Geneva Rules?... Hmm, nah

Candidone, you can't have a war where only one side fights by the rules. That's a losing cause. The other side has been invited to follow the rules of engagment and combat and have opted not to follow them.

Why should they fall under the protection of the rules when they are no longer in combat, but have been captured?

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Because the protection doesn't stem from the rules; it stems from an inherent sense of decency.

It has nothing to do with any agreed upon rules at all, other than the idea that we decide to hold ourselves to a high moral standard.

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Candidone, you can't have a war where only one side fights by the rules. That's a losing cause.

An immensely foolish statement, here; fighting by the rules is what will win us the war, not force of arms. Fighting by the rules is what keeps us from being seen as imperialists. You would have us do away with our greatest weapon against extremism, by becoming extreme ourselves.

Cycloptichorn

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bookmark

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Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all detainees ?- whether they are held as unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war.

I think, this is what will upset the world outside the USA.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Because the protection doesn't stem from the rules; it stems from an inherent sense of decency.

It has nothing to do with any agreed upon rules at all, other than the idea that we decide to hold ourselves to a high moral standard.

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Candidone, you can't have a war where only one side fights by the rules. That's a losing cause.

An immensely foolish statement, here; fighting by the rules is what will win us the war, not force of arms. Fighting by the rules is what keeps us from being seen as imperialists. You would have us do away with our greatest weapon against extremism, by becoming extreme ourselves.

Cycloptichorn

This is where we differ. I believe those that leak information on what happens in places like Gitmo should end up in places LIKE Gitmo. No one should have even the slightest hint of an idea how anyone inside there is treated. Whether humanely or tortured daily.

You want them to be treated well, I say they don't deserve it. They should be treated no better then then the animals they emulate, rats. Give them some cheese and a hole in the wall. If Allah wills it, he will free them.

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McGentrix wrote:

This is where we differ. I believe those that leak information on what happens in places like Gitmo should end up in places LIKE Gitmo. No one should have even the slightest hint of an idea how anyone inside there is treated. Whether humanely or tortured daily.

You want them to be treated well, I say they don't deserve it. They should be treated no better then then the animals they emulate, rats. Give them some cheese and a hole in the wall. If Allah wills it, he will free them.

Well, exactly that's what many think the USA to be: preaching freedom, democracy, law, Christian ideas .... and behaving like the worst rats themselves.

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Exactly, WH.

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This is where we differ. I believe those that leak information on what happens in places like Gitmo should end up in places LIKE Gitmo. No one should have even the slightest hint of an idea how anyone inside there is treated. Whether humanely or tortured daily.

You want them to be treated well, I say they don't deserve it. They should be treated no better then then the animals they emulate, rats. Give them some cheese and a hole in the wall. If Allah wills it, he will free them.

It doesn't matter what they deserve. All that matters is how we choose to conduct ourselves. Our example of not torturing and murdering is worth a million bullets, a billion soldiers, on the real battlefield.

You have no moral objection to torture, degradation, murder? You believe that it's right to do these things to someone, if they have done something wrong, or you just suspect that they have done something wrong? What a poor Buddhist you must be to believe these things in your heart...

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Exactly, WH.

Quote:
This is where we differ. I believe those that leak information on what happens in places like Gitmo should end up in places LIKE Gitmo. No one should have even the slightest hint of an idea how anyone inside there is treated. Whether humanely or tortured daily.

You want them to be treated well, I say they don't deserve it. They should be treated no better then then the animals they emulate, rats. Give them some cheese and a hole in the wall. If Allah wills it, he will free them.

It doesn't matter what they deserve. All that matters is how we choose to conduct ourselves. Our example of not torturing and murdering is worth a million bullets, a billion soldiers, on the real battlefield.

You have no moral objection to torture, degradation, murder? You believe that it's right to do these things to someone, if they have done something wrong, or you just suspect that they have done something wrong? What a poor Buddhist you must be to believe these things in your heart...

