Due process? What are you, pansy?

January 28, 2005

Digby “responds to a joke letter”:http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_01_23_digbysblog_archive.html#110688380850953943 making the rounds, wherein the President presumably tells liberal whiners about human rights that, ok, you don’t like how we’re dealing with them? Then we’re sending one to your door.

bq. Although Ahmed is sociopathic and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his “attitudinal problem” will help him overcome these character flaws…

Interestingly enough, in the linked post we see a lot of fantastic defense of American Democratic ideals, such as this statement by “mamapajamas”:http://www.haloscan.com/comments/diplomad/110652997621916353/#53270:

bq. They are NOT “criminals” or POWs. They are illegal combatants who were CAUGHT IN THE ACT of shooting at US military in combat. It isn’t as if some innocent bystander was pulled in by accident. Some were released because they were (in some cases mistakenly!) considered less dangerous than others. But none of them are innocent. And none of them are “due” processing other than being locked up.

…which demonstrates an amazing lack of understanding as to how these people were rounded up. I love how these people have special knowledge. “They are all evil bad men! We know! We don’t need proof! We can take our government’s word for it!”

bq. At least 59 detainees — nearly 10% of the prison population at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — were deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan. All were placed on “recommended for repatriation” lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, a facility intended to hold the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects. [ ??"LA Times":http://www.latimes.com/la-na-gitmo22dec22,0,2294365.story?? ]

Sometimes the people were arrested not because they were caught in the act of firing at US military personel, but because they were Arabs in Afghanistan:

bq. Others were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who collected bounties for prisoners, sources said. One such prisoner was captured at a restaurant near the border where he claimed to have lived and worked for 20 years. “He had the mental capacity to put flatbread in an oven and that was the extent of his intellect,” the interrogator said. “He never got trained on a rifle, never got pressed into service. But he was Arab by birth so he was picked up and sent away.” [ ??"ibid":http://www.latimes.com/la-na-gitmo22dec22,0,2294365.story?? ]

Of course, the other side (that’d be the pro-torture-of-innocent-civilians side, apparently) would like people to believe that we liberals get all sniffly about steely-eyed murderers having to live without Tivo. But just as these folks would like to see *us* try to deal with “Ahmed,” I’d love to see how they would react if they were arrested, sexually and physically assaulted, forced to squat or stand for hours, stay awake for days, be beaten to near-death, and so forth because they happened to live on the same block as a suspect mosque. They’d be a little more concerned about due rights then, wouldn’t they?

Of course, “mamapajamas doesn’t think it can happen to her”:http://www.haloscan.com/comments/diplomad/110652997621916353/#53292, but according to Alberto Gonzales, the President does have that legal right. So the only thing standing between these folks and a nice long stay at Gitmo is … well … um. Us, I guess. Since all mamapajama’s friends will probably talk about how he/she was really caught firing at the ATF _while eating a baby_.

Posted in What The...?!?