World's Dumbest Talking Point on Gitmo Gets Traction
For weeks now, Republicans have been talking about how we can't bring Guantanamo detainees to the US as if we'd be bringing them in for a picnic. They have pretended that bringing them to the US is the same thing as releasing them out in the middle of Kansas or Oklahoma (or right by Ground Zero as the dumbass Peter King suggested). We've talked about this on our show from time to time to mock them mercilessly, but I didn't bother writing about it because who would be dumb enough to believe this inane talking point? Well, now we have our answer. Almost the entire Senate.
They just voted 90-6 to say that the Obama administration cannot have the funds they need to close Gitmo and bring the detainees for trial here in the US. Rep. King was outraged at the idea that the people who carried out 9/11 would be tried near Ground Zero. Where the hell else would they be tried? That's where the crime happened. That's how our system works. Where are we supposed to try them - on Mars?
Well, the Bush administration came up with the novel idea of turning our military base at Guantanamo Bay into a legal version of Mars. And since it's been ongoing for almost eight years now, everybody seems to find that a credible solution. But that's crazy. The United States cannot create a legal black hole where we put anyone we don't like and hold them there indefinitely. That was the whole problem with the Bush administration and Gitmo in the first place.
Imagine if another country took our soldiers and held them on an island and said to us, "Don't worry, no laws apply there, so we can legally do whatever we like to your guys and keep them there forever." Would we be assuaged by that nonsensical and clearly illegal explanation? Of course not. That's why we were going to get rid of Gitmo. Anyone remember any of this? I thought we had an election about this.
So, let's get to the main and most obvious point here - bringing detainees to America does not mean we release them in America. The people who planned and carried out the first World Trade Center bombing are now in the United States! Everyone, panic! Oh no, that's right, they're locked up in a Supermax prison in Colorado, from which they will never emerge. Problem solved. Why is that so hard to understand?
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified today in Congress that if they are even held in a prison in the US, they could radicalize the other prisoners. Here are some of the other prisoners at the Supermax in Colorado - the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, World Trade Center bombers Ramzi Yousef and the Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, the Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph. Who are the Gitmo detainees going to radicalize, the Unabomber?
This is absurd. If we're going to try people for crimes they have committed against the United States, of course we have to try them in the United States. We have plenty of prisons that are completely secure and that they have absolutely no chance of breaking out of and that they can spend the rest of their lives in.
Under the breakout theory (another one probably inspired by a Fox network show, Prison Break this time - do these idiots get their ideas from anywhere else?), couldn't they break out of Gitmo, get on a raft, come to the Florida and then spread like a virus through the US (at which point, you'd have to get Jack Bauer to go collect them all). Maybe we should move them further away from the mainland. Maybe we should try them in the Arctic Circle?! If they thought the treatment at Gitmo was bad, wait till they get a load of Santa and his reindeer games!
So, the final concern is if they're found not guilty and have to be released. Has no one considered that at that point we would know that they are not guilty? Is that not a relevant consideration to anyone? I get that people are worried they are going to get off on a technicality or something inane like that (yeah, they're going to let Khalid Sheikh Mohammed slide because someone filled out the wrong paper work), but what about the people we actually imprisoned wrongly? Like the Uighurs, for example.
I don't want anyone to think I'm biased because my last name is Uygur (it's the Turkish spelling of Uighur) because what I'm actually biased by is the fact that they are not fucking guilty. We've been holding these guys who we know did not plan any attacks against us for six years now.
First of all, can anyone do diplomacy anymore? Here's how you solve this supposedly unsolvable problem. Of course, you don't return them to China where they might be tortured or killed, as Newt Gingrich has suggested. I understand why it's politically untenable to release them here in the US. So, you broker a deal. Here's a country that might work with us - Turkey. You give them some trade concessions, so some rich Turks in the textile industry get a little richer and the government who gets paid by those guys take these Uighurs off our hands.
There are already plenty of Uygurs running around Turkey anyway, I know because they're my family (all kidding aside, the Uygurs in Turkey are not related to the Uighurs in China, they have just taken on the name as a sign of respect because the Uighur Turks have a long and proud history of emphasizing education and writing). Turkey is a moderate Muslim country and for the right price they're almost always ready to make a deal. Look, this is just a suggestion from a layman who doesn't know the intricacies of local politics in these countries. But there's no way there isn't some Central Asian Republic that can't take a couple of Uighurs for the right price. Let's go, call the banker, let's make a deal.
