Small Victories. They All Add Up.
WASHINGTON: “Guantanamo inmates may not appeal, judge rules— In the first legal decision on a new federal law that denied access to U.S. courts to detainees in the war on terrorism, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could not sue for their freedom.”
Score another round for us in the fight against terrorists. This will be a big help in reducing the load on our courts as well as our ears. Now we won’t have to listen to the incessant chatter of the MSM as they cover court trials and blat on about “rights abuses”. This also takes away a propaganda platform for the terrorists as they won’t be pouring out their lies to our media.
Our Israeli allies are having their own legal victories. “The Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Israel’s policy of targeted killings of Palestinian militants — allowing the army to maintain a practice that has drawn widespread international condemnation.”
I guess about the only ones not condemning it are us and maybe the UK, tho I’m not sure about the latter. Personally, I’d like to see a little less strict adherence to “the rights of the accused”. It would be fine with me if we had government snipers and drone aircraft picking off the murderous undesirables right here in the US. Undoubtedly that would outrage 98% of the population of San Francisco, etcetera, but boy, wouldn’t it be effective in cleaning up our cities and clearing out the burden on our courts.
The fanatics that the Israelis are targeting are the ones who make the bombs and plan the attacks. Pre-emptive strikes against known terrorists are a fine idea. We should all be doing it. It is a war, isn’t it? Why do we keep wasting our time and money in court on the enemy? Give them a quick military tribunal if that really seems necessary, THEN take them out and shoot them. Before they can kill us.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
I don’t agree. Detention without trial may be necessary where terrorism is concerned if there is is a realistic assessment of risk but it does not mean that there should be no proper review or a chance for the people concerned to put their case. How do we know the CIA has not made another mistake in identity? it has happened quite recently with that elderly British man in Spain. As far as intelligence goes, any that these people must have had can have no further relevance.
What the US have done in Guantanamo is a disgrace to your nation.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:28 am
Ahh Xog, come on. What the US has done in Guantanamo has been blown totally out of reality by the liberal MSM. Every single one of those terrorists is absolutely innocent, and if you don’t believe it, why, just ask them.
Xog, this isn’t peacetime and those aren’t hapless farmers caught up in a net by mistake. Those guys are terrorists and this is WAR!
What the fuck does it take to get people to wake up to the fact that we are at WAR? We could take every last one of them and shove them against a wall and shoot them. Legally. They are enemy combatants. Millions of innocent civilians died without any sort of hearing in World War II when the bombs dropped and the artillery shells came whistling in. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were executed without hearings. Hundreds of thousands are dying today without hearings all over Africa and the Mid-East.
At Guantanamo, the military is prying information out of those prisoners, and they’ve gotten a lot of it, that has helped save an awful lot of lives. Would it have been better if we’d simply shot them and been done with it? How about we just torture them with knives and electric shocks to get information and THEN shoot them, like their own people do? Cut off a hand here, a foot there, behead a few with a dull knife in front of the rest?
The disgrace is that people get into this Anti-America bullshit over something like Guantanamo instead of backing us up. The disgrace is what the Arab muslims are doing to themselves and the world. But it’s war. Ugly things happen in war. Don’t snarl at your allies, it’s non-productive.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
We will have to differ on this Rastaman. They MAY be terrorists and if they are I do not give a damn what happens to them. I am simply saying that there must be some proper process to establish either a) that they are or b) that although it is not proven, they probably are and that the risk of releasing them is too great. As I said, I think the intelligence still to be pried out of them after the time most have been held must be pretty slim and out of date. Not much point knowing where Slimy Bin-Liner was four years ago.
The way this has been handled is so typical of the Bush administration. All that was actually needed was for a small committee to review each case and give an outline of its reasons, they would not actually have had to be real reasons but at least it would not have handed a propoganda victory to the US’s opponents. One can shoot captured prisoners? I don’t think so. It detracts from our own case in defending our society from the violent, arbitrary and oppressive nature of Islamic societies when we do this sort of thing.
There are ways of properly defending national interests without providing ammunition to the opponents or putting ally’s backs up. Unfortunately, Bush does not appear to have a clue and if there is more anti Americanism around it is largely down to the stupid way his administration handles things.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
I decided to put this up as a new post rather than the lengthy answer it would otherwise be.
A few things I’ll comment on here though. First is yes, one can shoot captured prisoners. You can hold a field tribunal on the spot without witnesses or jury, declare the combatant guilty and shoot that person dead. War is Hell. You’re just not supposed to do that to civilians but you can if the civilian has interfered in any way in the war. If you catch a civilian smuggling stuff to the enemy, you can kill the civilian.
The other thing is that I agree that Bush has handled the war with incredible ineptitude, and so do most of us. His approval rating for his handling of the war is in the 20’s out of a hundred, lowest of any President in our history. Even his own party is disgusted with him and that’s saying a lot.
December 16th, 2006 at 1:30 am
I am over the moon to hear about the US judges not adhering to the silly extreme left wing trend of trying to be as anti-nationalist as they can possibly be, but instead sticking firm to the laws that were made to protect the US and not bowing to the rotten hand of the likes of the ACLU.
In the last year I have read many articles from every sort of media imaginable from the BBC to Reuters to Sky News to NY Times to Al Jazeera to BNP news to CNN right down to blogs such as this very opinionated site here (but more trustworthy than all of the previous combined- you can always guarantee that people gathering and spreading news without any lucrative self-gain involved is more trustworthy that all the MSM sites put together) and my point is that what you may call “small gains” (perhaps metorphorically) are the kind of scenarios which give so much hope and sense of revival of common sense back to western nations such as the UK.
Don’t forget, western European nations consciously and subconsciously
recieve massive influence from the US on a daily basis so when we see defiance againce liberalistic/politically correct madness, we follow suit too, so these kind of messages from the judges from the US; that toleration of a hostile force will not be accepted, hopefully our (selfish and sell out) leaders may follow suit (if only to try to realise that getting tough once again works out more lucrative for own agendas) and they just might realise the white working class votr is more inportant than the Pakistani/Muslim bloc.
December 16th, 2006 at 2:02 am
Just to add to xoggoth’s and your own posts which I did not read before entering the previous post: I think that one of the major problems in western nations methods of war & defence in today’s climate is this:
Every county that we (as western civilistions) have confrontations and disagreements with, seem to be backward nations with absolutely no regard for thier citizens wellbeing and human rights.
Now when we are at war with nations such as this, we are at a major disadvantage. I know America has the most advanced & up to date fighter pilots/weponary/war equiptment/overall superiorioty military-wise over the whole globe…..however our (again as western advanced civilisations) have the absolute disadvantages because of the soft stances our governments have decided to take against peoples of ethnic minorities/ IE: like affimitive action experiments.
Because we have become so civilised and accepting toward our neighbours and alternative Religious groups….we have at the same time become easy targets for these foreign enemies to try to convert our values to that of their discusting way of life……sometimes becoming so advanced entails being so modest that the great way of life we have grown to is so vulnarable that we destroy ourselves by way of being so un=confrountational,
December 16th, 2006 at 2:25 am
(and another thing I hate is the way you yanks get the PS3 6 months before us English!!) . I mean HELOOOO! it doesn’t take too long for the Japs to convert an American speaking version of the console to an English speaking version of the console ….I mean COME ON!!! we speak the same bloody language!! why does it take over another 6 months for us to get it?? And if you Japs dare say because you have to release it in Euope the same time as every western Euro country…….WHY…we don’t speak spainish or Italian or German or those damn Eurasian bloody languages! Give the UK the goods when the US gets it!!! come on! We don’t wanna be a part of the EU!!! :0(