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- baltimoretim, on 10/12/2007, -7/+61Or, as I like to call it, "a voter's guide to who gets to go back to Congress next year."
Not one of those yay voters should be reelected. This detainee law is despicable and unamerican. It ratifies the torture we saw come out of Abu Ghraib, which we all decried at the time. We called that the work of one or two bad apples. Now it's the defining act and dseire of this entire administration. Shame on them, and shame on the members of Congress who voted to empower the torturers in our government. - SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23@lwdallas
I think you have some trouble with your vision, or perhaps understanding:
[Quote]
4 (A) As provided by the Constitution and by
5 this section, the President has the authority for
6 the United States to interpret the meaning and
7 application of the Geneva Conventions[/Quote]
I found that in 30 seconds. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23Most reds go one way.
Most blues go the other way.
The independent is irrelevant.
No way of predicting THAT! - insinuate, on 10/12/2007, -15/+35Jeez...of the seven representatives from Louisiana only one voted against it. Sigh. Damn rednecks. Not all of us are like that.
- ochants76, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21but right now we arent at war with a government.....we are at war with ....."terror"
- neoform, on 10/12/2007, -12/+30more like a sad day for the whole world, since this basically gives the president (bush or any future prez), the ability to arrest and torture ANYONE he feels like.
- deesnutz, on 10/12/2007, -11/+29If feel so sorry for the future of our men & women in the military. For they are the ones, if captured, who will feel the brunt of this decision. Because now, they (the enemy) will say, well if the USA can do it, then so can we (and of course it is open to their loose interpretation).
May God save the souls of our future POWs. And once again, Repulicans and George W. Bush creating more harm than good to America and its soldiers. - SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Then there is this part:
[quote]
22 ``(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdic-
23 tion to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas
24 corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the
25 United States who has been determined by the United
HR 6166 EH 94
1 States to have been properly detained as an enemy com-
2 batant or is awaiting such determination.
[/quote]
So upon suspicion only, the US con now imprison and torture to their hearts content.
It's now guilty until proven innocent, and prisoners are not allowed to try to prove their innocence.
How sweet. - MaxSand, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19The ayes are above the noes.
- kolywater, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18sorry to post in first thread, but the data is a bit clearer if you sort it by party:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2006-491&sort=party - drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16Precisely, state sponsored torture that goes against the guidelines of human dignity that this country helped create for the rest of the world to follow! At this rate their gonna vote to move the UN to another country.
- FellateMeFreddy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19I'm in total disbelief right now. America has completely lost its way. Didn't we learn anything from the McCarthy era? The Salem witch trials? Aren't the founding American principles and ideals important anymore? This is so ridiculous.
For the "highlights" of the bill:
http://www.starttherevolution.org/archives/2006/i%20-%20september/TheDetaineeLawExplained.htm
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both"
-Benjamin Franklin - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14The very best info we have gotten in the war in terror came from convincing a terrorist, that due to his belief in perdetermination, that allah wanted him to be captured for the purpose of telling us what we needed to know. That he was captured because he was wrong to fight the jihad. He was captured instead of killed because he is a good man and is supposed to help stop the violence...And it worked.. with zero torture, and we got quality and correct info and by not torturing, we can get accurate readings of body language or even from a lie detector.
Torture DOES WORK, it just isnt effective.. square tires can work with enough energy as well... but round make far more sence. - Daisuke, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19I've got to ask both of you: why the ***** would you want this peice of legislation passed? Neither of you even said why in your "argument", just that what we allowed is not "torture". Yeah, right, I would like to see you be waterboarded and then tell me it's not torture.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12You made an oath to protect America & the Constitution of the USA. At what point did you forget that?
- drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14(a) INGENERAL.—Satisfaction of the prohibitions against cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment set forth 9
in section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005
(42 U.S.C. 2000dd) shall fully satisfy United States obli-
gations with respect to the standards for detention and
treatment established by section 1 of Common Article 3
of the Geneva Conventions, with the exception of the obli-
gations imposed by subsections 1(b) and 1(d) of such Arti-
cle . 16
This is where it states that the military has the right to violate a national convention we have all heard of.
Of course I can't blame you for being too dumb to read it yourself, I'm guessing most of our politicians probably didn't even realize they were voting on something that had a statement like this. - Matrix_Prime, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17he doesn't have to wait for that, our own government can do it to him now.
