Wrongfully held for 7 years. Dangerous and bitter. Gotta hold'em for life. (Or, we could pay them damages)updated
As the shitstorm over the prospective release of the Gitmo remnant rages, the prospect of the newly embittered jihadi, rightfully furious over his torture and captivity, turning his burning anger upon his old tormentors is brandished as if it were an excuse to perpetuate an injustice once it has first been perpetrated.
There is, of course, a thread of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence which is denigrated by this debate (besides the thread ending in the prohibitions against forced testimony in the Fifth Amendment.)
When the state wrongfully holds an individual, upon discovering its mistake, the *State pays damages. What a concept!
The justly compensated claimant may retain his dignity without the (otherwise necessary) striking out at his torturers and their countrymen; For an “honor society” the idea of just payment is even more fundamentally implicated in self-respect than, perhaps, our own mostly materialist culture.
Withal, a financial incentive for pacification can be built in ( Periodic payments conditioned on non-combatent status should quell the howls from the right.)
Consider that we compensate the wrongly held, wrongly convicted.
How much more do we owe to the wrongly held, never convicted?
*”amounts ranging from $15,000 total to $50,000 per year of imprisonment”
To derive the correct amounts that our guests are to be refunded we must first take what we are currently paying in for management in their home country, then deduct the luxurious food and entertainment that they have enjoyed over the course of their visit. Their accounts shall be credited the difference.
Airfare and accommodations are always complimentary of the house.
May 22, 2009 5:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
hehehehehee. What did you get this from the Price is Right? hahahah Airfare and accommodations....
May 22, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
\
accommodations
The food! Don't forget the five star cuisine at Gitmo!
"Ensign also said the food served at to detainees is better than what was served to him and fellow senators."
May 22, 2009 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
huh, thanks JR, that was my link too but i guess i messed up the caret href...
Great quote choice
May 22, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great quote
Ensign is reliably stupid...as if you would trade your freedom for haute cuisine, (were that on offer...)
May 22, 2009 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Ensign also said the food served to detainees is better than what was served to him and fellow senators."
Who knew? Sometimes life is fair!
May 23, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes
Particularly the next time an outraged chef in the Senatorial Lunchroom has a moment alone with a bowl of Ensign-bound soup and an attack of "toker's hack".
Then life will be fair.
May 23, 2009 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
entertainment
You are quite right. I believe that each of them owes at least for the copy of playboy that was opened on his lap to a strategic foldout while he was being transported.
(Except for the guys who were hooded--they get the playboy for free...)
May 22, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it would be a sum somewhere between the bank bailout and the hidden costs of the Iraq War.
I need my slide rule to be more precise....
May 22, 2009 6:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
a sum
Nah--we'll just give them a tenth-cent on the dollar. Here's the British example:
"In 2006 and again in 2007, £6,000 was paid to the family of two "locally employed" men who were killed during British operations against the Taliban."
bupkis
May 22, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yet another idea that is rather sensible when you examine it but lends itself to sneering, devestating Republican talking points when reduced to a single sentence. I hate it when that happens.
May 22, 2009 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
sneering, devestating Republican
Sneering, yes.
Whether they devastate? A question for history...
May 22, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Librul Democrats not only want to release t'rr'ists into YOUR neighborhood to kill your family and rape your daughters, they want to APOLOGIZE to them for keeping us safe from them and even PAY them for their trouble! Stop the madness! Vote for safety!"
I'm a great believer in Obama's theory that people are smarter than either party gave them credit for, that they respond well--and are responding well --to being treated like adults capable of handling complexity. I strongly believe that the Democrats refusal to believe this, and have the courage to try it rather than treating them like frightened twelve year olds, was one of the things that kept the Reagan realingment on the shelf long after its expiration date. That basic difference in outlook is one of the reasons I so strongly opposed Hillary's nomination--because all of the people around her--Penn, Wolfson, Ickes, and all the rest of them--subscribed to the frightened 12 year old voter model.
And despite all that, I think an ad debasing this very sensible idea of yours would be devestating in places where its still close like Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, Indiania . . . Hell, I don't even know that it wouldn't be a disaster in New York. Doesn't mean I'm right. Hope I'm wrong.
May 23, 2009 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
would be devestating
Oh, without peradventure.
We can't even crank it up to permit the survivors of dead wedding guests to sue us like any other person in the world could, when the wedding has the bad luck to occur in one of our "free-fire" zones...
The dead givaway that I was pissing into the wind is my appeal to "history"
May 23, 2009 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
but see if you bring up the idea of compensation, that brings up a lot of other problems like:
- what if they are human and respond to human stimuli like "compensation" with human responses like "well, that's fair"?
- wouldn't compensating them be admitting that america is not perfect?
- wouldn't compensating them mean that we'd have to admit that they were wrongfully captured and therefore not the superhuman terrorist overlords we all believe them to be?
- etc etc
see the problem now? we can NEVER compensate them. because of these problems.
May 22, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
see the problem now?
