried to grab a President I'm pretty sure US marines would be eating crappy MRE's inside whats left of the Hague shortly thereafter. We're just protecting you from yourselves

This. I'm not a fan of G.W. Bush, but I'm of like opinion with John Wayne when it comes to Presidents.

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

But at any rate, when it comes to the U.S. and its citizens, we only recognize our own authority. Essentially, unless the Prez is tried and convicted by a U.S. Court, your little country and whatever mickey mouse ruling it came up with can go feth itself.

What he said!

Frazzled wrote:What he said!

Frankly, I'm kind of surprised we don't do conquest. Screw nation building, just take their country and make it U.S. territory.

IcyCool wrote: Essentially, unless the Prez is tried and convicted by a U.S. Court, your little country and whatever mickey mouse ruling it came up with can go feth itself.

I really, really can't wait until the US is forced to confront being not a superpower.

PhantomViper wrote:

CptJake wrote:
Last time I checked the US was not a member of the International Criminal Court. And for good reasons.

Your point being? That you are not a member because if you were you could theoretically be prosecuted with all the crimes you guys commit?

Nah, you can continue to rape and pillage all you wan't, no one really gives a damn...

Point being that to give up sovereignty to an institution that feths up the trial of an actual war criminal like Ratko Mladic, has crap rules for evidence, and would allow 'Bush is a War Criminal' type trials is an asinine concept.

Again, I point out that the US has investigated and prosecuted our own troops within an existing system that is one of the better on the planet. You don't have to like the results. and I freely admit the system isn't perfect, but at least it isn't the political circus that the Hague ends up being.

CptJake wrote:
Point being that to give up sovereignty to an institution that feths up the trial of an actual war criminal like Ratko Mladic, has crap rules for evidence, and would allow 'Bush is a War Criminal' type trials is an asinine concept.

You are very familiar with asinine things, so we should definitely trust your judgment.

CptJake wrote:
...but at least it isn't the political circus that the Hague ends up being.

Why is that not a good thing?

dogma wrote:

IcyCool wrote: Essentially, unless the Prez is tried and convicted by a U.S. Court, your little country and whatever mickey mouse ruling it came up with can go feth itself.

I really, really can't wait until the US is forced to confront being not a superpower.

Not much. We will still tell whatever little country with its mickey mouse ruling to go feth itself. North Korea and Iran do that just fine.