What is your prediction of what will happen in Iraq?

[ribonucleic]

Now, I'll wait for your explanation of how this Act can be used against American citizens, when the plain language expressly excludes American citizens (rather than a made up hypothetical). 

Nothing hypothetical about it. An American citizen - seized on American soil - has already been detained and tortured for 3 years while the government fought tooth-and-nail to deny him the right to appear in court.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-21-03.html

Oh, yeah - you'll love this part... When the government avoided a likely defeat at the Supreme Court by grudgingly bringing a case against him, their charges include none of the serious allegations they had spent those 3 years using to justify their detainment of him.

The Act is just a legal framework for letting Bush get away with it again in the future.

Now, I'll wait for your explanation of how Padilla didn't deserve to be heard in court because "he's a terrorist". 

[Dos Equis]

Nothing hypothetical about it. An American citizen - seized on American soil - has already been detained and tortured for 3 years while the government fought tooth-and-nail to deny him the right to appear in court.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-21-03.html

Oh, yeah - you'll love this part... When the government avoided a likely defeat at the Supreme Court by grudgingly bringing a case against him, their charges include none of the serious allegations they had spent those 3 years using to justify their detainment of him.

The Act is just a legal framework for letting Bush get away with it again in the future.

Now, I'll wait for your explanation of how Padilla didn't deserve to be heard in court because "he's a terrorist". 

So in support of your claim that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 applies to American citizens, you cite someone who was detained three years BEFORE the Act was passed?  BUZZZZZZ!  Try again.   

Don't dig a deeper hole dude.  If you're being intellectually honest you will admit the plain language of the Act applies to aliens, who are explicitly defined to exclude American citizens. 

"ALIEN--The term 'alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States." 

Section 948a(3).

"PURPOSE--This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission."

Section 948b(a) (emphasis added). 

You still haven't explained how the preceding language of the Act applies to American citizens.

[clock ticking]

[Eyeball Chambers]

Yeah, somehow I didn't think you'd get the point. 

Some armed soldiers break into your house tonight with automatic weapons and tie a black hood over your head. When you try to ask what's going on, you're tasered until you shut up. You're driven somewhere, put on a plane, and flown away.

24 hours later, the hood is taken off. Blinking painfully at the light, you see that you're handcuffed to a chair in a windowless interrogation room. When you ask where you are, a man in a military uniform says that you've been declared an alien unlawful enemy combatant by a competent tribunal as established by the Military Commissions Act of 2006. And now you're going to tell him about the Al Qaeda plot or be introduced to the waterboard over there in the corner.

The situation is not quite as entertaining as it was when you saw something like it on 24. But you're not completely panicked yet. You're an American, after all - you have rights! So you tell him not only are you not a member of Al Qaeda, you're an American citizen - and therefore have the right to have your case presented in a court of law.

"American citizen, huh?" The man in the military uniform laughs a rich, Rush Limbaugh kind of laugh. Then he leans down to your face and hisses two words: "Prove it."

Hmm. Well, that may prove a bit difficult. You don't even know what country you're in - let alone the phone number of public defender's office. So you explain that, if he'll kindly just uncuff you, you're sure you'll be able to prove to his satisfaction that you're a 100% FOX News-watching patriotic American like himself.

Having been forewarned against this kind of crafty Muslim treachery, the interrogator instead signals two burly colleagues. They strap you to the board, put the bag over your head, and start filling it with water. Just like it said on the Internet, your will to resist is broken in seconds. Between your choking and gagging, you tearfully beg for your life - insisting that you don't know anything about Al Qaeda except what Bill O'Reilly said in the No-Spin Zone.

Maybe you don't, the interrogator wonders to himself. After all, the only evidence against you came in an anonymous call from a Florida pay-phone - from some guy who would only identify himself with the code name "240". [It's always funny until someone gets hurt!  ] But acting on the 1% Principle enshrined by his Commander In Chief, he won't take any chances. There's a clock ticking somewhere! So he continues waterboarding you. And as you sh!t youself in terror, you decide: F#ck Cheney, this sure feels like torture to me...

.
.
.

LOL! Absurd psychobabble! This could never happen to you! The purpose of the Military Commissions Act is to go after the bad guys! You know: the "worst of the worst" we keep in "Club Gitmo" - hahaha! [All but the ones we released after a few years when we decided they were just schmucks who had been handed over to us by Afghan warlords in exchange for a bounty. They're, uh... back with their families now.]