Well, I am duly chastened. Of course, we can never compensate our victims. That would be too close to justice, and we dispise justice.
May 22, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
We think all these 'detainees' came from the same locations. All issuing from the same source, with the same aims and purposes.
I dunno. Years and years of captivity with no charges brought. Like someone lost in some dungeon a thousand years ago.
May 22, 2009 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
lost in some dungeon
Now that you mention it, there may be a few children out there (the ones under 7 years, you know, who never saw their fathers), to whom money is owed...
May 22, 2009 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, treatment. That could take years and years, for all the PTSD and physical harm caused. After that reparations, remuneration of some type. And as you seem to be pointing out, the longer we hold them, the higher the cost!
May 22, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, treatment
Into what strange hell have we wandered, that the reconstruction of souls shattered by torture should have become a specialty, and childrens' souls a sub-specialty.?
May 22, 2009 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Only if they receive competent, longterm treatment, where the therapist takes the brunt of all the anger, aroused due to the torture and the debasement, and the solitary confinement, and the neglect is there any chance they might let go of terrorist aims. Otherwise, we have, for sure, provoked such rage for what we've done to them, that they'd give their life 10 times to get back at us.
cheney's is such a twisted ideology! a twisted mind.
May 23, 2009 5:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
competent, longterm treatment
IANAT, but I cannot begin to imagine how one would tackle the knots in the psychic economy of a torture survivor.
Boy, would this ever be a good time for that long-promised forgetting pill.
*altho' one of the ones I married pioneered something she calls "Brief Therapy", which certainly is not the indicated intervention for torture victims!
May 23, 2009 5:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's a treatment I'd like to recommend - release the detainees into the room where Cheney, Rummy and Bush are locked up. Throw away the keys for a week.
May 23, 2009 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
into the room
And hi-jinks ensue...Alas, your prescription lacks the necessary provisions for medical intervention; lacking such, I really think we will not be able to prolong the party for a day, much less a full week...Fortunately, there is no shortage of trained MD's who are skilled in keeping alive those who would otherwise escape from our clutches into oblivion. Indeed, it is not unlikely that some of these very same doctors once served at the direction these very same prospective patients--is that what they call "Karma"? I'm unclear.
May 23, 2009 7:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
So let's say we give them 25,000 a year for each year imprisoned. Then what? Hand them a bus ticket back to Riyad? Should we cut out the middle man and ask them if they want the settlement in cash or explosives?
If we can imprison that sex offender on the campus of a Wisconsin prison because he has finished his sentence but is still a present threat to the community- why can't we use the same legal framework here?
May 23, 2009 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Criminally insane institutions exist for orange sex offenders, but let us further discuss the apple crop at gitmo and not digress. The posited argument is that detainees, only slightly dehumanized by their label, and greatly damaged by years of official torture with no apparent legal status, will gladly strap on e-vests and get payback and psychic peace by pushing a single button. Ergo they are waaay too dangerous to ever be released. Those who buy off on that argument must consider that the argument is what engineers call a "pilot". A starter argument if you will, that gets the old camel nose into the tent, and leads to the same thing for everyone. That is, a legal precedent for imprisoning anyone forever for no particular reason. As sure as we allow the least of our fellow humans to suffer so do we approve the same treatment for our selves. In some respect, this is very much like the other half of our Viet Nam POW's who were never returned and left behind until they became an embarassment and were executed, except worse.
May 23, 2009 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hand them a bus ticket back to Riyad
Something like that. Remember, they get the *25K each year that they don't fuck with us.
*subject to negotiation--the real schtarkers might get 100K per year--so the fuck what, if all 250 got 100k per year, we'd be long bucks ahead.
May 23, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
for each year imprisoned
Bear in mind, that, by definition, the imprisonment in question was wronful
Note, also, the guys we really want, the al-quaeda guys? They are all pleading "Proudly Guilty"--so that whole bullshit about "oh we can't convict them 'cause we used torture to get the evidence" is crap.
Any of these guys who denies what he did is not a hard core believer. He is a punk who will take our money and slink away.
May 23, 2009 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was it the Devil himself, (you know, Dick Cheney,) who said that 17% of those already released have returned to combat? I mean just because 83% of those wrongly imprisoned are living their lives without seeking vengeance is no good reason to let them go. Just because 83% of those who were released were found to be wrongly imprisoned is no reason to make haste with any trials, of any nature.
Memorial Day sure loses it's meaning when we are actually perpuating the actions of despotic governments the living our values and boldly decalaring that we are "all endowed with certain inalienable rights"!!! Frankly, this kind of fearful behavior, selfishly sacrificing the freedom of others from some false sense of securoity dishonors the bravery of those who dies to preserve that freedom.
May 23, 2009 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup, the "Devil himself" (your words) has decreed that you must keep 7 people jailed, just in case of one of them might cause harm.
May 23, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
83% of those wrongly imprisoned are living their lives without seeking vengeance
A 17% recidivism rate that any penal system would be proud of--yet in the face of a tiny risk at best, our response is to hold everyone, forever.
May 23, 2009 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink