Listen dude, I laid out an extensive arguement in my many posts to this thread. I’m not going to repeat them in response to your nutty posts.
No. I asked why anyone would want them to be treated as POWs and pointed out that they’d probably be worse off than they are now. You guys keep screaming POW!! POW!! like it’s some charm or something. Classifying these guys as POWs would close the door on their chances of being released, as many of them already have been. The “war on terror” doesn’t have an end, and I don’t think ObL (or whoever his successor turns out to be) is going to surrender. Do you?
But you’ll have to excuse me now while I go recite my Bush loyalty oath. We do it 5 times a day, facing Crawford Texas. :rolleyes:
Really? Do you have a cite for that? My impression is that the adminstration argues precisely the opposite-- that al Qaeda is a stateless organizaiton.
If you don’t actually have an argument, you need to reconsider your position, don’t you?
[quote]
I asked why anyone would want them to be treated as POWs and pointed out that they’d probably be worse off than they are now.]Bullshit. They’d have rights that they now lack. Plenty of them.
Ad hominem. What somebody with no argument resorts to.
He’s certainly not going to be captured, not under this administration. Now, consider what you’re saying - that a formal declaration that these guys are POW’s would involve a formal declaration that there’s a war, and a formal identification of just who it is that we’re at war with - and it isn’t, despite your talking-points quotes, “terrorism”. But that ain’t gonna happen with these people in charge, wanting to do what they please without regard for *anybody * else’s rights, the very rights we are allegedly defending. If we don’t do that, then what is the difference between us anymore? You don’t have an answer, of course, only the personal demonization that is the hallmark of you Bush-before-country types.
Has even that been established? Seeing as so many have been simply released, without charge? Surely they would not have been so treated if they were caught red-handed with an AK 47 in their hands? Yet, they were detainees just as much as the current detainees.
Which can leave us where? That we have already been detaining the innocent! Do we have even the slightest reason to believe otherwise?
So all this legalistic petifoggery about “status” is nothing more than trying to pass off a street ho as a virgin by fitting her for a communion dress.
I’ll see if I can come up with a definitive statement. But my comment was based on the government’s argument in the court below; they treat al-Q as a non-signatory to the accords and since signatories are, almost by definition, nation-states, pointing out that they are not signatories suggests that they could BE signatories.
Not exactly the strongest chain of inference, I grant, but also not fatal to any argument I advanced above.
You cannot, in one breath, demand a specific status under law for these people and in the next breath dismiss a precise effort at determination of status as “legal pettifoggery.” Either you want to use the Geneva Accords or you don’t.
Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if most of these guys are innocent. I believe a lot of them were turned in for bounties.
But I’m not really arguing for non-POW status for anyone in particular at Gitmo, other than Mr. Hamdan. I don’t know the particulars of anyone else. I’m just arguing that should we actually capture a real live al Qaeda operative at some point, then that person needn’t be treated as a POW. He should be treated humanely, but I want the guy interrogated, and interrogated vigorously*. And I want our people to be able to offer him a nice cushy bed and a fancy meal if he rats out his fellow al Qaeda operatives and their plans.
In the case of one party not being a signatory, the other is still bound by the conventions* if* the unsigned party conducts itself by the conventions. As al-Quaeda demonstratably haven’t, any signatory to the conventions isn’t obliged to act according to them, either.
[quote=Another problem for Hamdan is that the 1949 Convention
does not apply to al Qaeda and its members. The Convention
appears to contemplate only two types of armed conflicts. The
first is an international conflict. Under Common Article 2, the
provisions of the Convention apply to “all cases of declared war
or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or
more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is
not recognized by one of them.” Needless to say, al Qaeda is
not a state and it was not a “High Contracting Party.” There is
an exception, set forth in the last paragraph of Common Article
2, when one of the “Powers” in a conflict is not a signatory but
the other is. Then the signatory nation is bound to adhere to the
Convention so long as the opposing Power “accepts and applies
the provisions thereof.” Even if al Qaeda could be considered
a Power, which we doubt, no one claims that al Qaeda has
accepted and applied the provisions of the Convention.[/quote]
Sure I can! Because I presume that they have inherent human rights! You know, those things we hold to be self-evident? And that if they are to be deprived of those rights, some fair and reasonable legal procedure must…must!…be available.
I stress again: we have released some. They must be innocent, or they wouldn’t have been, no? Which means that the process by which they became detainees is fatally flawed, which means we haven’t the slightest idea as to the guilt or innocence of the remainder.
Yet we feel empowered to pronounce them “illegal combatants”. Presumably, the released innocent were also so designated! How much more absurd can a legalism become that declares the accused guilty, releases some of the guilty and detains the rest?
I’m not that concerned with the legal niceties of preserving those rights I consider inborn, inherent, and universal. Say you’re doing it because of the GC, say you’re doing because of the Military Justice Code, say its simply common decency!
We release people from jail, too, after they were arrested.
Does that mean the arrest process is fatally flawed?
[quoteI’m not that concerned with the legal niceties of preserving those rights I consider inborn, inherent, and universal. Say you’re doing it because of the GC, say you’re doing because of the Military Justice Code, say its simply common decency!
Just fucking do it![/QUOTE]
My only real objection here (remember, please, that I oppose Bush’s proposal) is the constant refrain that it’s “unconstitutional”. Bush is pissing on the constitution. Bush hates the constitution. Etc.
It’s not.
If you want to say, let’s do it because it’s common decency, because it’s the right thing to do, I’m pretty much with you. Just DON’T say it’s mandated by the GC or the constitution, OK?
The bold text is not really true. The driver for the policy doubtless stems in part from the fact that a memo has crossed Bush’s desk to the effect that: There is no chance of convicting any of them under any sort of fair process. So we are pretty sure all of them are innocent by any legal theory or definition.
On the other hand, in the vernacular in which this current administration trades, all are guilty. Look at them:
Arabic, or
Muslims
Shifty-eyed n’all
Goshdarn, the good ole boys back home have the rope all ready and come hell or high water, there’ll be a swingin’.
The REpub control over the Senate and Congress still holds. They have abbrogated their authority before and I see no reson to believe they won.t do it again. The Repub leaders control the campaign money and elections are coming. Senate and Congress can be defined as the business of getting reelected. They have given up.
…very, very few of them were: in fact, over the last few months I have been reading the Unclassified Combantant Status Tribunal Reports, and I don’t recall reading about any of them being caught with a gun in their hand. If you can find anyone fitting that criteria, can you please let me know… http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/index.html
That was merely an example, a hypothetical situation in which they would not be entitled to such protections.
In fact, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeldthe detainees are receiving formal hearings before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which is required by the convention and which determines their correct classification.