Shingo:

As a matter of fact, a total of ten German saboteurs were caught by the FBI; BEFORE Germany declared war on the US. When Roosevelt was told, he determined that a civilian trial would not guarantee the death penalty nor the secrecy he wanted to maintain about the case. So FDR sent the spies to a military tribunal presided over by seven generals. Eight of the ten were electrocuted (sorry, not hanged) in Washington, DC. The other two were given life sentences because they had rolled on their buddies.

“[The German POWs] were recognized as POW’s and afforded rights as POW’s that detainees at Gitmo are denied.”

Preciely wrong. Gitmo detainees are afforded the complete Geneva Convention protocols. They get three squares, they get to pray (remember the trouble our guys got in for “defiling” one of their Korans?), they get exercise, medical treatment, etc. But no part of the Convention says we have to be pleasant or treat them like BFFs.

And the kicker is that, under the Conventions, the US doesn’t have to afford them any of these rights, since they were non-uniformed, non-military actors and the Conventions do not apply to them.

“There’s no point denying that the reason the US government chose Gitmo.”

The reason the US chose Gitmo is because we no longer have leaders with the spine of Franklin Roosevelt. (Don’t forget, we weren’t even at war with Germany yet, and I doubt FDR gathered a focus group or consulted a Zogby Poll to assess the popularity of his decison beforehand.) We’re a bunch of namby pamby pussies in thrall to the ACLU when it comes to dealing with people who want to kill us.

rico, suave, October 28 at 12:44 am Link to this comment

“During WWII the US maintained POW camps along the East coast. Did German soldiers have rights under our constitution?”

No, but they were recognized as POW’s and afforded rights as POW’s that detainees at Gitmo are denied.  There’s no point denying that the reason the US government chose Gitmo is to make sure the detainees were hidden in a legal black hole where the US Justice System could not reach them.

“A handful of Germans were captured on Long Island, having sneaked ashore from a Uboat. Four were summarily hanged.”

I am not familiar with the incident, but were they or were they not given a trial?

Shingo:

During WWII the US maintained POW camps along the East coast. Did German soldiers have rights under our constitution? A handful of Germans were captured on Long Island, having sneaked ashore from a Uboat. Four were summarily hanged. Were they tried under the protection of our Constitution?

And what about my other questions?

By rico, suave, October 28 at 12:21 am Link to this comment

rico:

“Gitmo is as much US territory as the grounds of any US Embassy”

That’s not what the Bush Administration argued, which is why they moved the detainees to Gitmo - so that they could deny them due process and habeas corpus.

“The court reversed the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which had held that the Supreme Court’s 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager barred Guantanamo detainees from bringing actions challenging their detentions in U.S. courts because they were foreign nationals outside U.S. sovereign territory.”

http://www.cdi.org/news/law/gtmo-sct-decision.cfm

Shingo:

Gitmo is as much US territory as the grounds of any US Embassy.

Shingo:

What factors? And here’s another one- Do US military personnel have rights under the US Constitution?

And here’s another one- Do the Geneva Conventions apply to extra-national, non-uniformed combatants, like Al Qaeda?

And here’s another one- Should Obama be quaking in his boots because the New York Times condemns our detainee policy?

By rico, suave, October 27 at 11:50 pm Link to this comment.

Ric,

Let me ask again: “Is everyone on the planet who comes in contact with an agency of the US government guaranteed the protection of OUR constitution?”

That depends on many factors Ric.

1.  All of those who ended up in Gitmo were rendered there, so didn’t ask to be sent to Gitmo.  They are not aliens seeking refuge.

2.  Most of those who ended up in Gitmo were innocent and scooped up in clumsy drag net operations.

3.  The US government can’t decide if Gitmo is US territory or not.

4. Most of the rights under the Constitution mirror those on the Geneva Conventions.
3.

Shingo:

I’m asking about the applicability of the Constitution of the United States, not the Geneva COnventions or whether or not everybody has human rights. We agree about those things.

Let me ask again: “Is everyone on the planet who comes in contact with an agency of the US government guaranteed the protection of OUR constitution?”

By rico, suave, October 27 at 11:44 am Link to this comment

“Absolutely not, but you didn’t answer my question.”

