Prison inmates committing suicide now an act of warfare on the US
POSTED BY: Khyron
UPDATED: Friday, June 23, 2006 10:01
VIEWED: 9568
PAGE 5 of 11
Quote:Erm since my original comment which you replied to was essentially “people who are not protected by the Geneva Convention aren't bound by it” I knew nothing of the sort. So why should we expect people who we've decided aren't allowed the protection of the GC to be bound by it? Why are you surprised they don't respect the rights of our soldiers when we don't respect their rights? Why's it okay for us to break the GC but not them?
Originally posted by Geezer:
No. My remark, which you took out of context, was not meant to propose anything relating to the Geneva convention, as you know very well. It was part of a "compare and contrast" set of scenarios reflecting Coalition and insurgent tactics and policies.
Quote:Erm I see you taking specific scenarios at two extremes.
Since that's come up, do you see any difference between scenarios One and Two that I described above?
What's the difference between these two?
An American Marine shooting an unarmed civilian at point blank range.
An insurgent shooting an armed Marine in a conflict.
I don't expect an answer because we're both taking extreme specific examples of what's really happening to paint the picture we want to paint and hoping to get a concession from the other side.
Like a line of questioning in a court case:
"What fits the defendant better: A psychotic manic murderer or a Small Venezuelan potted plant?"
"Well the murderer, but the other one isn't even a person..."
"Thank you that's all I needed to know."
Quote:Yeah me to, it's happening every now and again.
BTW. I'm having trouble linking with FFF.net (maybe you are too?) so I'm gonna drop out for a while and pick this up later.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
"I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: 'No good in a bed, but fine against a wall'." -- Eleanor Roosevelt.
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
War is so simple.
Mark Twain had a whole thing on it. It was very accurate if I remember correctly.
It never changes you know, the weapons change, the nations change, the people change, but the thing remains the same.
We are good and they are bad, god is with us, they are the infidel, we protect freedom they fight it, we create safety they create death. So on and so forth, all while the other side says the exact same thing.
Nothing is new really, this whole semantic battle over who has what rights reminds me of Cicero, he couldn't change the laws so he tried to change what the words meant.
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Quote:War is peace!
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Nothing is new really, this whole semantic battle over who has what rights reminds me of Cicero, he couldn't change the laws so he tried to change what the words meant.
Freedom is slavery!
Ignorance is strength!
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
"I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: 'No good in a bed, but fine against a wall'." -- Eleanor Roosevelt.
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Now this is not an endorsment for Gitmo or any other 'secret' U.S. prison camps. In all fairness, if a case has not been made in several years, perhaps there is no case to be made. But it is really hard to prosecute intent.
With the exception of the three gentlemen from the above article, the remaining prisoners are alive. This can not be said about the victims of 9/11. This brings into question the rights of an enemy combatant or alledged terrorist as opposed to the rights of the average citizen to remain breathing.
Do not mistake me, I am not advocating rounding up persons of interest and locking them away. But people get sent to jail all the time for crimes they did not commit. Until us humans remove ourselves from the equation, all things are tempered with human fallacy. Besides, if the current residents of Gitmo can hold out, they will probably hire a lawyer, sue for wrongful imprisonment, win, then buy an island and try to make up for the lost years. 
My point is if, god forbid, there was another terror attack on U.S. soil, would the same people who are now speaking out about Gitmo et al change their tune? Would these same people begin to chastise the Government for not doing enough to ensure the security of the people?
De-lurking to stir stuff up.
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Quote:No.
Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:
My point is if, god forbid, there was another terror attack on U.S. soil, would the same people who are now speaking out about Gitmo et al change their tune? Would these same people begin to chastise the Government for not doing enough to ensure the security of the people?
Because it's NOT that they weren't doing enough before, they were doing TOO MUCH- of the wrong ass things. Our Government is a corporation now, and corporate style management is great for the short term, and terrible for the long. Keep your boss happy, that's all it is, now more than ever.
Look left, look right, look up, look down.
JAFB.
Chrisisall
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The answer to your question is... no.
