I was reading an article about this in Newsweek this morning.
They mentioned that the incident of the Qur’an being flushed down the toilet was committed by a detainee. In fact, there have been five incidents of Qur’an desecration by guards, three of them inadvertant. On the other hand, there have been about a dozen incidents of detainees descrecrating their own copies of the Qur’an, as an apparent attempt to create trouble for the guards.
I assume this means that there is a definite pattern of torture and abuse by the detainees, and that Saddam Hussein and bin Laden are responsible.
Yes. That is just about the most astute take on the situation that I have encountered to date. Thank god we have posters like you to shine the light of truth into the darkest corners of ignorance.
Good point, Shodan! I definitely will think twice before I vote for Saddam or Osama. Indeed, I will regard this as a telling indictment of the entire Baathist Party, and will be appropriately suspicious of thier press releases, as we have reason to believe that they are not entirely possessed of candor.
How many of the detainees were uniformed soldiers? It’s not just “Team Bush”. There is no reason to think these guys are POWs.
Having said that, I think the real issue is whether or not guards violated protocal and whether or not they were punished for doing so. Expecting any prison to run perfectly is unreasonable. Expecting guards to be held to certain standards, and punished of the fall below those standards is reasonable.
What is really bizarre to me about this whole issue is the “trying to get away with stuff under a technicality” attitude that seems to surround it.
I really don’t give a shit is they are POWs or “Illegal Enemy Combatants” (I am trying to convince myself that this isn’t a synonym for unperson). What they are, is human beings. A moral State doesn’t hold human beings without some form of due process, and a moral State doesn’t torture them. As far as I can tell, we are doing both and, thus, are having immoral things done in our name. How can anyone justify this?
If you were talking about one or two isolated events, I might buy this. But we are talking about case after case after case, in Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, and in Guantanamo. These events, in addition to simply being abhorrent to the principles the U.S. should stand for, are creating an image of us as evil, sadistic motherfuckers among the exact people we’d like to not view us this way. This represents a national security threat, and thus can not be dismissed with “well, as long as the guards get punished it’s OK”.
Remember the Wen Ho Lee scandal at Los Alamos? It turned out the guy was completely innocent of espionage and guilty only of violating a (fairly minor) data storage security regulation. But the shit hit the fan all the same: top leadership at the lab took serious heat and security procedures were changed all over the place. You know why? Because when national security is at stake, bungling incompetence is simply not acceptable. One violation is itself a big deal, and cause for reexamination of the system that allowed it to happen. It’s not enough to discipline only the people involved in the specific violation – the key is to make sure such things don’t and can’t happen. And the only people who can and must do that are the top leaders.
You’re right. I’m just not sure it’s possible to run a prison where “shit doesn’t happen”. Having some sort of independent monitoring would help, of course, and the Pentagon should open Gitmo to some sort of auditing by non-military personel.
But I should have added, that that is one of the reasons why we need to process these guys through some legal system and just not have them rot there forever. It’s hard to imagine that any of the Afghan detainees have pertinent information about terrorist activities any more. Whatever info they might have once had must be woefully out of date.
The scandal of Gitmo is it’s very existence, outside any sort of legal framework. I’m not saying we should just throw up our hands when “shit happens”, but ain’t no way you’re going to have a place like Gitmo where it doesn’t. Cleaning it up as best as possible, yes, but it would better to just shut it down altogether.
Precisely. Exactly how I feel about it. And Lib, I am FUCKING SICK AND TIRED of seeing you whip out your handy-dandy hair-trigger Offense-O-Meter. Me, a screaming hand-wringer about Christianity? Kindly go back over my posting history and point out where I’ve said stridently anti-Christian stuff, please? Where I’ve mocked religion qua religion? “Singling out your opinion”? Your snide little driveby had FUCKALL to do with the subject of this thread, but you just couldn’t pass up the chance to slam one of your favorite strawmen, could you? Opinion? Don’t make me laugh. That wasn’t even a steamin’ pile o’ shit, just a pathetic feeble fart of Lib-vapor.
But look! You got what you wanted, kinda. You got some people to answer you, and talk about what YOU care about, instead of what the OP addressed. Whoopeeee! Too bad most of the Dopers in this thread are more interested in, oh, I dunno, maybe talking about WHAT THE FUCKING TOPIC OF THE THREAD IS?
:: deep breaths ::
Okay, sorry all, I do try not to go off like that on folks but there is a limit to my patience.
Anyway, back on topic: Is it just me, or is there a pattern to these revelations of damaging information? Newsweek gets told by someone in the Administration about abuses at Gitmo, complete with the shock-factor-ultra flushing of Korans bit. Newsweek publishes it, protests erupt, the magazine slinks away from its claims as unfounded after all. Then a few days later, late on a Friday, the Administration releases a report that shows, oh, yeh, there have been abuses of the Koran, just not the one that y’all got so riled up about. No big deal, everything’s under control, the guilty have been punished, move along, nothing to see. And the vast mass of the American public mumbles, “Oh, yeh, there goes that damn lib’rul media again, f’ing liars,” and goes back to sleep.
You’re probably right, but the last people in the world who should be saying “eh, shit happens, what’re you gonna do?” is the administration. That’s almost as bad as the abuses themselves, in terms of how they come across to the world.
Why not instead remember the James Yee case at Guantanamo?
The shit hit the fan over that fiasco too. Now Yee is Not Guilty, and Not Innocent.
It doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence in the competence of those in charge of ensuring our national security.
BTW, ETF, I share your sentiments – as lucidly explained by mhendo in the post you highlighted – vis-a-vis Lib’s delusions of Christian martyrdom. But let’s keep things in perspective, consider the source and see them for what they are: delusions. And not necessarily confined to religion.
Only one winner when a thread plunges into Liberalandia.
That’s a very good question. They’re not POWs, and they’re not US citizens, so what governing document covers how such people are treated? I honestly don’t know. I think we do need some type of detailed protocal of how “enemy combatants” are handled. Something more than what Bush has done, which is essentially nothing.
I would agree, though, that would should (should, not must) treat them as POWs rather than just plopping them in limbo as we’ve done now. If not POWs, then treat them as criminals, charge them, and give them a trial.
My feeing is that whoever we pick up in these terrorist-catching sweeps should be initially treated as POWs. After all, we’re grabbing them as part of the War on Terror, right? No, they don’t wear uniforms, or have other indicia of membership in an organized military force, but the Geneva Conventions were drafted with a much more formal kind of warfare in mind. If 9/11 changed everything, as we’re so often told, if we’re engaged in a new kind of war, then definitions and protocols shaped by past conflicts must be revised and expanded to deal with the present.
IMO, there should also be provision for reassignment of status to either criminal subject to prosecution under the law of the land where the individual was operating, or release as innocent/unproven. This should be done following a reasonable period of time to assess the evidence for classification as POW, criminal, or innocent, and a hearing where the prisoner can be heard, with assistance of counsel.
What’s that you say about cockeyed optimists?
Oh, and RedFury, you’re right, I shoulda kept the lid on. My apologies.
