Maybe Terri Schiavo's parents should have tried this one?

March 2, 2006 9:31 PM

Bush Admin lawyers argue that torture ban dosn't apply to GitmoIn addition to making the argument that force-feeding one Mohammed Bawazir does not constitute torture, they Lawyers for the administration argue that Mr. Bawazir is not entitled to protection under the act, because the law itself bans judicial review for writs of habeas corpus by (among a few others) any " alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba". Cute.
posted by delmoi (38 comments total)

so how are hunger strikes handled usually? seriously, i do not know the answer to this. i guess they could

a) let him go
b) let him die
c) forcefeed him

If it were me, I'd choose C 100 times out of 100.
posted by b_thinky at 9:35 PM on March 2, 2006

Actually, maybe 75 C and 25 B.
posted by b_thinky at 9:35 PM on March 2, 2006

Bob-by Sands!
Bob-by Sands!
posted by HTuttle at 9:39 PM on March 2, 2006

Well, as to wether or not force feeding him is torture should be up to the courts, I suppose. But they're arguing that that they don't even need to worry about the torture ban.

The method they are using to force feed him is apparently particularly painful.
posted by delmoi at 9:42 PM on March 2, 2006

Ex Parte McCardle, 74 U.S. 506

Congress may strip the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction: "We are not at liberty to inquire into the motives of the legislature. We can only examine into its power under the Constitution; and the power to make exceptions to the appellate jurisdiction of this court is given by express words."
posted by DoorFrame at 9:45 PM on March 2, 2006

As predicted.
posted by homunculus at 9:57 PM on March 2, 2006

Adel is innocent fucked.
posted by homunculus at 9:59 PM on March 2, 2006

They're not real people anyway.
posted by homunculus at 10:08 PM on March 2, 2006

What's the point of consitutional rights if a simple act of legislation can overwrite it?
posted by Talez at 11:03 PM on March 2, 2006

b_thinky, why not try them first? Interview some grunts from Afghanistan who saw them holding AK's or working for the Taliban. Because each and every one of them was a big bad terrorist, no possibility at all that any one of them was a farmer swept up in a flurry of mass detentions and crisp hundreds being thrown around by CIA operatives and tribal warlords. Then you can have your masturbatory tough-guy fantasy and shove feeding tubes through their nostrils while they shit themselves out of fear.

Ugh. I hope this puts the final nail into any notion that McCain is a moderate and/or independent Republican. He had to know this was coming, and I think his whole war-hero/anti-torture thing was just him posturing for 2008. If not, he's dumb, and this is a pretty big middle finger thrown right back at him.
posted by bardic at 11:15 PM on March 2, 2006

Talez, I hear you, but it's kind of the other way around--Bush lawyers are saying that, precisely because of their perceived Constitutional rights as the executive branch in wartime, Congressional legislation is meaningless.

Six of one, half-a-dozen etc.
posted by bardic at 11:17 PM on March 2, 2006

NPR did a story on this back in February. Here it hear.
posted by wsg at 12:11 AM on March 3, 2006

I can't shake the feeling that our great-great-grandchildren will judge us just as harshly as we judge the people who didn't stand up and fight the Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, and slavery.

How can any American be arguing that it's okay to detain someone without due process, indefinitely, and torture him while he's locked up? These mewling cowards are traitors to everything their country stands for. Patrick Henry would kick their asses.
posted by EarBucket at 3:43 AM on March 3, 2006

I can't shake the feeling that our great-great-grandchildren will judge us just as harshly as we judge the people who didn't stand up and fight the Japanese internment camps, the Trail of Tears, and slavery.

They won't. Because they will read your metafilter posts and know you fought against it with everything you had...
posted by srboisvert at 4:07 AM on March 3, 2006

srboisvert's snarky comment aside, what can you do? I mean, thigns like this enrage me, but I'm not yet willing to rise up in arms against the current administration. Because I'm not willing to engage in a one-man coup against the administration, what am I expected to do?

srboisvert, you don't know that he doesn't try to educate other people and hope that they will vote this administration out. You don't know that he doesn't contact his representatives and senators regularly.

