James Taranto, Wall Street Journal
Was it wishful thinking? On Thursday the Associated Press reported that, according to sources it did not name, "the Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere." The White House quickly denied the rumor, and, for good measure, on Friday the Pentagon announced that Guantanamo had admitted its first new detainee in months: Haroon al-Afghani, a commander from the al Qaeda-affiliated terror group Hezb-i-Islami.
The AP's impatience to write the final chapter of the Guantanamo story is of a piece with the way news organizations generally have told the story. Although the Supreme Court has granted some rights to detainees, it has been remarkably restrained in doing so. But journalists have falsely portrayed Guantanamo as an affront to the Constitution and international law.
Perhaps the most striking example was the New York Times's coverage of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which the court decided a year ago this week. "The decision was such a sweeping and categorical defeat for the administration that it left human rights lawyers who have pressed this and other cases on behalf of Guantanamo detainees almost speechless with surprise and delight, using words like 'fantastic,' 'amazing' and 'remarkable,' " correspondent Linda Greenhouse exulted. She opined that there was "no doubt" the ruling represented "a historic event, a defining moment," and likened it to U.S. v. Nixon, the 1974 case in which the court unanimously ordered the president to turn over the Watergate tapes.
Nixon resigned 15 days after that decision. A year after Hamdan, it is safe to say that its impact has been rather less dramatic. While the court, by a vote of 5-3, did hand Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's personal driver and bodyguard, a victory on key points, Ms. Greenhouse's purple prose belied the narrow grounds on which it did so. Less than four months after Hamdan, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which effectively undid the ruling. Congress had this power because the Supreme Court has not extended a single constitutional right to alien enemy combatants.
Hamdan dealt with two legal questions: whether detainees have the right to challenge their captivity by petitioning a court for a writ of habeas corpus, and whether the military commissions established to try detainees for war crimes passed muster under U.S. and international law.
The court had ruled in Rasul v. Bush (2004) that detainees had the right to file habeas petitions. But it rested that conclusion on statutory, not constitutional, grounds--that is, it found that Congress had conferred this right on the detainees. Congress therefore had the authority to take it away, and it did so by passing the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to hear Guantanamo detainees' habeas petitions.
But in Hamdan, the high court held that the 2005 act did not apply retroactively, so that habeas proceedings already under way could continue. The Military Commissions Act removed this ambiguity and ordered a stop to all habeas petitions. An appellate court upheld this provision in February 2007, and in April the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to that ruling. The Justice Department has petitioned for the dismissal of still-pending habeas claims.
In overturning the administratively created war-crimes commissions, the Supreme Court found that detainees are entitled to some protections under the Geneva Conventions. It did not afford them the privileges enjoyed by legitimate prisoners of war--those who wear uniforms, carry weapons openly and otherwise comply with the rules of war. Instead, it ruled that they have more-limited rights under Geneva's Common Article 3, which applies to conflicts "not of an international character." This originally meant civil wars, but the court imaginatively reasoned that since al Qaeda is not a nation, its war against America is not "international."
Yet the justices granted the detainees only one specific right under Common Article 3: the right to have any criminal charges heard by a "regularly constituted court"--one created by an act of Congress. The high court has not adjudicated the legality of the legislatively created commissions, but it seems unlikely to rule against them. Four justices in the Hamdan majority joined Stephen Breyer's concurrence, which expressly invited Congress to authorize military commissions.
To be sure, legal obstacles remain. Earlier this month two military judges dismissed charges against Hamdan and another detainee, on the pedantic ground that administrative tribunals had designated them enemy combatants, not unlawful enemy combatants--notwithstanding that they clearly meet the Military Commissions Act's definition of unlawful combatants.
Some politicians have also undertaken efforts on behalf of enemy fighters. Senate Democrats, joined by Republican Arlen Specter, have introduced legislation that would restore habeas rights to Guantanamo detainees, although this is unlikely to become law as long as George W. Bush is president.
Colin Powell would go even further. "I would close Guantanamo, not tomorrow, but this afternoon," the former secretary of state told NBC's Tim Russert earlier this month. "I'd get rid of the military commission system and use established procedures in federal law or in the manual for courts-martial."
