@okie,
okie wrote:oe, you muddy up the waters by simply repeating that we haven't treated them as prisoners of war, so then I think you imply we should then treat them as criminals, is that right?
I'm repeating that you haven't treated them as POWs, because that's what Rumsfeld et aliter publicly stated. Look:
- The Third Geneva Convention details the treatment of POWs
- The United States has ratified the Third Geneva Convention
- The US government refused to treat them as civilians, but at the same time argued that the Third Geneva Convention didn't apply to the inmates of Guantanamo
You accuse me of "muddying up the waters" by repeating what members of Bush administration have stated publicly? Okay. Your problem.
However, I haven't suggested that "should then treat them as criminals". I've just said that there seem to be two alternatives: you can treat somebody who has been apprehended in the course of an armed conflict a) as a POW or b) as a civilian.
By the way, that's pretty much what the commentary by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the Fourth Geneva Convention says:
The International Committee of the Red Cross wrote:Every person in enemy hands must be either a prisoner of war and, as such, be covered by the Third Convention; or a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law.
Now, faced with that choice, the Bush administration decided to go for option c) - that they wanted the Guantanamo inmates to be outside the law. Hence the establishment of Gitmo outside of American territory.
That's what the Bush administration chose to do, and there's really nobody else you can blame for that decision, okie.
okie wrote:And you say that works because McVeigh is a good example of doing that.
No. I'm saying that the McVeigh case demonstrated that it's absolutely possible to deal with terrorism inside the American justice system.
okie wrote:Before debunking the first part of that, we were able to collect crime scene evidence, and we did not have clearcut evidence that McVeigh was part of any network to bring down the country as an act of war.
It seems you don't have clearcut evidence that all of the Gitmo inmates are part of any network to bring down the country as an act of war either. It may be the case for some, it may not be the case for others.
You simply ignore that fact and pretend that it's already been established that all of the Gitmo inmates are guilty.
okie wrote:McVeigh was a nutcase with an axe to grind, and was appropriately tried in the criminal justice system.
Well, he had killed 168 people in an unprecedented act of terrorism. Yet you don't think there was a problem with dealing with him within the criminal justice system.
okie wrote:Now, I disagree that we have not held the prisoners as prisoners of war,
That's interesting, because you haven't clearly stated that. So you think you have followed the Third Geneva Convention, which was signed and ratified by the United States, and which clearly details which conditions have to be met in regard to the treatment of prisoners of war?
Or are you saying that you have treated them generally as POWs and just broken a couple of regulations?
okie wrote: but we cannot hold them as traditional prisoners of war for a few reasons, which I have already laid out.
You've said that you couldn't treat them as "traditional prisoners of war" (whatever that's supposed to mean), but you haven't given any reasons. You have said that terrorism somehow constituted "a new type of warfare", but you have not explained why that kept you from following the treaties you have signed.
okie wrote:Among these reasons are the war may not have a definable end, wherein the country that these prisoners represent will surrender, because they do not represent a country.
Fair enough. That's certainly a problem when you fight a war against a noun rather than against a country.
But look: you're also fighting the War On Drugs (or is that one already over?), and yet nobody is trying to argue that you can't try drug dealers, because if they were acquitted, they'd just go back to selling drugs.
It doesn't make sense. You either trust the system and believe it can deal with all kinds of people - even terrorists - or you don't.
okie wrote:Look, I am not an attorney, I am simply looking at this from a common sense viewpoint, and it is simply not practical to try these people as criminals, nor do they deserve treatment as typical prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, I do not believe we have made a practice of violating the Geneva standards.
That's what Rumsfeld explained, though. He explicitly stated that the Geneva Convention applies to all prisoners held in Iraq, but not to those held in Guantanamo Bay. He said that any al-Qaeda or Taliban personnel taken prisoner are to be treated consistent with the Geneva Convention, unless they ended up in Guantanamo.
From a common sense viewpoint: does that sound like a violation of the Geneva Conventions, or doesn't it?
okie wrote:Bottom line, I see no clearcut easy answer to this problem, while libs like yourself seem to argue that there is.
I see no clearcut easy answer either, and I resent being labelled a "lib".
I don't argue that there is an easy solution to the problem created by the Bush administration, but there's no denying that this problem came about because this administration detained people without a trial and refused to treat them either as civilians captured during an armed conflict or as POWs.
It was clear, back at the time when the decision was made, that the treatment of the Gitmo inmates violated the Geneva Conventions (which Rumsfeld acknowledged), and that they were not going to be treated as civilian criminals either. The location in Cuba was choosen explicitely in an attempt to keep the inmates out of the reach of the American justice system.
That ultimately failed, and you're now facing the consequences of the decision made by the Bush administration.
By the way: do you consider this a particularly conservative trait - making a decision and, when faced with the consequences of that decision, trying to blame them on the political opponent?
okie wrote:I think you are wrong, period,
Okay. I think you're wrong. Full stop.
okie wrote:and I think if Obama does what you want, we will see more havoc and people die because of that policy, and we will see possibly unnecessary bogging down in domestic courts to try these people.
I think that's a paranoid mindset. As I said before: you either trust the American criminal justice system, or you don't.
You should be happy that an international observer of your domestic scene seems to place enough trust in your criminal justice system to declare it able to deal with terrorists, but apparently you don't share that trust.
Pretty said, actually. Essentially, you're saying that when handed over to your own criminal justice system, those people will go free, you will see more havoc, and people will die.
Crazy.
okie wrote:If you have the perfect solution, let me know, otherwise I think you continue to criticize what has been done as part of the 8 year program to demonize Bush.
I've already acknowledged that I don't have a perfect solution. I don't think a perfect solution exists. However, I see that you're absolutely willing to demonize Obama for having to deal with a situation that was willingly created the Bush administration and that has remained unresolved ever since.
I'm not surprised.
okie wrote:I have news for you, Bush will not be in office much longer, unfortunately, and then your man, Obama, will finally have to do something.
Sure. He'll have to face the consequences of the bad decisions made by the previous adminstration.
I see that you have offered no solution, that you seem to think that the current unresolved situation is actually a solution, and that you're unwilling to do anything about it.
okie wrote:I am nervous, as is at least half the country.
Well, yeah. I'm sure you're nervous when somebody actually tries to solve the problems this administration has created.
