Gitmo Prisoners Starving Themselves to Death

[Manny]

1) While the prisoners aren't actually POW's, it's perfectly acceptable to compare them to POW's from previous wars when it suits the arguments. When it doesn't suit the argument, they are not POW's, but enemy combatants.

Partially correct. Both are combatants taken during wartime. POWs have certain rights that illegal combatants do not; but not the other way around.

2) Indefinite confinement without charges being laid, or a trial promised is perfectly OK since Gitmo is such a darn nice place to stay. Kinda like the Hilton. These prisonsers should be happy to be there.

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Edited by tim: 

manny, this comment was rude and offensive. Please desist.

. I said it was better than other camps. That's true.

3) It's not the job of the government/military to prove these prisoners are guilty, rather it's the job of the prisoners to prove they are innocent. Of course, they don't actually get a trial to do that.

It has never, ever, in the entire history of war, before or after the Geneva Conventions, been the obligation of a warring party to demonstrate the guilt of enemy combatants. Never. Not even once. Like, when Athens fought Sparta? Not then. When are you going to get that through your lying head?

 

[Darat]

Have you checked the Geneva Conventions lately? No, we're not going to give these guys access to scientific instruments (hah!) and we're not going to pay them.

Fine so you won't treat them as POWs. Therefore any comparisons with other POWs is on very shaky ground.

If they are not POWs, they are citizens of foreign countries who did not break any law in the USA. However I have also said I do not oppose their interment (in general terms) what I object to is the lack of (apparent) justice.

Some of them have valuable information and we're not going to surrender our right to interrogate them.

You cannot know they have valuable information. You may only suspect it. I would also like to understand what information would still be valuable in securing the USA from threat after so much time has passed?

They set up this situation, not us. Play for an actual government and wear an actual uniform and you get to be a POW, like almost all of the prisoners taken during the initial part of the liberation of Iraq (and like Saddam himself). Don't, and you don't. I have absolutely not even the teensiest qualm about that and I don't think it's relevent to whether a combatant should be released while hostilities are ongoing.

...snip...

This just assumes the guilt of everyone in the camp.

What I wish to see is the USA demonstrating that the USA (e.g. "western world") methods of dealing with people are the best because they are inherently just and that they (even if the prisoners don’t) respect the basic rights of human beings.

 

[Manny]

Fine so you won't treat them as POWs. Therefore any comparisons with other POWs is on very shaky ground.

If they are not POWs, they are citizens of foreign countries who did not break any law in the USA. However I have also said I do not oppose their interment (in general terms) what I object to is the lack of (apparent) justice.

The comparison is not on shaky ground at all; both legitimate POWs and illegal combatants are persons taken on battlefields at time of war. POWs, because they observe the laws of war, have certain rights. Illegal combatants did not observe the laws of war. By what logic should they have more rights? They have fewer. Specifically, we can interrogate them, their families can't send them bombmaking materials, we're not paying them. But that doesn't create a right to be released while hostilities are ongoing.

What I honestly don't get mostly is that you say you don't oppose their internment in general, but you seem to have some objection to their internment in specific. Check rickzilla's post on the prior page again -- they are all getting tribunals, an example of them actually having more rights than POWs. What justice are they lacking that battlefield prisoners have lacked literally since warfare was invented?

You cannot know they have valuable information. You may only suspect it. I would also like to understand what information would still be valuable in securing the USA from threat after so much time has passed?

It's true that the value of any information they have diminishes with time; that's why the pace of releases (or attempted releases -- some of these guys are cleared to leave but are afraid to return to their home countries) has also increased with time. But everybody should understand that that's something extra the US is doing that it doesn't have to do and which no country has ever, ever done.

 

[Manny]

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Edited by tim: 

manny, this comment was rude and offensive. Please desist.

I'll retract the [rule 8] part. Sorry about that. However, you also removed that I called him a liar. He did lie about my statement and that part stands.

 

[Darat]

The comparison is not on shaky ground at all; both legitimate POWs and illegal combatants are persons taken on battlefields at time of war. POWs, because they observe the laws of war, have certain rights. Illegal combatants did not observe the laws of war. By what logic should they have more rights? They have fewer. Specifically, we can interrogate them, their families can't send them bombmaking materials, we're not paying them. But that doesn't create a right to be released while hostilities are ongoing.

If POWs and illegal combatants are different the the comparison you keep making between them is shaky. You would need to find comparisons between other illegal combatants held in a prison.

Also again you assume that they are all illegal combatants and all "guilty" of something. Don’t you see that this is just an assumption and the basic injustice of your assumption?

What I honestly don't get mostly is that you say you don't oppose their internment in general, but you seem to have some objection to their internment in specific. Check rickzilla's post on the prior page again -- they are all getting tribunals, an example of them actually having more rights than POWs. What justice are they lacking that battlefield prisoners have lacked literally since warfare was invented?
...snip...