Cycloptichorn

Be careful with your strawman there Cyc. That's not what I said at all.

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Why don't you clarify for me then? It seems to me that on one hand you say you have a problem with torture, murders and abuse (remember abu ghraib?), but on the other hand, you don't want anyone to know about it when it goes on under US watch, and think that the terrorists deserve what they get, so there's nothing wrong with it?

You can't have it both ways, so I must be in error. Educate me about your position, and be clear, please. Perhaps it was your meaningless non-sequitur about those who report on US abuses which threw me off.

Cycloptichorn

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McG, where do you stand on the rule of law, human rights, and due process? You sound as if you're willing to throw all of that away to respond to terrorism. You are ok with a government that acts in secret and detains people in secret with no outside verification of their guilt or innocence. And you had a problem with the way Saddam ran his country?

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Asherman wrote:

The Geneva Convention is a protocol governing military behavior, and is not necessarily applicable when dealing with an enemy combatant who is not uniformed and a part of a recognized military formation. Detainees at Guantanano Bay are more akin to pirates than soldiers. It would be more applicable to apply international law related to handling captured pirates to them rather than the usages of war.

I agree that terrorists, as a general rule, are more akin to pirates (hostes humani generis -- enemies of all mankind) than to soldiers. But then that's only when we know that they're terrorists and not something else, like innocent civilians caught up in the indiscriminate American dragnet. Of course, we aren't attempting to determine if they're terrorists, because the government still won't hold hearings for the Guantanamo captives, so equating the captives in Guantanamo to pirates is nothing more than question begging.

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From what I have been hearing McG, there are two sides fighting, both by thier own set of rules.
If those held in Gitmo are, as you call them, rats, guilty as charged, perhaps you could explain why so many of them have been released without any charges laid against them?

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In litigiation regarding the availability of fundamental rights to those imprisoned at the base, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that the detainees "have been imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control."[1] Therefore, the detainees supposedly have the fundamental right to due process of law under the Fifth Amendment

Source

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GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba ?- The Pentagon plans to release nearly a third of those held at the prison for terrorism suspects here because they pose no threat to U.S. security, an official of the war crimes tribunal said Monday.

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The decision to release 141 detainees ?- the largest group to be reclassified and moved off the island ?- follows a yearlong review of their cases in which interrogators also determined that they could provide no further intelligence. It was unclear when or where the detainees would be released.

Source

From terrorist to "no threat".
A curious reversal of fortune for the detainee indeed.
Perhaps after being detained, without council, without protection from international laws, there will be yet another reversal, to actual terror.
I can't imagine what the psyche of the released detainee must be like after that kind of ordeal.

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Sure I can have it both ways.

No one should know how terrorists are treated by American forces. Period.

That does not mean I condone torture, nor does it mean terrorists should be given cotton candy and movie passes.

Abu Ghraid is not Gitmo and Gitmo is not Stalag 17. They are seperate places used to house seperate prisoners of seperate wars.

I feel the US ADMINISTRATION tells the military to act a certain way. They are told to treat prisoners of war a certain way. They are told to treat illegal combatants a certain way. They are told to treat little baby girls and their doll babies a certain way. The US ADMINISTRATION has never told a single soldier that they are allowed to torture anyone. It is up to the individual soldier to follow orders as they have been told. If they do not, they are brought up on charges and made to stand tall before the man. That is what has happened and what continues to happen.

What we don't need is a bunch of mealy-mouthed press people searching for their big-break writing stories based on anonymous information that misleads people into believing things that aren't true. Especially the liberals in the world so ready to pounce on anything that raises a welt on the current administration.

It sickens me. That's why no one should be allowed to know what happens. At no time during this war has an illegal act been discovered by the press that was not already under scrutiny from within. The process works when it is allowed to.

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McGentrix wrote:

It sickens me. That's why no one should be allowed to know what happens. At no time during this war has an illegal act been discovered by the press that was not already under scrutiny from within. The process works when it is allowed to.

