Pushback

Please don’t hold your breath waiting for reparations. You would suffocate.

I’ve long been appalled about abduction of people without a trial and confinement on what is arguably American soil without the most basic of Constitutional protections. While there are undoubtedly some who were in conflict with our troops there is simply no perfect operation with no innocents harmed.

Should we compensate those who have been falsely imprisoned? Since we rarely provide compensation to those who have been wrongfully incarcerated, sometimes for decades I suspect reparations for GTMO detainees are going to be a very tough sell.

Would it be ethical to do so? Yes. Is it likely? Not for decades. And it doesn’t address those who we “rendered” to other countries where they were held and brutally tortured.

It is good to see a revival of concern about this issue. Some, like Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law, have been highly concerned about GTMO for years. I know he has been attempting to address the issue periodically in his scholarly blog http://velvelonnationalaffairs.blogspot.com since at least 2004.

This Administration has never been able to admit making mistakes. The close mindedness displayed has been astonishing. In order to have a debate about Gitmo or anything else they first have to admit they might be wrong. It seems that Bush & Co. would rather trash the Geneva Conventions, the rule of international law and the Constitution than admit they might have been wrong. So reparations and apologies?? HAH! They're still busy throwing the Iraqi interpreters and refugees to the wolves. Where is their Honor???
I resent their lack of ethics and morality and their short sightedness.Its a classic example of ruthless people making policy without thinking through the consequences of their actions. People who don't read history are doomed to repeat it. As Alexander the Great and the Russians could have told them!

I think you should keep writing about this and keeping it in front of the public eye.

Writing from Asia, I can assure you, that the image of our country is indeed tarnished, and I feel our President is directly responsible.

Moron oh excuse me ,Moran would look great in an orange jumpsuit praying toward mecca daily. That would be great reperations

Terminological inexactitude is a phrase introduced in 1906 by British politician (later Prime Minister) Winston Churchill. Today, it is used as a euphemism or circumlocution meaning a lie or untruth. (wiktionary)

Terminological inexactitude seems to be this administration's particular pathology.

Mehar Arar got a cash settlement and apology from the Canadian government recently for being detained while going through customs and "sent to Syria for a little torture".

The US refuses to clear his name, citing some 'troubling' things in his file.

I'll say.

The Gitmo prisoners are a quagmire. The combat is not against a nation, it is against a culture of Fundamental Islam totally committed to the annihilation of the United States, but is not unique to Afghanistan or Iraq. They are sprinkled worldwide in just about all nations. That commitment is not going to reduce regardless of what the United States does.

This makes the need to centralize a conflict such as this to proven fronts; those being Afghanistan and Iraq. There will be future attacks with the chance of attacks on the United States mainland much more likely if the present fronts are abandoned without success.

Certainly some of the prisoners deserve to be there. From a legal standpoint I do not know the proper procedure because they are not United States citizens and I think that extending the rights as established for United States citizens in the Constitution and its amendments is not proper. They are not citizens of the United States.

Among this group unquestionably are terrorist, some of who killed Americans, some were planning to kill Americans, and some accommodated the purposes of those who have or planned to kill Americans. There are some who did nothing regarding the killing of Americans, but just simply hated us.

This is a military issue and thus to provide a system of the courts as provided Americans I think is not proper. What is proper is to deal with these detainees? I am in favor of it being a military court system designed specifically for prudently dealing with these detainees, and certainly liberally providing rights, but in a military environment.

Hopefully it is designed for the murderers to be punished appropriately and those who did and do no more than hate be left go. Their detention would be adequate punishment for their hate and desire for the annihilation of the United States.

I see where no reparations are warranted. Should there be some who had not evil desires toward Western Culture, I should hope some accommodation be made to help them integrate into a peaceful society.

Well said, ebbarn, well said indeed. However, I have a bone to pick with you about letting those prisoners who hate us go back home as they are now.

Having known a young man of Middle Eastern descent while a graduate student at Baylor U., I am painfully aware of their propensity for hating until the object of their hatred is destroyed. So to allow the haters to roam free without thoroughly reprogramming their world view seems to be unwise in that such action would simply provide one more future terrorist somewhere to kill who knows how many Americans.

These young men can be taught to appreciate the personal and societal benefits of a Christian lifestyle, and many can actually be converted from Islam to biblical Christianity by proper and knowledgable counseling. Such people then would not only be greatly benefitted personally, but would no longer pose a terrorist threat to our nation.

We are truly at war, and with an implacable enemy unafraid to die in the conflict. This is an extremely serious national emergency, and we must get serious enough about it to do whatever we must to survive it.

