Bush Signs Torture Act

[Clay Fink]

This seems like a fair rundown of what the Millitary Commissions Act covers: http://www.cvt.org/main.php/Advocacy...CommissionsAct

You can read the act here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:S.3930:

I'm not sure, however, if it's exactly what Bush signed yesterday.

[Gentle Giant]

Darn that Bish!

[Clay Fink]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

Darn that Bish!

Sorry.

[Root Doctor]

I would classify listening to Stephen Bishop as torture.

[Gentle Giant]

Molly Anne Bish (August 2, 1983 – June 27, 2000) was a sixteen-year-old girl from Warren, Massachusetts who was abducted and then murdered while working as a lifeguard in rural Massachusetts. Her body was found three years later after the largest search in the history of Massachusetts.

During the summer of 2000, Bish had been working as a lifeguard at Comins Pond in Warren. The day before her abduction, her mother Magi Bish claimed that she saw a man in a white sedan in the parking lot of the beach where her daughter's lifeguard post was positioned. Although the man looked suspicious to Magi, she had forgotten about him until after Molly's disappearance. The last person to see Molly before she was kidnapped was her mother.

It was believed that Molly's kidnapper had tricked her into believing he needed help from her and when she went to help him, she was abducted.

An extensive search took place to find Molly Bish. It was the largest and most expensive search for a missing person ever held in the state of Massachusetts. On June 9, 2003, Bish's remains were found five miles from her family home.

To date, there have been no arrests in the case, though in 2005 a Connecticut resident, was under investigation. -Wiki

[Clay Fink]

OK, already.

[Gentle Giant]

OK, I'm sorry. Go ahead, tell us about your hot meat.

[groover]

Bush said last night in his interview by O'Reilly on Fox that his administration does not use torture. He said they have effective techniques of getting information that are short of torture, but he couldn't reveal what they are because the enemy would then be able to prepare for it.

I'm seriously beginning to suspect that some people here don't take the President at his word.

[patricia]

So, how do you prepare yourself to resist torture?
Do you have your wife or other person subject you to home versions of water-boarding, telling you they will kill you, putting you in a dark room for days, or weeks on end, stripping you naked and leaving you like that for days, threatening you with rape, putting a bag over your head and then having a dog bark in your face, beating you, etc. etc. etc.?

The most ridiculous thing that Bush has said is that if suspected terrorists know what methods of torture will be used to extract information, they will be able to prepare themselves to resist.
What nonsense.

[Scott Dolan]

What would Biff do?

[groover]

Originally Posted by patricia

So, how do you prepare yourself to resist torture?
Do you have your wife or other person subject you to home versions of water-boarding, telling you they will kill you, putting you in a dark room for days, or weeks on end, stripping you naked and leaving you like that for days, threatening you with rape, putting a bag over your head and then having a dog bark in your face, beating you, etc. etc. etc.?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini

From 1904 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from handcuffs, chains, ropes and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope or suspended in water, sometimes in plain sight of the audience. In 1913, he introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. He held his breath for over 3 minutes.

I'm sure Houdini had to practice to work up to 3 minutes.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by groover

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini



I'm sure Houdini had to practice to work up to 3 minutes.

What do you suppose the odds are that either side in this obscenity will do those things?
How do you suppose that a person will practice to resist being suspended by his wrists for days and being systematically beaten on his legs until the bones are totally shattered and his flesh is a bloody pulp.
That's what happened to an Afghan taxi driver who was judged by the Americans as being a suspected terrorist.
He never gave any useful information, despite that. In fact, he died of his injuries. Turns out that he was.....surprise........a taxi driver.
He probably didn't realize that he should have been practicing to resist being beaten to death.

[groover]

Originally Posted by patricia

That's what happened to an Afghan taxi driver who was judged by the Americans as being a suspected terrorist.
He never gave any useful information, despite that. In fact, he died of his injuries. Turns out that he was.....surprise........a taxi driver.
He probably didn't realize that he should have been practicing to resist being beaten to death.

Taxi driving is no occupation for the faint of heart.

But seriously, that's a bad example, Patricia, since that incident was acknowledged by the Pentagon as a policy violation.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by groover

Taxi driving is no occupation for the faint of heart.

But seriously, that's a bad example, Patricia, since that incident was acknowledged by the Pentagon as a policy violation.

Sorry, it is the one which sticks in my mind for it's sheer barbarity.
Policy violation.
What a nice sterile description for the deliberate, fatal cruelty inflicted on another human being, for no other reason than that they could.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Patricia

The most ridiculous thing that Bush has said is that if suspected terrorists know what methods of torture will be used to extract information, they will be able to prepare themselves to resist.
What nonsense.

The nonsense is that you took the statement, made a personal decision about what your opinion would be concerning said statement without studying the subject at all, and then proclaimed the alternate opinion nonsense.

The biggest problem here being that you refuse to educate yourself about any of this shit because you simply want to believe what you want to believe. sounds rather Bushian of you, now doesn't it?

