Diffing Guantanamo Bay SOP Manuals 563
James Hardine writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Wikileaks has released another manual for Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay together with the US military's rendition operations manual. This release follows from the Wikileaks release of the 2003 SOP Manual as discussed on Slashdot last month. Wikileaks compares the two manuals (2003, 2004) and reveals damning changes in official US detainee policy in exquisite detail. Who knew that diff could be such a powerful political weapon?"
If you want to diff it.. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihadmanual.html [thesmokinggun.com]
Re:If you want to diff it.. (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture1.html [thesmokinggun.com]
That's better.
Re:We're all boiling frogs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Just a thought about Gitmo (Score:5, Informative)
I quote:
An "enemy combatant" is an individual who, under the laws and customs of war, may be detained for the duration of an armed conflict. In the current conflict with al Qaida and the Taliban, the term includes a member, agent, or associate of al Qaida or the Taliban. In applying this definition, the United States government has acted consistently with the observation of the Supreme Court of the United States in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 37-38 (1942): "Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war."
"Enemy combatant" is a general category that subsumes two sub-categories: lawful and unlawful combatants. See Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38. Lawful combatants receive prisoner of war (POW) status and the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. Unlawful combatants do not receive POW status and do not receive the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention. (The treatment accorded to unlawful combatants is discussed below).
The President has determined that al Qaida members are unlawful combatants because (among other reasons) they are members of a non-state actor terrorist group that does not receive the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. He additionally determined that the Taliban detainees are unlawful combatants because they do not satisfy the criteria for POW status set out in Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention. Although the President's determination on this issue is final, courts have concurred with his determination.
Re:If you want to diff it.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We're all boiling frogs (Score:5, Informative)
Who told you that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to non-Citizens? Let's look at the 5th Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Its pretty damned clear to me that "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." Not "no citizen," but "no person". Due process applies to anyone in the jurisdiction of the US, regardless of citizenship or residence (or in fact their physical location, but that's another argument). Note that "in actual service" phrase if you think you can use the military exemption clause as cover here - that only refers to the use of military courts to try US servicemen in time of war or public danger.
Before spouting off, RTF Constitution!
Boiling the President Alive (Score:1, Informative)
Please stop spreading these lies about this issue, you are undermining the human rights legislation.
US Constitution applies to all people held under US government power. It doesn't matter where they are held, as do the Treaties on Human Rights that USA has signed and ratified.
The fact that americans have tortured hundreds of people to death (US Doctors Faked Death Certificates to Cover Up Homicides by Torture [commondreams.org] ACLU Autopsy Reports [aclu.org]), despite these, is a shame that falls on every american, especially those who spread the above false propaganda rhetoric you posted. It is largely responsible for producing these human rights violations in the first place.
Under USA's own 1996 War Crimes Act [findlaw.com], as people have been tortured to death [aclu.org], the people ordering the treatment are subject to receive the death penalty for supreme crimes against humanity.
This includes the US president and Vice President as well as Donald Rumsfeld and other facilitators.
Their crimes include having others Uzbekistani dictator's torturers boil people alive for the CIA. [informatio...house.info]
Americans seriously need to owe up to this behaviour around the world.
Re:Just a thought about Gitmo (Score:1, Informative)
You completely missed the point of the term "enemy combatant". It was entirley from the start intended to side-step The Geneva Convention and to deny POW status to people, so that we could have more liberties with the "worse of the worse" (which ended up often times being innocent farmers with the nerve to stick up to warlords).
Re:congrats to wikileak (Score:5, Informative)
From the 9/11 hearings when Senator Gorton interviewed Richard Clarke, the Clinton Administration's Terror Czar and head of counter-terrorism.
FORMER SEN. SLADE GORTON: Assuming that the recommendations that you made in... on January 25 of 2001 based on blue sky, including aid to the northern alliance which had been an agenda item at this point for two-and-a-half years without any action, assuming that there had been more predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted, say, on January 26, the year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?
RICHARD CLARKE: No.
Unequivocal. The person in charge of counter-terrorism up to the very date that the Bush administration started CONFIRMED that 9/11 was already irreversibly in motion. The opportunity to stop it had already passed.
