Gitmo suicides

[ag]

None of these people have been convicted or even indicted for any crimes.  Many of those, once incarcerated there, have been acknowledged by the US government to be innocent of any antiamerican deed or even thought. Whatever legal or expediency argument that may be advanced to justify keeping them there, does not justify gloating over their misfortune.  There is an old Russian saying (late me again be Reagnesque in my propensity to quote these): "never bet against <going to > prison or begging".  This is something that everyone should remember: especially, once the great American tradition of subjecting the accused to trial and allowing him to defend his innocence has been abandoned. 

[ag]

i hope theyll all kill themselves.

Are you confident you yourself will never find yourself in a similar situation, imprisoned without a trial by some government in some country?  You are a self-confident man, I envy you. When was the last time you re-read Kafka?  I suggest you do it again.

[ag]

Since I'm pretty sure I'm never going to be scooped up off the battlefield while shooting at Americans, yes, I'm confident I'll never be in the situation that those terrorists now find themselves.

Since a reasonable argument can be made that your position on this issue is not just un-American, but blatantly and treasonously anti-American, I wouldn't be that self-confident, if I were you . Perhaps, a future government will conclude you are dangerous for some other reason.  Also, don't you think somebody some day could claim he saw you shooting at US soldiers? Doesn't have to be true, you know. Didn't you have any enemies in high school ?

US government has never claimed everyone there was  "scooped off <a> battlefield shooting" at anyone, Americans or Marsians (in fact, it has repeatedly confirmed the opposite) - this is pure and simple your own invention, the thing you choose to believe without ever having been told this by anyone in the know. Since we don't know the identities of those who have committed suicides we don't know why they were where they were. A lot of people who have been released from Guantanamo over the years just happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time, or have made enemies of some of the US informants, etc. Nonetheless, it took years for the interrogators to conclude they never did anything.

It is the logic of any bureaucratic machine: somebody else arrested the guy because he had some reason I have no clue about; if he stays where he is, there is no harm done to me personally, but if I order his release, and it turns out he was dangerous, my career is over.  Remember the story of a poor Nepalese Hindu man who got arrested filming his neighborhood in Queens (he was planning to go home and wanted to show something to his friends back in Nepal). Accidentally, and without any knowledge of the fact, he filmed the local FBI office, and got booked. Within a month FBI concluded he was no danger whatsoever, but it took over a year to have him released (and it would have never happened, if the FBI agent who dealt with this case didn't take it personally that the higher ups were refusing to approve the release of an innocent man). 

Just think of it: tomorrow you go to Toronto and accidentally take a picture of a Mounties' office. Can you be sure that some over-zealous Canadian official does not decide you are a terrorist? That's why we have trials, you know.

[ag]

Let me just make it clear. I am not talking at all about the policy of holding these people in Guantanamo - I don't think this topic is about it.  One might reasonably conclude that this has to be done the way it is done (whether I agree with that is irrelevant here). Nor do I want to make a big issue out of the unfortunate event itself - the US will get a lot more  grief because of it than it deserves. Nor do I want to claim that most inmates there are innocent lambs - it is quite likely they aren't.

But what one has to be cognizant of is the fact that the US Constitution established the due process protections for a reason. You might reasonably conclude that US Constitutional protections do not apply here - but that does not eliminate the original logic that led to their introduction in the US. If you "relax" the due process, you are nearly guaranteed to "scoop off", in the unfortunate language used here, a lot more innocent people than you'd normally do. While you might reasonably conclude that you don't have a choice but to detain these people, a minimal courtesy you owe to them is to treat them as innocent until proven guilty, at least in name.  While there might be a justification for holding them in Guantanamo, it is immoral, and I would not shirk from using the words, un-American and even anti-American to gloat about their death.