Let me more explicit.  All human beings are entitled under the Geneva Conventions on Human rights, to human treatment.

Shingo:

Absolutely not, but you didn’t answer my question.

By rico, suave, October 26 at 9:22 pm Link to this comment

“Is everyone on the planet who comes in contact with an agency of the US government guaranteed the protection of our constitution? Just asking.”

Do you have a problem with upholding human rights Rico?

Just asking.

To say nothing of the fact that habeas corpus has not yet been re-established, having been “taken out” by Bush.  We’re stuck on “Idle” and running out of gas in more ways than one.

Rico, let’s get this in perspective. As much as we’d like to believe it, I don’t
think any among us is guaranteed said protection; those who can afford it
notwithstanding… e.g:

BY WW EDITORIAL STAFF | 503-243-2122
[October 20th, 2010]
http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3650/14671/?SOURCE=RSS

More than four years after James Chasse Jr. died in Portland police custody on
Sept. 17, 2006, we’re finally learning all the unpleasant facts about what police
did.

No thanks to this week’s Rogue, the Portland City Attorney’s Office, which
denied the public and Chasse’s family the chance to learn in a timely way what
caused the death of a 42-year-old schizophrenic man who, by most accounts,
was doing nothing wrong when police arrested him.

For four long years, city attorneys dragged their feet while attorneys for the
Chasse family sought documents in their lawsuit against the city and the
individual cops who arrested Chasse. Even after the city agreed in May to settle
for a record $1.6 million, the city continued its attempts to limit what was
released from a federal judge’s protective order.

When Chasse family attorney Tom Steenson filed his lawsuit in February 2007
against the city, Multnomah County and the American Medical Response
ambulance company, the city immediately began its efforts to curtail which
documents were handed over and which were released to the public.

The city wanted to hide everything from training records to past complaints
against individual officers. And before you think it was all a good-faith effort to
protect the taxpayers from a huge payout, consider this: Multnomah County,
which was also a defendant in the lawsuit, gave up almost all of its records
without a fight long before it settled its end of the lawsuit in July 2009 for
$925,000, Steenson says.

Even after the city settled with the Chasse family in May, city lawyers continued
to wrangle with Steenson over which documents would be released from U.S.
District Judge Dennis Hubel’s protective order. Some documents still remain
secret, including some training records and complaints. But the city finally
handed over much of its documentation in August—nearly four years after
Chasse died.

It’s not the first time the City Attorney’s Office has been accused of covering for
the cops. Earlier this month, The Oregonian reported that the City Attorney’s
Office had kept for six years plaques that a police captain erected in a public
park honoring Nazi soldiers (for more on that story, turn to page 17).

On Oct. 18, Steenson and co-counsel Tom Schneiger held a press conference
laying out their conclusion from the newly released Chasse documents (see
wweek.com/chasse_coverup). They believe the documents show a pattern that
the officers covered up Chasse’s injuries on the day of his arrest in order to
prevent him from being hospitalized, where his injuries would be documented.

“If there hadn’t been a cover-up by police,” Steenson said, “James Chasse
would be alive today.”

But as a result of delays by the City Attorney’s Office, those revelations come
long after most public anger over Chasse’s death has subsided. Officer Chris
Humphreys and Sgt. Kyle Nice, the two cops most directly responsible, received
a mere two weeks’ unpaid leave as discipline.

“I believe that we were acting appropriately in defending the city in the
litigation,” says City Attorney Linda Meng.

On the contrary, we think Meng and other city lawyers should remember that
sometimes, the city’s best interest is in telling us the facts instead of hiding
them.

Is everyone on the planet who comes in contact with an agency of the US government guaranteed the protection of our constitution? Just asking.

RE: ...compared to most of its competition (and other local papers), it is
most definitely left-of-center.

So what, the Left-vs-Right Distraction is the best one going and the NYTs is one of the
biggest limited hangouts going

Why did they never run with this potentially explosive story?

Cia Visas For Patsies

J. Michael Springmann, formerly chief of the visa section at the U.S. Consulate
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has testified that he rejected hundreds of suspicious
visa applications by Saudi Aabian men similar to those named as the 9/11
HijackersPatsies when we was head of the consular section of the US embassy
in Jeddah, but C.I.A. officers repeatedly overruled him and ordered the visas to
be issued.