It has taken too long and it is still not being "seen to be done". How many are found guilty and innocent - any access to the records of the trials and so on?

 

[Manny]

If POWs and illegal combatants are different the the comparison you keep making between them is shaky. You would need to find comparisons between other illegal combatants held in a prison.

Now you're talking! Last time we came across illegal combatants they were captured in late June and executed in August after a military tribunal. Frankly, that''s what should have been done with these guys.

Also again you assume that they are all illegal combatants and all "guilty" of something. Don’t you see that this is just an assumption and the basic injustice of your assumption?

No, that's the way war works. Warring parties are entitled to pick up guys you think are trying to kill you and entitled to hold them until hostilities have ceased. There has never, ever been an obligation for the warring party to establish that the guy actually was trying to kill you. Civilian internees were commonly kept during the latter half of WWII when the allies were occupying former Axis towns.

 

[Rolfe]

Rolfe, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

I'm sorry, I didn't give enough detail about what I was referring to. I've looked it up and found this corner of the C4 web site devoted to the short series of programmes they made about this. The one I was particularly referring to was the reconstruction of conditions at the camp using volunteer prisoners. Unfortunately I don't think there's a great deal of detail available on line.

The Guantanamo Guidebook reconstructs the regime at the US's Cuban base. For 48 hours, seven volunteers are subjected to interrogation techniques known to be used in the camp, ranging from harassment and abuse to sensory deprivation – with shocking results.

Rolfe.

 

[Skeptic]

So the detainees at Gitmo are prisoners of war, then?

Nope. The point is that if it is legitimate to detail people fighting against you who do meet the minimal criterion to be considered prisoners of war (like the Germans POW--i.e., wear uniforms, carry weapons openly, and so on), then it is a fortifori also justified to detain people fighting against you who do not meet the minimal crietrion to be considered prisoners of war in such a way. In fact, since they don't meet the minimum POW criterions, POW-like treatment is a matter of grace on the US's part.

Also, WWII was a delcared war with a clear end

So? It was still unlimited detention without trial. Nobody knew in advance if and when the war was going to end.

 

[Darat]

Now you're talking! Last time we came across illegal combatants they were captured in late June and executed in August after a military tribunal. Frankly, that''s what should have been done with these guys.

Which prison camp was this? How was the illegal status of those combatants established?

No, that's the way war works. Warring parties are entitled to pick up guys you think are trying to kill you and entitled to hold them until hostilities have ceased. There has never, ever been an obligation for the warring party to establish that the guy actually was trying to kill you. Civilian internees were commonly kept during the latter half of WWII when the allies were occupying former Axis towns.

You just confused me again! You switch from war, to POWs to illegal combatants, to civilian internees without establishing why they are valid comparisons.

Also even if they were all the same or similar enough for close comparisons to be made it would be an irrelevance to my point. The British army invented concentration camps, but that does not mean I would ever for any reason support their use. I can always look into the past and see times when we did things that today we wouldn’t consider right, what I am concerned with is what is right today, not was right 60 years ago.

And in my opinion this camp is wrong today.

It is a prison full of people that apparently aren’t POWs and haven’t been proven guilty of anything (perhaps just yet) and are denied access to a system that we claim we stand for and in fact proudly claim that we will fight to preserve! I believe the old adage is right, it is in dire times that we truly see what we stand for and what we believe in and I really hope that what the camp is, is not what the vast majority of people believe in.

(Edited for words.)

 

[WildCat]

Which prison camp was this? How was the illegal status of those combatants established?

Perhaps he was talking of captured German saboteurs:

On 13 June 1942, 4 agents were landed from U-584 on Amagansett, Long Island, New York; and on 17 June 1942, 4 agents from U-202 were landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, south of Jacksonville, Florida. A subsequent military trial of the 8 captured agents resulted in 6 death sentences, one life imprisonment and one 30-year sentence. On the recommendation of the Justice Department, President Truman granted executive clemency on condition of deportation to the two surviving agents who were deported to the American Zone of Germany in 1948

Compare their treatment to captured uniformed German soldiers, who were given POW status.

On a side note, some German POW's in the US were even given jobs, such as truck drivers, because there were no available US men to take them. The newspapers here used to run stories every time the ex-POW's would have a reunion here in Chicago. They weren't even guarded when they made their trucking runs, and none even attempted to escape. And why would they? Even if successful (and getting back to Germany from Chicago would have been highly unlikely) their "reward" would be having to go back to the front lines. Haven't seen these newspaper stories lately, most of them have probably died off by now.

 

[hammegk]

RE; Thread Title

Has anyone mentioned, The more, The merrier?