- EndrWiggin, on 10/12/2007, -8/+18One can only hope you get captured on a battlefield by a government who passes a similar bill. That'll change your tune. Your lack of common sense baffles me, as does your ability to read and think critically. You obviously have no idea what kind of repercussions this bill has for this country.
- EndrWiggin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Perhaps you should take a moment to think about the political game at play here. This isn't just about terrorists, this is about the core liberties of this nation that you are fighting for. When you signed up, you took an oath to protect and defent this nation and the constitution. Well, what are you going to do now that the Constitution is under attack? These are core liberties these bills are walking the line with, not just about terrorists, but American citizens. Citizens can be considered enemy combatants under this bill. Sure, to an extreme extent, but it is possible. You can't reason with religious extremists (Christian ones especially), whether you torture them or not. We're talking about humane treatment in the face of inhumane acts and the due process of law here, being better than them, rising above the scum that they are, not becoming them, not getting back at them for getting us. I would go back and look at your responsibilities as a member of the military and decide whether it is revenge for September 11th, or protecting the U.S. Constitution.
- ochants76, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10muslims.........joking of course
- tigerpaper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I would agree that "the torture bill" is not the best pet name for the bill.
I would go with something more along the lines of "THE BILL THAT ALLOWS ANYONE, ANYWHERE TO BE ARRESTED, HELD, MISTREATED, OR KILLED WITH NO RATIONALE OR ACCOUNTABILITY AS TO WHY"
This arguement over the use of the word torture itself is.....retarded.
Tomato/tomåto. - zoezack, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13To each so called christian who voted in favor of this despicable, inhuman, bill, I would ask: "Who Would Jesus Torture?"
- SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Oh, and this part is lovely. When someone is is tortured on suspicion alone, for god knows how long, they shall not have the right to sue the state:
[quote]
3 ``(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3)
4 of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005
5 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have
6 jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against
7 the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of
8 the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of
9 confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the
10 United States and has been determined by the United
11 States to have been properly detained as an enemy com-
12 batant or is awaiting such determination.''.
[/quote] - SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@EndrWiggin
Oh, torture `works` alright. In short orderl the person being tortured will say anything to make the pain stop. Most often this is pure fantasy, whatever their wracked brain can come up with, since they hardly ever know the information that the torturers want to know.
Confession usually comes first. They eagerly confess to every single thing the torturer asks them to. Anything to make the agony stop. Then they admit to anything the torturer asks: Their friends, family, aquantances etc, being part of whatever fantasy they just admitted to. Once more, anything to make the agony go away.
With luck the torturers go away for a while, to verify what they've been told, but they'll soon be back when they found out that it was not true. Soon this broken groveling thing, that was once a human being, will be in agony again, making up new fantasies to make the pain stop.
That there are supposed human beings that support doing this to another living thinking creature makes me sick to the stomach. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14It is a very sad day for our troops
becasue The enemy knows they will be tortured if captured.. so they are far less likely to surrender and far more likely to fight to the death.
The people responcible for obtaining information say torture is far far less effective than non torture techniques and no i dont mean comfy chair.
The purpose of torture is torture.
The torture thing is what made me turn my back on the GOP for the first time in my life.
CLinton was an asshat but he never advocated torture. This is so sick it is not even funny.
And yeah i know terrorist are sick and evil and dont wear uniforms and would behead our troops anyway, but saying the enemy is evil in now way justifies US being evil. And lets not forget we have tortured at the very least 2 completely innocent human beings..(i am scared to ask what that percentage is)There is nothing that torture can do besides spread fear, that cant be obtained by better means. I hate to curse but the people that voted for this are a bunch of sick *****.
We are now no better than iran, nk, pakistan, china, russia. - garg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10from reddit.com comments (posted by TDaulnay) :
"The U.S. Congress passed a law permitting the torture and indefinite imprisonment of:
1. Foreign nationals providing "material support" to anyone fighting "the U.S. or its co-belligerents"
2. Non-citizens in the U.S., who it accuses of the same.
3. U.S. citizens accused of same.
4. No review by non-military courts for the first 2.
5. U.S. citizens must be charged within one year.
And best of all, the military can set the criteria for who is an "unlawful military combatant", with no review by anyone.
It's not limited to people fighting the U.S. abroad, it explicitly applies to people inside the U.S. And to anyone the military determines it applies to."