Mr. Powell claimed that "I would not let any of [the detainees] go," but his proposal would inevitably have that effect. Once inside the criminal justice system, detainees would become defendants with full constitutional rights, including the right to be charged or released, the right to exclude tainted evidence, and the right to be freed unless found guilty of a specific crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
Legitimate prisoners of war enjoy no such rights. The primary purpose of holding enemy combatants during wartime is not punitive but preventive--to keep them off the battlefield. No one disputes that a country at war can hold POWs without charge for the duration of hostilities. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority in Hamdan, reaffirmed the government's authority to do the same with the unlawful combatants at Guantanamo.
By granting constitutional protections to detainees, Mr. Powell's proposal would endanger the lives of American civilians. It would also afford preferential treatment to enemy fighters who defy the rules of war. This would make a mockery of international humanitarian law.
In the long run, it could also imperil the civil liberties of Americans. Leniency toward detainees is on the table today only because al Qaeda has so far failed to strike America since 9/11. If it succeeded again, public pressure for harsher measures would be hard for politicians to resist. And if enemy combatants had been transferred to the criminal justice system, those measures would be much more likely to diminish the rights of citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism.
By keeping terrorists out of America, Guantanamo protects Americans' physical safety. By keeping them out of our justice system, it also protects our freedom.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/26/2007 06:25 ||
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From Small Wars Journal
Ive spent much of the last six weeks out on the ground, working with Iraqi and U.S. combat units, civilian reconstruction teams, Iraqi administrators and tribal and community leaders. Ive been away from e-mail a lot, so unable to post here at SWJ: but Id like to make up for that now by providing colleagues with a basic understanding of whats happening, right now, in Iraq.
This post is not about whether current ops are working for us, here on the ground, time will tell, though some observers elsewhere seem to have already made up their minds (on the basis of what evidence, Im not really sure). But for professional counterinsurgency operators such as our SWJ community, the thing to understand at this point is the intention and concept behind current ops in Iraq: if you grasp this, you can tell for yourself how the operations are going, without relying on armchair pundits. So in the interests of self-education (and cutting out the commentariat middlemensorry, guys) here is a field perspective on current operations.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/26/2007 10:37 ||
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#1
smart man
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/26/2007 13:09 Comments ||
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#2
For my mind, the biggest question remains southern Iraq. It is the one part of the country where US forces have never been part of the "culture" of the place.
While the British and other forces of the MNF have been there, their military culture and ours are very different in how they interact with the locals.
The British have a bad habit of thinking they understand Arabs, and this can cloud their thinking, making them too willing to accept the less than desirable, because "It is the Arab way."
The US, however, takes everything at face value. They do not assign values to people they know nothing about, good or bad. And when actions speak louder than words, a certain clarity is obtained. A sense of mutual honesty, as many of the illusions are set aside and you act polite, until evidence convinces you otherwise.
So I think, in the long run, now that much of the West has been stabilized, and Baghdad and environs, along with the North are cooled, the US will have to spend considerable time in the South.
Not especially in an aggressive manner. Just so that we become known to each other. It is to our great advantage that we do not leave a large region behind where Americans are known mostly from gossip, rumor, and tall tales.
#3
Moose, we have had interaction with the south inasmuch of the supplies/logistics came in there and the Shatt-Al-Arab denizens HAVE To know things are better since we came in. If they don't lean Iranian, we can win them over, IMHO. If they do, we can solve that too....
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/26/2007 18:35 Comments ||
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#4
Iraqis have proven that they will inform of terrorist safe-houses, as long as they feel protected in so doing. I don't believe that "hiding" is an infallible weapon. Search and destroy!
#5
IMHO, it always comes down to the tribes and understanding how they work in the context of their environment and local history. Some commanders I see embrace that and they do well. Others try to treat the Arab like Americans and fail. They're just not there yet. We have to incrementally deprogram them - this is a long work in project. Unfortunately our 5 second sound byte generation of morons in office & much of a particular voting block prolly won't give us the time and lee way necessary to really crack this nut.
Jules is one of the few MSM members I consider credible. He was with 3ID on the initial invasion and was there in Baghdad at the fall, and even knew the guys who fired the shots at the Paleostine Hotel where those reporters were killed. He always has a good, snarky take on things. Go follow his links.
