Point well taken…my bad wording…what I was trying to allude to was the GITMO whiners who say we are evil down there. I think the trial wipes that theory out especially when you contrast it to how the bad guys treat our our folks.

Snake307 on August 8, 2008 at 12:11 AM

good stuff.

Kudos the the jury for letting and justice triumph over emotional reactions.

Time served while 3000 innocent Americans get the death penalty on 9/11. If this is the way we are going to “fight” then this war is going to be a very very long one. Ironic isn’t it? 63 years ago today our fathers grandfathers and great grandfathers dealt very differently with an enemy who used suicide bombers. After turning Hiroshima into a hole in the ground the day before, they were waiting for word that the Empire of Japan had surrendered. They gave them 3 days to give it up and when it didn’t happen the enemy woke up August 9th to find Nagasaki missing.

Dollayo on August 7, 2008 at 11:10 PM

Yet after the war with Japan, only the commanders were put to death, most of those who were tried for war crimes got fairly light sentences. That was for years of abuse, starvation, murders, rapes, and a host of other crimes including medical testing on humans.

We didn’t try Tojo’s driver, and we didn’t try the pilots who helped plan the Pearl Harbor attack. We didn’t try every soldier Japan had for war crimes. We unlike the Germans who invaded Belgium and France in 1914 and again in 1940 don’t do group reprisals. We do everything possible to make sure that Justice fits the crimes. Even the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was not just to test the bomb, but demoralize and destroy the Japanese willingness to continue the war. It worked. It had a military objective that was quantifiable.

After the war, we treated the Japanese people with respect. We didn’t try each and every German Citizen for the atrocities of the Genocide programs of Hitler. We didn’t sentence each German citizen to death for their crimes of supporting Hitler and the war. Apparently, we are going to have a different standard for this war. Now, if we don’t kill you on the battlefield, we’ll execute you later for even daring to resist us.

For the record, that technique was done by Germany in both wars. By Japan as well. It bred more resistance instead of less. An example, in one night, the Norwegian Resistance fighters cut the Train Tracks in a thousand different locations all over the nation. Screwed up transportation for weeks.

This war may degenerate to the point where we have to kill each and every Muslim in the world. I hope it doesn’t, I honestly do pray it doesn’t get to that point. If it does, we deserve all the scorn history chooses to say about it.

I would prefer to try and demonstrate that we are as understanding as we are deadly. We don’t hold privates responsible for the actions of Generals. We hold the Private responsible for his own actions. Restraint is as important as response. We must use force to protect our citizens. When we capture a fighter, by demonstrating that we’re going to apply justice with an even and fair hand, we make it more possible instead of less that we’ll get the enemy to turn against their leaders.

I know you doubt me. In Iraq in 1991, whole units surrendered partially from the bombing. Mostly from the draftee’s who had some personal first hand knowledge about Americans, and what they wouldn’t do despite the propaganda from Saddam. By being the rule following American’s always, we saw whole units sitting by the road without any weapons in sight waiting patiently to surrender. How about the enemy who happily surrendered to a helicopter?

Do you think that the enemy will consider surrendering if they know, they know, that we will execute them no matter the severity of their crimes? No, we’ll be back in the Pacific, on Saipan. Marines had tears in their eyes as they watched the Japanese civilians leap to their deaths on Banzai Cliff. These tough men literally wept to see women, children, and old people dying rather than be captured, and they believed tortured and executed as well as dishonored.

This war on Terror may get to that point, where we can’t risk allowing even the women and children to live. If it does, I personally weep for mankind. We will have become what we detest. We will have become the enemy of an entire race.

As I said, it is possible, not likely that will happen. Eventually one side or the other must stop fighting. If neither side is willing to surrender, and I am not willing for our side to surrender, then the war must go on. If the enemy chooses and our own bungling of the message creates a situation where we can’t allow any muslim to live, then mankind is in very dire straights indeed.

I will not become Muslim. Not even to save my life. I will not submit to Sharia law. I believe in personal individual freedom, and I’ve fought for my beliefs. If it gets to that point, where it’s literally us, or them. Then it will not be us who surrenders.

The Company Commander’s driver, whom I shall call H was a friend and former room mate of mine. The Platoon Leaders driver we will call W was also a friend of mine, obviously since he was in my platoon. At this time, I’m a team leader, one of the two very junior NCO’s in the squad who have four troops under me, and we work for the Squad Leader so to speak.

The Officers and Platoon Leaders as well as the Squad Leaders are being briefed. We lowly troops are waiting for orders. H comes over and shoots the Bull for a while. We ask what’s up? He tells us he doesn’t have a clue, but the CO was working on a long list as they drove over here. W comes over and says the LT stuck his head up and told us to start to prep the Six Demon Bags for a raid.

The Six Demon Bags was a nickname we gave the Demolition Tools bags we had. From the movie Big Trouble in Little China.

Ok, we know this. The CO has a big operation planned, hence the long list. We don’t know nothing about the operation except the LT wants us to check out the Demolition equipment to make sure it’s all present and working. So we do what we’re told, knowing we’ll be told what’s going on in time.

The Drivers didn’t know squat. They just drove the officers around, and were all under the rank of Sergeant. The exception to that was the most senior officers like Generals got Sergeants, but even they weren’t given information on planning of operations, just told where to take the Officer in question.

