A good first step I think.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
A good first step I think.
16
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 5:12pm

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/11/obama.executive.orders/index.html


A thorough review of these should help bolster his promises of change, though he'll still have to carry through and not just review them.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:02pm

In case you hadn't noticed, your beliefs have been largely implemented under BushCo without any particular success in some cases and outright FAILURE in others.

For instance, waterboarding hasn't been proved to result in truthful information. The prisoner will say just about anything to stop being tortured. "IF" is a damn flimsy rationale for a practice which we decry until doing it ourselves.

Failing to consider the link between actions and consequences ("what the world thinks of us") gave us Osama bin Ladin. Who knows what sorts of evil seeds have been sowed under BushCo, to be harvested later, with a bountiful and bitter "return".

Our allies? Who would they be? We have a pariah's reputation for either wisdom or strength. And how many nations are left of that once much-vaunted "coalition of the willing"?

Gettingahandle


Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.


Facts stifle the will, hobble conviction.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2001
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:24pm

Out of that list, this is the thing that gives me pause:


An Obama administration also could overturn the Bush administration policy of banning funding to organizations such as the U.N. Population Fund that operate in countries that practice forced sterilization, including China, which adheres to the "one child" policy.


I would need to look into the U.N. Population Fund, but it would be in my line of thinking to not support forced sterilization.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:32pm

"it would be in my line of thinking to not support forced sterilization"

I certainly would not support that. Who do we support who is doing that?

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2001
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:34pm

From the CNN article that mirage posted in the OP:


An Obama administration also could overturn the Bush administration policy of banning funding to organizations such as the U.N. Population Fund that operate in countries that practice forced sterilization, including China, which adheres to the "one child" policy.


my4lovies2aug4.jpg picture by LadyCaribou


Thank you, nicole_ftm for my siggy!

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 10:40pm

>>> If these people are so guilty, how come we have not been able to prove it over the past six years? If we don't have the evidence, do you think we will get it now? Are you suggesting we just hold these people indefinitely without a trial or the evidence to prove they are guilty? How do you think that will look? How do you think this has looked?

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Obama's advisers are crafting plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and prosecute terrorism suspects in the U.S., a plan that the Bush administration said Monday was easier said than done.

Under the plan being crafted inside Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and others would be charged in U.S. courts, where they would receive constitutional rights and open trials. But, underscoring the difficult decisions Obama must make to fulfill his pledge of shutting down Guantanamo, the plan could require the creation of a new legal system to handle the classified information inherent in some of the most sensitive cases.

Many of the about 250 Guantanamo detainees are cleared for release, but the Bush administration has not been to find a country willing to take them.

Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But as details surfaced Monday, it drew criticism from Democrats who oppose creating a new legal system and from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. mainland.

The move would mark a sharp change from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States. At the White House, spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday that President Bush has faced many challenges in trying to close the prison.

"We've tried very hard to explain to people how complicated it is. When you pick up people off the battlefield that have a terrorist background, it's not just so easy to let them go," Perino said. "These issues are complicated, and we have put forward a process that we think would work in order to put them on trial through military tribunals."

But Obama has been critical of that process and his legal advisers said finding an alternative will be a top priority. One of those advisers, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, acknowledges that bringing detainees to the U.S. would be controversial but said it could be accomplished.

"I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on U.S. soil as anywhere else," Tribe said. "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."

The tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration's military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on U.S. soil.

"I think that creating a new alternative court system in response to the abject failure of Guantanamo would be a profound mistake," Jonathan Hafetz, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents detainees, said Monday. "We do not need a new court system. The last eight years are a testament to the problems of trying to create new systems."

Senate Judiciary Committee member John Cornyn, R-Texas, said it would be a "colossal mistake to treat terrorism as a mere crime."

"It would be a stunning disappointment if the one of the new administration's first priorities is to give foreign terror suspects captured on the battlefield the same legal rights and protections as American citizens accused of crimes," Cornyn said Monday, noting that the Senate overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding Senate bill last year opposing bringing detainees to the U.S. Obama did not vote on that measure. He has said the civilian and military court-martial systems provide "a framework for dealing with the terrorists," and Tribe said the administration would look to those venues before creating a new legal system. But discussions of what a new system would look like have already started.

An Obama administration will want to avoid the criticisms that have marked the Bush administration's military commissions. Human rights groups and defense attorneys have condemned the commissions for lax evidence rules and intense secrecy. Some military prosecutors have even quit in protest.

"It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts," Tribe said. "It will have to both be and appear to be fundamentally fair in light of the circumstances. I think people are going to give an Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in that regard."

Some weren't so sure.

"There would be concern about establishing a completely new system," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the House Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor who is aware of the discussions in the Obama camp. "And in the sense that establishing a regimen of detention that includes American citizens and foreign nationals that takes place on U.S. soil and departs from the criminal justice system -- trying to establish that would be very difficult."

Though a hybrid court may be unpopular, other advisers and Democrats involved in the Guantanamo Bay discussions say Obama has few options.

Prosecuting all detainees in federal courts raises many problems. Evidence gathered through military interrogation or from intelligence sources might be thrown out. Defendants would have the right to confront witnesses, meaning undercover CIA officers or terrorist turncoats might have to take the stand, jeopardizing their cover and revealing classified intelligence tactics.

That means something different would need to be done if detainees couldn't be released or prosecuted in traditional courts. Exactly what remains unclear.

"I don't think we need to completely reinvent the wheel, but we need a better tribunal process that is more transparent," Schiff said.