And yeah. "Gazapalooza" made me LOL IRL. :-)
Too long for us to post, and Jules is loaded with links for everything. Go there, read it all and return when you're done.
Posted by: Gary and the Samoyeds ||
06/26/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
What people call the scientific method, he explains, is really the Islamic method: All the wealth of knowledge in the world has actually emanated from Muslim civilization.
Absolutely not! Any scientist with conflicting views gets beheaded.
Science is inquisition.
Nobody was expecting that!
What people call the scientific method, he explains, is really the Islamic method: All the wealth of knowledge in the world has actually emanated from Muslim civilization.
Sho'nuff, that's why they invented the light bulb, automobile, transistor and Chatty Cathy doll.
In residential neighborhoods, beautiful old buildings crumble, and the people who live in them pile debris onto rooftops because there is no public service to take it away.
In strict accordance with Islamic science and engineering, they also never hesitate to add extra stories onto buildings whose original design specs cannot possibly bear them.
El-Naggar has no doubts. We are not behind because of Islam, he says. We are behind because of what the Americans and the British have done to us.
Strange, for some odd reason he left out the Jews.
As a scientist, I see the danger coming from the West, not the East.
Thats because if yall piss in our ear one more time and try to tell us its raining, youre gonna hurt real bad.
Critics are quick to point out that Islamic scientists tend to use each other as sources, creating an illusion that the work has been validated by research.
Just like with the doctrine of their religion cult.
Researchers who dont agree with Islamic thinking avoid questions or research agendas that could put them in opposition to authoritiesthus steering clear of intellectual debate. In other words, if you are a scientist who is not an Islamic extremist, you simply direct your work toward what is useful. Scientists who contradict the Koran would have to keep a low profile. When pressed for examples, Soltan does not elaborate.
For fear of compromising his "low profile". Sheesh, talk about an atmosphere conducive to free thought and inquiry.
In Soltans view, the twin forces of Islamization and government policy have inadvertently worked together to blunt scientific curiosity. We are in a period of transition, he says. I think we are going to be in transition for a long time.
There's nothing "inadvertant" about it. Islam's attempt to re-enter the 7th century requires exceeding the speed of light and that transition is always a lengthy one.
Nobody can just write what he thinks without proof. But we have real proof that the story of Adam as the first man is true.
What proof?
He looks at me with disbelief: Its written in the Koran.
Allah said it, I believe it, that settles it.
Chaabouni recalls the early days of her career, in the mid-1970s, when she saw children afflicted with disfiguring diseases. It was very sad, she says. I met families with two, three, four affected siblings.
Might have something to do with poking your cousins.
For all that, Chaabouni still sees how her advice sometimes clashes with her patients beliefs. Like many Arab and Muslim countries, Tunisia has a high incidence of congenital diseases, including adrenal and blood disorders, that Chaabouni has traced to consanguinity.
No kidding!
In fact, since most of the water from the Jordan Rivers tributaries has been diverted and no longer flows to the Dead Sea, even the Dead Sea is dying. There are plans for resuscitating it, but they will require a delicate process of regional cooperation, including the Israelis and the Palestinians, and most likely Western aid.
I'll bet nobody saw that one coming.
Science needs stability, democracy, freedom of expression, says Senator Adnan Badran, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Michigan State University, as we drink Turkish coffee at his office. You must have an environment thats conducive to free thinking, to inquiry. If you dont, youll never be able to release the minds potential. Its a very bleak story, a very disappointing story, about the state of science and technology in the Arab region.
I wanted to destroy every vested interest, to get rid of cronyism, to build accountability and transparency by freeing the press, Badran says.
The circumstances of Badrans term were difficult, however. He was an excellent academic and scientist, a journalist tells me, but an ineffective politician.
Given Badrans aims, thats no surprise. Something tells me he wasn't much of a soft touch and that's a real career killer in the MME (Muslim Middle East).
#3
Hmmm...according to my Koran copy, Alexander the Great reached the spot where the Sun sets, and it was a swamp (Sura 18:83-98). The Koran is the central dogma of Islam, with which no Muslim may contradict. Muslims MUST believe that the end of the universe is on this earth. The fact that they have to at least assert belief in untenable dogma, reveals that coercion is central to the Muslim cult.