Amazing as it may seem to you and as it surely seems to me, converting the men at GTMO and likeminded others the world over to biblical Christianity has now become an absolutely necessary tool of national survival in this strange war. It is in reality a to-the-death conflict between two profoundly different cultural world views, each one based on deeply divergent religious principles. That is why there must be a strong religious element in the manner in which it is fought if it is to be fought successfully. To do otherwise is to invite eventual horrendous defeat on a never before conceived world-wide scale.

So, are you in the mood to commit national suicide? This old "Hell on Wheels" soldier says NEVER, not now, not as long as there is a breath left in my body and a freedom loving soul left in the US.

To ColinCody:

The problem is that it is hard to prosecute a person for what he or she thinks. Most of these that harbor hate have been detained in less than desirable conditions for some time now. Possibly that will serve as some form of punishment.

It is a problem for the hatred can manifest itself into action at any time with the most devastating results as we in America have already experienced.

We just don't have a crystal ball on who is going to act of his or her hatred.

I do understand where you are coming from.

Thanks

I feel that most Americans are unable to understand the depth of the feelings these people have. As a friend who was raised as a Maronite Christian in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon once told me, "You Americans just don't know how to hate".

These people seem to have no way to resolve a conflict short of a never ending blood feud.

I don't know if this is a hallmark of a tribal culture or something else. However, until human beings learn to resolve these, there isn't going to be any peace or freedom from terrorist attacks.

Don, is correct! These people hate to the very bottom of their souls and this is nothing new. They have been doing things this way since the inception of the Islamic faith.
For a christian, it is virtually impossible to understand their way of thinking. If a muslim man hates your family, then his grandchildren are going to hate your family also.
Blood feuds are a way of life with them.

You shall be a wild ass of a man,
and a great nation.

God blesses Ishmael.

To Mr. Ebbarn:

It is, indeed, impossible to submit a person guilty only of hating to a jury trial, however, we have many already designated haters imprisoned at GTMO where they can be converted to Christianity before we let them go--however long that may take.

Punishment does not benefit these haters, it only makes them hate to a deeper and greater degree, and it may be just the trigger to turn them into full-blown terrorists.

To Don and the Native American:

The depth of my Lebanese friend's hatred years ago astonished me to no end. I was more horrified each day we talked. These people cannot be reasoned with or talked out of their hatred--I tried and I'm not a bad persuader. Short of experiencing a deep, thoroughgoing Christian conversion that wipes the "hate slate" clean for a new start with God's agape love (Luke 9:23), there is no answer to the problem and never has been nor ever will be. That is the stark reality, pure and simple.

And that is why I contend that we must engage in a governmental full court press to promote genuine biblical Christianity among these people because that is the only religion powerful enough in its pure, biblical form to meet their need for profound transformation and give them the valid hope of heaven that they so desire.

I know this idea will go over like a lead balloon among godless liberals in congress, and it is certainly not, as you can plainly see, in the least politically correct, but it is the only thing that has even the slightest chance of changing these people for the better in the long term.

The heart of this entire issue is that we are in a war between conflicting world views that are essentially based on religious principles, whether we recognize that fundamental fact or not. And nothing is more clear than that we cannot win this war at the level of conventional military firepower. Unless we have the manly courage to adopt a strong, militantly religious stance as the heart of our battle plan, this conflict will last for hundreds of years or even forever. No one in the history of the world has ever defeated a religion by killing people. Nero couldn't do it. MouseToung couldn't do it. Even Suleyman (called the Magnificent) couldn't do it. And we can't do it either though we may foolishly never give up trying.

It's time for Georgie and the boys on the Hill to get their heads screwed on straight about this totally different and strangest of all wars. They must come up with a great plan, covert or otherwise, to use all the means at our national disposal to promote in-depth, transformational Christianity among radical Muslims the world over.

I thought this idea would never get past the governmental troglodytes when it first entered my mind in a blinding flash, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes, and the more sense it makes, the more I see it can work--perhaps not yet, but eventually when the national pain is great enough. In a word, there is hope and this is it.

Even the least intelligent among us must surely agree that it is better by far to convert Islamics to a peace loving religion (using well trained former Islamics who are now Christian evangelists) than to exterminate them one by bloody one. And, because we are reactive rather than proactive, this extermination process will only happen after they have killed hundreds of thousands or even millions of us with poison gas, lethal germs/viruses and atomic satchel bombs. See the show "24" on Fox TV for a likely general scenario of our future...and probably not that far in the future at that.

folks. Let's get real here. If we start doing reparations, we are going to open a flood gate the likes of which we have never seen. The courts will be clogged with frivolous lawsuits. The wheels of justice will grind even slower. It can't be done. You can admit a mistake, but, if you start going down that slippery slope, you better be ready. This is not a racist remark, it is a factual remark. In Missouri, a member of the Missouri House has asked for Missouri to apologize for slavery. How do you apologize? And the head of the NAACP in St. Louis wants Scholarships for decendants of slaves. How do you determine that? It is a huge ball of chaos. I don't see a reason for reparations in the large sense. I see a need to help, but, what is enough? I don't think anyone can answer that question.

