Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Gitmo detainees’ lawyers: Courageous people doing the right thing.

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For the record, I would be more likely to patronize a law firm whose attorneys were doing pro bono work on behalf of Gitmo detainees, thereby helping to continue some 800 years of habeas corpus and due process.

So go ahead, Stimson, Crowley, et al. — you publish those names. Some of us admire courage, and detest cowardice.

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        • What cowardice. Frankly, the threat of Islamist terrorism is pretty puny compared to past threats this nation (and others) have faced in the past…it would most likely be even less were it not for Bush creating a new, major failed state in Iraq to match the one in Afganistan (now sliding back into chaos…)

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          There is no evidence that Gitmo has lessened terrorism…all the arrests of Al Queda have been by foreign governments, who seem to be a whole lot more effective than our own these days.

            • compared to, for example, the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 20-40 MILLION people in just one year.

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              Imagine how much better off we’d be today if we had dedicated the funds spent on Operation Iraqi Liberation to medical research (or alternative energy development, or [insert item of human progress here], for that matter).  If you think 911 was bad, just wait until the next plague hits our even more densely populated world.

              • If Flight 93 had hit it’s intended target that would have been nothing?

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                What happened on 9/11 wasn’t a pandemic or a natural disaster, it was a calculated act of war.

                • or are you the 40% of Fox viewers that still think they found WMDs in Iraq?

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                  Yes, we are all well aware that 9/11 was an act of war, yet we don’t see where the perpetrator of the crime was pursued and captured. It seems the Bush administration got off track somewhere.

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                  It always cracks me up when tighty righties invoke 9/11 as justification for clamping down on civil liberties and torturing innocent people. Do you agree with Stalin and other 20th century fascists who really believe that the ends justify the means? I guess you have to break eggs to make an omelette, so to speak.

            • That was one of the past threats I was thinking of. That was a real war that nearly destroyed the nation.

        • …that the election of George W. Bush as president was a national suicide pact.  It wasn’t completely clear at the time the decision was made–at least not to enough of the voters–though the signs were certainly there.

        • “The Constitution is not a suicide pact”

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          Do all of your political positions fit on a bumper sticker?

        • A suicide pact would be one that says let’s kill the Constitution by hurting people who are trying to uphold it.  By attacking the lawyers and law firms that are representing the people accused of terrorism, Mr. Stimson is contributing to the death of our democracy.  He is no better than a terroist. 

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    • She did not just represent an individual accused of terrorism.  She engaged in an illegal, stupid act.
      She is an aberration. 

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      Lawyers representing people accused of terroism are upholding the principles in our Constitution. They should be commended.  The member of the administration who said the lawyers should suffer financially because of their representations should be fired from his job. 

      • is that the Constitution is expendable-except, of course, if someone is trying to take away his guns. In the case of the detention of AY-rabs, the ends justify the means. So what if innocent people get caught up in the dragnet. We’re fighting the War on Terra and we can do no wrong.

    • Don’t feed the trolls.

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      I’m all for us answering those conversation-elevating conservatives, you know, the ones who quote useful facts, understand the liberal point of view but disagree with it, and are capable of more than one line responses.

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      Maybe I’m just not into the exhilirating rush of being provoked?

  2. …they called it rebellion in those days. Nevertheless, one of the founding fathers was wise enough to pen this little gem, applicable in full force today:

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    “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” – Thomas Paine

    • Consider this, from Joshua E. London in the National Review – “America’s Earliest Terrorists”:

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        …. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.

        Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.

        These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress,

        “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

        • Laurel, your comment suggests that you view radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, maybe in the future armed with an A-bomb or sarin or smallpox, as similarly threatening as KKK criminal murders circa 1932. (Set your moral equivalence aside.)

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          I don’t.

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          And thanks for demeaning white christians everywhere (we’re all for lynchin’, don’t ya know.). 

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          I’m one.

          • Laurel said that generally home-grown terrorists are white christians, not that most white christians are home-grown terrorists.

          • white. Christian. current. You don’t have to go back to 1932.

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            I’m betting the majority of BMGers are white Christians (this is Massachusetts, after all). No need to play the martyr here. We all know how the Christian majority is persecuted in this country. /sarcasm/

      • Aside from ‘those Muslims have been bad-ass for a long time’, your quote illuminates little.

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        You might take a look at Article 11 of this treaty: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,  – as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, – and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

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        Jefferson might be highly offended that the States have upset this precedent in later centuries.

  4. I agree. People should stop acting and falling into the 9/11 trap. Terrorism has always been around and will always be around. Differing groups who want their interests highlighted will always use terrorism as a means to an end, including our own government in some cases.

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    So please, let’s not keep perpetuating 9/11 security hysteria and keep thinking with our heads.

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    Gitmo is a place where we hold people without charge and outside the normal due process of law. Bringing these suspects and charging them and subsequently convicting or acquiting them does not threaten our security or lead to our “suicide” but rather demonstrates the morality our nation is capable of to the rest of the world, who has almost universally condemned the prison’s existence.

  5. Mr. Stimson, who is deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, should be fired and/or disbarred.  When he was appointed to his position, and when he was sworn in to the bar, he took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution.  He has violated that oath by trying to encourage companies to punish lawyers and law firms who provide representation to people accused of terroism. 

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    When I read this story yesterday, I was appalled, not only by the statements, but by the fact that someone being paid with my tax dollars was making the statements.  I was further appalled when I read that the guy was an attorney.  I also thought the statements sounded somewhat reminiscent of the comments by the Healey campaign about Deval Patrick’s representation of some acccused person in Florida. It all must be from the same playbook.

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