"President Must Answer to Downing Street Memo"

Kevin Willoughby wrote:
says...
On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 14:51:09 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
It is...in wartime...we haven't legally declared war on anyone yet; if
we had, then all those poor shmucks down at Guantanamo Bay would be POWs
and subject to their rights under the Geneva Conventions.

No, they wouldn't. They're unlawful combatants. And they are being
treated according to Geneva despite that.

True (excepting the torture claims, if true).

On the other hand, the Constitution has explicit requirements on the
ability of the government to detain people without probable cause,
speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, habeas corpus,
representation by a lawyer, cruel and unusual punishment, etc. "all
those poor shmucks down at Guantanamo Bay" are denied these rights.

(The Constitution limits the ability of the government to become a
tyranny. There is no special exception for non-citizens, even if those
non-citizens have been accused, without proof, of being terrorists.)

However, the Constitution's applicability to people
who have been held to be enemy combatants in a time
of war is approximately zero.

It can be argued that the current state of affairs
is Not Right, and should be changed.

However, no President has done so, the Congress has
not passed a law to do so, and the court systems have
so far refused to get involved either.

There *is* precedent here. A lot of people don't like it.
I don't like aspects of it. But along with the whole
international law applicability to clearly terrorist
organizations problem, we have the equivalent domestic
constitutional law problem.

As with the international one, nobody in congress has
stepped up to the plate with a coherent alternative
framework proposal...


-george william herbert

Scott M. Kozel wrote:

The South formed their own country and wanted to chart their own
destiny. Then the unionists with massed armies invaded the South.
The unionists were the aggressors.

Riiiiight. They most deviously towed Ft. Sumter into a previously
blank section of harbor.

--
Pete Stickney
Java Man knew nothing about coffee.

It appears that the notorious 'Downing Street memos' are not original
documents but 'reconstructions' based on originals that have been
conveniently destroyed. Does that raise any red flags in people eager to
believe the worst interpretation of them?



http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/...ves/004746.php

Times of London:

The eight memos - all labeled "secret" or "confidential" - were first
obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in
The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the
documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the
originals.

Scott M. Kozel wrote:

The South formed their own country and wanted to chart their own
destiny.



And then, like a buncha damned retards, they had to go and attack Fort
Sumter. Bah. An agrarian slave-based nation attacking an ajoining
industrial nation. Just plain stupid.

Jim Oberg wrote:

The eight memos - all labeled "secret" or "confidential" - were first
obtained by British reporter Michael Smith, who has written about them in
The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times.
Smith told AP he protected the identity of the source he had obtained the
documents from by typing copies of them on plain paper and destroying the
originals.

Unless additional copies of the original memos can be produced, or their
original author(s) are identified and required to testify as to their
being a true copy of any presumed memo(s) he may have written, they
should be treated as forgeries and ignored.

And it's a pity that Mr. Smith didn't mention that he'd typed them up
himself in his first article -- before wasting our time like this.

--
I was punching a text message into my | Reed Snellenberger
phone yesterday and thought, "they need | GPG KeyID: 5A978843
to make a phone that you can just talk | rsnellenberger
into." Major Thomb | -at-houston.rr.com

Peter Stickney wrote:

Scott M. Kozel wrote:

The South formed their own country and wanted to chart their own
destiny. Then the unionists with massed armies invaded the South.
The unionists were the aggressors.

Riiiiight. They most deviously towed Ft. Sumter into a previously
blank section of harbor.

No union soldier was killed or injured at the Fort Sumter incident, and
all were allowed to return to the union.

There would have been no attack if the federal garrison hadn't occupied
the fort in the first place and if Lincoln hadn't decided to send an
armed naval convoy, which he sent solely for the purpose of provoking
an attack so he could use it as a pretext for an invasion.

Jim Oberg wrote:

It appears that the notorious 'Downing Street memos' are not original
documents but 'reconstructions' based on originals that have been
conveniently destroyed. Does that raise any red flags in people eager to
believe the worst interpretation of them?


"Fake but accurate."

If I could only have as much success with those copies of Howard Hughes'
last will and testament, where he gave *everything* to me.

Scott M. Kozel wrote:

Peter Stickney wrote:


Scott M. Kozel wrote:



The South formed their own country and wanted to chart their own
destiny. Then the unionists with massed armies invaded the South.
The unionists were the aggressors.


Riiiiight. They most deviously towed Ft. Sumter into a previously
blank section of harbor.



No union soldier was killed or injured at the Fort Sumter incident, and
all were allowed to return to the union.


If Country A fired an armada of missiles at Country B and the B's were
able to zap 'em out of the sky with lasers, who would really say Country
B would be out of line in declaring war? Failure to succeed at an attack
does not absolve the attacker of repurcussions.


There would have been no attack if the federal garrison hadn't occupied
the fort in the first place

"Look what you made me do!"

There would have been no need for Federal troops there if the Southern
aristocracy hadn't wanted to keep their fellow man enslaved.

Scott Lowther wrote:

Scott M. Kozel wrote:
Peter Stickney wrote:

Riiiiight. They most deviously towed Ft. Sumter into a previously
blank section of harbor.

No union soldier was killed or injured at the Fort Sumter incident, and
all were allowed to return to the union.

If Country A fired an armada of missiles at Country B and the B's were
able to zap 'em out of the sky with lasers, who would really say Country
B would be out of line in declaring war? Failure to succeed at an attack
does not absolve the attacker of repurcussions.

Bogus analogy. Fort Sumter then belonged to South Carolina, it was in
the Charleston harbor and was built to protect the city; and the union
soldiers were there illegally, over 500 miles from their country.

There would have been no attack if the federal garrison hadn't occupied
the fort in the first place

"Look what you made me do!"

There would have been no need for Federal troops there if the Southern
aristocracy hadn't wanted to keep their fellow man enslaved.

Read your history. Slavery was not the reason that unionists started
the war, their sole "reason" was the fact that the South seceded from
the USA.

Slavery was legal in 1861 in some of the union states, by the way.

Scott M. Kozel wrote:

The South formed their own country and wanted to chart their own
destiny. Then the unionists with massed armies invaded the South. The
unionists were the aggressors.



Which leaves one wondering- when does a country _become_ a country?
We declared independence from Great Britain without any popular vote on
the subject, and with a major segment of our population opposed to doing
it. Could Britain still make the claim that we are not an independent
nation but a colony of Britain in the hands of rebels acting in an
illegal manner?
If the majority of the population in the Confederacy decides that the
Confederacy is an independent nation, does that make it one in a legal
sense? Or is it when other nations start treating it as an independent
nation by recognizing it as one in regards to diplomatic relations?
This seems historically to be settled by blood and iron rather than in a
legal sense. You become an independent nation when other nations don't
dare screw with you.
Israel comes immediately to mind in regards to this concept. Does it
exist as an independent nation or not? Depends who you ask. :-)

Pat