Re:We're all boiling frogs (Score:4, Informative)
Google around a bit - some of the guys who have already been released once they finally started having military hearings about their cases have nothing to do with terrorism.
For a while there we were offering a cash reward for anyone who would sell us a terrorist. So countries used that to point out anyone they didn't like and have them sold to us and sent to Gitmo. Two guys were just cartoonists who made fun of their local government! But it took over a year at least for them to be released.
Even ignoring full civilian trial rights, we at least need some sort of legitimate defense so that we have to prove that people were actually enemy combatants before we lock them up. I'm sure even with a court-appointed lawyer we wouldn't have any trouble locking a guy away for the moment because there was eye witness testimony he was shooting at American soldiers.
Re:Changed MPs to Guards (Score:2, Informative)
"Enemy Combatants" (Score:3, Informative)
In this context, it might be relevant to note that our use of such legal reasoning to avoid giving captured enemy combatants the protection of either the Geneva conventions—or any other sort of law—is not without precedent. In 1941, General Eisenhower declared all captured German soldiers to be "Disarmed Enemy Forces", and not prisoners of war. This meant that the United States was free to ignore international laws that required such niceties as feeding prisoners (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager [wikipedia.org] or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower_and_German_POWs [wikipedia.org] for some background). It also meant that "extraordinary" interrogation methods could be used to obtain evidence for the upcoming war crimes trials. The justification for Eisenhower's action was that the German state no longer existed, and that the prisoners were thus no longer the soldiers of any such state. I guess they were "non-state actors".
The major difference between 1941 and today is that this treatment of German prisoners was temporary, lasting only a matter of months, while now we have the Never-Ending War on Terror.
Re:Just a thought about Gitmo (Score:3, Informative)
According to the Third Geneva Convention, you must have status determined by a military tribunal; until then, the prisoners are POWs. In the case that they are unlawful enemy combatants, then they must be handed over to the domestic courts.
So, already, we have a problem because the status was never determined by the military tribunal, so they should have been POWs. However, if they did go through a military tribunal, the next step is to hand them over to the domestic courts. However, the Gitmo site was selected *specifically* because it was not US territory - that way, the administration argued, domestic courts could not touch them. This way, they could stuff humans between the Geneva Convention and the US courts without giving them basic human rights.
Of course, the Supreme Court ruled that any place that US has complete jurisdiction in, the courts have jurisdiction, which is how we ended up with the military tribunals which congress authorized - although there is argument as to whether these can be considered "competent" courts.
One line of speculation considers that one reason that the whole Geneva Convention stuff has been avoided a lot by the Bush administration is that if Geneva doesn't apply to the prisoners, Geneva doesn't apply to the captors. The thought is that for some of these torture incidents, US personnel could possibly be prosecuted for war crimes. Of course, this part is speculation.
The Bush administration way, way overstepped when it started denying POWs basic human rights - and most of it was based on the legal footwork of Gonzales, even before he became AG.
Re:Damning changes? (Score:3, Informative)
Your blind faith is amusing. That might well be the intention, but according to the Boston Globe, 146 detainees have been released [boston.com] from Guantanamo by late 2004 (because I'm too lazy to track down more recent numbers). Clearly, either Bush is soft on your "worst of the worst," or the system make lots of mistakes. Deal with that fact before you consider denying people their right to be fairly tried.
The article I cited actually points out that seven of the released detainees went back to fighting the US, which you should probably also consider as mistakes.
Re:Damning changes? (Score:3, Informative)
You are misinterpreting the GC, either through ignorance or quite willfully, as no where does Article 4 say those are requirements. Rather, that is a (as we shall see) inexclusive list of indicators:
Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
If you're confused, read Article 5, which very clearly assigns a default status of "POW" to anyone detained:
Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.
If you had actually read the wiki article on the fictional "Lawful Combatant" term, you'd already know this.
You are therefore either an ignoramus, a troll or a liar.
(If you have any argument whatsoever, it would be on whether the tribunals at Gitmo are actually competant. However, it is a fact that prisoners are normally held there, outwith GC protections, prior to review by tribunal - so even that argument would be extremely weak).