Here is what The Center For Victims Of Torture have to say about the matter:

"Although eventually everyone will confess to something, it takes a lot of time. We know that many militaries and radical groups train their members to resist torture and to pass along false pieces of information during the process. And those with strong religious or political beliefs that help them understand the purposes of torture used against them are most able to resist and to recover from its impact."

http://www.cvt.org/main.php/Advocacy...wsaboutTorture


That took less than a couple of seconds on Google to find. You are a smart woman, but you betray yourself when you ignore facts for emotional speculation.

[Clay Fink]

I think what your missing, Scott, is that some people think that all forms of torture are unacceptable.

[Scott Dolan]

What does that have to do with what I posted?

[graypencil]

As despicable as this act is, the REAL two ton monster in the room is ( according to a large number of legal scholars ) this act somehow negates the principle of habeus corpus, which has been a cornerstone of our civil rights since we were founded.

From what I've heard so far, it seems that DUBBYA now has the uncontested power to throw you ..orI ..or ANYONE in the slammer with no due process ..if he merely doesn't like the way you look or what you might have said.

This is truly scary


( especially the part that the american citizenry isn't screaming bloody murder over this development )

[groover]

Originally Posted by graypencil

As despicable as this act is, the REAL two ton monster in the room is ( according to a large number of legal scholars ) this act somehow negates the principle of habeus corpus, which has been a cornerstone of our civil rights since we were founded.

From what I've heard so far, it seems that DUBBYA now has the uncontested power to throw you ..orI ..or ANYONE in the slammer with no due process ..if he merely doesn't like the way you look or what you might have said.

This is truly scary


( especially the part that the american citizenry isn't screaming bloody murder over this development )

I'm no expert in Constitutional law, but this seems to indicate that the suspension of habeas corpus only applies to aliens. This may have been a modification to the bill as it was originally introduced in the senate.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...Eh3qLQ:e116721:

S.3930 Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)


SEC. 7. HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.

• (a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):

• `(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

The nonsense is that you took the statement, made a personal decision about what your opinion would be concerning said statement without studying the subject at all, and then proclaimed the alternate opinion nonsense.

The biggest problem here being that you refuse to educate yourself about any of this shit because you simply want to believe what you want to believe. sounds rather Bushian of you, now doesn't it?

Here is what The Center For Victims Of Torture have to say about the matter:

"Although eventually everyone will confess to something, it takes a lot of time. We know that many militaries and radical groups train their members to resist torture and to pass along false pieces of information during the process. And those with strong religious or political beliefs that help them understand the purposes of torture used against them are most able to resist and to recover from its impact."

http://www.cvt.org/main.php/Advocacy...wsaboutTorture


That took less than a couple of seconds on Google to find. You are a smart woman, but you betray yourself when you ignore facts for emotional speculation.

My point, Scott, was that of the number of suspected terrorists incarcerated in various detention centres nobody knows how many are actually battle-hardened soldiers.
If it's true that many, if not most of those imprisoned and tortured are just ordinary citizens, scooped up and labelled terrorists, the torture inflicted on them serves no purpose other than diminish both their and their torturer's humanity.
That anyone could be tortured simply by being in U.S. custody was my point. Maher Arar is another example. They could have tortured him forever and he would have admitted, as he did, to being and doing anything they asked him to get the pain to stop.
If you consider that emotional, rather than factual, I have probably read as many items as you have, both in print and on the web that support my contention that torture serves no more useful purpose now than it did in any other period in history.
My home-testing list of typical torture techniques was made to illustrate the position in which an ordinary citizen would find themselves, should they, like the example I gave, been unjustly incarcerated and tortured.
Trained soldiers are, I'm aware given training to resist if not pain and suffering under torture, giving up any information. There are no stats on whether they would or wouldn't have caved if they hadn't been tortured.

[Scott Dolan]

If that was your point, you really need to find better ways of getting it across.

I'm not a fan of tortureI don't think it's a useful tool at all.

I'm also not a fan of assuming that a significant portion of those detained by the US are simply innocent citizens.

[Tom Storer]

But say you're an American who has been detained and accused of being an alien, enemy combatant--or a dual national, American and something else. You can "submit to the convening authority matters for consideration by the convening authority" after the trial and within 20 days. If the convening authority (that is, the Secretary of Defense or anyone he designates) chooses to ignore what you have to say, such as "Wait a minute! I'm an American citizen!", well, that's up to the convening authority. It's not a public matter and no one will know what your claim was. And since there's no habeas corpus for aliens, all it takes is for the military commission and the convening authority, behind closed doors, to disregard or disbelieve your claim to American nationality, and that's it--you'll be considered an alien and have no right to any further review of the conditions of your detention, ever.

That's the loophole--only if you're an alien are you denied review of your detention, but only by review of your detention could you establish that you are in fact not an alien.

Besides, lots of long-term American residents don't have US nationality. Think of all the green-card holders. But in any case, even people who do not have American nationality should benefit from habeas corpus when tried by America. In my humblest of humble opinions.

