Just Shoot This Bastard Now!
He was convicted three years ago for an act that can only be characterized as treason during a time of war.
Simple disposition of case: SHOOT HIM!
WASHINGTON — A Navy lawyer sentenced to six months behind bars for sending the names of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a human-rights attorney is set to appeal his conviction to the U.S. military’s highest court.
Oral arguments were scheduled Tuesday morning before the U.S. Armed Forces Court of Appeals in Washington.
The case involves Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, of Topeka, Kan. He was convicted in 2007 of communicating secret information that could be used to injure the United States, and leaking information to unauthorized personnel.
The names were in an unsigned valentine to a Center for Constitutional Rights lawyer.
Diaz said before his conviction that leaking the names was right because the detainees were being mistreated. But he said at his sentencing that his actions were cowardly.
Category: Politics
Is there no act that can be called Treason anymore? I have seen treasonous acts, or acts that once would have been called treason, and a wrist slap is the most any of the bastards get.
Where in hell is the respect for the country, its military, and its troops anymore? In the early ’60’s, regarding one of the “Swiftstrike” maneuvers, a guy in my airborne rifle company was given a special courtsmartial for “missing a movement’. Hell, anymore they’re committing really serious stuff, like the issue of this post. What will happen to the Ft. Hood Raghead Major? What would have happened to him for doing the same in the ’60’s or earlier?
Give me one good reason why he shouldn’t face a firing squad, on Ft. Hood, open to the public? Can we spell Political Correctness, boys n girls?
Nuf Sed
Unfortunately, COB6, we don’t shoot treasonous bastards, anymore; we give them a platform to speak from, possibly a book deal, and if they’re really good, a spot in the administration, or re-elected to congress over and over and over.
FranklyOpinionated, maybe if you’d been picked up off the street, thrown in a black hole somewhere with no recourse and no escape, mistreated and tortured, maybe you’d want someone like Diaz on your side. The guy didn’t collude with Al Queda or anything. So we pick up a bunch of guys in Afghanistan – quite a few were completely innocent, clueless patsies turned in by tribesmen for monetary payments, or for some kind of personal vendetta. And these blameless people are held in secret with no way out, their families have no clue if they’re dead or alive, they have no rights whatsoever, no way to defend themselves, they are routinely mistreated, some of these innocent people are tortured. And this lawyer Diaz notifies a human rights lawyer – not a terrorist cell – and you want to shoot him? Maybe he does deserve six months, but maybe he also deserves a pat on the back. Sometimes there are higher imperatives than following the letter of the law. He did win something calleed the Ridenhour Prize for his actions, sharing this distinction with many of my heros (Ellsberg, Moyers, Carter, Hersh, et al). Naw, all in all, I’m glad there are still people out there like Diaz.
And the seagull flies in to take another shit. Dear Joe, you **ARE** aware that there are REASONS for detaining these folks, yes? And divulging classified info would still get me thrown into the employ of the Kansas Gravel Company, even over a decade after I’ve left active duty. So why cut this ass-clown a break for doing the same thing?
Again, NHSparky, many were completely innocent. It would be one thing if there was a process whereby they could have proven their innocence, but we literally locked these blameles people up and threw away the key, and in secret. What the hell kind of a system is that? Kind of like the divine right of kings. The Supreme Court had ordered the Bush administration to provide these prisoners habeus corpus rights, an order they were determined to ignore. I look at Diaz as an Oskar Schindler type of guy, fighting injustice, and, well, evil as best he could.
Joe: Do you have proof of them being tortured at Gitmo? Do you have proof that they were “just picked up off the street for no reason”? No, you don’t, so why don’t you just STFU? Plus, the idea that these guys should be released while there is an active operation going on in that country is just downright stupid (which explains why you support such an idea). Tell me; did we release enemy combatants during WWWI, WWII, Korea, etc. until after the end of hostilities? That would be, again, no.
Face it, Joe, you are about as clueless as always and dumber than a box of rocks.
Don’t go away mad, Joe, just go away.
Joe, these guys are enemy combatants and aren’t entitled to habeas corpus rights. The only “rights” they have, under international law, is a firing squad. Yeah, you’re right, Joe, they are all innocent. We make a habit of throwing innocent enemy combatants in jail, because we have nothing better to do with our time.
does anyone have info that shows whether those who were named were released? that would say more than this current discussion.