That is the way the Military works, and the way these Officers viewed this case. They guy was at the very most a Sergeant in equivalent rank/authority. He was given assignments, duties, and that’s about it. He didn’t participate in planning, not at that level. Most probably, he didn’t know anything about operational issues outside his need to know. We don’t tell our troops the details of the plan for weeks, months, or years ahead of time. We tell them at most a day ahead, and that’s it.

These officers saw this fellow as a driver like our own. He turned the steering wheel, got a plate of food for the officer from time to time. Reminded the Officer to eat and sleep from time to time. That’s what our drivers do when they’re assigned to drive the officers. They care for the Officer, and take care of the minutia so they can do the Officer things like co-ordinate missions and objectives and assign their subordinates jobs that are within their abilities.

He’s a driver. He didn’t plan 9-11, or the battles in Afghanistan. He drove OBL. We can suck all the information out of his brain about what OBL said and the things he did within his hearing, but otherwise, he’s useless.

The enlisted people just don’t have access to the long term planning stuff. History has shown that successful operations relies on minimal personnel knowing anything they don’t have to. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor wasn’t known by more than a hundred people until less than a month before the attack. As you needed more people to do things, you brief them in on the operation, so they can do their part to make it successful.

Midway is a perfect example of what happens when you start talking too much before the operation. The enemy knows everything before you get there.

As a hint of what communication security is all about. Before we crossed the line in Desert Storm. We were briefed by our Lieutenant as to our operational mission, and the Divisions objective. After finishing the briefing, he ordered the squad leaders to disable all of the radios (military ones which transmit guys) by removing the microphones and power cables. We didn’t transmit one single sound until just before the jump off and then only on low power with small antenna’s to test the radios before we moved to the line.

We were told the mission forty eight hours before we jumped to the line, just three days before we invaded Iraq on the ground. Security means not telling your people until the last possible moment, so they can’t accidentally let something slip that tips the enemy off.

WTF? And the two border patrol agents are still in jail, and for a longer time.

PattyJ on August 7, 2008 at 10:00 PM

Well … they were carrying guns, making it a 924(c) violation. Hamdan only had a couple of SA7 rockets.

What’s it gonna take ? ? 2 or 5 more 9/11s

Bush better pardon them, after this travesty.

As soon as he admitted to being part of AQ, and we squeezed all the information we could out of him, he should have been shot or hung immediately.

Why on earth are we continuing to enable Islamists with these circuses? The rules and norms of war exist for a reason, and our coddling these terrorist is costing American lives for no good reason.

Regarding Hamdan — I wasn’t there, I didn’t see the evidence, don’t know the story or the mitigating factors….but if a military jury says that he deserves five and a half years, with five already served, I’m thinking that’s probably about what he deserves.

Dingbat63 on August 7, 2008 at 8:03 PM

I am failing to see your moral relativism. Arent we supposed to be against that kind of crap?

Squid Shark on August 7, 2008 at 7:37 PM

Yes, we do. But I’m trying my best to bring you around :)

Hamdan had to have the trust of the most wanted man on the planet. No small feat and certainly not a trivial barrier to cross. If you recall, the Taliban had operatives/soldiers dress up as foreign press to kill Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Do you think Bin Laden himself was unaware of the required trust to have a “flunky” drive him around in a taxi (aka mobile IED)?

Do we know what the Court knew in determining Hamden’s knowledge and associations? No. Is the military court more trustworthy than some Berzerkley civil court? Most likely. Do I still think that this court is all knowing and guaranteed to be an honest arbiter? Not a chance though, en toto, it’s the best we’ve got.

Why suggest such reservations to their ultimate judgment? Because surely there are political/geopolitical calculations which we cannot, will not, or should not know. I’d suggest that this court knew it was being heavily scrutinized to evaluate their ability to be “just and fair.” Actually, that’s not just a suggestion. That’s a guarantee. We know for fact that this is the case. It is precedential, meaning that it was a test case to be paraded around for everyone to praise… or critique. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their ultimate findings were wholly pure and right. Surely there were overt external pressures as well as internal, personal pressures to deduce the “right” opinion… an opinion that would serve beyond just Hamden in the little picture but also, if not more importantly, the WoT in the bigger picture.

To that end, you sacrifice a case to be politically correct and let a “small fry” go even if you really believe that not to be the case. You try to set the precedent that an overzealous military court won’t appear too brutal or offensive. If you can do that, then the powers that be can lean harder on the tougher nuts and crack them as necessary. The court will have inoculated itself and those who strategize fighting terrorism against the inevitable and severest critique.

If Hamden was given some reprieve on the premise that by doing so, the bigger war is fought more easily, then I understand and support the tactic though I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea. It’s a tough pill to swallow. If not, and the court really thinks that handling battlefield combatants in such a civil way is to be SOP from now on, then I think it to be a grave mistake and one that will send a more empowering message(excuse) for those committed to killing us.

Gabriel Malor writes:

He therefore has only six months left to serve on his conviction for material support for terrorism. (DrewM. pointed out this possibility in the other thread.) At that point he will be reintegrated with the general population at Guantanamo Bay. He is still subject to indefinite detention as a combatant in wartime, but, like all combatant-detainees he may be released if it is determined that he no longer poses a risk of returning to combat activities. – amerpundit

What’s the Guantanamo recidivism rate these days?

Bait & release?