These are not normal criminal cases. These are urgent and very special cases that potentially threaten thousands of lives and they’re examples of the criminals for whom the Patriot Act was designed.

What you seem to say is that these terrorist suspects should have more extensive human rights than regular criminal suspects. This is unacceptable and incompatible with the current law, as of September 2001 – December 2005. Of course that they have lower rights and the authorities have extended rights and tools to deal with them.

I’m more concerned about innocent people being wrongly branded as terrorists. Even with all the checks and balances of the justice system, innocent people are put behind bars in the US. This happens in other countries too, but in the US this isn’t considered to be a big deal.

People say that the judicial system did work if a man on death row is freed after 20 years on death row after DNA evidence proved him innocent. In France the justice minister ordered an investigation after convictions for pedophelia were overturned on appeal after 4 years.

If a prosecutor can get away with this in a normal court:

http://members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/smith&allen.htm

”Prosecutor Jonathan Rosenbaum told the jury that the children hadn’t identified Allen at the line up because they were paralyzed with fear. One mother testified that when her little boy saw Allen, he started crying and ran from the viewing room. The video tape of the lineup, which was not shown to the jury, proves her testimony was false — her son didn’t cry or run from the room, but rather seemed to be having a good time.”

then what do you think will happen if there is no court at all?

Lubos wrote:

“Dear Moshe, indeed, I would also recommend us and you in particular to save your energy for other things and avoid comments about questions that you have no idea about – such as war strategy.”

Lubos can you please review your military/intellegence service background for us so we can understand how you came to be such an expert on these matters?

Elliot

I also assumed that the sarcasm in my comment #32 would be obvious. I’ll try to make it more obvious next time I’m trying to insult Lubos!

In any case, nobody’s forced to participate in any particular thread. There’s plenty of good science stuff on your blog. Keep up the good work.

Does anyone know any blogs about physics that purposefully avoids posts about politics and making fences?

Politics is a physical phenomena too.

You should hardly complain about what I wrote after your #32.

“There was delay after delay after delay, as we tried to find out what was going on. It was very difficult. This is sort of a pattern, where the Department of Defense wants to do it their way and is very resistant to congressional inquiries and to congressional oversight.”

Arun – I think you mean to say “What Specter and the other Senators on his committee were trying to do, and being prevented from properly doing is what is known as oversight.”

Honestly, how can you quote the above sentences to us, and take them as evidence that the system is working? Doesn’t effective oversight generally require that those in charge recognise and submit to the monitoring process, rather than trying to impede it?

“‘Torture’ is often defined differently by different people so it tends to be hard to figure out exactly what people are talking about.”

But isn’t that one of the things a public court system can handle, ie interpret and set public references (precedent’s)?

The idea of distributing rulemaking and decisions to lowest possible levels (like the US Constitution and lower) is practical and efficient, but there are also positive effects of standards (like UN conventions) such as visibility and predictability.

The links here are useful.

Candidly, it is very hard to deal with the Department of Defense on these matters. When we were in Guantanamo on August 1, we took up an issue that the New York Times had publicized, on August 1, where three officers had said that the trials were rigged by the military. We sought information from the Department of Defense on an inspector general’s report and on an internal investigation. There was delay after delay after delay, as we tried to find out what was going on. It was very difficult. This is sort of a pattern, where the Department of Defense wants to do it their way and is very resistant to congressional inquiries and to congressional oversight.

What Specter and the other Senators on his committee were doing is what is known as oversight.

A single german citizen is very different from the large number of innocent Iraqis which anecdotal evidence indicates were randomly rounded up and subjected to torture.

Yes and this in turn generates support for terrorism. The world has become a very dangerous place thanks to Bush.

Also, I still haven’t heard a reason why these prisions should be secret.

http://elyon1.court.gov.il/files_eng/94/000/051/a09/94051000.a09.htm

One argument for having guidelines had been that in their absence simple soldiers bear unfair share of the responsibility when something goes wrong, while their commanders, and all the civilian leaders, are nowhere to be found. I believe this is another point of similarity.

Well, given the fact that the German citizen who has claimed to be an innocent victim of these policies has been described in 460 news sources listed by Google and many others, let me assume that your statement that there’s no public oversight was just a joke.