Massive Gitmo hunger strike reaches past 11th week, over half the detainees.

ID2006

ID2006

CAGiversary!
Edit: A Guantanamo Hunger Strike Chart

4/26 - Now up to 97 prisoners, 5 hospitalized.

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4/22 - Half Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike
Eighty-four of the 166 prisoners held at the US-run Guantanamo Bay facility are now on hunger strike, US military officials have said.
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4/15 - Obama, Guantánamo, and the enduring national shame - A related article by Glenn Greenwald.


4/14 - Gitmo Is Killing Me - An op-ed by one of the hunger strike inmates.
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, told this story, through an Arabic interpreter, to his lawyers at the legal charity Reprieve in an unclassified telephone call.
Click to expand...


It would be so shameful if this ends in vain. What more can these prisoners do to protest their highly dubious fate?

It's terrible, and should be a black mark on Obama's legacy, but will probably be whitewashed to obliteration..
 
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[quote name='perdition(troy']Let them starve themselves to death.[/QUOTE]
Not everyone at Gitmo is a terrorist, commited crimes, and/or otherwise involved with terrorism. HTH
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']I said nothing about their crimes.[/QUOTE]

So your point about allowing them to starve is?
 
Point is what does it prove or accomplish? It's like north korea waiving its dick around hoping at some point they get another foreign aid food package for the 100th time. There is no reason to give in to anything. Let them starve if that is their choice.
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Point is what does it prove or accomplish? It's like north korea waiving its dick around hoping at some point they get another foreign aid food package for the 100th time. There is no reason to give in to anything. Let them starve if that is their choice.[/QUOTE]

The point is that we're treating innocent people like shit because we want to. This is just their only way of crying for help.
 
Clearly they are all innocent.

There are only 180~ prisoners left. From what I remember about the wiki leaks papers is that most of the ones left were high priority prisoners.
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Clearly they are all innocent.

There are only 180~ prisoners left. From what I remember about the wiki leaks papers is that most of the ones left were high priority prisoners.[/QUOTE]

Who said anything about all of them? I said people, implying a minimum of 2. If you don't think that at least 2 people are innocent in Gitmo (and known to be innocent), then you're off your rocker.
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']It would surprise me if it was only 2. I would think it would be more along the lines of 5-10%.[/QUOTE]

So how can you think it's OK to let innocent people starve to death because we're torturing them?
 
If you're think we're not torturing them you're in denial. If we're not torturing them then we're just leaving them in because the U.S. fucked up in detaining them. You see, if we admitted that we jailed innocent people that would mean the sky would fall because this country, i.e. God, was found to be in error. /sarcasm
But seriously, finding that out would mean the prisoners would be able to sue this country for a bundle given their treatment and it would be deeply humiliating to some of the politicians(you'll note I don't say country) of the United States. Imagine Obama or George Bush losing face because they fucked up in the detentions(God forbid).
I also imagine they would be perfectly willing to let go if some prisoners sign one of those things that wrongly jailed prisoners have to sign here if they want to get out early after the mistake is found. You know the piece of paperwork I'm talking about, right? It's the one that says you agree not to sue the assholes who fucked up and left you in prison for half your life.
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Because A) we aren't torturing them B) it's there choice to eat or make a statement.[/QUOTE]

OK, let's say we aren't torturing them. We're still A) holding innocent people and B) denying them rights guaranteed by our constitution.
 
But Obama being a consitutional lawyer should surely respect the Constitution huh?

Yup no reason for people to hate America, everyone should be forgiving of what America has done to them in the past, after all we have the moral authority..
 
[quote name='Access_Denied']OK, let's say we aren't torturing them. We're still A) holding innocent people and B) denying them rights guaranteed by our constitution.[/QUOTE]

Rights guaranteed to us citizens. If we have any left in there you are right they should be moved.
 
Benjamin Franklin:

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved


Now you know why this guy will NEVER EVER be president.. I'm surprise our country still print bills with his face on it..
 
[quote name='Finger_Shocker']
Now you know why this guy will NEVER EVER be president.. I'm surprise our country still print bills with his face on it..[/QUOTE]

Ya that and he is dead
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Rights guaranteed to us citizens. If we have any left in there you are right they should be moved.[/QUOTE]

Actually, most of the constitutional rights are guaranteed to all humans, not just US citizens. The only ones that apply specifically to citizens are ones like voting rights and the right to hold office.

EDIT: Specifically, the fifth and sixth amendments apply to all people, not just citizens.
 
[quote name='perdition(troy']Rights guaranteed to us citizens. If we have any left in there you are right they should be moved.[/QUOTE]

Why do you think things like habeas corpus are only limited to US citizens?
 
[quote name='Obama']We're going to close Guantanamo. And we're going to restore habeas corpus. We're going to lead by example—not just by word but by deed. That's our vision for the future.[/quote]

Oh, to be so innocent as to have believed a politician...
 
Spare us the faux concern. It's a winner issue for the GOP. They can do nothing to close it AND bitch about Obama not keeping promises.

yea, I'm pissed it's still open. But Don't act like he has done nothing. Congress lost it will to do anything about where to put the prisoners and enacted legislation to prevent it.

and yes, blah blah he had a friendly congress for 2 years, blah blah
 
That's not the point, even though he wanted to close it he would've continued the policy of indefinite detention, which is the main objection to Gitmo.
 
What he said.

Obama has signed legislation that has continued the policies of the Bush administration that does not nice things like denies legal council and trials for detainees. In fact, some of what the Obama administration has put in place is beyond what the Bush administration did.