No conflict between Islam and Science? The fact that Muslims cannot accept reasoned conclusions that run counter to revelations - as recorded by Mohammed without witnesses - manifests total war against reason. One Roman Catholic Pope (Pius 9) challenged reason (Syllabus of Errors), and was humiliated into silence by church members. Generally, Muslims are conditioned into holding opinions contra to the entire corpus of the post-Renaissance era. Islam is the plague of the second millenia.
#5
Islam will never get anywhere in the world as long as it embraces the 7th century barbarianism that it so loves. Take away their oil wealth, and the ME will fall like a deck of cards in a gale.
#6
El-Naggar has no doubts. We are not behind because of Islam, he says. We are behind because of what the Americans and the British have done to us.
ROTFLMAO!!!
That's why you educate your kids over here where they can get legitimate PhDs and a decent education instead of in your own doctrinally-infested hellholes and so-called "universities", right?
I see that great big wonderful Islamic space station, the space shuttle, and those Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, and other planetary probes, that wonderful little gem of a medical miracle called vaccination, heart transplants, MRI's, refrigeration, the internal combustion engine, heck, even that dog n' pony show called the Airbus - yeah, all those were Islamic inventions and ideas.
How's that science thing goin' for ya'll these days?
Nope. The readership of Discover is the scientifically literate layman who wants a broad overview of the field, but less challenging than Scientific American. The readers will laugh to scorn every one of Zenster's examples, and then FOTSGreg's. I grew up with Sci.Am., but we've had a subscription to Discover for the last two years... and Mr. Wife is by training a chemical engineer and medical researcher, now heavily involved in new developments in chemical production. The journalist very cleverly let Dr. El-Naggar's own words damn him, his fellow Muslims, and the entire religion as it's practiced these days.
#8
The Prophet Muhammad said to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. The very first verse came down: Read. The Koran...only the Koran. All else is Haram
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/26/2007 14:04 Comments ||
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#9
The readership of Discover is the scientifically literate layman who wants a broad overview of the field, but less stuffed with ads on every pagechallenging than Scientific American.
There, fixed that for ya, tw. I grew up with Sci-Am and it is now but a pale shadow of its former glory. It's pretty easy to tell as Questar no longer advertises in their pages. One of the best runs for your money is Science News. This weekly rag beats most other popular scientific journals to the scoop by two or three weeks. The $50 per year is a pittance and the writing is easy to read and technically correct.
gg, as tw notes, read the whole article. The writer lets his subjects slip on the noose all by themselves.
#10
I'll take that on faith, Zenster dear. Lots of changes in twenty-five years, it seems. Daddy used to get a weekly that may have been the Science News, but I don't recall being excited by it. Probably because it didn't have glossy pages and gorgeous, coloured pictures. ;-) But if this is the one you mean, it's rather amusing.
#13
Anyone seriously interested in Islam and Science needs to reference the Pakistani Physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy...
Although genuine scientific achievement is rare in the contemporary Muslim world, pseudo-science is in generous supply. A former chairman of my physics department in Islamabad has calculated the speed of heaven. He maintains it is receding from Earth at one centimetre per second less than the speed of light. His ingenious method relies upon a verse in the Islamic holy book, which says that worship on the night on which the book was revealed is worth a thousand nights of ordinary worship. He states that this amounts to a time-dilation factor of 1,000, which he puts into a formula of Einstein's theory of special relativity.
A more public example: One of the two Pakistani nuclear engineers who was recently arrested on suspicion of passing nuclear secrets to the Taleban had earlier proposed to solve Pakistan's energy problems by harnessing the power of genies. He relied on the Islamic belief that God created man from clay, and angels and genies from fire; so this high-placed engineer proposed to capture the genies and extract their energy.
Posted by: John Frum ||
06/26/2007 21:18 Comments ||
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#14
ahhh but what is the velocity and frequency of Djinns??
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/26/2007 22:15 Comments ||
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#15
I gave up on SciAm soon after Martin Gardner left. Discovery is too fuzzy. The New Scientist was ruined when the Daedalus column left.
