Omar Khadr's Interrogation Videos

[Asher]

Patty, thank you for quoting the document but you still miss the point. There is no grey area, he's one or the other.

Take your pick. Is he a bona-fide POW or is he a civilian?

He has rights in both cases that are not being respected as part of Gitmo. This is why Gitmo is globally derided (even by your allies) and this is why many of your fellow citizens are livid about it.

Some people in your country still respect the morals of its foundation. You and anyone else who advocates having places like gitmo are a disgrace to your country's true values.

As for your point about it's not helping me get him deported to Canada -- that is not the point. I just want him treated well like any POW should under the Geneva conventions. Right now that's not the case. And since the US is showing no signs of wising up, the best course of action is to get him out of Gitmo and into the Canadian system where he can be charged with any applicable crimes (in this case, there's no evidence of any crime).

The real irony of this all is while Omar can't be tried for any war crimes, there is far more of a case for Bush and the people who run Gitmo from getting prosecuted for war crimes well before Omar ever will.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Nobody is disputing that he was a member of Al Queda and engaged in hostile action agains coalition forces, beach alone capable of justifing his simple detention.

Actually, according to the military themselves they have no evidence that Omar has ever hurt any American.

He was with members of Al Qaeda because of his family situation.

We were discussing proof of torture, on which I am correct.

You are being utterly ridiculous. There is all kinds of proof of torture going on at Gitmo. The very fact that the administration admits to using forms of torture should be enough for you. The fact that his chief interrogator has admitted torturing and abusing should be enough for you.

There is no "evidence" in the world that you would believe. You'd probably even claim photography evidence was doctored.

You're so far up Bush's ass that you could give him a colonoscopy.

Right now you're detaining and inhumanely treating (of this, there is no doubt!) a child because he was with members of Al Qaeda. Members of the US military who know him and his interrogators all claim he is a "good kid" and is no threat, and in fact they believe leaving him there LONGER will increase the chances that he DOES become an extremist.

Your argument is so desperate you're now basically claiming just because he was where he was with the people he was, he deserves to be disrespected as a human being for the rest of his life and spend it in solitary confinement. That is alarmingly inhuman.

[Ramo]

Nobody is disputing that he was a member of Al Queda and engaged in hostile action agains coalition forces, beach alone capable of justifing his simple detention.

We are not really discussing that, nor is that what I was talking about in the quote you posted (as you know anyway, why so disengenuous Ramo?). We were discussing proof of torture, on which I am correct.

Sorry, got your post confused with the conversation in general. But it's clear that Khadr's detention has not been validated by any real judicial review (and the kangaroo courts known as the CSRT's certainly don't count).

[Theben]

After re-reading the 1st article:

The DVDs come nearly a week after internal foreign affairs documents were released showing that Canadian officials knew Khadr had been sleep-deprived for weeks to make him more willing to talk during interrogations.

The report says that Canadian official Jim Gould learned during a visit to Guantanamo on March 30, 2004, that Khadr had been put on a "frequent flyer program," meaning he was not permitted to remain in any one location for more than three hours.

As an aside the article does some injustice itself by playing an emtional tune. I can see why Patty et al. figured we were "heartbroken" over his treatment, but rule of law and the moral compass of the USA are the concerns.
Seriously, I really don't understand the race to the bottom of morality by the far right. Unless viewed thru the RWA leader/follower measuring stick, only then does it make some sense.

Still, torture done be torture. Game. set. match.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Ramo
More sig material. A veritable treasure trove, here.

I am nothing if not a source of the most quotable of quotes. Thanks for appreciating my contributions.

[Felch]

Originally posted by Theben
You didn't (I don't think) but Felch said he was okay with it.

Yeah I pretty much said that.

And at any rate it's more bad PR that we can ill afford. As Felch says he doesn't want to "needlessly endangers civilians", I can't imagine this will go over well with the fence sitters in the Islamic world. After all, it only takes one fence sitter to drive a truck full of explosives, which would endanger more than just civilians.

This is what I don't agree with.

One of the chief complaints is that we did something called "rendition" where we would send hajis to friendly Muslim countries like Jordan, where they would be tortured. I see nothing wrong with that, because I'm a believer in multi-cultural diversity and what have you. So basically, when we torture these guys, all we're really doing is trying to make them feel at home - it's almost the same as giving them halal beef and couscous and all that.

As far as these suicide bombers, they aren't America's fault. They are responsible for their own actions. Just like I'm responsible for what I do, and you're responsible for what you do. Blaming our actions on other people is what children do.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Patroklos




I am trying to remember where I said torturing Omar is cool, could someone please quote me? Anyone?

RTFT

No, but your and your govt's definitions of torture remind me of this:

[Felch]

Originally posted by Theben
Seriously, I really don't understand the race to the bottom of morality by the far right.

War is as immoral as it gets. Anything which shortens a war is a good thing. When the war is over, we can go back to being friends.

Furthermore, the only real war crime is losing. If you don't believe me look at Nuremburg. A lot of Nazis were being accused of doing the same thing Allies were doing (unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking civilian populations, etc.)

Viewed through that perspective, does it make more sense?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Patroklos




I am trying to remember where I said torturing Omar is cool, could someone please quote me? Anyone?

RTFT

You condoned torture. Asher did a good job of proving that.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Patroklos

Nobody is disputing that he was a member of Al Queda and engaged in hostile action agains coalition forces, beach alone capable of justifing his simple detention.

Then try him. They've twice tried him in rigged military tribunals which the SCotUS has stuck down as illegal and the first stopped prior to judgement because it was clear the prosecution was losing badly while the second found him not guilty. It's telling that Bush fired the tribunal members and then ordered him retried on the same charges.

This is a joke.

[Ramo]

Originally posted by Felch

Blaming our actions on other people is what children do.

So basically, when we torture these guys, all we're really doing is trying to make them feel at home

That was the same post, a couple sentences apart. Simply awesome.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Felch

War is as immoral as it gets. Anything which shortens a war is a good thing. When the war is over, we can go back to being friends.

Furthermore, the only real war crime is losing. If you don't believe me look at Nuremburg. A lot of Nazis were being accused of doing the same thing Allies were doing (unrestricted submarine warfare, attacking civilian populations, etc.)

Viewed through that perspective, does it make more sense?

Yep. Now I think we should nuke them. From orbit, of course.

It worked for Truman, right?

As far as these suicide bombers, they aren't America's fault. They are responsible for their own actions. Just like I'm responsible for what I do, and you're responsible for what you do. Blaming our actions on other people is what children do.

Then why were are commanders interested in winning "hearts and minds", and going out of their way to not offend muslims? To be polite?
Or were they acting on what could be defined as 'realistic expection of consequences based on previous actions' (I agree that the individuals in question are responsible for there actions, but so are we)?

[Ramo]

War is as immoral as it gets. Anything which shortens a war is a good thing.

From Jane Mayer's article breaking the rendition story:

n a bleak winter day in Trenton, New Jersey, Dan Coleman, an ex-F.B.I. agent who retired last July, because of asthma, scoffed at the idea that a C.I.A. agent was now having compunctions about renditions. The C.I.A., Coleman said, liked rendition from the start. “They loved that these guys would just disappear off the books, and never be heard of again,” he said. “They were proud of it.”

For ten years, Coleman worked closely with the C.I.A. on counter-terrorism cases, including the Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania. His methodical style of detective work, in which interrogations were aimed at forging relationships with detainees, became unfashionable after September 11th, in part because the government was intent on extracting information as quickly as possible, in order to prevent future attacks. Yet the more patient approach used by Coleman and other agents had yielded major successes. In the Embassy-bombings case, they helped convict four Al Qaeda operatives on three hundred and two criminal counts; all four men pleaded guilty to serious terrorism charges. The confessions the F.B.I. agents elicited, and the trial itself, which ended in May, 2001, created an invaluable public record about Al Qaeda, including details about its funding mechanisms, its internal structure, and its intention to obtain weapons of mass destruction. (The political leadership in Washington, unfortunately, did not pay sufficient attention.)

Coleman is a political nonpartisan with a law-and-order mentality. His eldest son is a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan. Yet Coleman was troubled by the Bush Administration’s New Paradigm. Torture, he said, “has become bureaucratized.” Bad as the policy of rendition was before September 11th, Coleman said, “afterward, it really went out of control.” He explained, “Now, instead of just sending people to third countries, we’re holding them ourselves. We’re taking people, and keeping them in our own custody in third countries. That’s an enormous problem.” Egypt, he pointed out, at least had an established legal system, however harsh. “There was a process there,” Coleman said. “But what’s our process? We have no method over there other than our laws—and we’ve decided to ignore them. What are we now, the Huns? If you don’t talk to us, we’ll kill you?”

From the beginning of the rendition program, Coleman said, there was no doubt that Egypt engaged in torture. He recalled the case of a suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing who fled to Egypt. The U.S. requested his return, and the Egyptians handed him over—wrapped head to toe in duct tape, like a mummy. (In another incident, an Egyptian with links to Al Qaeda who had coöperated with the U.S. government in a terrorism trial was picked up in Cairo and imprisoned by Egyptian authorities until U.S. diplomats secured his release. For days, he had been chained to a toilet, where guards had urinated on him.)

Under such circumstances, it might seem difficult for the U.S. government to legally justify dispatching suspects to Egypt. But Coleman said that since September 11th the C.I.A. “has seemed to think it’s operating under different rules, that it has extralegal abilities outside the U.S.” Agents, he said, have “told me that they have their own enormous office of general counsel that rarely tells them no. Whatever they do is all right. It all takes place overseas.”

Coleman was angry that lawyers in Washington were redefining the parameters of counter-terrorism interrogations. “Have any of these guys ever tried to talk to someone who’s been deprived of his clothes?” he asked. “He’s going to be ashamed, and humiliated, and cold. He’ll tell you anything you want to hear to get his clothes back. There’s no value in it.” Coleman said that he had learned to treat even the most despicable suspects as if there were “a personal relationship, even if you can’t stand them.” He said that many of the suspects he had interrogated expected to be tortured, and were stunned to learn that they had rights under the American system. Due process made detainees more compliant, not less, Coleman said. He had also found that a defendant’s right to legal counsel was beneficial not only to suspects but also to law-enforcement officers. Defense lawyers frequently persuaded detainees to coöperate with prosecutors, in exchange for plea agreements. “The lawyers show these guys there’s a way out,” Coleman said. “It’s human nature. People don’t coöperate with you unless they have some reason to.” He added, “Brutalization doesn’t work. We know that. Besides, you lose your soul.”

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6?currentPage=4

[Patroklos]

Patty, thank you for quoting the document but you still miss the point. There is no grey area, he's one or the other.

There most certainly is. Nowhere in the articles themselves does it say you are one or the other, only your completely irrelevant commentary said that.

The articles tell you who is a civilian and who is a combatant and who is a POW, it is entirely possible due to your actions to be legally none of those.

In fact, that is the point. The GC are trying to get everyone to act a certain way in order to restrict the destuction of war, and as a "reward" for doing so you get certain rights depending on your class. If you refuse to adhere to the requirements of any category, you belong to none and don't get rights on puropse.

Actually, according to the military themselves they have no evidence that Omar has ever hurt any American.

Thats not what justifies his detention (or not solely). The simple act of being a member of AQ OR participating in hostilities against the US are all that is needed to hold him. The medic thing is just sandbags.

There is no "evidence" in the world that you would believe. You'd probably even claim photography evidence was doctored.

Funny, I specifically told you that is exactly the type of evidence that would convince me. I even answered a direct question from you.

You're so far up Bush's ass that you could give him a colonoscopy.

Saying retarded things like this doesn't change the fact that nothing you have said in this thread amounts to anything but your unfounded opinion.

Asher

Your argument is so desperate you're now basically claiming just because he was where he was with the people he was, he deserves to be disrespected as a human being for the rest of his life and spend it in solitary confinement. That is alarmingly inhuman.

Feel free to quote me on that, because that is not what I said. What I actually said is it is because of what he was a member of and what he did.

Seriously, I really don't understand the race to the bottom of morality by the far right.

If you can show he was tortured I would be all about punishing those involved, but you can't, so I'm not.

No, but your and your govt's definitions of torture remind me of this:

What's my definition of torture? Feel free to quote me? No? In fact, when was I even discussing what is and isn't torture?

You condoned torture. Asher did a good job of proving that.

Brace yourself Oerdin, you know what is coming.

Quote me where I said I condone torture. Really, go ahead. No? Let me once again predict your failure at life on this forum.

1.) You will waffle a bit
2.) You will offer some juvenile and ultimately self defeating personal insults.
3.) You will leave this thread.

I think your record is about 0/8 as far as you producing quotes of me saying what you claim when challenged, maybe you will suprise us?

Then try him.

For what? There is no trial necessary to detain him if you consider him a POW Oerdin, pay attention.

If you don't consider him a POW, then he has no GC rights at all, though it seems our own courts have and will continue to grant him more rights under our own law.

[Theben]

Pat has entered the Nedaverse. We've lost him forever.