As for "faux concern" - for some of us, it isn't. I know you'll find this hard to believe, but some of us where against the Iraq war and some of us where against the Afghanistan war. Even some of us are wholly opposed to secret detention centers where we can hold people outside of the US so we don't have to treat them according to US law.
 
I am not making any claims, but don't you find it strange that Obama ran an the popular idea of closing guantanomo back in 2008.

Then he became President and decided not to.

Maybe it is just the optimistic side of me, and it obviously isn't good enough to hold people, but maybe...just maybe there is a reason he has kept it open that we don't know about. Maybe even a good one.
 
What's the good reason for "secret" military prisons outside of the US so that the US doesn't have to treat the prisoners with dignity and respect?
 
[quote name='UncleBob']What's the good reason for "secret" military prisons outside of the US so that the US doesn't have to treat the prisoners with dignity and respect?[/QUOTE]

Ask the guy with all of the information.

Even if there isn't a good reason, something changed his tune about it. I would think that when you obtain that Office, you get a wealth of information you didn't have when you were campaigning.

Of course he could have blatently lied about wanting to close it. I guess there's a good chance of that.
 
He's the guy who like bombing people with unmanned drones.

You'll forgive me if I don't put a lot of trust in his decision making abilities.
 
[quote name='usickenme']Spare us the faux concern. It's a winner issue for the GOP. They can do nothing to close it AND bitch about Obama not keeping promises.
[/QUOTE]What is it like living in a world where Obama did not sign the NDAA that one time? I want to go to there.
 
First of all GITMO is a POW camp no matter how much spin you like to put on it....

We the USA has kept POWs longer then any other nation that capture our soldiers during times of war.
 
[quote name='usickenme']Spare us the faux concern. It's a winner issue for the GOP.[/QUOTE]

Gonna keep this quote handy when it comes to the inevitable Syria thread.
 
[quote name='Spokker']Why would Obama keep innocent people in jail?[/QUOTE]

Because he's a fascist masquerading as a democratically-elected politician, cut from the same cloth as his predecessors.

And to the ignoramus (perdition) who posted crap on letting innocent people starve and rot away in this prison camp, nearly 100 of the remaining have been deemed innocent when Obama was first elected and have been held for no good reason.
Innocent, but still locked-up: Guantanamo prisoners stay behind bars years after being cleared for release

“One of the greatest injustices at Guantánamo is that, of the 169 prisoners still held, over half — 87 in total — were cleared for release by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force,” writes Worthington. That task force, he says, was established at the dawn of the Obama administration and has pulled minds from varying intelligence agencies and government departments to determine the fate of the prisoners. Even after being let off the hook, however, dozens of those detainees have been subjected to continuous imprisonment at the military jail.

Former State Department Official: Team Bush Knew Many at Gitmo Were Innocent

Retired Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served the Bush Administration as a senior official in the State Department with access to classified documents and the most senior White House officials, was willing to testify, and formally declared under penalty of perjury, that many of the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay were taken into custody "without regard for whether they were truly enemy combatants, or in fact whether many of them were enemies at all."

And related to this and conveniently unreported by the mainstream...
Bipartisan Report Concludes There's No Doubt U.S. Tortured, Violated Law

The assessment was put together by the Constitution Project, and was lead by a Democrat and a Republican--both of them former members of Congress. The 577 page report states that torture has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” It also concludes that torture does not provide reliable intelligence. The Constitution Project publication calls on Guantanamo Bay to be closed by 2014, and says that the nation's highest officials bear responsibility for the use of torture.
 
^This is not to counter your points but did he not just go on TV today and say we need to shut it down?

"The notion that we're going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man's land in perpetuity-even at a time when we've wound down the war in Iraq, we're winding down the war in Afghanistan, we're having success defeating al Qaeda, we've kept the pressure up on all these transnational networks, when we've transfsferred detention authority in Afghanistan- the idea that we would still maintain, forever, a group of individuals who have not been tried, that's contrary to who we are, it's contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop."
 
I saw that earlier today. Looked like he wasn't expecting it to be brought up.

Anyway, Obama really seems more concerned about the dismal image that Gitmo projects (on his legacy) than he is about the people suffering inside and the lack of due process for each of them. To him, it's probably an embarrassment if anything. Some of his plans in the past have been to move these people to a brand new Gitmo, essentially.

And it's not like he's powerless to do anything, either.

Also, this.

Edit: And, this.
Links courtesy of Glenn Greenwald.
 
[quote name='cancerman1120']^This is not to counter your points but did he not just go on TV today and say we need to shut it down?

"The notion that we're going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man's land in perpetuity-even at a time when we've wound down the war in Iraq, we're winding down the war in Afghanistan, we're having success defeating al Qaeda, we've kept the pressure up on all these transnational networks, when we've transfsferred detention authority in Afghanistan- the idea that we would still maintain, forever, a group of individuals who have not been tried, that's contrary to who we are, it's contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop."[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I posted that yesterday so looks like he responded to my pressure! LOL. Well, I guess the hunger strike is working contrary to what some idiot said early on in the thread. Good that Obama feels the pressure to comment. Now, will this go the same way when he said similar things at the start of his presidency? I surely hope not.
 
[quote name='ID2006']I saw that earlier today. Looked like he wasn't expecting it to be brought up.

Anyway, Obama really seems more concerned about the dismal image that Gitmo projects (on his legacy) than he is about the people suffering inside and the lack of due process for each of them. To him, it's probably an embarrassment if anything. Some of his plans in the past have been to move these people to a brand new Gitmo, essentially.

And it's not like he's powerless to do anything, either.

Also, this.

Edit: And, this.
Links courtesy of Glenn Greenwald.[/QUOTE]

Very good links. Thanks!
 
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