The Glade 4.0

The first three relate to persons in uniform and openly carrying arms; the fourth Geneva Convention deals with "Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War".

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Way to appeal to authority there, Khross. I seem to recall this:



Not too long ago. But I guess if all you have to do is say "Well, a general said it", then everyone is justified in ignoring your arguments on anything to do with economics, or what the **** ever in favor of Paul Krugman or some other economist, who's widely known.

Furthermore:

A) I specifically mentioned treaty obligations
B) The Geneva conventions apply to signatory countries
C) By what stretch of the imagination do you think there's even an off chance terrorist organizations would ever adhere to them?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Again, that proves that due process is not absolute, so quibble all you want, my points been made and you've apparently accepted it.

The use of "cases" in the snippet ""...except in cases arising..." suggests the usage of the plural is just dandy.


I'll just let it play out in court Khross. Thanks for expressing your opinion and I look forward to reading your "friend of the court" brief when this hits the Supreme Court.

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In time, this too shall pass.

This has been so widely... interpreted differently... over the years (engaging confederate soldiers, for example) that I'm not even sure what the current legal interpretation of this is anymore. Hence why I'm torn on the issue. Then there's the practical question of being able/authorized to engage enemies during wartime. And of course the whole "wartime" question is murky as well, since we're not at war with Yemen. So... yeah.

What I do know is that he's not going to be impeached, the populace will not be outraged, and if anything, this will increase his "leadership" standing.



One of these days you really out to look up what trolling means. It does not mean "arguing with Khross".

Lets look at the 5th -



First, lets explore the use of the word "case" (1 & 2) in the 5th amendment - it's used 2 different ways.

1) the use of the word "cases", plural, implies that there are multiple types of exceptions to due process being discussed. What follows would seem, logically, to describe the categories of exceptions.
2) the use of the word "case", singular, implies that there is a single type of the case "criminal" being discussed.

Or, they just used whatever language the hell they wanted and it's all up for grabs.

Seems that the use of the word "case" is to delineate a single element in a category and the plural "cases" is used to delineate multiples. It's either used ambiguously or specifically. Your mileage may vary.

Second, let's examine (A)

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except ...".

Being that "held to answer", in this case, meant a predator flew up his ***, it seems to me that being granted due process the way you seem to want it to be defined means you CAN'T be held to answer etc. capital etc. crime etc. grand jury etc., etc., etc.. Again, your mileage may vary.

So, there you go. I still don't give a rats *** about this guy or others who seek to gain their cred by encouraging folks to murder other folks, citizen or not. Kill 'em all, let God sort them out. BUT, I don't think the president is pursuing illegal means to meet this end. That's my opinion and it's not going to be decided here in this forum if I'm right or wrong, and absolutely not going to be decided by some super ego guy making accusations of "trolling". That's just stupid.

Your mileage may vary.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Vindicarre:

"is"

Forgive the typing on a non-ergonomic keyboard

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Taskiss:

You're still wrong. If I were you, I would concede the argument now, withdraw your last post, and say, "Mea culpa." If you are unwilling to do that, I will demonstrate exactly how flawed your last post happens to be at the level of language and grammar. By the by, the word "case" only employs one definition in the Fifth Amendment.

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That doesn't logically follow. In fact, that just doesn't even make sense at all . A plurality of cases to which an exemption is applied does not in any way imply a plurality of exemptive reasons.

"All cars, whether American made or foreign, shall be subject to a 10% sales tax, except if the price of sale is less than $1,000; any car shall be required to have seatbelts."

Exactly one (singular) exception that applies to many cars (plural). Further, the exception clearly applies only to the sales tax provision, not to the seatbelt provision that follows in a independent phrase separated by a semicolon. This is the same basic sentence structure used in the 5th amendment.


That provision does discuss a particular sub-type of cases (criminal as opposed to all cases, inclusive of civil cases, for instance), however, the pluralization doesn't have anything to do with it one way or the other. You could just as easily write: "nor shall be compelled in any criminal cases ..." and it would have the same meaning. Regardless, your implication is that "case" in the second clause is supposed to be a subset of "cases" in the first clause:

This is demonstrably wrong. Any case of capital crime or heinous crime is also a criminal case. However not all criminal cases are cases of capital crime or heinous crime. "Any criminal case" is a larger category than "(cases of) capital, or otherwise infamous crimes".

That is: "All rectangles and squares" fits into the larger category of "any quadrilateral". Your choice of plurals doesn't change that relationship no matter how much you want it to.


