Obama's Gitmo Policy Coming Home To Roost

[leftysergeant]

I only offered my opinion that enemy combatants should be treated as POW's.

Fine, if they are captured in combat. If some warlord turns in a rival, we need some evidence that he is actually a bad guy. Torture does not produce evidence of any value, so why are we holding them if all we have is torrtured confessions?

And how would those criteria apply to people who were rounded up in raids and offered no resistance?

As long as you have evidence that only the bad guys were rounded up, they are POWs. If there is no clear narrative, you have no grounds to hold them at all without solid evidence.

No, I mean enemies, in uniform or not. Should enemies get special treatment if they are not wearing uniforms? Do your vaunted standards vary according to number of enemy and their dress code?

The fact that they are fighting in a society in which there is no uniform is as valid as having a uniform to qualify for POW status.

POW's do not get lawyers unless they are charged with a crime. They typically are not charged with crimes. They are simply held until the end of hostilities. Basically, all I've advocated in this thread is that enemies should not be brought to trial, but should simply be held as POW's. At the end of hostilities, those deemed guilty of war crimes could be tried, just as at the end of WWII.

And if they were not taken in combat or arrested on firm evidence that they are enemies, they should not be held at all.

Well, I don't trust lawyers more than I trust the people who, by now, should be experts at rounding up, questioning, identifying, and classifying enemies. The only thing I would expect lawyers to do is cost a shipload of money and turn loose a lot more guilty ones than innocent ones.

The people doing the rounding up were trained by morons who have no freaking clue or conscience. It is a crime to hold those who were wrongly rounded up. End of that line of discussion.

Our enemies are not trying to defeat us militarily. They know they can't do that. They're just trying to be the straw that breaks our backs. I'm not interested in obliging them any more than is necessary.

Were you under the idiotic delusion that we can defeat them militarily?

 

[Virus]

Were you under the idiotic delusion that we can defeat them militarily?

Why not?

 

[leftysergeant]

Why not?

There is no strategic territory to be conquered and held. There is no centralized command to cripple. There are no established supply points that have to be preserved for the organization to function.

The best we can do is to take out key figures like Osama.

The merry morons really blew that one, didn't they?

 

[Virus]

The terrorists don't seem to think they're invincible;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3346386.ece

By your logic, every terrorist group should have eventually achieved success since they're invincible. Reality says otherwise.

The terrorists started this war. Why should we tap-out and encourage them?

 

[joobz]

The terrorists don't seem to think they're invincible;

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3346386.ece

By your logic, every terrorist group should have eventually achieved success since they're invincible. Reality says otherwise.

The terrorists started this war. Why should we tap-out and encourage them?

is the only battlefield an actual battlefield?
The surge in Iraq worked not because it was simply "more people" but that it recognized a reality of the current effort. Unless you get the support of the people who aren't terrorists(insurgents), you will not be able to win.

 

[Virus]

is the only battlefield an actual battlefield?
The surge in Iraq worked not because it was simply "more people" but that it recognized a reality of the current effort. Unless you get the support of the people who aren't terrorists(insurgents), you will not be able to win.

Never said otherwise. I was just disagreeing that terrorists can't be defeated.

 

[JihadJane]

The terrorists started this war.

No, they didn't.

 

[Virus]

No, they didn't.

Yeah they did. Arab terrorists were behind 9/11. Since they were behind 9/11, America gets to make war on whoever was behind 9/11 and anyone who harbored the people behind 9/11. If they didn't want war on them, they shouldn't have been behind 9/11. That's the truth of the matter.

 

[leftysergeant]

Yeah they did. Arab terrorists were behind 9/11. Since they were behind 9/11, America gets to make war on whoever was behind 9/11 and anyone who harbored the people behind 9/11.

Barbaric.

We're suposed to be better than that.

 

[NWO Sentryman]

Barbaric.

We're suposed to be better than that.

What was the US supposed to have done? Relied on David Caruso and his shades to make a flawless arrest of all AQ operatives? Let the wahhabists spread and fester? What would YOU have done after 9/11?

 

[leftysergeant]

What would YOU have done after 9/11?

Same thing Clinton did, plus a few Delta Force strikes against known operational centers inside Afghanistan or whereever.

 

[NWO Sentryman]

Same thing Clinton did, plus a few Delta Force strikes against known operational centers inside Afghanistan or whereever.

You seem to think that Special Forces are some kind of instafix for any problem. That isnt the case. A lot of variables take place in a SpecFor operation. Rememeber the chinook crashing during Eagle Claw? Where Would your special forces be now if that failed? You'd be laughed out of the WH for that suggestion.

 

[BeAChooser]

You seem to think that Special Forces are some kind of instafix for any problem.

Oh lefty is a military genius. Didn't you hear?

 

[NWO Sentryman]

Oh lefty is a military genius. Didn't you hear?

Im pretty sure Delta force can rely on mountain bikes, the GAVIN or AMPHIGAVIN from here on.

 

[leftysergeant]

You seem to think that Special Forces are some kind of instafix for any problem. That isnt the case. A lot of variables take place in a SpecFor operation. Rememeber the chinook crashing during Eagle Claw? Where Would your special forces be now if that failed? You'd be laughed out of the WH for that suggestion.

How we doin' on that hunt for Osama been Forgotten?

 

[joobz]

Never said otherwise. I was just disagreeing that terrorists can't be defeated.

But I don't remember Lefty saying they couldn't be defeated. Only that defeat wouldn't come militarily. A point that I partially agree with.

I believe military serves an important roll, but not the only roll. To rely on it as the sole means misses the entire point of what a war on terror really encompasses.

 

[leftysergeant]

We're upto out eyeballs in the doodlebug's pit where empires go to die, and al Qaeda exists only as a mobile small-cell organization. We are spending bazillions zapping a bunch of impoverished hicks with no means of coming to get us while the really dangerous people are spread aroiund the world waiting to find a weak spot where they can hit us.

And we can't afford to build the quick-strike forces or security apparatus that will identify the walking land mines.

Brilliant.

 

[Virus]

Same thing Clinton did, plus a few Delta Force strikes against known operational centers inside Afghanistan or whereever.

Ha. A wrist slap.

 

[leftysergeant]

Ha. A wrist slap.

His actions were directed against an actual enemy in actual encampments. The average Afghan peasant had done nothing to us. Now we have thousands of them pissed off at us for destroying their lives. Really wins some heasrts and minds, doesn't it?

 

[Virus]

His actions were directed against an actual enemy in actual encampments. The average Afghan peasant had done nothing to us. Now we have thousands of them pissed off at us for destroying their lives. Really wins some heasrts and minds, doesn't it?

Special forces assassinations wouldn't have inflicted the sort of devastating losses on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that the war did. How many do you really expect to take out that way? 20? That's not going to eliminate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.