Detainee Rights…They May Actually Get Some
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The War On TerrorismLet me say right now, I like this plan because I think it’s a good compromise on people who are essentially prisoners of war against an idea. I understand the legal quandry that the Bush Administration has faced regarding these people, but they should have come up with an idea like this a lot sooner instead of excusing torture and detainment without end, two idiotic policies that have seriously injured our credibility around the world.
From the Wash Post:
A bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise yesterday that would dramatically alter U.S. policy for treating captured terrorist suspects by granting them a final recourse to the federal courts but stripping them of some key legal rights.The compromise links legislation written by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), which would deny detainees broad access to federal courts, with a new measure authored by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) that would grant detainees the right to appeal the verdict of a military tribunal to a federal appeals court. The deal will come to a vote today, and the authors say they are confident it will pass.
Graham and Levin indicated they would then demand that House and Senate negotiators link their measure with the effort by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to clearly ban torture and abuse of terrorism suspects being held in U.S. facilities.
A bi-partisan agreement on how we should treat our fellow human beings, regardless of what they would do to us.
Now THIS is America that I know and love.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 and is filed under The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 15th, 2005 at 10:26 am
The one thing that I am uncomfortable with is the wording in McCain’s bill. There is no explicit definition of ‘torture’, if you are going to have a bill I really think that it should be very explicit instead of being left up to interpretation.
I also have a little bit of problem with it including “Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatment” and being based on the UN Definition it just says that it includes all other treatement up to just being short of ‘torture’, which could include such simple stuff as calling them names, keeping the light on in a cell at night, playing music constantly, etc.
I think that this is much more restrictive than it should be. With this type of interpretation prisoners can file frivilous ‘complaints’ constantly and tie up our resourses in handling them. Then if they don’t like the verdict they can take it to the Federal Courts and tie it up too.
I think that we need to remember that these people aren’t the common criminal that we have here, they aren’t just shoplifting or writing a bad check. I think that the government needs to have a little more latitude than what this bill will give them.
I know that there is always the possibility of ‘continued power grab’ by officials but we have created special circumstances in the past during times of war only to have them removed after the crisis was over. I believe that we can certainly do it again.
I don’t for a minute believe that we didn’t use coersive techniques during every war that we have ever fought, while not coming to the same level of brutality that others have, I don’t think that we provided a country club setting for them either.
November 15th, 2005 at 11:28 am
The definitions are in the military standards for interrogation already. We’ve stepped outside those in the War on Terrorism. McCain’s amendment closes the loopholes so the Administration can’t violate the Geneva Conventions because they’re defining a detainee as an enemy combatant instead of a POW.
Sorry, but you’re wrong about this. They do not have the same rights as prisoners in the US.
Of course we didn’t “provide them a country club setting.” But we most likely stayed within the rules of military conduct as best we could since there was no official policy from above that said it was okay to use harsher tactics.
That the McCain Amendment has to exist at all should be enough for people to be ashamed our Administration is using “protecting the country” to condone torture and murder.
November 15th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
“I also have a little bit of problem with it including “Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatmentâ€Â? and being based on the UN Definition it just says that it includes all other treatement up to just being short of ‘torture’, which could include such simple stuff as calling them names, keeping the light on in a cell at night, playing music constantly, etc. ”
So you are ok with including this in the bill also? What is acceptable questioning of these prisoners to you? Should we not try to question them at all?
I just think that a lot of this is not torture and I don’t agree with not allowing it to be used to gather important information.
August 6th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Good job.