ColinCody

People who are caged are highly unlikely to convert to Christianity. We can't save anyone. Only Christ can do that and the decision on the part of the convert has to be freewill.

Whatever conversions there might be most likely would only be a con for the purposes of preferences or getting out.

The Church is totally failing to present the Gospel to the free citizens of the United States. I hardly see how placing preferential efforts on the Gitmo prisoners would serve to build Christ's Kingdom effectively. We are letting our own citizens go to Hell in a hand basket.

Not a serious question. Just cut 'em up and feed 'em to the sharks swimming in GITMO bay....

Just watch the DVD "Road to Guantanamo" and see if the blood thirsty cool their jets. It's an eye-opening look at how these 'worst of the worst' get to GTMO. Startling to say the least.

Let's send a large contigent of NYU Attorneys to the battlefield, and have all the troops read a variation of Miranda before they open fire on these 16 th century minded killers.
Each and every enemy combatant can have their own courtroom, gaggle of starry eyed leftist supporters that want to "rehabilitate" these poor misguided souls and a never ending supply of appellate courts.
Let me say this, these Islamic extremists want you, me and everyone else in this country DEAD. They are a patient and cunning enemy that abosolutely positively will not stop. They cannot be stopped by kind words and counseling. Thank goodness there are those in the world that recognize true evil and are willing to fight. There are a large number of folks in this world that dont have to stomach to realize that some people just need to be killed or caged. Wake up. The enemy is knocking. Part of their stragedy is playing to the sympathy of those too weak to fight the good fight. Grass eaters, stand aside and let the warriors do what needs to be done, lest your grandchildren will be turned into Islamic slaves. Its a a real threat, and a stated goal of these extremists. You cant talk to a barbaric idealist, get over it.

Reparations to these people are the right thing to do, however it will never happen. The current administration like many before it, are more interested in aligning itself with right wing extremists bent on promoting their own narrow world view. Christian extremist are no better than Muslim extremists and would probably be doing the same thing they were if the economic systems were reversed. It's about econimics folks, not religion. Horrible atrocities have been committed in the past by many "religious" factions, and they always seem to find support in their interpretations of their respective "holy" texts. Sad but true. Extremism is born out of misinformation, poverty, and lack of education.

Religious zealots, right wing "conservative" wing-nuts and war mongerers will always find a reason to annihalate each other, whether they are Muslum, Christian, or belong to any other belief system that tolerates and exploits the extremists.
Yes there are bad people who want to destroy us. You have to ask yourself why? Children are not born hating, it is taught.

Wow, Mr. Ebbarn and Mr. Cody are spreadiung the gospel according to De Sade here, also, eh?

So gentlemen, after having plucked some university student from his home, whose only "crime" is disagreeing with the invading forces killing his loved ones for oil, sending him to Guantanamo for a bit of recreational waterboarding, for a few years, without the benefit of the "due process" which the invading forces espouse so loudly, do you really think he would be in a good mood?

Of course this has turned him even more adamantly opposed to the invaders, but what do you propose to do after it has been shown that you were wrong? If he cannot be sent back home, where do you send him?

According to your logic, "kill him, so he can't go back to join the opposition". Well then we will have illegally kidnapped, tortured, and finally murdered an innocent man, for the sake of Bushco's oil grab.

Ain't America great?

And all this from self-professed "Christians"...

Briany Whiny
Sits on his hiny,
Till it is shiny.
Briany whiny's hiny's shiny.

Briany Whiny:

You are a foreigner.

You are not "of the people".

You lack knowledge of United States democracy.

You lack knowledge in United States economics.

You lack knowledge in United States politics.

You lack knowledge in United States history.

You lack knowledge in United States sociology.

You are an outsider.

You have no rightful say. You can't vote. Voters have say.

It is apparent you have very serious problems.

You have a serious mental disorder driving your compulsiveness.

Take your socialist ideas and devote them to correcting the problem nation from which you exist. There is no greater place to live other in the United States of America. If you are so smart, then devote your time to your sub-standard country. It needs it more than the United States does.

Briany Whiny:

I nailed you later more than once related to the fact you have no concern of the murder, rape, and mutilation in mass of women and young girls. Because of where the atrocities were coming from you would not condemn these people.

Pervert; You are really a sick puppy.