And it's not because I'm a naive happy camper. I was probably one of the few people who wasn't shocked by 9-11. Even before the Cole and the US Emnbassies I was waiting for the oterh shoe to drop. I was just glad it wasn't worse because the scenarios in my head were much, much more horrific.
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Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.
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People get thrown into jail for crimes they do not commit all the time, and those people get a trial which is as fair as we can manage with the world we have to work with in a timely fashion.
They get to hear the accusations against them and they get to challenge those things and try to prove their innocence.
Also their loved ones know where they are right from day one.
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As for would I change my mind? No. If I wanted to live in a safe world I would go to work on a way to kill off every single person who has the potential to maybe dislike me at some point in their lives, for one thing it would be a hell of a lot more polite than the way we're doing things now, and for another it would actually stand a slim chance of working.
However,
There is a reason that Habeas Corpus is in the constitution, and not the bill of rights. Before the people who founded this country even thought about religion, search and seizure, or anything else mentioned in the Bill of Rights they thought about how pissed off we were that some bastards from overseas were throwing them in jail and not even telling them why.
I mean President Bush said it, this would be so much easier if it were a dictatorship, it would also work so much better if we stopped caring about morality, a camera in every bathroom and an electric prod in every cell and soon enough things will start to be safer. If we were to start executing people for anything equal to or worse than litter we'd probably have a safer nation then too.
Of course the people there are foreigners. (As far as I know they only ever had one American held there, for two years I believe, after investigating for all of that time they finally turned up one piece of information on him: he was an American, so on the agreement that he would not press charges they released him.)
But if individual rights really mean so little that we'd take them away from others just so we're a little bit safer there's no reason we should give them to ourselves. They simply don't matter that much. We certainly shouldn't go on about inalienable rights because that would be total bullshit.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I was just glad it wasn't worse because the scenarios in my head were much, much more horrific.
That's what surprised me. People had been saying that terrorists would crash planes into the World Trade Center since they upped the security on their basement in response to the bombing.
What amazed me was that that is all that happened. Two planes in New York, one we think was meant for the White House, one at The Pentagon, and possibly one more target unknown that never lifted off that day.
Five planes out of something like 4,000 over the US. It's a blessing really, I wasn't expecting anything less than ten, and really I thought that was such a low estimate.
September 11th was sloppy, and for that I am grateful. Considering the state of our air security at the time it was incredibly minor, and for that I am grateful.
It was also preventable and what's more it could have been stopped without throwing people in jail for years without even telling them why.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Trouble here too. But I'm patient.
First of all, I question your scenario.
Or, first of all you dodge the question.
Quote:
Just out of curiosity Geezer: Have we ever taken "lawful combatants" prisoner in our war on terrorists? Considering that the Taliban was not recognized as the lawful government of Afghanistan (except by the UAE, to which we almost entrusted our port security... but that's another story) by definition I don't think there were any lawful combatants in that war. And while I suppose that Saddam's army consisted of lawful combatants, I'm not aware that we took any of them prisoner.
Sorry you're so uninformed about an issue you argue so passionately.
30 days into the Iraq war we had captured around 7,500 POWS, had released 1000 Iraqi soldiers that had been taken prisoner, and were releasing prisoners at a rate of 200 to 300 a day.
http://usinfo.state.gov/dhr/Archive_Index/leaders_captured.html
Quote:Hey. we're about to release 120 or so of them, as soon as we find some place that will take them.
It seems to me that all of our prisoners in Gitmo and most of them in Abu Ghraib are either "unlawful combatants", innocent bystanders (oops), and petty criminals.
Quote:
Feel free to let me know how we treated that minor percentage (if any) of our lawful combatant prisoners.
As noted above, we were letting them go.
Quote:
As far as I know, according to you the rest are fair game.
Oh, come on. You must know that I have applauded the convictions of US forces who exceeded priosner treatment guidelines (unless you conviently forgot.)
So come on. Can you see any difference between letting most POWs go and killing most of them?
"If Darwin ain't Happy,
Ain't Nobody Happy"
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Ah, becasue WE are "lawful combatants" (who just happened to unlawfully invade a nation) and therefore deserve GC treatment.
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Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.
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