According to three advisers participating in the process, Obama is expected to propose a new court system and may appoint a committee to decide how such a court would operate. Some detainees likely would be returned to the countries where they were first captured for further detention or rehabilitation. The rest could probably be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts, one adviser said. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing talks, which have been private.

One challenge will be figuring out what to do with the 90 or so Yemeni detainees -- the largest group in the prison. The Bush administration has sought to negotiate the release of some of those detainees as part of a rehabilitation plan with the Yemeni government. But talks have so far been fruitless.

Waleed Alshahari, who has been following Guantanamo issues for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, said the plan being discussed by the Obama team was an improvement over the current system. But he said he expects most detainees to be released rather than stand trial.

"If the U.S. government has any evidence against them, they would try them and put them in jail," Alshahari said. "But it has been obvious they have nothing against them. That is why they have not faced trial."

Whatever Obama decides, he should move quickly, Tribe said.

"In reality and symbolically, the idea that we have people in legal black holes is an extremely serious black mark," Tribe said. "It has to be dealt with."
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/11/10/obama-planning-trials-guantanamo-detainees/

>>> You see, there are a billion Muslim people in the world. They are not happy with this and with good cause. If just 1% of them decide to take arms with al Qaeda, that's 1 million people. That's well over the size of our entire standing army.

I see...so you suggest a foreign policy of fear and appeasement?

>>> You can't have it both ways. You can't treat an ethnic group like dirt and expect them not to hurt you for it. This is another stupid fight we don't need by Bush.

We didn't hurt the Muslims of the world, so unlike you, I can't find justice in their radical cause or in their murder of innocent people.

>>> Here's what we need to do. We need to become a beacon of hope again, not a symbol of oppression.

Sounds like an Obama slogan...and about as substantial too.

>>> And we need to catch or kill bin Ladin for heaven's sake.

Why? Not that it wouldn't be nice, but he's pretty much a figurehead at this point...and I wouldn't invade an ally to get him, like Obama has suggested.

>>> The world was with us against bin Ladin after 9/11.

The world couldn't have cared less. Our allies were with us, but everyone else paid lip service. None of them "put up."

>>> Then Bush and the Republicans ran us into a deep deep ditch. Closing Gitmo is the first step of getting out.

Sorry, but if you imagine Bush charging into Iraq, he was doing it hoisted on the shoulders of the Democrats. This was their war during Clinton's years and they were right on the bandwagon from day one after 9/11. It's also telling that the Democrats haven't come up with any viable proposals for the detainees at Gitmo. I'm waiting for Obama to realize the legal quagmire he's inherited and turn them all loose in Kansas.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Wed, 11-12-2008 - 11:00pm

"From the CNN article that mirage posted in the OP:

An Obama administration also could overturn the Bush administration policy of banning funding to organizations such as the U.N. Population Fund that operate in countries that practice forced sterilization, including China, which adheres to the "one child" policy."

Hold on a second here. Nowhere does this article say that the UN Population Fund supports forced sterilization. The article says that the UN Fund operated in China.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft operate in China where the government uses that type of technology to spy on people and Google and Yahoo may have turned over information about people - does that mean you should boycott their web sites and software? iVillage's parent NBC does business in China, where the media is repressive - does that mean you should hop off this web site and never come back? Yes there are countries that do bad things. And yes we should call them on it. But isolation a la North Korea is not always the way to go, and it takes a horrible toll on tens or even hundreds of millions of human beings just like you and me.

And the article does not say that the UN Fund supported forced sterilization. After about 10 seconds of research using Google (guilty!), I found that is a false claim made by the Bush Administration - when Bush got called on it instead of admitting he was wrong (which he never does) he just clammed up and continued to punish the UN Fund for something they didn't do.

"UNFPA and the United States Government

In 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, the Bush Administration denied funding to UNFPA that had already been allocated by the U.S. Congress on the grounds that the UNFPA supported Chinese government programs which include forced abortions and sterilizations. In a letter from the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns to Congress, the administration said it had determined that UNFPA’s support for China’s population programme “facilitates (its) government’s coercive abortion programme”, thus violating the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, which bans the use of United States aid to finance or support abortions overseas.
This accusation has never been supported by any investigation, and has in fact been disproved by the various US, UK, and UN teams sent to examine UNFPA activities in China. UNFPA points out that it "does not provide support for abortion services". Its charter includes a strong statement condemning coercion.".
The Bush Administration has, nevertheless, continued to withhold funding, and has fought Congressional efforts to require an explanation of its decision to block the funds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Population_Fund

So anyway, I agree with you, forced sterilization is an outrage. If Bush cared so much about it, however, instead of punishing a group which had nothing to do with it, why didn't he use his power to actually try to persuade the Chinese government to stop it, or at least talk to them about it? I'll tell you why. Bush is an immoral stupid idiot. And not just that, they are a bunch of lawbreakers - as an aside, why are lawbreakers often liars? because you often have to lie to break the law. Liars and lawbreakers, like these Fox Republicans, often go together. I wish it weren't true. But it is. America will be so much better off when he and his cronies are out of power.

The big picture is that the only way to truly put this behind us, to truly make things right, and to truly do something for future generations, is to conduct a proper investigation (not the type our crony hack "no" Justice Department today might conduct) and hold those who broke the law accountable. Unless we show the Republicans they can't get away with breaking the law, they will keep right on doing it. It's no coincidence that Cheney and Rumsfeld got off during the Nixon Administration and came back to haunt us in this one.

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