Springmann protested to the State Department, the Office of Diplomatic
Security, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and congressional committees, but
was told to shut up. He later realized that this was a CIA operation, and wrote
about it in the Spring 1997 issue of the journal Unclassified.
After 9/11, Springmann observed that 15 of the 19 Hijackers Patsies got their
visas from the very same CIA controlled consulate in Jeddah

article here includes links to copies of the CIA authorized visa applications
http://911review.org/Wiki/CiaVisasForPatsies.shtml

Breaking news 12/12/01
US News and World Report

The easy path to the United States for three of the 9/11 hijackers
By Edward T. Pound

Three of the hijackers in the September 11 terrorist attacks obtained visas in
Saudi Arabia through a brand-new program designed to make it easier for
qualified visa applicants to visit the United States, an American government
official said tonight.
more here
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/terror/articles/visa011212.htm

2 things to never forget:

1. “Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state.” - James Jesus
Angelton - Director of CIA Counter Intelligence (1954-74)

2. “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the
major media.” - William Colby - Director of the CIA (1973-76)

David:

“Why does the NYT even bother any more?  Their cover has been blown so wide open so many times now.  It took me years to realise it was even “supposed” to be a liberal paper.”

I’m not sure you and I are reading the same paper.  I have been reading the NYT cover to cover for over 20 years.  In that time, it has ALWAYS been MORE liberal than not.  Yes, it has gone through periods of moving more to the center (though NEVER to the right), and it is shamelessly pro-Israel (though it has actually had an increasing number of more even-handed articles re the Israel-Palestinian situation, and has been patricularly critical of continued Isarael settlements).  And, yes, it contributed to the run-up to both the Afghan and Iraqi wars.

But as “large” as thope things may loom re perception, the reality is that both the editorial board and the op-ed columnists are mostly left-of-center.  For example, the editorial board was critical of the nominations of Thomas, Roberts and Alito to SCOTUS (it supported Scalia, but even had some reservations about him as well).  And until perhaps ten years ago, it only had a single conservative columnist (William Safire).  And although it now has two (David Brooks, Ross Douthat), both are actually more Libertarian than straight-line conservative.  And I cannot fathom how you do not see its liberalism in the group of Frank Rich, Tom Friedman, Bob Herbert, Charles Blow, Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd.

Sadly, you seem to regurgitate the perception of the right rather than the reality of the paper itself.  No, it is not quite the liberal bastion it used to be.  But compared to most of its competition (and other local papers), it is most definitely left-of-center.

Peace.

Why does the NYT even bother any more?  Their cover has been blown so wide open so many times now.  It took me years to realise it was even “supposed” to be a liberal paper.

These days, “It can be hard to distinguish between the Bush administration and the Obama administration when it comes to detainee policy,” laments The New York Times.
=====================================================
To the New York lamentation, I would add:

1. The so-called surge in Afghanistan, resulting in a surge of killing on both sides.

2. The drone attacks in Pakistan, constantly killing increasing numbers of civilians.

3. The watered-down so-called health reform bill, which I am still waiting to see how it is any different from what we had before.

4. The unconditional continued support for the wrongs and terrorism of the Zionist entity.

5. The continued deterioration of American economic woes, and more importantly continued American loss of its moral compass.

As I said it many times before, “The more things change the more they stay the same if even they don’t get worse.”

In the NY editorial is found ...Sami Omar Hussayen, who was tried for
supporting an Islamic group that the government said “sought to recruit others to
engage in acts of violence and terrorism. A jury acquitted Mr. Hussayen on some
charges and didn’t reach a verdict on others…

If there really was a “recruiting” operation in action, rest assured that it was being
run by a top-secret contingent answerable only to one, maybe two black-
ops/psy-ops specialists in some sort of highly compartmentalized counter-
insurgency CIA unit… basically, a Patsy School.

Funny I have a lyric from an old ‘Who” song running through my head, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”. Maybe not actually, but in too many areas way too close or even worse like this.

The truly galling aspect of all this, federal courts uphold the unconstitutional
bullshit run on America by the Executive Branch of our government.