JOE, your kool ade is rancid! You wrote: “FranklyOpinionated, maybe if you’d been picked up off the street, thrown in a black hole somewhere with no recourse and no escape, mistreated and tortured, maybe you’d want someone like Diaz on your side.” Picked up off the street? WTF? I suppose you think that they were just lounging around, leaning on the buildings, and an army rifle squad leader just felt like committing half of so of his squad to capture and ship the dink to Gitmo. Yeah, right. Mistreated? In what flippin’ way? Tortured? As in waterboarding, a training device used on our own SPECOP troops? Maybe your lifestyle is such that you risk getting picked up off the street, but I am above that, and above you. You then wrote: “So we pick up a bunch of guys in Afghanistan – quite a few were completely innocent, clueless patsies turned in by tribesmen for monetary payments, or for some kind of personal vendetta. And these blameless people are held in secret with no way out, their families have no clue if they’re dead or alive, they have no rights whatsoever, no way to defend themselves, they are routinely mistreated, some of these innocent people are tortured.” Yes, it is true that some of those detained were totally innocent, set up by others of their ilk. And as soon as we determined that they were sent home with a nice Caribbe Suntan, new prayer rug and new Queer’an. I’ll bet that you think we should be fighting and handling this mess according to the GENEVA Convention. Not at all! This is not something that even remotely falls under Geneva limitations. Would you agree that you feel it is just fine that these goathumping assholes behead Innocent people and would do it to a GI in a heartbeat? The only thing I would change in the whole scenario, now that we are prevented from using effective interrogation, would be to just shoot ’em in the face on the battlefield. A prisoner is a large burden to a unit, whether the unit… Read more »
Treasonous bastards? Why these days we make them Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader.
The logic some of you use – if he’s in Gitmo, he must be a terrorist and if he’s a terrorist, he should be in Gitmo. Simple fact is some were completely innocent, which you guys admit. What do you expect them to do, just politely sit there and rot for a decade or two and be nice guys because we made a little mistake? Until we can wave our magic wand and determine who is/was an enemy combatant and who is a simple goat herder, there has to be some way for them to prove their innocence. Otherwise we’ve regressed about 800 years as a society. For all I know your ethics allow you to disappear me, or shoot me in the face just ‘cuz you feel like it.
Joey, Joey, again you open your yap(metaphorically speaking) and confirm what we all know. Your world view is just totally f**&ed up. Frankly Opinionated addressed your worry that they’d be left to “rot for a decade or two”. When they were checked, and found not to be what some said they were, they were released. That doesn’t make Diaz a hero, it makes him a law breaker. Just answer two questions, did Diaz release the list? Was it released to an unauthorized person? Eagerly waiting to see how you tap dance around this.
And, it’s certainly not surprising that Ellsberg, Moyers, Diaz and Carter are some of your heroes. Your threshold for heroism is set alarmingly low.
Joe, you said “For all I know your ethics allow you to disappear me, or shoot me in the face just ‘cuz you feel like it.”
Nothing like a little drama in your posting? Besides, there would be an inquiry.
UpNorth,
Yes, Diaz did release the list. Yes, it was released to an “unauthorized” person. Oskar Schlinder also broke the laws of a sovereign nation, and we now hold him up as a hero. Maybe in 50 years Diaz will be considered a hero too.
Jeezus Joe, you are one mental midget. Are you comparing Schindler saving people from genocide with someone who, at worst, wouldn’t be able to watch Hanna Montana while praying 5 times a day and having a custom dietary plan?
You can’t even come up with a relevant comparison.
OldTrooper,
Several of the Gitmo detainees have died under mysterious circumstances. Three committed “simultaneous suicide”, if you can believe that. And again, a number of innocent people were held (are being held?) for years with no recourse. It’s on a much smaller scale that Schindler, but Diaz did his best to rescue innocent people he rightly believed were being mistreated by an apparently immoral government using illegal authority. It’s called habeus corpus man. That’s the higher in question law here.
should read “higher law in question”….
What Diaz believed at the time does not trump the law. Diaz broke the the law by releasing the names to an unauthorized source. He now has to man up to the consequences of his actions – no matter how rightly he believed them to be at the time.
Interesting to note is the staggering percentage of ‘innocent’ detainees when released have returned to the the same battlefied they were captured.
He did “man up” and do time. I wonder if he still thinks it was worth it – my guess would be “yes”. Reading about him, for someone in his shoes it may not have been a choice at all, but rather an imperative. He has stated that as an officer in the US Navy, he had sworn to uphold the Constitution, and that’s what he did. It has been called, “illegal but an act of tremendous courage”.
Has anyone found out the grounds for his appeal? I’ve been digging and have not.
At a minimum the guy is a coward, and worse, by his own admission, but I’m gonna act the contrarian a bit.
He got a 6 month sentence. We can raise hell about the sentence, but as it stands I’m not convinced that that sentence should equate with hanging or a firing squad.
Hey Joe,
Wasn’t it you that sang(Giai Phong Mien Nam)in Paris back in 69-70? If that’s you then I know alot of vets that would like to invite you on a hunting trip.
Leftard lawyer first, American distant second!