It sickens me that a nation which tells everyone it will bring freedom and democrycy should behave like any other corrupt and undemocratic country.

I can't believe that this really is your opinion.

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Part of "supporting the soldiers", entails knowing what the soldiers are doing.
If they were raping children, we have the right to know.
If they are defacating on an accused prisoner, we have the right to know.
If they are contravening an international agreement, we have the right to know.

I do not want to support a soldier or group of soldiers who defy international law or demonstrate an inability to act in a manner consistent with the ideologies espoused by the countries they represent.

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Your lack of understanding of the concept of transparency, and why it is important, is astounding McG. You are describing a situation which breeds abuses, and you couldn't care less about that, apparently.

You also make idiotic statements like this

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The US ADMINISTRATION has never told a single soldier that they are allowed to torture anyone.

Which you have zero proof of, and there is a great deal of proof that this is, in fact, not true.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe in a 'trust-me' goverment. It really saddens me that you do.

Cycloptichorn

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At no time during this war has an illegal act been discovered by the press that was not already under scrutiny from within. The process works when it is allowed to.

Not until a time magazine reporter broke the Haditha massacre story had there been any official investigation into what happened. Before that, there was only cover-ups, lies and denials. All the way back to November 2005.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174649,00.html

People like you are scary in their ignorance.

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Asherman wrote:

The Geneva Convention is a protocol governing military behavior, and is not necessarily applicable when dealing with an enemy combatant who is not uniformed and a part of a recognized military formation. Detainees at Guantanano Bay are more akin to pirates than soldiers. It would be more applicable to apply international law related to handling captured pirates to them rather than the usages of war.

First: The Third Geneva Convention, which explicitly deals with the treatment of prisoners, holds that any "detainee" is to be afforded all the protections of the Convention, until such time as the status of the individual has been determined by a "competent tribunal." This administration has never even been willing to discuss what would constitute a competent tribunal, let alone state whether or not any one detained in operations in Afghanistan were brought before such a tribunal. The terms of the Third Convention are such that anyone alleged to have been a Taliban fighter meets the criterion of the Convention as a prisoner of war.

Second: Many of those "detainees" in Gitmo were taken pursuant to an American policy of offering a cash reward of thousands of dollars, in the tribal region of Pushtunistan in southeast Afghanistan and western Pakistan. I didn't make up that term, the Afghans have been involved in diplomatic wrangles, cold war and the occasional firefight with Pakistan over that region since the establishment of the latter in 1947, alleging that Pushtunistan were ethnically a natural part of their nation. Thousands of dollars represents years of income to the tribal people of that region. They'd turn in their own mothers for that kind of money, if they thought they could get away with it. Allah help any hapless Muslim in a village of the region who was unknown to the inhabitants.

You've let your partisan prejudices cloud your judgment with such a statement.

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Articles four and five of the Third Geneva Convention, read, in their entirety:

Article 4

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention:

1. Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment.

2. The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties.

C. This Article shall in no way affect the status of medical personnel and chaplains as provided for in Article 33 of the present Convention.

Article 5

The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal. (emphasis has been added)

The Third Geneva Convention can be read at this page.

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McGentrix wrote:

. . . No one should know how terrorists are treated by American forces. Period. . . .

. . . What we don't need is a bunch of mealy-mouthed press people . . .

. . . It sickens me. That's why no one should be allowed to know what happens . . . .

A representative democracy depends on investigative journalism and the freedom of the press to inform us when our government abuses it power. We are entitled to be informed. We are entitled to debate and decide--through the enactment and enforcement of laws--what we will and will not allow our government to do on our behalf.

McGentrix advocates the abolition of our greatest founding principles. In doing so, he embraces the notion that ignorance is bliss--and any news person who would tamper with our bliss--ought to be annihilated.

Thank our lucky stars that McGentrix belongs to a small minority of people who find pleasure in being uninformed about governmental abuses of power.

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Geneva Rules?... Hmm, nah

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