Great Post!

[240 is Back]

So in support of your claim that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 applies to American citizens, you cite someone who was detained three years BEFORE the Act was passed?  BUZZZZZZ!  Try again.  

Don't dig a deeper hole dude.  If you're being intellectually honest you will admit the plain language of the Act applies to aliens, who are explicitly defined to exclude American citizens. 

"ALIEN--The term 'alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States." 

Section 948a(3).

"PURPOSE--This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission."

Section 948b(a) (emphasis added). 

You still haven't explained how the preceding language of the Act applies to American citizens.

[clock ticking]

Padilla is an American citizen picked up in a Chicago airport.


Do you even get CNN?  Do you know which channel FOX is?  Do you know where Chicago is?

[240 is Back]

"ALIEN--The term 'alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States." 

Section 948a(3).

"PURPOSE--This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission."

Section 948b(a) (emphasis added). 

You still haven't explained how the preceding language of the Act applies to American citizens.

[clock ticking]

Jose was an american citizen who's been held without trial. 


Not an alien...


tick...


tock...

[ribonucleic]

So in support of your claim that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 applies to American citizens, you cite someone who was detained three years BEFORE the Act was passed?  BUZZZZZZ!  Try again.   

I'll try to keep this simple for you...

Alien unlawful enemy combatants are denied habeas corpus.

So an American citizen detained as an alien unlawful enemy combatant - either through malice or incompetence - will then have no means of establishing his citizenship to assert habeas corpus rights.

Hope this helps. 

Oh, by the way, Attorney General Gonzales asserts that the Constitution does not guarantee anyone habeas corpus rights.

[Dos Equis]

Padilla is an American citizen picked up in a Chicago airport.


Do you even get CNN?  Do you know which channel FOX is?  Do you know where Chicago is?

More dumb questions from 240.   

[Dos Equis]

Jose was an american citizen who's been held without trial. 


Not an alien...


tick...


tock...

Geeze Louise.  He wasn't held under a law that hadn't been passed yet.  It's disturbing that I even have to explain that you.   

[ribonucleic]

Geeze Louise.  He wasn't held under a law that hadn't been passed yet.

We await your citation of the law that authorized his detention without charge for 3 years.

[Dos Equis]

I'll try to keep this simple for you...

Alien unlawful enemy combatants are denied habeas corpus.

So an American citizen detained as an alien unlawful enemy combatant - either through malice or incompetence - will then have no means of establishing his citizenship to assert habeas corpus rights.
Hope this helps. 

Oh, by the way, Attorney General Gonzales asserts that the Constitution does not guarantee anyone habeas corpus rights.

Good grief.  I can't believe I'm actually having this discussion.  An "alien" is not an American citizen under section 948a(3).  

"ALIEN--The term 'alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States."  

Section 948a(3).

So a person born in this country could be arrested under the Military Commissions Act and, despite the plain language of section 948a(3), would not be able to provide a birth certificate or social security card, etc. showing they are actually an American citizen?  How ridiculous is that?  I guess about as silly as the claim by you and 240 that a law passed in 2006 was used to detain someone in 2003.  LOL . . . . .  
  
[Sigh]  I give up already.  

[ribonucleic]

So a person born in this country could be arrested under the Military Commissions Act and, despite the plain language of section 948a(3), would not be able to provide a birth certificate or social security card, etc. showing they are actually an American citizen?

That would be the birth certificate and Social Security card that the men who abducted you were thoughtful enough to give you time to collect before flying you out of the country to their undisclosed prison? 

And you still seem to be having a hard time with this "malice" idea. You're too young to remember Nixon's "Enemies List" perhaps?

[Dos Equis]

That would be the birth certificate and Social Security card that the men who abducted you were thoughtful enough to give you time to collect before flying you out of the country to their undisclosed prison? 

And you still seem to be having a hard time with this "malice" idea. You're too young to remember Nixon's "Enemies List" perhaps?

LOL . . . . Wait . . . .  Will the men be wearing black uniforms and flying in a black helicopter?  LOL . . . .  Better yet, will they use a law that will be passed sometime in 2010 to detain me? 

This is rich . . . . LOL. . . . Thanks for starting my day with smile.  I love this board.   

