http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=amNk__5Rv14U&refer=home It seems remarkable that this gentleman was kept imprisoned for over 6 years on such flimsy evidence, with no recourse to challenge his detention. I would say that on moral grounds, this guy has a pretty good case for putting most of the executive branch, and a good chunk of Congress and the military in jail for 10-30 years for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment.
I agree wholeheartedly. And believe me, I am no bleeding-heart liberal. What this administration is doing is attempting to 'back-door' and circumvent core principles, such as 'habeus corpus,' that have distinguished the American System of due process as better than any other. "The guy's not an American citizen." I can hear that retort in my head already. So what? Do we want to make that distinction, even on purely technical grounds? I can hear "[t]he guy was a combatant," too. No, in fact he wasn't. He was NOT picked up 'on the battlefield,' is elderly, had no weapons, and was merely picked up because he practices Islam in China, and was in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Sorry, that doesn't even remotely make the grade, even by a wartime standard of proof, for claiming the guy was an enemy combatant. If it did, you might as well cordon off entire continents with razor wire and call them detainment camps. Do we want to be known as the nation that goes around the world, picking up farmers and non-combatants, even when we concede we have no proof whatsoever of such claims, and keep them from their families, never give them any credible opportunity to challenge their detainment, and lock them in detainment camps until the day they die? Is this moral, let alone rational, and shouldn't we expect to be condemned by not only the rest of our world, but by Americans with any conscience? On a practical level, it just makes for bad policy, as we lose any credibility on human rights, and will be accused of hypocrisy each and every time we clamor for the dignity of the individual, whether coupled or not with our (correct) belief in free economic markets. The two go hand in hand.
This is the problem with getting the judiciary involved in these cases. Where does it end? What gives the courts the ability to decide how credible intelligence sources are? Even this crackpot columnist concedes that "The worst the government could say about Parhat was that in 2001 he lived in an Afghan camp run by a leader of a Uighur independence group who trained him in weapons. " Liberals have no trouble putting american citizens in jail for exactly that sort of thing. You could talk to the people at waco , the ones not burned up by Janet Reno's FBI that is. These types of cases present issues the courts are not equipped to handle. Domestic courts inevitable will apply criminal justice standards to these types of cases. The government will never be able to come up with satisfactory proof. Who knows what this guy was up to? Apparently he moved to afghanistan, lived in a terrorist camp and was trained in weapons. Maybe it was all innocent and just a big misunderstanding. Maybe he was training to be a terrorist. His major claim seems to be he was planning attacks on china , not the US. Not a very compelling defense in my view. I certainly don't see him as some poster child for the horrible unfairness of the administration's anti-terrorism effort. The author suggests that it would be a good idea to release this guy in the US and let him stay here. As I have said repeatedly, this is why you just cannot trust liberals with the security of the country. They have zero judgment.
SO you have no problem locking people up for the rest of their lives who were not found with a weapon in hand, near weapons, the elderly, farmers, whatever, on whatever word of mouth (from a foreign translation), and just let them die there, whether next year, or 50 years from now? Is that you, Adolf? By the way, despite your red herring, the columnist is anything but 'liberal.'
The columnist thought it was a good idea to release a guy into the US who was training at a terrorist camp in afghanistan. This is the kind of thinking that we will have to deal with under President Obama. Frankly, if the government is going to make an error, I'd rather they keep foreign terrorists under lock and key rather than take a chance relasing them into the US. Obviously, democrats want them to get the full ACLU treatment and let lawyers cross-examine the soldiers who captured them and force the government to burn sources of intell to justify holding them. This guy was not some farmer picked up randomly, like you imply. He admitted he was training in afghanistan. His defense apparently was that he was going to hit chinese targets, not US ones. Based on that distinction, the OP wants to put the entire US government in prison.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/23/AR2005082301362.html Yeah, that's some real great policy the Bush Admin has cooked up, no? I'm sure we'll all be better off in the long run for this.
How would you handle it genius? Turn them loose in the US? Return them to China? Now not only do we have to fight al qaeda and taliban but we have a fifth column of out of control judges and lawyers. I predict it is only a matter of time before the federal courts are asserting a right to approve of military missions. After all, our soldiers might violate someone's rights or cause some environmental damage. Obama is on record as wanting to return to the criminal justice method of fighting terrorism that worked so brilliantly for Clinton. If I'm a special ops guy in the field, no way I'm bringing in any prisoners, knowing I might end up in a DC courtroom with al qaeda operatives taking notes as I testify.
Respond to the article. We plucked them up from some barren field because we were payoffs for random tips, now know they're innocent, and so we're just going to keep them locked up, thousands of miles from their families, until they die. Do you still think America is that shining beacon on a hill, that can resolve problems without trampling on the inherent rights of the innocent, and without at least admitting it? Why don't you craft the solution to this problem (if you even think it is), since the people you support created it.
They were the ones who left their families. To go and train in afghanistan. We are doing them a favor not sending them back to china. Gitmo is paradise compared to the reception they'd receive there. No one else wants them, for obvious reasons. I won't be surprised if some idiot federal judge orders that they be brought to the US and turned loose. It won't bother a judge since they are used to turning all sorts of violent criminals loose. What's a few chinese muslim terrorist wannabes?
I guess you didn't read the article, and don't believe the Bush Administration's own conclusion's. Here's the quote for those who are reading averse: In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials. More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive. They are men without a country. The Bush administration has chosen not to send them home for fear China will imprison, persecute or torture them, as the United States charges has happened to other members of China's Muslim minority. But the State Department has also been unable to find another country to take them in, according to U.S. officials and recently filed court documents. Yes, AAA. They are exactly how you described them. Nothing to see here. Move along. Don't worry about even trying to create anything resembling a bare modicum of justice. We're America, but so what. F U world or anyone who thinks innocent people shouldn't be locked up for the rest of their lives. Don't let the facts get in the way of your dogma. It's too convenient to do the wrong thing.