If the current government, or any future administrations, want to detain you for actions that it deems to be unacceptable then enjoy spending years and years in prison.
Our laws are timeless and if the Bush administration doesn't... someone else just might use it against you.
When you give someone more power than they need then there will always be someone who will abuse it and use it against you.
Now before some weirdos jump on me and accuse me of supporting the "terrsts" let me make clear that I am against the terrorists and I want them defeated.
I am also against INNOCENT people being held indefinitely and being torturned. - diggduggjoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8This is bad for everyone in America, not only future POWs. The support for this usually comes from the notion that they are not US citizens, so who cares. First, human rights come from being human not American. This bill effectively says the government grants us rights, which is directly opposite of what our founders believed and intended. Too many Americans are stupid. Second, most interrogators will recommend against torture for the intel sucks. When you beat a man he will say anything, most likely BS, if they really do not know anything. That will lead us to spend resources on wild goose chases.
When the US truly takes the moral high ground most of those who hate us will be weakened. Most of the Islamic people who hate us have been under dictatorships that we installed. The theory of unintended consequences never seems to permeate the average American's mind. - garg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8lwdallas > You just have to be accused of that :O
- honds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Just incase anyone is curious about reading the entire bill (those on both sides that spoke before reading)... http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c109:2:./temp/~c109x9SfAi::
Once you read it then you can speak. I haven't read it in it's entirity myself so I can't speak yet. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I do agree with you, BALITMOREtim, but things are just way too different down in the southern or other red states. Representatives get blindly re-elected down here. People like Michael Machaud (D-Maine) and other northeastern reps may lose their jobs, but it's far less likely it will make an impact in heavy red states.
- EndrWiggin, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13TORTURE DOESN'T WORK. WHat don't you morons understand? Torture has never worked. It's UNRELIABLE. Think about it, if someone was torturing you to tell them where your children were so they can kill them, would you tell them the truth? I didn't think so. You people are so ***** narrowminded, I'd be ashamed to call myself an American if I thought like you.
- VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9You're speaking as if most Americans are aware of issues, and base their votes upon them.
- tehmatticus, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Yeah, i wish our representatives werent idiots. Vitter is against Net Neutrality too. As soon as im out of college, i'm out of here.
- wurzelgummage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The U.S is now officially a rogue state that needs regime change.
- DS513, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Sorry mrz, but I really don't buy that argument. Stooping down to the level of terrorists isn't the way to win this "war on terror". If we torture prisoners of war against international code of law, how does that make the United States any better than the people we are fighting? Besides, even from a practical standpoint, torture is a useless way of getting information, most of the time the people will simply lie. It also endangers our own prisoners of war.
I think 30 years from now, people will look back on this episode in United States history and really regret the terrible, unnecessary lengths we went in order to make sure we were "safe". That is when they're not in sight of the telescreen... - gcauthon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Sec. 949t. Maximum limits
`The punishment which a military commission under this chapter may direct for an offense may not exceed such limits as the President or Secretary of Defense may prescribe for that offense.
`Sec. 949u. Execution of confinement
(a) In General- Under such regulations as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe, a sentence of confinement adjudged by a military commission under this chapter may be carried into execution by confinement--
`(1) in any place of confinement under the control of any of the armed forces; or
`(2) in any penal or correctional institution under the control of the United States or its allies, or which the United States may be allowed to use.
How could anyone vote to allow Bush and Rumsfeld such an open-ended interpretation of what constitutes torture? How can we allow Rumsfeld to hold someone in confinement anywhere in the world, including some places that allow torture? - tigerdyr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I guess one way of securing the free world is to formally close it down. I had hoped the americans had been a little wiser. Now, from a european point of view, we're actually going to have to work against you - or at least until cooler heads prevail.
- SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Oh, it get's even clearer:
[Quote]
4 (A) As provided by the Constitution and by
5 this section, the President has the authority for
6 the United States to interpret the meaning and
7 application of the Geneva Conventions[/Quote]
Whoever is the president can decide that powerdrilling your eyes is not torture.
Bush sure has succeded in clarifying what torture is. It is what he says it is. - wozley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Well, I know I'm not voting for Jack Kingston. Maybe I should write him and tell him why.