1stCavRVN11B,
Nope, you must have me confused with someone else. But calling people you don’t agree with traitors, well, I’ve come to expect that from some of the contributors. Hey, it worked for Hitler…..
Habeas Corpus is a right that arises under the United States Constitution that applies to citizens and those arrested in the United States. The reason they are being held in Gitmo is so that they do not have this right, as opposed to the ridiculous notion that they are being held there for the purpose of torture.
These people were caught in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iraq. Their expectation should have been the treatment they would have received if aprehended by the government of the nation in which they were nabbed, which is significantly less nice than they received at Gitmo.
wow, those stupid lawyers and their pesky complicated veiws on the law and constitution. they should have just asked FrankOp, he seems to cut out all the complicated stuff and just “shoot em in the face”.
that’s right folks, don’t let the terrorits win and destroy what America stands for, just throw that shit out the door yourself so the terrorists can’t claim it!
Joe; habeas corpus doesn’t cover non-US citizens, or those detained during a fricken war outside of the US. You need to learn a little about the law before jumping up and down screaming habeas corpus.
They are non-uniformed enemy combatants, so under international law, they aren’t even entitled to POW status. If they were, then they could be held here in our country without a trial, just as German, Japanese, and Italian POWs were during WWII and they didn’t get a trial or visits from some bleeding heart, whining maggot lawyers that don’t give a shit about anything but their “cause”. Just as the vaunted ACLU was founded by a draft-dodging, card carrying communist (I’m sure one of your heroes).
RebYank: Please give me your opinion on what America stands for, since you think you’re such an expert.
Joe, prisoners are known to communicate with each other without the knowledge of the guard force. So, yeah, I do believe that three dirtbags would kill themselves at the same time in order to gain sympathy from folks like you.
RebYank:
Just “Shoot ’em in the Face”,,,,,, yer damned right. When it comes to them or our troops, and since the libtards, (I believe that you are among that bunch), have deemed that we cannot effectively and efficiently extract information from them, they have become as useless as say, used toilet paper, Barney Fwank, or Algore.
If you had demonstrated more Warrior knowledge than a Playstation warrior, you wouldn’t need us to explain that Wars are fought to be won. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the definitions of Civilian and enemy are defined thusly:
A civilian is someone who has handed his weapon to his woman to put under her burhka, and an enemy still has his in his hand.
For those who’ve had to fight them under that mentality, (not me), the burden of prisoners can be fatal.
Ol’ dude named Sun Tzu would be a good study for you. He is required reading for all good Warriors, and his suggestions are spot on. Unfortunately, the powers that be, do not let us conduct ourselves as such, hence the high casualty rate.
Stupid libtard shit like Warriors not being able to fire on someone if they are running away, things like not being able to fire if they are near civilians, (see civilian/warrior definition above), are very fatal, and should only be conducted by liberal JAG officers, placed well forward of the lead units.
I am privileged to belong to a “gray hair” outfit that supports the finest of the fine, a bunch of instructors who have a unit patch on EACH shoulder, (you’ll have to ask a veteran to define that for you), and these heroes, to a man, feel that the libtards of the country have put them in greater danger than any other factor.
No wonder I have yet to find a RANGER who will claim to be a Democrat.
Get a clue…………..
Nuf Sed
Frankly,
Generally, I agree with you, but your last statement is untrue. Jim Marshall, member of the Ranger Hall of Fame and CongressCritter from the Georgia 8th, is a Democrat. Now, he is a Southern Democrat, and more convservative than some Republicans, but he is still a Democrat.
Susan, that is true; in some instances, a Southern Democrat is more conservative than a Mass. Republican.
Now, a Ranger that is a hardcore conservative would be Duncan Hunter.
Frankly; you said: a bunch of instructors who have a unit patch on EACH shoulder, (you’ll have to ask a veteran to define that for you)
I know! I know! Pick me!
Ooo…Ooo, I know the answer! pick me, pick me!!!
….damn….Trooper beat me to it…….
Susan,
Jim Marshall is in the Ranger HoF but so is Tom Hanks. Marshall did attend Ranger School but never spent a day in a Ranger unit.
He does have the ability to funnel funds to the Ranger Training Brigade and thus the Hall of Fame honors.
Hey, Joe! Got one for ya, dipshit!!
And before you claim it’s Fox News, look at the story. It’s off the AP wire originally.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587898,00.html
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — A man freed from Guantanamo more than two years ago after he claimed he only wanted to go home and help his family is now a senior commander running Taliban resistance to the U.S.-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, two senior Afghan intelligence officials say.
Abdul Qayyum is also seen as a leading candidate to be the next No. 2 in the Afghan Taliban hierarchy, said the officials, interviewed last week by The Associated Press.
