Freed Gitmo Detainee Rejoins Al-Qaeda, Attacks US

[INRM]

Smackety,

But do the ends justify the means?

That's the problem. If we adopt this attitude, in regards to combatting terror in general -- allowing torture, indefinite detention, prohibiting contact with counsel, abolishing habeas corpus, spying on every single person, every single e-mail, phone-call, etc... we may win the war on terror, but we'll ultimately lose in the fact that we will have destroyed all we stood for, and will have no freedom left.

If we are going to combat terrorism we have to do it in such a way so that we do not end up losing all our freedoms. True freedom is one of the most valuable things in the world, without it, life is hardly even worth living now is it?


Cylinder,

Outsourcing torture - I guess there is a third option after all. Nice link, cat...

Extroardinary rendition is one of the most depraved practices I've ever seen. We're not allowed to torture people (in fact according to international law we're not allowed to) in the U.S.

So we end-run this law by abducting people (Disappearing them -- which is a crime against humanity)[/i]; we ship these people to countries where it is legal to torture the living daylights out of them, some even die, any information they give can be admitted because we allow information obtained via torture as long as another country does it.

This is completely and totally depraved, sick and disgusting.


INRM

 

[WildCat]

That's a curious question. Did you actually read the thread, or did you just jump in again with yet another non sequitur in an attempt to derail it?

(I think) everyone agrees that if someone was captured after shooting an AK-47 at US troops in Afghanistan that it would be okay to lock them up as POWs until the end of hostilities with the Taliban.

If they were captured elsewhere then the justification "we are keeping them as POWs until the end of hostilities with the Taliban" makes no sense, because they weren't captured as Taliban or Taliban-aligned combatants.

What a load of absolute nonsense!

There is no geographic limitation to this war. In fact, the single most deadly attacks took place in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC.

 

[gumboot]

Well, ok. Sure. Everyone would like it if we always played by the rules, and some people will find fault with anything.

Harboring murderers is also illegal, so there's plenty of illegality to go around. I'm sure that when the Israelis sent their guys in to capture Eichmann, some people were upset about violating the laws of wherever it was they picked him up. (Argentina?)

The bottom line is that if we find out where Osama is hiding, and send in a team to get him, there will be protests filed with lots of official indignation at various embassies, and various political groups in the US will say that this was an outrageous thing. However, the diplomatic protests will be formalities and the domestic complaints will be predictable.

I agree. I merely wanted to point out that those claiming the only issue anyone had with Bush's actions was the torture. This simply isn't true. A lot of people are against rendition in any form, even if they guy that was captured is treated like a prince and as guilty as sin.

 

[gumboot]

What a load of absolute nonsense!

There is no geographic limitation to this war. In fact, the single most deadly attacks took place in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC.

On this point I agree with Kevin Lowe. The Laws of Armed Conflict are quite specific about limiting the geographical scope of a conflict. That's why the "War on Terrorism" might work from a PR perspective, but doesn't float from a legal perspective. What you have a numerous isolated individual conflicts. The War in Afghanistan. The War in Iraq. And so forth.

You can't just detain people wherever the heck you feel like it and then treat them like POWs for some vague global war. It doesn't work like that.

This is one of the fundamental reason I argue the Laws of Armed Conflict have become obsolete because modern warfare is not fought by states, and the entire basis of the current Laws of Armed Conflict is that two nation states will be fighting each other.

Instead future warfare can expect to consist of trans-national entities waging unconventional warfare in multiple countries. New laws need to be passed to deal with that sort of problem, because right now the laws benefit the insurgent forces while tying the hands of nation states trying to fight them.

 

[Meadmaker]

I agree. I merely wanted to point out that those claiming the only issue anyone had with Bush's actions was the torture. This simply isn't true. A lot of people are against rendition in any form, even if they guy that was captured is treated like a prince and as guilty as sin.

True.

(Although, if things follow their usual pattern, their opposition might be correlated with the party affiliation of the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.)

 

[WildCat]

On this point I agree with Kevin Lowe. The Laws of Armed Conflict are quite specific about limiting the geographical scope of a conflict. That's why the "War on Terrorism" might work from a PR perspective, but doesn't float from a legal perspective. What you have a numerous isolated individual conflicts. The War in Afghanistan. The War in Iraq. And so forth.

The war with Iraq was a seperate AUMF, and no one from that war was ever held in Gitmo.

You can't just detain people wherever the heck you feel like it and then treat them like POWs for some vague global war. It doesn't work like that.

The AUMF passed after 9/11 is quite clear in stating who we are at war with.

This is one of the fundamental reason I argue the Laws of Armed Conflict have become obsolete because modern warfare is not fought by states, and the entire basis of the current Laws of Armed Conflict is that two nation states will be fighting each other.

Instead future warfare can expect to consist of trans-national entities waging unconventional warfare in multiple countries. New laws need to be passed to deal with that sort of problem, because right now the laws benefit the insurgent forces while tying the hands of nation states trying to fight them.

I can't argue with that. But the laws are what they are, even if it's the equivalent of driving a square peg into a round hole.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

What a load of absolute nonsense!

There is no geographic limitation to this war. In fact, the single most deadly attacks took place in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC.

Now we're going around in circles, because we've already discussed these points.

Have fun.

 

[Cylinder]

The Laws of Armed Conflict are quite specific about limiting the geographical scope of a conflict.

That's incorrect. The LOAC has no way of predicting where combatant activities will take place. The US in WWII killed and captured Axis forces where they were found - in many cases thousands of miles from set-piece battles. Examples include the seizure of weather stations in Greenland, the detention of German combatants within the United States. German naval forces quite legally interdicted American Lend-Lease shipments to the UK.