Clueless Senators Impede War on Terror

[Joe DiMaggio]

Senators say legislation needed for Guantanamo

By Vicki Allen Thu Jul 14, 5:29 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress should pass legislation defining the legal status of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to avoid more damage to the United States' image abroad and reprisals against U.S. soldiers, senators said on Thursday.

But the Pentagon said existing laws allow the indefinite detention of people the United States has deemed enemies in the war on terrorism, and that legislation could be too restrictive and was not needed.

"The truth is due to no one's fault Guantanamo Bay is a legal mess," Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), a South Carolina Republican, said at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing.

With the Pentagon under fire for the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, Graham is working on legislation with fellow Republicans John Warner of Virginia, the Armed Services Committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona to clarify the legal standing of people the administration calls "enemy combatants" who can be held indefinitely.

Human rights groups and a number of European countries have said that term has no standing under international law, and the detainees should have the rights of prisoners of war.

Guantanamo, opened after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has become a lightening rod for criticism with accusation that the mostly Muslim detainees from the U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan have been tortured and humiliated.

The Pentagon contends detainees have not been tortured, although it found a key prisoner was subjected to "abusive and degrading" treatment when U.S. interrogators told him he was a homosexual, forced him to wear a bra, made him wear a leash and perform dog tricks, and subjected him to interrogations up to 20 hours a day for about two months.

There are about 520 detainees at Guantanamo from more than 40 countries being held because they are deemed dangerous or to extract information from them on the al Qaeda network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. Many have been held for more than three years. Only four have been charged and none prosecuted.

Senators said harsh interrogation practices and the refusal to grant prisoner of war status to detainees could backfire when U.S. soldiers are captured.

"Our troops are looking at us to see whether we're going to adopt a standard that if they were captured would be acceptable," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the committee's top Democrat.

Warner defended Guantanamo's current operations "as the best they can do under a framework of laws that is either not clear or needs to be refined."

Graham pressed a panel of Pentagon legal officials on whether a law passed by Congress clarifying the status of enemy combatants would speed up the legal dispute that has blocked prosecutions of detainees.

Daniel Dell'Orto, the Pentagon's principal deputy general counsel, said the litigation would continue with or without legislation. "I don't know that that's a panacea for any problem we have right now," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June 2004 ruled that detainees had the right to go to federal courts to seek their release from Guantanamo, but there have been sometimes contradictory lower court rulings since then.

Apparently, guys like Nick Berg had it coming because we once told a prisoner that he was gay.

I was worried that Congress would refrain from something stupid, something moronic like fuck up our efforts to combat the war on terror by inserting themselves into the thick of it, but now I'm glad to see that those fears can be laid to rest.

Most of our elected officials are little more than trained fucking chimps. Now, ordinarily, their rampant flapdoodle is merely a vexation that we all, as Americans, must bear, but this, of course, is different, because it relates directly to actions taken by our military which are designed to combat the war on terror, defeat our enemies, and prevent another catastrophic terrorist event such as 9/11. I have the distinctive feeling that our 'esteemed' representatives, by sticking their nose into things, are just going to FUBAR the entire thing because they're either too goddamn stupid, or ideological, or desperate to win brownie points with an international community that is filled with petty, pedantic miscreants who will still loathe and despise us out of jealousy.

Congressmen have complained after the fact about the Patriot Act, claiming they didn't know or really read what it is they were signing into law. I say, they shouldn't have even tried - they're far too fucking retarded to understand it, or realize that it is / was what is necessary.

 

[WHITE DEVIL]

So calling people fags and making them wear bras and bark like dogs while in detention is furthering the war effort? Tripe.

 

[Joe DiMaggio]

If that's all it takes to extract info, I'd have hoped you'd support it.

Personally, I'd start torturing other guys in front of prisoners and remind him that he'll be treated MUCH worse if some accurate info isn't presented quickly. No scratch that, I'd start using all that ammunition we have lying around. It's not doing anyone any good if it's not being blasted through Moslem terrorists at supersonic speeds.

And the more details I hear about this laughable "torture" the more I suspect it only occurs in the Moslems' sick fantasies. I heard it once characterized as a series of Penthouse Forum letters, and that's exactly right.

Please, bitch, that's nothing but light hazing at a frat pledgeship. Don't expect me to shed any tears over that shit.

 

[Dirty Clint]

We should just blow up the earth so everybody dies. That way nobody is ever right or wrong again. Stupid humans.

 

[TROLL]

bush put his foot in his mouth by calling this a war and hence having to follow the geneva convention

the term definately has to be defined because i think the problem is seperating muslim and islamic extremeism from regular muslim and islam.

Now thats pretty much guilt by association due to a broad term..(like public use term for the eminent domain). the shoot em all and let allah sort em out kinda attitude is a result of frustration because they have no honor except in there own twisted ideology of what honor is...

But if we respond to that violence with the exact same in return, dont u think that they will get even more brutal to match. (u poke me in the eye, i poke u back..u poke me again.)

your only going to keep going till u put an eye out and by then its too late... :eyecross:


My suggestion... use the now more free flowing tv and radio waves that flow thru iraq and call out the terrorist for live debates like on tv and shit and reference them as haters of islamic/muslim traditions...mentions shit like bastardizing the religion in the eyes of the other worlds and watch how much of the civilains listening will see them in a diffrent light....

but not only that..

openly announce that we were looking for civilians to hire as spys in iraq afganastan etc....WHY YOU ASK???

by doing so with both the live television debates and the open hand for the people who live there peacefully...both sides are going to be wary of each other..

(terror recruiter thinking if this new guy is spy the us were hiring)

and

(possible recruit thinking these guys are really shameing them by killing there own innocent)

causeing dissruption and dissertion amongst the ranks..

(haha my post count hit 666)

 

[Tha_Perv]

These towel head prisoners get treated better then Terry Schiavo. If it was up to the dumbocrats, these prisoners would get TV's and treated like kings.

Idiots.

 

[Jae iLL]

If that's all it takes to extract info, I'd have hoped you'd support it.

Personally, I'd start torturing other guys in front of prisoners and remind him that he'll be treated MUCH worse if some accurate info isn't presented quickly. No scratch that, I'd start using all that ammunition we have lying around. It's not doing anyone any good if it's not being blasted through Moslem terrorists at supersonic speeds.

And the more details I hear about this laughable "torture" the more I suspect it only occurs in the Moslems' sick fantasies. I heard it once characterized as a series of Penthouse Forum letters, and that's exactly right.

Please, bitch, that's nothing but light hazing at a frat pledgeship. Don't expect me to shed any tears over that shit.

If you support this "war effort" so much, why don't you hurry up and enlist so you can go help out on the front lines already.