I have no idea where you're getting this from, or even what exactly you're trying to communicate. You can convene a grand jury and even hold a criminal trial in absentia. The right to due process doesn't obligate you to avail yourself of the opportunity provided, any more than right to free speech obligates you exercise it. If they gave a trial and provided him opportunity to mount a defense, but he refused to participate, that's on him. I'd prefer not use trials in absentia, but sometimes there are no reasonable alternatives when the defendant chooses to be a fugitive.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Arathain:

Taskiss is trolling. He's making repeated bare assertions and dismissing factual counter-arguments without cause, as he doesn't want to admit what both Stathol and I demonstrated: he's wrong.

Taskiss:

Curious thing that the Constitution provides for a singular exception to due process in its own text; consequently, should you really want to quibble about semantics -- that exception is part of due process itself.

That said, there's no exception in Article 3 that applies to the general public. There is, however, two explicit requirements that indicate the procedural necessity of a trial to determine whether or not a person is guilty of treason.

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Right. Which is pretty much the argument the administration is making. It never had anything to do with any "exception" clauses in the 5th to begin with. To put it bluntly, their argument is, "we gave him all the process we think he was due". It's even possible that the argument has merit, but it's something that needs to be decided in a court of law.

And there's the rub.

The thing that bothers me about this is pretty much what bothers me about the whole birth certificate fiasco. It's rule by executive decree, and there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it because it will never be given its day in court. The federal court system has systematically undermined the right of the citizenry to petition the government for redress of grievances where the executive -- and most especially the president -- is concerned. In a nutshell, "move along, citizen. You have no standing here." Probably the only person they would recognize as having standing to challenge this is Al-Awlaki, and he's conveniently dead. And the executive branch just sits backs and thumbs its nose at the entire notion of legality and constitutionality because, **** YOU. That's why.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

So, "Flee, before I become verbose!", eh?

Knock yourself out. Show why the word is used in the singular when referring to "criminal" and plural when used where you claim it refers to a singular exception.

Why wasn't the term "criminal cases" used, Khross? Seems that would have been more consistent.

But, I do have to warn you. Without a tie breaker of some sort, I'm not going to buy it, and at this point, the only tie breaker I'm thinking will convince me is a supreme court ruling. Other than accusations of trolling (which is annoying but hardly more than that - it's lost any meaning because of constant misuse in this forum), you've not been overtly insulting as far as I remember and I don't care enough to go back and check. So ... I can agree to disagree, no harm, no foul. If you think you're going to get a mea culpa from me based on you whipping out paragraphs of text and exclaiming Q.E.D!!!! at the end of your post I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.

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In time, this too shall pass.

We don't have a government, we have a collection of lords and masters who rule over us. The republic is lost. We could not keep it.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The republic is not lost ...

We just traded it for an iPad, a 20 oz. ridiculously named cup of burnt coffee, and the next 30 seconds of Paris Hilton's twat on the TV.

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I'm sure it's very comforting to excuse yourself by thinking that.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Diamondeye:

I actually wasn't critiquing you or anything you've said in the thread, I was quoting an applicable quote on why we bother to follow the Geneva Conventions at all as the United States.

In other words ... you do it to feather your own nest, not theirs.

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I'm aware of that. However, the comments about the Brigadier General were really not necessary, and I'm sure you can see why.

In any case, while the General is correct when speaking of armed conflict as a whole, in the case of terrorism it basically fails because there is pretty much no chance of terrorists treating our men any better because of how we treat theirs; if we don't treat theirs sufficiently badly, they just publish training manuals telling their guys to make false allegations of mistreatment anyhow.

Things like the Geneva Convention, the Hague Convention and so forth, whiel certianly high-minded and admirable (and of course, being solemn treaties we are Constitutionally bound to honor) also were written, at least in their earlier iterations, in eras where gentlemanly combat was still largely thought of as actually being possible. WWI quickly proved many of the provisions of the Hague, in particular, unworkable for both sides; the provisions on commerce raiding unworkable for Gemrany, and of Blockade for Britain. Kaiser Wilhelm said he wished to conduct the war in a "knightly fashion" and probably honestly believed that he had. Even Nazi Germany geenrally treated POWs (American and British at least) at least halfway decently within their means.

None of this envisioned the modern terrorist. The terrorist knows all the rules, domestic and international, nations hold themselves to. He uses concepts like soveriengty and due process as a shield to skirt the line between being a law enforcement matter and a military one, and he knows how to play both sides of the political equation; on one side he wants people to fear his attacks, on the other he wants people to fear the steps the government will take to stop him. Essentially, hhe knows that everyone cannot be made happy and that's his greatest tool.

In the case of foreigners, I would say that any attempt to use any convention of war to complain about terrorists being bombed, captured, or whatever is an attempt to violate the spirit of the treaty in question; every one of them has provisions regarding who is lawfully entitled to protection. Enemy soldiers are not entitled to due process, nor irregular combatants; this is something that was not spelled out because no one should need it spelled out. Terrorists are even less so; they are, in a manner of speaking, the pirates of this century and essentially exist beyond the protection of law or treaty except insofar as we deign to do so.

