Well bugger me, the White house agrees with me. Over the past four years I have argued vehemently that GC rights should be accorded to the detainees in Guantanamo, and now the White House confirms it:
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The US today reversed policy when it said all detainees at Guantánamo Bay and all other prisoners in US military custody were entitled to protection under the Geneva conventions.
The Bush administration had previously claimed terrorism suspects were “non-combatants” because they were fighting for a sect or faction and not a state and were therefore not subject to the Geneva conventions.*
If these detainees have these rights now, they have had them for the last four years.
I pit the neo-con politicos who lied for four years to all of us.
I pit the participants in the debates on this board who came up with excuses and get-outs for American behaviour in mistreating these individuals, and accused me of anti-americanism and worse.
It seems that I’m as anti-american as The White House press spokesman, Tony Snow.
For this administration, one right out of four is about par for the course. I agree that the SC decision is complex, but … “humanely”? … “get it right”? … and “not really a reverse of policy”?
(And why is it so wrong to reverse policy when the old policy was wrong, and becoming more obviously wrong day by day?)
Ironically, this ruling may well mean that these individuals are incarcerated for even longer.
The so-called ‘commissions’ that were to be set up to try them have been declared illegal too, as part of the Supreme Courts judgement, probably because they are incompatible with human rights, the right to defend oneself or the right ot counsel etc.
Legisation now has to be enacted to produce a system to try these detainees which will have to go through Congress, and that means research, modelling, debate and political posturing.
Add to this that some of those, who are yet to be tried, by a legal system that has not yet been formulated, cannot be returned to their nations of origin if found not guilty of any crime.
Some might be deemed by the White House to be too dangerous to be freed, but their continued detention will have to proceed along differant lines, and evidence will have to be produced, and anyway, since any crimes will not have ocurred within US jurisdiction then this too will lead to great problems.
They could well end up detained for several more years, I doubt Bush will be in office when and if they are released.
It does mean the Red Cross should be able to gain unimpeded access, that is likely to be very interesting.
I suspect there’s a delay or error in the system somewhere, because I’ve noticed something similar with other very young threads. For some reason the view count is way below what it should be, and I doubt that it reflects reality.
Just for an example, there’s another new thread on the BBQ Pit main page that I personally have viewed, but it’s still showing 0 views. There’s a bug somewhere.
Never noticed it before- sometimes I have been really depressed :dubious: that so many people have read the words of wisdom in my OP and failed to convert their reading to a response. Maybe it’s a recent thing.
It’s because one of the big sins these days is being a flip-flopper. Kerry partly lost the election because he was accused of being a “flip-flopper”. Changing policies = flop-flopping. Nuancing = looking like a flip-flopper. So you can change policies all you like, just don’t present them as a change. In Orwell-speak, “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”
Meh, I’m picking nits here, but I wouldn’t call it Orwellian. Orwellian is when the populace has no choice but to believe it. Right now, we’re still at the point where we can just say “Ahhh, he’s fucking lying out of his asshole.”
Also, George Bush doesn’t strike me as “Big Brother.” He strikes me more as “Younger Stoner Brother Who Barely Passed High School . . . And Who Now Has Access To Nuclear Weapons.”
You know, now that I think about it, that’s worse.
Orwell’s dystopian vision of a totalitarian society with absolute thought control has not come to pass in the US, and is unlikely ever to. However, he also had a few words to say about the use of language, both in 1984 and elsewhere, and this Snow job fits exactly what Orwell was talking about. So “Orwellian” is (IMHO) exactly the right word.