- EndrWiggin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12Oh that's right. Our brilliant president can now declare ANYONE an enemy combatant and therefore deny the right of habeus corpus (for those of you Bush-lovers who don't know what that means, that's your right seek release from unlawful imprisonment) to those "combatants.
ochants76:
The government is falling right into the "terrorists'" trap. The point of terror is to invoke an overreaction from the targeted government, thus changing the way of life of its citizens and forcing them to submit to the new impositions of their government, making it harder for them to have a voice...guess what, the terrorists just won. - EndrWiggin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8There's a difference between being passive, and being moral. Sure the terrorists are immoral and inhuman to the eyes of Americans, but if we lower ourselves to their level, we're no better than they are, regardless of how many Americans they kill.
- whiskeymb, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12can someone point out the portion of this bill that actually says that our government can torture... I was looking through it but didn't see anything obvious.
thanks! - smitting, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Our government's and democracy's foundation is the principle that we let 10 guilty men go before we lock up an innocent man.
This law will not affect those in Iraq. Foreign invaders and Iraqi citizens are not afforded protections under the constitution, because they are not American citizens. We have the legal right, under the Geneva Conventions, to lock up pretty much anybody in Iraq that we want to for the duration of the war.
What I don't get is, if we are not torturing anybody, then why do we have a problem with the Geneva Conventions? What is it that the Bush administration is so worried about?
If we're throwing out democracy with the bathwater, what exactly are we speading to Iraq? - SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12Mostly by party lines. I'll list the exceptions here.
Democrats that voted for.
Aye NJ-1 Andrews, Robert [D]
Aye GA-12 Barrow, John [D]
Aye IL-8 Bean, Melissa [D]
Aye GA-2 Bishop, Sanford [D]
Aye OK-2 Boren, Dan [D]
Aye IA-3 Boswell, Leonard [D]
Aye FL-2 Boyd, F. [D]
Aye OH-13 Brown, Sherrod [D]
Aye KY-6 Chandler, Ben [D]
Aye AL-5 Cramer, Robert [D]
Aye TX-28 Cuellar, Henry [D]
Aye AL-7 Davis, Artur [D]
Aye TN-4 Davis, Lincoln [D]
Aye TX-17 Edwards, Thomas [D]
Aye NC-2 Etheridge, Bob [D]
Aye TN-9 Ford, Harold [D]
Aye TN-6 Gordon, Barton [D]
Aye SD-0 Herseth, Stephanie [D]
Aye NY-27 Higgins, Brian [D]
Aye PA-17 Holden, Tim [D]
Aye GA-3 Marshall, James [D]
Aye UT-2 Matheson, Jim [D]
Aye NC-7 McIntyre, Mike [D]
Aye LA-3 Melancon, Charles [D]
Aye ME-2 Michaud, Michael [D]
Aye KS-3 Moore, Dennis [D]
Aye MN-7 Peterson, Collin [D]
Aye ND-0 Pomeroy, Earl [D]
Aye AR-4 Ross, Mike [D]
Aye CO-3 Salazar, John [D]
Aye GA-13 Scott, David [D]
Aye SC-5 Spratt, John [D]
Aye TN-8 Tanner, John [D]
Aye MS-4 Taylor, Gene [D]
Democratic voters: You know what to do about these!
Republicans against:
Nay MD-6 Bartlett, Roscoe [R]
Nay MD-1 Gilchrest, Wayne [R]
Nay NC-3 Jones, Walter [R]
Nay OH-14 LaTourette, Steven [R]
Nay IA-2 Leach, James [R]
Nay KS-1 Moran, Jerry [R]
Nay TX-14 Paul, Ronald [R] - DS513, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Jim Gerlach ain't getting my vote this fall!
- gcauthon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This bill does not directly reference torture, but there is a reference. You just have to cut through the BS to get to it.
Sec 948r.d.3: the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment prohibited by section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.
Well, lets look at the detainee treatment act of 2005...
In General- No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
Ok, now where's that Army field manual? Oh right, they added a section on allowable torture... I mean interrogation techniques and then classified it. - zeiben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Moussaoui was a deranged terrorist wannabe. If we'd have tortured him, we'd have gotten the secret plans for his takeover of mars.
- ichbinladen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What happened to the Constitution? It's just another relic like G. Washington's dentures.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5according to bush we dont send people to places that torture..
lol.. i wonder how he can say that with a straight face.
I would love to be their when he meets his maker but i bet satan fears for his job. - kris2lee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Your president has cone mad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2JGTFI2PPM
It's not a government but mafia. -
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