In the case of Al-Awlaki (or McVeigh or any other USC terrorist) our obligation is to ourselves, not to them, to give them due process, in order to protect the process. For foreigners, there is no obligation and not because they're "brown people" or whatever condescending European liberals tell each other to dismiss American concerns, confident that because they hide behind American power instead of wielding it directly that they won't have to deal with the issue.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'm quite aware of the treaty observations you've made, and I almost universally agree. Any quibbles are certainly minutiae with which we would bore other posters ...

That said ...

I agree that our obligation to Al-Awlaki is to ourselves, hence the argument about the 5th Amendment and Section 3 of Article 3. Obviously, we're constitutionally bound to give him a trial (at the very least in absentia) for our own legal process. And, I think our President and his administration have sufficiently snubbed that requirement.

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I would agree, although I must say I'm rather surprised to see anyone here advocating trial in absentia.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's still not trolling, especially since he's providing the basis for his point. Whether he's wrong or not is irrelevant. He's not trolling. He's on topic and explaining his point.

Please learn to use the term correctly, as you have a tendency to apply this incorrectly. It almost seems like you're just trying to use this as an excuse to dismiss the other posters.

I was surprised by this as well, though I suppose practicality says you cannot expect to get him in court.

If you can't get someone in court, you shouldn't have a trial because they can't be there to defend themselves. It isn't valid due process.

I'm not entirely against the idea, although I'd prefer it be used only against people who are A) known to be in other countries and B) refuse to surrender themselves.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I wouldn't exactly advocate it; I'm just saying that in some rare circumstances it would be acceptable as a last resort. Certainly it's infinitely more acceptable than just flat executing someone without a trial, grand jury, or even filing charges...


Pretty much this. Although to be more specific, I think they should have held just a grand jury in absentia (which has lower due process standards in terms of the defendant anyway). Assuming they got the indictment, then we should have made a good faith effort to capture him, since the Yemeni government was apparently cooperating with us on this. Considering what were able to do in Pakistan without their assistance, I find it hard to believe that intercepting his motorcade would have been completely beyond the realm of possibility.

Not that he likely could have been captured alive. Probably not. But at that point, it's no different than any other armed resistance to a lawful arrest. Shooting people before they go to trial is definitely undesirable, but sometimes its necessary and justifiable. I'm also not wild about using the military in a police capacity, but honestly -- what other reasonable alternatives are there? It's not as though the FBI/U.S. Marshal Service/Special Service/Texas Rangers have the kind of training or equipment that would be necessary to pull of this type of arrest. I'm not even sure what the jurisdictional issues would be for all of them.

And yes, I do realize that this would put our own personnel at considerably more risk than just lobbing a missile at him. That is unfortunate; however, to be completely blunt, no one ever said that being a civilized republic was going to be easy.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

By "advocate" I meant "advocate even in extreme cases like this" not "advocate for common usage", sorry.


Pretty much this. Although to be more specific, I think they should have held just a grand jury in absentia (which has lower due process standards in terms of the defendant anyway). Assuming they got the indictment, then we should have made a good faith effort to capture him, since the Yemeni government was apparently cooperating with us on this. Considering what were able to do in Pakistan without their assistance, I find it hard to believe that intercepting his motorcade would have been completely beyond the realm of possibility.[/quote][/quote]

As many problems as the Pakistani government has, I think you would find they're still worlds more capable than Yemen. Their basic problem with OBL was lack of actual desire to do anything about it.

I also believe you'd find that intercepting his motorcade is not the problem so much as stopping it, finding the vehicle, and extracting him from it in something resembling a live state. As you point out, I'm sure he has no intention of being taken alive. If we know perfectly well he's not going to be taken alive barring being rendered unconcious in a firefight and spirited away and its likely to get a number of SEALs or Rangers or whoever killed in the process, there's little functional difference between shooting him in a firefight and hitting his car with a missile, except that we traded the off chance of a live capture for the lives of a few troops.

Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't try to capture him at all, but I would say that once he's been offered that chance to surrender, (following the aforementioned indictment or in absentia trial, not in the case that actually happened) becomes a matter of him simply refusing due process and essentially waiving his right to it.

Basically, taking someone alive IS a more complex and risky tactical option than just killing them, and the lives of the people who have to do the capturing are part of the equation as well. In other words, blowing him up with a missile is one thing, blowing him up with a drone after you show up with a bunch of helicopters and announce "We have you surrounded, you are under arrest for treason, throw down your arms and surrender!" is another thing entirely.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."