"Thank you George Bush. The country will be cleaning up after your messes for at least 10-20 years. At least."

Thank you Pres. Bush for ZERO attacks on America after 9/11.

And here's what we can expect from Barak Hussein Obama closing Gitmo without even talking to his Nat Security advisors:

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2009/01/nefa_foundation_video_of_forme.php

" In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001. He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.

The question Mr. Obama should have asked right after the inaugural parade was: What will happen after we capture the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah? Instead, he took action without a meeting of his full national security staff, and without a legal review of all the policy options available to meet the threats facing our country.

What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123318955345726797.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

If you want the jihadi scum freed so badly, why don't you call for them to be given jobs in YOUR kids school.

Bottom line: Gitmo is a shit sandwich. There is no really good way to deal with it, but it has to be ended. Iraq war is a similar situation.

Thank you George Bush. The country will be cleaning up after your messes for at least 10-20 years. At least.

No true 9/11 Family would let this shit go unnoticed. OBAMA, WE'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU!

No true 9/11 Family would let this shit go unnoticed. OBAMA, WE'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU!

Torture, besides being unconstitutional, is usually unsuccessful. You can beat or waterboard or rip out fingernails and at one point the victim will tell you anything you want to hear.

There's nothing like a reactionary family member linked to an over-politicized news story to bring the US into Nazi-like torture practices.

Who were they whining at when we needed the US to be less dependent on middle-eastern oil so we can close military bases in nut-case-holy-land-central and get al-Qaeda off our backs? Oh I forgot, the bereaved only want to create *more* death and depravity. I must have forgotten that when my dad died; I missed the chance to stab a baby or something.

#21- Nazi-like? Really?

Didn't know we were into gassing folks or putting them in ovens in Gitmo.

Thanks for the heads up, though.

Edge,

Not Nazi-like. The same as the Nazis.

Forcing people to stand up for hours, deprived of sleep is torture (check out the movie "Stalag 17").

Waterboarding is torture.

In fact, the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" is a translation of the german "Verschärfte Vernehmung" - a term invented by the Gestapo. (the memo is at the link below).

Quite a few Nazis were hanged or sentenced to long prison terms for doing these things.

Speaking of "Stalag 17", which is one of my favorite movies, I now get ashamed watching the scene where the British flyer is forced to stand for hours on end by the POW camp commander.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html

And here is a sound clip of John Yoo, formerly of the Office of Legal Counsel, stating the president of the United States has the authority to crush the testicles of the child of a detainee, if the president "thinks he needs to do that".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt1-eWU2Ii0

Are you jaded against America so much that you really think the President (any President) would order a child's balls to be crushed just because he could? Just because a college professor asked a shocking question does not mean there's ever been a Presidential conversation about doing such a thing.

Today New York is still standing and the United States has not experienced an attack in 7 1/2 years. There is no way to prove that intelligence gained at Guantanamo had any hand in making that happen, but chances are it did.

>Are you jaded against America so much that you really >think the President (any President) would order a >child's balls to be crushed just because he could?

So you want the protection against that happening to be that the president is a nice guy?

Hey - why have the Magna Carta - King John is a nice guy. Why have a Bill of Rights, why have a Constitution? We should just trust the government to do the right thing -they'd never arrest someone unless they were guilty, right?

So I guess people like Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and the rest of the Founding Fathers were similarly "jaded".

>There is no way to prove that intelligence gained at >Guantanamo had any hand in making that happen, but >chances are it did.

Congratulations, that is logic worthy of Peter Griffin.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Ben Franklin

It's not that the president is gonna say "crush that kids balls" it's the fact that his administration has authorized such behavior so that anyone down on the totem pole thinks they have highest level approval to do so. And no, I doubt, though it's possible, that anyone from our great and virtuous land would "would order a child's balls to be crushed just because he could?" That's a straw man argument. No, in the torturers mind he would be thinking that he was doing it for a higher purpose. Thats the tortured logic. Do some more research- this book for one:

How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq

Also, by your tortured logic the fact that Clinton kept us safe after the 1st trade center bombing without torture then that means that we don't need torture, right?

I didn't think any U.S. President would defy the Geneva convention, but there you go.

And "chances are that it did?" Are you really formulating an opinion about something as significant as the torture of suspects on the basis of a rationale for which you have no proof?

you know that mr burke voted for mccain and is still salty over the fact that obama won.

Michael Burke - shut the fuck up. You are not the only person in the world who has lost a loved one, yet you somehow think that it's OK for you to call for thhe constitution to be abolished? Just shut up.

Sing Sing or Gitmo. If I were a terrorist caught in a theatre of war, I would rather be tortured at Gitmo than ass-raped by Big Daddy at Sing Sing or any other federal prison.

Yeah, as Stephen Colbert said, "What business does the Constitution have telling the president what he can and can't do?"

AngryGod is exactly right. Gitmo's express purpose was that Bush/Cheney/Woo & Co. thought they had found some magic loophole in United States law, where they could do whatever they want, to whomever they want, for as long as they want. A literally lawless zone, where they could practice medieval torture.

Does Mr. Burke realize that Pres. Bush originaly asserted the right to declare even him, an American citizen, on American soil, an "enemy combatant", and dump him there, without any kind of recourse?

The United States put on trial both Japanese commanders, and Confederate soldiers who mistreated their charges.

The Brits, who suffered WTC-type casualties every night for a year, when bombed during WWII, didn't torture their prisoners.

Lastly, torture was designed not to elicit true confessions, just confessions. People who are professional interrogators will tell you that it is not effective.

Try these people (made harder because of Bush's actions), hold them as p.o.w.'s, but Gitmo has become the #1 recruitment poster for Al Queda and has damaged our reputation all over the world. We can't take it back, but we can stop it.

The ultimate irony is that we may not be able to convict some of the terrorists at Gitmo because their confessions were made under torture and thus are not admissible (or reliable).

The acts committed by terrorists are horrendous, but if we meet barbarism with barbarism, how much better than the terrorists are we? As John Adams said, we are a nation of laws and not of men. This country was founded on the Constitution and to throw that away now would mean that the terrorists win in that they have ruined the very foundation of our nation.

One of the first things our new President does is extend the rights of the enemies of our country? As someone who lost a loved one on 9/11, I find this choice disgusting and completely offensive.

Obama's choice of putting politics ahead of security, is leaving himself open for failure. How can we not blame the Obama administration if (when?) a released terrorist kills Americans? Remember Obama, it's your watch now...

AS someone who also lost a loved one and is imminently going to lose another loved one due to the after effects of being on the pile, I'm going to use my qualified voice to say shut up once and for all to all the people who are, as ianmac47 rightly pointed out, using this as a crutch. Those people in Gitmo aren't directly connected to the WTC. We all know who did it. We all know you only want revenge on anyone you can take y our loss out on. There are some of us who are sick of being caught up in your pity party and would like to move on. For those of us who lost someone, you are making it impossible to let the wound heal. And for those of us who are in the process of saying goodbye to someone still you are cheapening the remaining time they have on this earth. Take your complaints elsewhere! We don't care anymore!

Don't use your loss as a crutch. Your opinion is not more valid because you qualified your statement as coming from "someone who lost a loved one on 9/11."