The case of the Uighurs also applies to anyone else who might be found not guilty, whether it's because they're actually innocent or because we somehow couldn't convict them. You don't have to release them in Wichita or Akron or Fifth Avenue. You can make diplomatic deals to send them to other willing countries. Will we have to sacrifice some things to get them out of the country even though we brought them here by detaining them in the first place? Yes, but that's the price you pay for your mistakes. Especially, if you're not willing to pay the political price of releasing them here.
The bottom line is we were supposed to bring these guys to justice. Instead we've done the exact opposite; we have taken them out of the justice system. The legal black hole we have left them in is obviously unacceptable. Bringing them to the US for trials is sensible, just and safe. So, let's get beyond these senseless talking points meant to scare the American voters (and Democratic politicians, who are far easier to scare). The minute Ted Kaczynski makes a run for it out of the Supermax in Colorado is the minute I'll agree that it's unsafe to bring the Gitmo detainees here. To paraphrase George Bush, don't denigrate our correctional officers. They know perfectly well how to keep people locked up in the US.
The Senate needs to stop giving into Republican fear mongering and recognize that it's about time that we brought the Gitmo detainees to justice here in the United States.
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So Many People really hate America and Americans, yet will claim to love it.
You don't believe our courts work, You don't believe our prisons work, you don't believe our governmnet works, and it's obvious Wall Street doesn't work. Even our terrorists aren't as capable as Arab Muslim terrorists.
So what do you like about America? The land, the resources?
Try the prisoners in a court of law.
If they are so dangerous, it should be easy to prove.
Otherwise, release them back to where we captured them.
Try this oversimplification. Obviously the detainees are guilty. Otherwise they wouldn't be imprisoned. Put them on trial. Hold the trials in private so no critical information is released. Get it over with. I'm sick of hearing they're guilty but too guilty to bring before the courts.
If our attorneys aren't bright enough to get a guilty verdict, perhaps we'll realize that accusations aren't equal to prison sentences.
You're absolutely right guily men always get convicted. OJ was obviously innocent.
If these people do get off on a technicality or for whatever reason, where do they go then, when no country will take them?
They will go somewhere. Many countries WILL take them if it's shown that they are innocent. If they are getting off because of a technicality, there are places that they can go.
Of course, you wouldn't be bothered to find out the facts, would you?
Oh. I get it. Unless you are pleased with every verdict rendered in a U.S. court they should not be tried in our system. Based on that logic nobody should be tried in America because you were unsatisfied with a jury verdict in a celebrity show trial.
Y'know people, the issue is NOT really about evil-doers escaping from the
maximum security facility down the street, it's about their allies doing
their righteous worst to the neighborhood.
That, after all, is the main reason we put them in Guantanamo in the first
place. Now, what's called for are some sort of gulag arrangements up there
in Sarah Palin's domain. Yeah, that's the ticket! Let Sarah handle 'em. It's
a win-win, you betcha!
Hey Cenk, I got one word for you when it comes to bringing these terrorists to the US for trial. OJ
Um, who said that they'd be tried by Judge Ito just because they're being tried in the US?
And did you not pay attention to the point about what to do with them if we don't actually convict them? Who said we then release them into the US?
The point of closing Gitmo is to get them out of the hands of torturers.
To get another OJ, I think we would need a 6 month trial with a sequestered jury, 9 of whom are themselves terrorists.
As long as Dick Cheney is standing up pontificating about "we kept America safe after 9/11" and [virtually] no one reminds him that 9/11 hapened on their watch there is no point in even trying to talk reason re: Gitmo.
This may seem completly off the wall, but have we considered that possibly if we have to just set some of these people free the absolutely safest place to do it would be right in the middle of the US! Why? Because we could watch them. Their movements would be constantly observed by federal agents. Oh and make some 'Megan's Law' database of exactly where they are living! The local police would somehow happen to allways find an excuse to have a black-and-white parked outside of their house. And don't even get started on the activities of the 'concerned neighbors' who are members of the local 'neighborhood watch'!
Think that they would be able to go anywhere unnoticed much less buy a weapon or make the materials for a bomb and be able to set it? Think they would hook up with other terrorists? No other terrorist would come within miles of them, much less send them an e-mail or make a cell phone call.
That's why we would be actually be safer releasing them here than overseas. In some other Muslim country they could disappear again.