Now, it takes a certain amount of cynism and skepticism to fear that there are enough military judges and commissioned officers (only commissioned officers are eligible to sit on the commissions), and military or civilian lawyers appointed as defense counsel, who so lack all principle as to purposely or negligently run roughshod over suspects' rights just because they can. I hope that in fact, these commissions will be very serious about accurately determining who is or is not an enemy combatant as defined by this act and, for goodness' sake, what their nationality is, nor do I feel that is necessarily a vain hope by any means. However, setting aside the fact that if any administration deserves cynicism and skepticism it's this one, more important is that you can't have laws whose correct implementation depends solely on the discretionary judgment of the judges and call them just.

[Scott Dolan]

I agree with everything you've said here, Tom.

And the Congress should have never allowed this bill to see the light of day.

That said, it's also important that we not confuse theory with practice.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

If that was your point, you really need to find better ways of getting it across.

I'm not a fan of tortureI don't think it's a useful tool at all.

I'm also not a fan of assuming that a significant portion of those detained by the US are simply innocent citizens.

How many innocent citizens would form a significant portion of those detained to convince you that there are too many being tortured who are not guilty of anything or in possession of any information, even if torture were effective in gaining intelligence? Ten? A hundred? More?

As for my having an emotional reaction to the use of torture, of course it's emotional. I've made no secret that I consider torture to be barbaric and unworthy of anyone who considers themselves civilized. War itself is the ultimate expression of barbarity, IMO.

[graypencil]

Originally Posted by groover

I'm no expert in Constitutional law, but this seems to indicate that the suspension of habeas corpus only applies to aliens. This may have been a modification to the bill as it was originally introduced in the senate.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...Eh3qLQ:e116721:

S.3930 Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)


SEC. 7. HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.

• (a) In General- Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section 1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109-148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection (e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law 109-163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection (e):

• `(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

Regardless of what is said above, I heard two constitutional law experts last night say there IS language in the bill that includes something to the effect of :

" ..or anyone suspected of aiding, abetting or otherwise associated with a terrorist act etc .."

it didn't specify just ALIENS ..

also , I sure as hell dont want DUBBya being the guy who throws me in the slammer because he doesnt like the way I look ..

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Patricia

As for my having an emotional reaction to the use of torture, of course it's emotional. I've made no secret that I consider torture to be barbaric and unworthy of anyone who considers themselves civilized. War itself is the ultimate expression of barbarity, IMO.

1. Don't twist my words.

2. Don't make believe that your follow up explanation was what you really meant in your initial statment.


Your exact quote with my own emphasis:

The most ridiculous thing that Bush has said is that if suspected terrorists know what methods of torture will be used to extract information, they will be able to prepare themselves to resist.
What nonsense.

This was a gross generalization. Did you mean those who truly did engage in terror activity, or those who did not? Because it is very likely that those who were engaged in terror activity were/are indeed trained to resist torture techniques. Just as our own military is. And probably yours too.

And that is anything but nonsense.

And to answer your other question, I don't know. I do not approve of the use of torture, but, using your example how many people do we have to wrongly convict in US criminal courts before we completely do away with the justice system?

I don't have a problem with your principles, but you are dreaming of some perfect Utopian reality that simply will never exist.

We're human. We make mistakes.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

Did you mean those who truly did engage in terror activity, or those who did not? Because it is very likely that those who were engaged in terror activity were/are indeed trained to resist torture techniques. Just as our own military is. And probably yours too.

No. I meant the ones who were scooped up, like the taxi driver I mentioned and like Maher Arar, guilty of nothing, but nevertheless tortured.
In the case of Maher Arar, even an official OOPS after almost a year in a Syrian jail is not thought necessary by the U.S. government. They were well aware, having been notified by Canadian authorities of the error in intelligence being acted on while he was still in New York. But, the extraordinary rendition and subsequent year-long torture was carried out anyway.

Surely you don't believe that Arar was alone in being railroaded by an over-zealous War on Terror mentality?
The only reason that we know about him is that his wife went to the press and was relentless in fighting for his return. Had she not, he would certainly still be jailed in Syria.

[Scott Dolan]

If you picked out a few pieces of gnat shit from a small pile of pepper you'd be looking to ban the use of pepper. Never mind that over 99% of the pepper is genuine.

As I said, you are dreaming of some Utopian society where everyone is perfect and not a single mistake is made.

It's as though you have no idea what being human even means.

[Scott Dolan]

Originally Posted by Patricia

No. I meant the ones who were scooped up, like the taxi driver I mentioned

Well then you should have clarified that in your previous post. Then we could have avoided this entire discussion.

[patricia]

Perhaps you're right. I'm not human, nor do I have the courage and strength to survive being unjustly jailed and tortured.

Just for your own edification, you might be interested to read about Maher Arar, the one grain of pepper, to use your analogy, unjustly sent to be tortured by the U.S. If it were just one, you might have a point. We don't know how many there are, just like him. Estimates of innocent people incarcerated in Iraq and in Guantanamo range from 70% to 90%.

Here's the link:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/na...216cd2&k=46697

Or, if the link doesn't work, simply google "Maher Arar". Today he was to be presented with an award in the U.S. but did not attend the ceremony because he is still on the U.S. WAR ON TERROR watch list and fears being arrested and incarcerated again.