Friday, May 22, 2009
Glenn Greenwald analyzes Obama’s preventive detention proposal
by Larry Geller
Check out Glenn Greenwald’s article on Obama’s preventive detention proposal.
Obama should know better. Obama does know better. Obama should not be allowed to get away with this.
Greenwald’s article is a long and comprehensive analysis. To encourage you to click over and read it, here is a snippet which will give you the flavor of his concise analysis:
Is it "due process" when the Government can guarantee it always wins?
If you really think about the argument Obama made yesterday -- when he described the five categories of detainees and the procedures to which each will be subjected -- it becomes manifest just how profound a violation of Western conceptions of justice this is. What Obama is saying is this: we'll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don't think we can convict in a real court, we'll get convictions in the military commissions I'm creating. For those we can't convict even in my military commissions, we'll just imprison them anyway with no charges ("preventively detain" them).
Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you'll get convictions is not due process. Those are called "show trials." In a healthy system of justice, the Government gives everyone it wants to imprison a trial and then imprisons only those whom it can convict. The process is constant (trials), and the outcome varies (convictions or acquittals).
Obama is saying the opposite: in his scheme, it is the outcome that is constant (everyone ends up imprisoned), while the process varies and is determined by the Government (trials for some; military commissions for others; indefinite detention for the rest). The Government picks and chooses which process you get in order to ensure that it always wins. A more warped "system of justice" is hard to imagine. [salon.com, Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal, 5/22/2009]
I thought this craziness would be all over when Bush got into his last helicopter ride out of DC. It’s disappointing, discouraging, and even depressing to see his legacy reborn in the guy we were counting on to bring us that promised change.
Update: Andy Parx posted an excellent comment. Since many readers don’t look at comments, I want to include it here.
The question at the heart of this that Greenwald doesn’t get to is that if you haven’t got any evidence to convict someone it’s quite probable they didn’t do anything. In other words how can they say they “know” they did something if they don’t have any evidence. What are they, psychic?
More like psycho...pathic.
The rules of evidence in the American justice system are there so you don’t have manufactured cases based on some kind of “we’re sure they did it so they must have done it” fallacy. Thinking “they might have done it” doesn’t cut it for good reason. It’s apparent in many of these cases they can’t even meet preponderance of evidence” standards much less reasonable doubt.
All too often overzealous prosecutors delude themselves into thinking “it must be” the person they suspect and have arrested even when it isn’t and they proceed to trial based on that. That’s how we get 99% of the wrongful convictions.
And that’s just regular prosecutors – the ability to self delude themselves is the prime hallmark of the Bush/Chaney (now apparently Obama) cabal. If all they have is a “confession” they tortured out of someone it’s worthless, most likely given just to get them to stop. If they can’t even gather evidence after a tortured-out confession it’s obviously because there isn’t any evidence there, just a self- deluded surety that these guys did something.
Apparently they “rounded up the usual suspects” and now have no idea what they might have done but they’re sure they “must have done something”.
They’re as “sure these guys are guilty” as they were that Sadam had nukes and that we’d be greeted as liberators and... and...
# posted by Andy Parx : 12:21 PM HST
The question at the heart of this that Greenwald doesn’t get to is that if you haven’t got any evidence to convict someone it’s quite probable they didn’t do anything. In other words how can they say they “know” they did something if they don’t have any evidence. What are they, psychic?
More like psycho...pathic.
The rules of evidence in the American justice system are there so you don’t have manufactured cases based on some kind of “we’re sure they did it so they must have done it” fallacy. Thinking “they might have done it” doesn’t cut it for good reason. It’s apparent in many of these cases they can’t even meet preponderance of evidence” standards much less reasonable doubt.
All too often overzealous prosecutors delude themselves into thinking “it must be” the person they suspect and have arrested even when it isn’t and they proceed to trial based on that. That’s how we get 99% of the wrongful convictions.
And that’s just regular prosecutors – the ability to self delude themselves is the prime hallmark of the Bush/Chaney (now apparently Obama) cabal. If all they have is a “confession” they tortured out of someone it’s worthless, most likely given just to get them to stop. If they can’t even gather evidence after a tortured-out confession it’s obviously because there isn’t any evidence there, just a self- deluded surety that these guys did something.
Apparently they “rounded up the usual suspects” and now have no idea what they might have done but they’re sure they “must have done something”.
They’re as “sure these guys are guilty” as they were that Sadam had nukes and that we’d be greeted as liberators and... and...
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