The Guantanamo Prison: Useful or Outdated?

[hedrick]

The whole point of putting terrorists there was that the Constitutional protections didn't apply. They didn't want anyone trying to use habeus corpus. I agree that any American base is covered by the Constitution, but there also seem to be Constitution-free zones around airports and ports, which I wouldn't have thought possible. Not to mention civil forfeiture.

 

[RDKirk]

The whole point of putting terrorists there was that the Constitutional protections didn't apply.

Which court ruled that? Putting them at Guantanamo made it something that would have to be--one day, by and by--determined in court, hopefully after the "war on terror" had been won.

The concept of a "military tribunal" itself is Constitutional, and the DoD created rules for the Guantanamo tribunal that would pass Constitutional muster, if it came to that.

But...those prisoners now in Guantanamo have not been tried by the military tribunal. They have been held all this time without conviction and even without charges.

 

[hedrick]

See Guantanamo Bay detention camp - Wikipedia. This agrees with my memory that there was an intent to avoid some legal review. Early court decisions supported them. Ultimately the Supreme Court didn't. There were a number of attempts to remove constitutional rights, including laws. Lower courts supported them, but the Supreme Court didn't. I think it's clear that the intent was to avoid Constitutional rights, although ultimately it didn't work.

 

[Dale]

I'll have to disagree with your analogy of Bush putting terrorists in Guantanamo. These are terrorists and what better place to put them in. Military law is how they should be tried as far as I am concerned. Still remember Obama trading terrorists (who went right back to fighting) for one single traitor.

I don't defend everything Barack Obama did as President, but take a look at the numbers.


"Tuesday's report counts the 714 detainees released as of Jan. 15 — 532 under Bush and 182 under Obama."

According to these figures, of Guantanamo prisoners released so far, 75% were released by George W. Bush and only 25% by Barack Obama.


The story in the link is dated 03/07/17. The story was written after Donald Trump became President.

Link
Intel report: 121 former Gitmo detainees returned to terrorism