A released Gitmo detainee in the US would be as effective at becoming a terrorist as Valerie Plame would be of again becoming an undercover spy. Once the secrecy is blown it is gone for good.
You're probably right, we don't have to worry about harm from these released "terrorists" but the way right wingers have ginned up locals for killing anything that scares them, released innocents wouldn't have a prayer living in this country. I hope that wasn't the underlying message in your comment.
Maybe these men being found innocent in trials in this country is what they're afraid of. It will show to all it was a crime to hold these people...l
We've already learned there were only 24 real terrorists of the hundreds imprisoned there. So a trial that shows what they endured under a sadistic regime really ought include punitive damages be paid them for their false imprisonment.
If they were awarded compensation, other countries would be clamoring to take them. Everybody is watching their bottom line, someone with money would be a prize.
In fact, I resent the idea that we pay other govts to take them.
Give them their own money. Let them choose ferchrissakes.
First we pay $5,000 to abduct them to fill a island prison for torture, them we just sell them to another country in a reverse-asset-swap? Sounds damn ugly.
We're all hearing they're the "worst of the worst" when from the sound of things, they are simply innocent of anything Bush declared they did. They weren't making war or they'd be "prisoners of war". Bush gave them a made-up name with made-up crimes and tortured them...pur
THE O-N-L-E-Y Problem with that suggestion, is that GUNS are SO easy to get at the moment. All that guy would need is to get one and visit a pack shopping mall an hell freezes over!
Of course, guns are so easy to find here, so they'd probably be killed before they got off more than a couple shots....
If anyone in Camp X-ray is tried, released, and later carries out a terrorist act that kills Americans, that will be the fault of those who prevented a guilty verdict in the first place. Namely, those who authorized illegal imprisonment and torture.
Seriously, doesn't anyone in the States watch CSI or Law and Order? When the cop screws up the conviction, you don't blame the D.A.
Sorry, but L&O and CSI are "liberal." Only 24 has the appropriate credentials to fantasize off of.
It's disturbing how great a portion of Americans think that trying a man is a mistake that makes them unsafe, but imprisoning a man forever without charge was a right decision that made them safe.
I wish that portion was surprising.
Think "OJ"
Um, who said that they'd be tried by Judge Ito just because they're being tried in the US?
And did you not pay attention to the point about what to do with them if we don't actually convict them? Who said we then release them into the US?
The point of closing Gitmo is to get them out of the hands of torturers.
Isn't it crazy? Its the left-overs of up-is-down
What could be more American, ferchrissakes we watch law and order trials day and night... put them on trial in the fair court system and take it from there.
They're more afraid of finding them innocent, which from all reports is what most of them are...they don't want the shame associated with the truth, they'd rather the crime of their imprisonment go on forever.
What the says about the Americans that think that way is unconscionable.
The only resolution of GITMO is from an open court, anything less is cowardice.
I take it that you don't think Stepan Colbert is serious.
Let's see, 1 of 7 gitmo releasees returns to terrorism; that's 14%.
The recidivism rate for American prisons is about 60% depending on the parameters of the data analyzed.
Perhaps we should be sending American prisoners to Gitmo.
Or imprisoning innocent Americans, cause then they won't be "returning" to a life of crime when they get out.....
Bear in mind that in this statistic 'returns to terrorism' actually means returns to the Taliban or a similar group. When you stop and think about it that is a remakably small precentage.
If you put a bunch of completely innocent US citizens into prison for several years how many would upon release turn to a life of crime? Most likely more than one in seven!
If these really were former Taliban members that we were releasing most likely ALL of them would be returning to the Taliban, not just one in seven.
Of course, the "1 in 7" stat is completely bogus and made up. It requires that we trust what the Bush administration says not only with regard to what "returns to terrorism" means but also with regard to how many have actually done so. They've lied about everything else. Don't you think they might lie about this? After all, every single time they've trotted out statistics regarding those who "returned to the battlefield," it's always some vague description ("many") or a number that has no consistency with any numbers that came before.
Thus, you can simply dump it as a fiction made to scare people.
Inconvenient facts keep making this a stiky issue.
Al Q was born in an Egyptian prison.
This morning the FBI announced it caught 4 individuals in the US, who were planing to bomb a Jewish center and Temple, and shoot down a military airplane. One was Afghanistani who doesn't like the collateral damage from our war in Afghanistan, the other three converted to Islam in prison. All of thise happened here in the US.