[ribonucleic]

Will the men be wearing black uniforms and flying in a black helicopter?

Sometimes they wear airport security uniforms. 

"A Canadian citizen who was detained last year at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist said Tuesday he was secretly deported to Syria and endured 10 months of torture in a Syrian prison."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A522-2003Nov4&notFound=true

But don't you worry about that, Bum. You're white, I take it.

[Dos Equis]

Sometimes they wear airport security uniforms. 

"A Canadian citizen who was detained last year at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist said Tuesday he was secretly deported to Syria and endured 10 months of torture in a Syrian prison."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A522-2003Nov4&notFound=true

But don't you worry about that, Bum. You're white, I take it.

Ribo you're not unlike many people in this country.  You have to put people in a box for your own comfort level:  liberal, conservative, white, black, straight, homosexual, etc.  You need it so you can whip out your canned views of how that group thinks and acts.  And when you don't have that information, you make ASSumptions, e.g., "You're white, I take it."  I'll never tell.  I'd rather make it more difficult for you to put me in a box.   

Try thinking outside the box.  It's refreshing. 

[ribonucleic]

You have to put people in a box for your own comfort level:  liberal, conservative, white, black, straight, homosexual, etc. 

Don't forget "black-helicopter paranoid". 

[Dos Equis]

Don't forget "black-helicopter paranoid". 

Right.  And "making up statutory language to support an abjectly false claim about the Military Commissions Act."   

[240 is Back]

Beach,

he just showed that Padilla, an American citizen, was held for 3 years without trial, where no law allowed for it.

It gave you a chuckle and a great start to your day?

Sounds like Ribo loves the constitution and defend it, while you could care less.  You laughed at an American citizen being denied his rights illegally.  DId you laugh on 911 too?  I just want to know which events which violate our rights you enjoy, and which you dislike.  Where is your line?

[Dos Equis]

Beach,

he just showed that Padilla, an American citizen, was held for 3 years without trial, where no law allowed for it.

It gave you a chuckle and a great start to your day?

Sounds like Ribo loves the constitution and defend it, while you could care less.  You laughed at an American citizen being denied his rights illegally.  DId you laugh on 911 too?  I just want to know which events which violate our rights you enjoy, and which you dislike.  Where is your line?

You both said Padilla was held under the provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which wasn't passed till three years after he was supposedly detained.  THAT gives me a chuckle.  I'm laughing at YOU (and Ribo).   

[240 is Back]

You both said Padilla was held under the provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which wasn't passed till three years after he was supposedly detained.  THAT gives me a chuckle.  I'm laughing at YOU (and Ribo).  

And what is your take on an American being held for 3 years with no trial in 2001?

[Dos Equis]

And what is your take on an American being held for 3 years with no trial in 2001?

Obviously terrible, but don't try and change the subject.  You and Ribo made a cockamamie argument.

[240 is Back]

Obviously terrible, but don't try and change the subject.  You and Ribo made a cockamamie argument.

You agree it was terrible back then.

But you believe it's "okay" today.

So, when Bush makes a law saying it's okay, it moves from "terrible" to "it makes me chuckle?"

[Dos Equis]

You agree it was terrible back then.

But you believe it's "okay" today.

So, when Bush makes a law saying it's okay, it moves from "terrible" to "it makes me chuckle?"

 

"ALIEN--The term 'alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States." 

Section 948a(3).

"PURPOSE--This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission."

Section 948b(a) (emphasis added). 

[240 is Back]

"ALIEN--The term 'alien' means a person who is not a citizen of the United States." 

Section 948a(3).

"PURPOSE--This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission."

Section 948b(a) (emphasis added). 

So you're okay with the US Govt torturing people who are not US citizens then?

[Dos Equis]

So you're okay with the US Govt torturing people who are not US citizens then?

Bwahahahahaha!!!  Changing the subject again.  LOL.  240, it is obvious that when you have to argue the cold hard facts your brain gets tied in knots. 

Hey, so did they like show Padilla a draft of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and tell him that was the basis for his detention?  LOL . . . .   

[ribonucleic]

" Iraqi Interior Ministry estimates 1,000 killed in one week"

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/04/iraq.main/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Proportional to their population, that's the equivalent of 11,000 people being killed here.

Yes, great things are happening in Iraq...