This is not the America I believe inFollow

Gbaji, Outsourcing your torturing does not remove culpability.

If you knowingly transport prisoners to an intermediary that conducts torture of said prisoners then returns those prisoners back to you, you still can be held liable. Adding more layers of subsidiary agents does not remove principle-agent responsibility.

Especially so, if no charges were brought against those prisoners.

Civilian appeals for harms done by the government are typically handled by the judicial branch.

I am absolutely confident that I am in communication with my Congresscritter far more often than you talk to your representative. Also, she keeps calling me and inviting me to telephoned town hall meetings. I like her, she's a good rep.

See? I don't just say it, I live by it!

Yes, and the judicial branch has ruled that in this case, the needs of securing classified operations outweighs the claims in their lawsuit.

So we're in agreement. Hurray! ;)

And yet, you don't want to wait for any sort of ruling that the US government was engaged in torture, or in knowingly sending people to other countries to be tortured before simply declaring that it is true. So much so that you attack a ruling dismissing a lawsuit against a third party based solely on the assumption that the allegations of torture are true. Good to know you guys have such great respect for the legal system!



Yeah. "Oh wait". What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

There's some tricky legal ground here, but the basic premise is sound. We don't require that a soldier hold a trial for the guys on the other side before he's allowed to fire his weapon. We don't hold trials when we capture soldiers fighting on the other side. And when they are fighting in violation of the requirements for the 3rd Convention to qualify as a "lawful combatant", that doesn't magically mean that they get a trial before being captured either. To do so would suggest that someone who fights in violation of the 3rd convention should receive better treatment if captured than someone who fought by the rules. Which would be monumentally stupid.


Where this gets a bit sketchy is that some of these prisoners were not captured in a traditional "war zone", much less in what the Conventions envisioned when it defined such things. The 4th convention uses the phrase "spies and saboteurs" though. By extension, one can argue that a guy plotting to build dirty bombs qualifies. The jurisdictional qualification of a "war zone" is really the most problematic aspect of the whole "war on terror" bit, and I'm sure that a whole lot of legal professionals have been debating that one for the last 10 years, and probably will continue for another 30.

The broader point though is that the supreme court has accepted those prisoners status under the existing military commissions. That's a de-facto acceptance of their definition as "unlawful combatants", including the broad definition of the field and conditions under which they were captured. That's always a fun and interesting argument, but it's really not relevant to this debate. What is relevant is that having accepted those definitions and allowed that they are legal, a person who falls into said category does have the right to have the evidence used to detain him examined, but not in a court of law. The allowances for operational secrecy by the detaining power is clearly outlined in the 4th convention.


The guys who were flying planes and transporting prisoners around at the behest of the US government, on the other hand, are entitled to the full protection and privileges the law allows. And that includes the presumption of innocence.

Yes. I have not once insisted that the guys flying those planes *didn't* knowingly fly them to black prisons and then cart them directly into the torture chambers, and then perhaps changed into their torture suits and did the deed themselves. My point is that we can't assume that is the case either, and in this case, the only way for the judge to get at the facts would require violating classified documents.

Which, I'm sure you'll agree, is a bit more problematic than say subpoenaing a public document from a state health department.

If we're going to make silly comparisons, that is.




My "can you prove this" statements were about the broad accusations of torture, not just the specifics of this one case. Given that the argument many are making (BT in particular) for insisting that this lawsuit should open up classified documents rests on the assumption that the US has been torturing (or arranging the torture of) a large number of WoT detainees for the better part of a decade, it's relevant to point out that those are *also* merely accusations and allegations. None of which have been proven or even have evidence to support them other than claims made by detainees (which have no reason at all to lie, right?), and a very small number of confirmed cases in which detainees were tortured prior to being taken into US custody. From this has spun this huge conspiracy which assumed that the CIA was taking prisoners and sending them to be tortured, getting as much information from them as possible, and then for some inexplicable reason, instead of just killing them and making them disappear, they then delivered them into US custody where said prisoners could tell the regular military guards, and news reporters, and members of congress, and everyone else in the world about what happened.


Occam's Razor tells me that if we were actually doing that, all of the people we did it to would be dead and not sitting in prisons like gitmo. It would be *easier* to keep it secret then, wouldn't it?





I think it did serve the interests of justice. I just think that many people believe that justice is when the result is what they want it to be, and that's not always the case. Justice exists for the guys who flew those planes as well, right? How would justice be served if they were forced to stand trial, but could not bring any evidence to defend themselves because it was all classified and they'd be charged with even more serious crimes if they did?

Would that be justice? Justice is blind but fair. You can't just look at one side here. I think the judge did the right thing (and this is probably the only time you'll hear me say that about the 9th court).

Right. I attacked a ruling that said "we aren't gonna let this go to court, rather quash it on secrecy statutes". Wholly consistent. What a shocker.

Because your head is too far up your *** to understand how the court system should work and didn't here?

"They changed the status quo! ACTIVISTS! LIBERALS! SOCIALISTS!!! COMMUNISM!!! At least this guy didn't do anything I wouldn't like."

Threats of Physical harm will get you banned. I suspect you were making a torture reference to prove a point rather than a serious threat of physical harm, however if Gbaji takes that as a serious threat against himself I have no choice but to lock the thread and cooperate with law enforcement.

I don't care how pissed off you are at someone, you don't threaten them with physical violence in the forums.

Administrator Kaolian

Cut your fucking sig, Shador, before I cut yo-

-delling. Before I cut yodelling classes to write an angry tirade about you on the internet.

[sm] tags.

Do it.

That's terrible. Why do you have the first joint of your other fingers up? Why has someone cut your little finger short? Why are you such a cunt?

I've don't think I've ever seen a post by you that isn't in some manner whiny. Cheer up, lad.