The issue of torture is different from the issue of Gitmo.
The Uighurs claim they were not tortured.
The Uighurs were training in Tora Bora camps when we bombed, and they ran to Pakistan, trying to find the Al Q camps there. They were turned in before they found them.
Uighurs are fighting with Al Q and the Taliban in Swat velley right now.
Not all Chinese Muslims claim they are being represses by China.
Not alll Chinese Uighurs claim they are being oppressed by China.
Not all Chinese Uighurs are millitants.
When do we confuse dissidents aith Aq Tora Bora trained militants with dissidents?
In my opinion the issue is what to do about the millitant violence being used around the world for the purpose of scaring the wits out of people to achieve political ends?
The same thing we do about homegrown terrorism - which was born in our prisons right here.
The Uighurs are NOT fighting alongside Al Qeada, they never have been! They were on our side AGAINST Al Qeada until the Chinese declared them to be terrorists and told bush that he couldn't use them anymore!!
I see we haven't all been listening to the full rightie rant. You see, once the Guantanamo detainees are on US soil, they will be released on technicalities by liberal judges. They will then slip into the mainstream of American life, where they will be granted asylum or green cards by liberal INS agents. Finally, they will become citizens, and in about fifteen years, they will strap bombs to themselves and blow up something important. And all because we refused to do just one more waterboard
Everything you said made perfect sense, up until that last sentence. Why did you have to spoil such a succint characterization of precisely what WILL happen?
Oh, it won't take 15 years to become a citizen-bomber. Amnesty will grant them citizenship retroactively, and much sooner.
mikefina: duh!
Are you one of those people who thinks Stephen Colbert is serious????
Since you guys have THE answers before the events,
I'll wager any of you could get jobs as weathermen.
And get paid handsomely as well!
Aaaaaarrrr
First, there are those among them who are not guilty of ANY crimes! These should be released.
Second, that you think all judges are liberal (in spite of the fact that more than 60% of the currently sitting judges are conservati
Third, even if they ARE released, do you REALLY think that they will be allowed to live in America??? Neither do I!
You CAN'T be serious! Where do you get this information??? There is no WAY that ANY judge, liberal or otherwise, would release a transferred prisoner from Gitmo. They would be tried just like the first Twin Towers bombers - who are still in prison, but the way...
"You CAN'T be serious!"
Uh, he isn't.
Let's say we do bring them into the U.S and they go before our legal system. What happens to them after they serve their sentence? or maybe they are found not guilty. I would think they must be released, but where, if no other country will take them? Does anyone really want them living next door to them?The cost for this stupid adventure must also be taken into account. Not to mention the crafty lawyers being paid nicely on the taxpayers dime. This is a total cluster that the dumb left can't stop crying about. I say we have military tribunals like we always have done, and if they are found not guilty , we send them back to their home country.
Did you receive all of your education from Fox News? After they serve their sentence in a Federal Prison, they get deported, just like every other foreigner who is convicted of a crime in the US after completion of the sentence.
Ok, wise guy, what's your recommendation???? Eh?
We would send them back anyway. Also, a "true blue" American would believe in our principles.
The US let over 500 prisoners from GITMO go already. Now without a trial how do we know who is guilty or not. I understand the people there from a province in China were caught up in this thing and
rounded up and are being held there. Why do we assume they are terrorists. I can only say if I was
locked up 4 years with torture, etc. and I was released I would brim with hate too.
I think it is shameful that all of these politicians demonstrate so little faith in the prison system they're responsible for administering. If they don't trust our supermax prisons to keep people from escaping currently, why aren't we ALREADY panicked & paranoid about potential escapees? Oh that's right, they're probably not Arab. It seems to me that a good, honorable leader/governor would be saying "Give 'em to us, we've got great people here, we can handle 'em."
One already did. There's someone in Montana where they have an empty, state of the art, max security prison, who wants them. The town it's in is is dire straights from a poor economy. They would love to have them there.
Yep, that's exactly who I was thinking of.
Jeez - that's perfect. It's a win-win.
Hardin Montana has a brand new, unoccupied prison sitting there ready to go and ready to take all the prisoners. It is a 464 bed maximum security prison. Montana Senators and Representatives are fighting the town on their proposal thinking it will hurt the state's reputation and overall tourism dollars. It's an option.
Man, the day Lindsey Graham and I agree on something.
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