I don't see you picking up your AK to put it to those people who don't "[fight] with everything [they] had...", why do you assume that means that people aren't doing what's available to them to try to fix it?
posted by Swervo at 4:19 AM on March 3, 2006

Fucking monstrous.
posted by Drexen at 4:28 AM on March 3, 2006

so how are hunger strikes handled usually?

b) let him die

"5. Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially. The decision as to the capacity of the prisoner to form such a judgment should be confirmed by at least one other independent physician. The consequences of the refusal of nourishment shall be explained by the physician to the prisoner."
posted by queen zixi at 4:41 AM on March 3, 2006

King George has decreed they SHALL eat cake.

Laws are for little people.
posted by nofundy at 5:05 AM on March 3, 2006

Indeed, what can be done about this? You have the world's most powerful army, or at least the ones with the most and deadliest weapons, not merely protecting this state of affairs but participating in the thick and the thin of it.

It is with this as with the rest of human history -- it never really matters who the people's favorite is, because it's the guy with the army's power who always ends up on top.
posted by clevershark at 5:44 AM on March 3, 2006

..And always eventually loses. usualy in a long bloody war.
posted by Elim at 6:54 AM on March 3, 2006

[fuck america]
posted by chunking express at 6:59 AM on March 3, 2006

God help the people we have imprisoned there (and it's going to cause blowback for decades or more against us), and i only wish the UN would sweep in and free them--Cuba even--many of them did nothing against us at all.

Gulag or not, Guantanamo is indefensible--... _ Many of my correspondents interpret the fact that almost all these men deny having anything to do with al Qaeda in particular or terrorism in general as evidence of their guilt. The logic of this position is that guilty men often deny their guilt, so such denials are actually incriminatory. This also happens to be the position of the U.S. government. Indeed, the increasingly harsh coercive interrogation measures used against the prisoners are largely a product of the failure to get the vast majority of them to reveal useful information about al Qaeda or anything else.

This, needless to say, is the nightmare logic that as a historical matter was employed wholesale by totalitarian regimes. Since the possibility that the authorities had either made a mistake or had knowingly arrested an innocent person could not be considered, the prisoner's failure to confess simply meant he hadn't been tortured enough. ...
posted by amberglow at 7:00 AM on March 3, 2006

Force Feeding a hunger-striker amounts to torture.

They strap them down and jam a tube down their nose directly into their stomach.

Bush needs to not only be impeached, he needs to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity and imprisoned for the rest of his life.
posted by empath at 7:39 AM on March 3, 2006

Hunger striking prisoners are not force-fed out of concern for their health. They are force fed because hungre strikes are so goddamn embarrassing for their captors.

Basic medical ethics says that a patiet, if he or she is in his or her right mind, can refuse any medical treatment at any time. This is not medicine, it's politics.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:18 AM on March 3, 2006

I agree with empath. Bush needs to not only be impeached, he needs to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity and imprisoned for the rest of his life.

I feel this way only because I do not support the death penalty.

(on preview @Astro Zombie)

"They're not patients, they're enemy combatants!"
posted by Richard Daly at 8:53 AM on March 3, 2006

I don't see you picking up your AK to put it to those people who don't "[fight] with everything [they] had...", why do you assume that means that people aren't doing what's available to them to try to fix it?

My AK? WTF? I don't have a clue what your no doubt outraged point is.

(P.S. It's not my country swervo and yes it was a snark)
posted by srboisvert at 8:55 AM on March 3, 2006

My AK?

Your Alaska?
posted by matteo at 9:03 AM on March 3, 2006

His AK-49 Kalishnakov rifle, which the government has deemed is too powerful and dangerous a weapon for an American citizen to legally own.
Think about that for just a minute.
We are told that the American citizen is too dumb/stupid/crazy/dangerous to be trusted to own a firearm that is used the world over as the defacto weapon of choice on the battlefield. The proven most effective field rifle in the 20th century.
But Americans can't own them.

Leading the bull by the nose.
posted by daq at 9:27 AM on March 3, 2006

49?
posted by matteo at 9:40 AM on March 3, 2006

As a physician, I'd like to put things in perspective. A nasal feeding tube is only a mild discomfort at best. If you have ever had abdominal surgery or been involved in a serious accident of any kind you will get an even bigger tube shoved up your nose and down into your stomach to suck stuff out and make sure that you don't vomit up stomach contents. We care because sedated people can aspirate (eg. inhale) the contents causing a really bad chemical pneumonia.
If you need to be fed, we snake a smaller tup down your other nose, past your stomach into your small intestine - and basically pour instant breakfast down it slowly. This is normal, everyday stuff. Now don't get me wrong, I think the Bush admin is a nightmare but this particular point is not very persuasive. There are SO many worse things this administration is doing in nearly every aspect of it's reach.
posted by zwemer at 10:04 AM on March 3, 2006

Seattle Times, June 3, 2005:

"Charles R. McNabb was five months into a hunger strike — his 5-foot-9 frame withered to less than 100 pounds — when he was wheeled into the Airway Heights prison infirmary last year.

