Wednesday, June 18, 2014

GOPers Seem to Have Lost Sight of What Justice Means

GOP Gitmo Detainee Solution: Stay Forever and Rot Without Justice

GOP Sense of Justice

First the facts on civil trials vs. military tribunals — stark evidence (in RED):

  • 403 individuals have been tried and convicted of terror-related charges in 37 different states and most are serving life sentences.
  • 779: Total number of detainees who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay facility since September 11, 2001 attacks.
  • 600: Of the 779 detainees, roughly 600 were released without charges, many after being detained for years.
  • 155: Total number of detainees remaining at Guantanamo.
  • 76:  Number of the 155 detainees who the US has approved for transfer to home or third countries but remain at Guantanamo with no place to go.
  • 15:  Number under age 18 who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo
  • 9:  Number of Guantanamo detainees who died while in custody, six by suspected suicide.
  • 7:  Number of those convicted in the military commissions after trial or plea bargain.
  • 6:  Of the 155 detainees that remain at Guantanamo only six, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, and the September 11, 2001 co-defendants face any formal charges. 
Note:  Also there are a lot of confusion and a disconnect about the exact number of detainees released and “returned to the battlefield.” The numbers all over the place -- take look here.

Now the post for today from here:

Red Iraq for all the past bloodshed. Today, red hands for Dark Dick

A growing number of GOPers pretend to be legal experts, but they have not one ounce of legal training, let alone any common sense, or sense of justice. The story is from here:

The military commissions at Gitmo are not simply an alternate legal system for any Muslim accused of terrorism. Jack Goldsmith, a former Bush-era Justice Department official, wrote that Khattala isn’t covered by the 2009 military commissions act, which some of the lawmakers demanding Khattala be tried by military commission helped write.

“There are other complications here, but my first take is that the critics of the Obama administration’s choice of civilian court to incapacitate Abu Khattala don’t have a legal leg to stand on,” Goldsmith wrote.

John Bellinger, former State Department legal adviser under Bush, agreed with Goldsmith that military commissions “are not necessary or appropriate for prosecutions of terror suspects who — like Ahmed Abu Khattala — have clearly violated federal criminal laws and who are captured after a lengthy criminal investigation and careful collection of evidence by the FBI.”

Nor are Republican lawmakers unaware that the suspects in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi are not covered by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, crafted to justify the use of lethal force and indefinite detention against suspected members of al-Qaeda and their allies.

The GOP goal seems to be just make up legal rules as they go along bitching and moaning and trying to figure out another way to harm President Obama.

I say: Based on the evidence as shown above, try Abu-Khattala in NYC or DC. Find him guilty and then sentence him to life plus 50. Even consider maximum hard labor served only piss and punk (Marine slang for bread and water while in confinement in a Brig). How's that?

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