Now, let's give credit where it's due: we got algebra and algorithms from the Arabs. But, what have they done with them since?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
06/26/2007 22:55 Comments ||
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Contrary to what the Syrian leadership is trying to publicize about its current 'neutral' stances and its 'non-interference' in the details of Lebanese internal divergences, the latest declarations made by Syrian Vice President Farouk el-Shara in a meeting alleged to have been held with the media, showed another aspect of this orientation and unveiled Damascus's clear and constant stance.
These declarations were published when the initiative of Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa was at its peak in Beirut among an Arab mission to revive the interrupted dialogue among Lebanese leaders. Therefore, these declarations appeared to be addressed to this very initiative and also to its curators, especially because they expressed Syria's opinion about a group of thorny points representing the core of Lebanese disputes. Some of these points are the National Unity Government, the relations between Beirut and Damascus, and the legitimacy of the Fouad Siniora government and of the parliamentary majority.
With regard to the government, the Syrian Vice President believes that it is not possible to achieve anything different than the idea based on creating a national unity government and that without this, Lebanon will not stabilize. The idea of a national unity government is optimal in principle, and was proposed before independent ministers were asked to withdraw from the government. Likewise, the majority team in Lebanon is not opposed to this government. It has affirmed this many times and repeated it during Amr Moussa's Lebanese mission. Considering the non-formation of the government to be a gateway to Lebanon's 'instability' is, at least, an example of interference in an internal affair, a matter unacceptable to the norms of international relations. At most, and specifically with respect to Syria, this opinion means 'inciting' to link the current instability and the continuous assassinations in Lebanon to the opposition's request concerning the government.
Respectively, Shara does not conceal his clear 'estimation' of the size of the majority in the government and parliament, although the overwhelming majority of Arab and foreign countries have acknowledged it. He believes that 'a bunch of politicians' in Lebanon cannot bring Syria to cut its relations (what relations?), close its borders and enter into an armed conflict, even if these politicians had a 'portion of the Lebanese masses'(!). He added, "In Lebanon we have stronger allies than others, if they wanted to use this power."
The Syrian Vice President was certainly referring to military power, since the political one is not in the hands of Syria's allies, as he complains. In fact, no national unity government has been formed so far. When speaking of the military power of Syria's allies, what crops into one's mind is not the team led by General Michel Aoun, for instance, or Talal Arsalan. Indeed, what one immediately thinks of is Hezbollah, the strongest team - militarily speaking - in the Lebanese arena as a result of its intense armament used previously to carry out resistance and currently to remain in a state of readiness! Therefore, one must at this point consider Hezbollah leadership's opinion about this issue. Does it think that the party's 'military power' has now become something to be used based on the request of the Syrian 'ally'?
There is one positive point left that one must refer to and thank the Syrian Vice President for raising: Lebanon has matured and become capable of solving its own problems with no Syrian or Arab military interference. We hope that this position truly expresses Syria's political intentions in this stage and that it is not only a way to inhibit any other Arab role in Lebanon aimed at rescuing the country from the standstill in which it is now stuck and preventing it from emerging among all other countries for its political and security situation.
In front of these Syrian positions, which have become sincere and clear, it is now politically naïve to believe that the dispute among the Lebanese people is contained within Lebanon itself and that a solution can be found through a meeting of a group of leaders representing the two contending parties. As Amr Moussa has found out at the end of the mission, which has failed to achieve its goal, the decision of a team of the opposition comes from abroad. This is proved by the remarkable contradiction between the opposition's acceptance of the settlement projects that it itself had partially proposed and that is backing down on after a short while, under the shadow, or the pressure, of foreign stances.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/26/2007 00:00 ||
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#2
One thing I wont do is walk around on eggshells worrying about "offending" minority sensibilities, they can eat me. This article is subtly suggesting that we fawn over them and hoist them high above other minorities, minorities that don't cause trouble for themselves and us. When is the last time you heard about someone getting attacked by a Hungarian street gang, or kidnapped by Australians?
#6
all of the isolation I've ever seen wrt muslim-Americans has been the self-imposed variety. If they don't like it here no one is making them stay. Go home *ssholes you add very little to my country.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