The prison medical staff wanted to insert a feeding tube. McNabb, convicted of arson, wanted to continue starving. He was remorseful, he had told jailers, for badly burning his stepdaughter.

Was it a case of a patient's right to deny medical care, or of the state's obligation to avert a prison suicide?

The Washington State Court of Appeals yesterday ruled that the Department of Corrections (DOC) was justified in force-feeding McNabb, setting a precedent for other state inmates who attempt hunger strikes."
posted by iviken at 10:05 AM on March 3, 2006

posted by matteo : 49?

There is an AK-49, or was. But I'm with you, he probably meant 47.
posted by Mr Bismarck at 10:36 AM on March 3, 2006

zwemer, your point is well taken, but I've read stories of how these things are administred under duress--it's not uncommon for a lot of cartilage and bone to snap. And what Astro Zombie said. These guys are probably being told their family and village have been destroyed, and that they're never going to leave. Any viable intelligence they might have had had an expiration date of 2003 or 2004. And call me tinfoil, but I'm sure some of these guys have managed to kill themselves, and they've been promptly buried and the official number of detainees has been duly revised. Nothing to see here.

Does the AMA have the power to revoke the licenses of these military doctors, or recommend them for review? Because these torturers should never be allowed to practice on human beings again.
posted by bardic at 10:57 AM on March 3, 2006

We don’t torture. But even if we did, you couldn’t stop us. Even if you could stop us, it then wouldn’t be torture, because you would be able to stop it. So fuck off and let me burn my initials into this sand niggers’ ass.

“Because I'm not willing to engage in a one-man coup against the administration, what am I expected to do?”

Who says it has to be one-man?
There are plenty of things you can donate your time, money and efforts to, in order to oppose this. I’m not going to link to anything I’m doing, because you should define your own level of involvement.
If you feel really really strongly but really really alone, call a few newspapers and set yourself on fire in front of the white house in protest.
That’d get some attention.
Might be a bit too much to ask though. I’m not doing it, so I’m certainly not criticising. But there are lesser lengths one can go to fight on this issue. The first step is in fact defining how. For that you need to frame your thought, perhaps get some feedback.
/Which metafilter is nice for.

From there you can get a sense of your short term goals and get the ball rolling.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:06 AM on March 3, 2006

His AK-49 Kalishnakov rifle, which the government has deemed is too powerful and dangerous a weapon for an American citizen to legally own.

I thought the assult weapons ban was not renewed.
posted by delmoi at 12:47 PM on March 3, 2006

This Washington Post article has a grisly first-hand account of a force-feeding (It's towards the end of the article for those of you in a hurry).
posted by gamera at 1:40 PM on March 3, 2006

I don't see what everyone is upset about. Mr. Bush is simply construing the torture ban "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President as Commander in Chief."

Feh. My vote is for Smedleyman to lead the Metafilter Militia when it comes time for the Second American Revolution.
posted by EarBucket at 2:49 PM on March 3, 2006

His AK-49 Kalishnakov rifle, which the government has deemed is too powerful and dangerous a weapon for an American citizen to legally own.

I thought the assult weapons ban was not renewed.
posted by delmoiPoster at 12:47 PM

The assault weapons ban was not renewed, but it was a BS law to begin with. All it banned was rifles that "Looked" a certian way. Folding stocks, bayonets, 30 round clips, pistol grips. You could have two alterations on a rifle, but not three.

So you could take a .22 caliber Ruger 10/22 from a stock rifle and trick it out to look badass with all kinds of cool accessories.

There are many types of AK's. the AK-47 is chambered in 7.62X39 amunition, and the AK-74 is chambered in 7.62X54. there are other calibers, too. But it's like saying the US uses M-16's. They haven't ysed M-16's since vietnam. The current M-4 rifle is basicly the same gun, but with different configurations.
posted by Balisong at 8:09 AM on March 7, 2006