Doesn’t that just make ya wanna crawl back into your hole? Try it. You might want to for a while, dude.
Uh Joe,
al Qaida and Co. are masters of setting up cells and hierarchies in prisons. How did Zarqawi’s gang get started?
Besides, it’s not unheard of for al Qaida to engage in tactics that involve simultaneous suicide. Iraq? Afghanistan? 9/11?
Doggone it NH Sparky, Ya beat me to it. I was gonna jump in here with this headline: Ex-Gitmo Detainee Now a Taliban Commander, and follow with that link. Innocent bastard,eh? Shoulda shot him in the face while he was in whatever ‘stan he caved up in, and saved the round trip Caribbe Vacation complete with take home goodies fully expenses paid.
Nuf Sed
Joey, Joey, we take it you’ve never, ever, in your life, cross your fingers, heard of a suicide bomber? I was going to go on, but Fred beat me to it.
Sparky, Joey will just say the guy was driven to fight against the US because he had a cell that faced west, not east, or some other bullshit.
Susan:
Re: Comment #30
“Generally, I agree with you, but your last statement is untrue. ”
That statement is absolutely true, and I will restate it here:
No wonder I have yet to find a RANGER who will claim to be a Democrat.
Done in bold so you can better read it. I personally, have no knowledge of this person you are talking about, as you must have read, right above the TRUE statement I was discussing active duty RANGERS.
Nuf Sed
If someone hadn’t previously seen Joe’s particular brand of ignorance in these comments, the fact that he would list Seymour Hersh as a personal hero tells exactly how much interest he has in being intellectually and factually honest. Hersh made his name and fortunes as an epic liar and smear merchant, and I suppose he gives Joe someone to look up to in the minor leagues of internet trolling.
“It is better that 100 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man suffer.” I guess most of you don’t agree with this statement. More like “It’s better to put all these Muslims in prison, and if we got a few innocent people mixed in with the bad guys, some of whom get tortured, a few of whom die in prison, whose families have no clue where they are, whose children will grow up fatherless, well that’s just the cost of doing business”.
I don’t doubt that the majority of detainees are very bad guys. But it’s our duty to seperate the innocent from the guilty, and just as importantly, give the innocent a chance to prove they’re innocent. If we don’t, we’re on that slippery slope, the one that ends up with FranklyOpinionated shooting people in the face because he doesn’t like the way they look. You dehumanize people, and once you do that, any atrocity is possible, as (recent) history shows so well. You’re cavalier attitude about human rights is chilling. I wonder how many of you would be singing the same tune if you were wrongly rounded up in a dragnet and put in a cell with no opportunity to prove your innocence. I think you would be screaming bloody murder. But you’ve got no problem with tossing some ignorant peasant in there without recourse. Some scary, elitist, self-centered, narcissitic sh*t.
Dude, seriously. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Or to quote the great and wise poet warrior Mister Mackey, “Drugs are bad, m’kay?”
Be more specific. Which drugs are you talking about?
Joey, Joey, still drinking the kool-aid? First, your quote about “guilty men go free” applies to civilian trials, in civilian courts and American citizens who commit crimes, not terrorists overseas who commit acts of terror, or engage in unlawful combat.
As Sparky said, when you find yourself in a hole, looking up at the guys shoveling dirt down on you, it might be a good idea to stop your own digging.
And, yeah, anyone who idolizes Hersh just confirms what thinking people know, you’re an asshat. And you better be careful, if you keep talking about 0 like that, “scary, elitist, self-centered, narcissitic sh*t”, your buddy Hersh, and maybe Carter too, will be all over your ass.
One flaw in your argument UpNorth: innocent goatherd = terrorist.
Joe, you claim the torture ring, yet I haven’t heard you give specifics about what torture took place, or is taking place. Identify the torture or leave it out of the argument.
Did Lewis Libby commit treason by leaking the identity of a CIA agent to the press during a time of war?
Well, Jesse, that would be theoretical, since Scooter Libby didn’t do it. It was Richard Armitage over at the State Dept. and her name wasn’t a secret at the time Armitage said it.
So, put your tinfoil hat back on and get back to watching ICarly
OldTrooper,
Documenting torture at Gitmo:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jan/03/guantanamo.usa
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2005/06/24/afx2110388.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/4239480/US-admits-Guantanamo-torture.html
http://www.expatica.com/de/news/local_news/ex-guantanamo-guard-describes-torture-methods-22810.html
Oh, Jesse–did your mommy teach you that talking point? You know how oldsters are just **SO** unhip and out of touch. And FWIW, Libby was convicted of obstruction, perjury (in front of a grand jury), and a count of lying to the FBI, which in normalspeak is a nice way of saying someone played, “GOTCHA!” with him. Nobody in the Bush WH divulged Plame’s identity–she did it all by herself.