No. Technically they are not protected under the constitution. However, They are protected by the UN's Human Rights Charter, of which the US is a signatory and therefore bound by under international law. But then, what does this admin. care about human rights or international law?

What does the U.N. care for human rights unless it is about condemning Israel while ignoring the greater problems in Darfur?

They got what they deserved? Prove it, show the evidence, at least the hints. You can't. Counterchecking the Guantanamo is actively prevented.. You know nothing about why somebody is being send there - amongst others also in YOUR name. That's what is wrong with that system. That's what a legal system usually tries to make sure: that's it's acts and decisions can be counterchecked from outside the legal system. That is what basic democratic oprinciples are about: counter checking, "checks and balance", that no authority of executive, legislative, government can ever be totally beyond control. In guantanamo, you have just arbitrary ruling, and the public, like you, forms opinions about wether it is justified or not not even on the basis of hear-say, but only - by personal, unfounded imagination. It is about making it acceptable, and prevent opposing opinions. for the same reason why Bush only talks about war in terror, but never about the war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, gobal military opoerations that are specified in name and definition - he hopes that all these wars will be unopposed if he loinks them to this idiitoic word-construction "war on terror". Ridiculous. It seems that the democrats currently are enforcing new word-regulations in the defense ministry that are aiming at preventing this generalization to deceive the public. That is good.

What is also wrong is the possebilities of arbitrarily arresting someone without that someone having any chance to ever proove his innocence. If I would travel to the US, and would be held for somebody else at the harbour or airport, and get arrested, I can loose years of my life, being held, being tortured and mistreated, and afterwards having no chance to ever demand any form of compensation, or even an excuse - nothing. This has already happened a lot of times to foreigners beign happy to have been picked up. I can not call anybody outside who could proove they got the wrong man. I must not even be charged with any accusation. Hell, by the laws of your country American secret agents even can kidnapp me from my home in Germany, and get me there. THIS IS IN NO WAY ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE GESTAPO SYSTEM: IT IS NOT DIFFERENT AT ALL. IT IMAKES MOCKERY OF THE AMERICAN STANDARDS CONCERNING JUSTICE AND LEGAL SYSTEM, IT SEVERLY DEGRADES MUCH OF WHAT WAS AND IS GOOD IN AMERICAN HISTORY, AND IS A CRYING SHAME FOR THE UNITED STATES. -

Strange that you can't see the torture in it; for me privately as well as fro an ex-professional perspective when I dealt with torture victims from the Balkans, it is crystal clear. I expect you to accept torture only when it is about electro-shocks, cuts with knifes, bleeding wounds, lots of blood and using white-glowing iron on naked skin, then? I wonder if you would think the same way if you would be made subject to the hospitality of Guantanamo. Don't believe every silly wordgame your stupig "president" or Cheney is playing on you. "alternative forms of interrogations"? What about an alternative form of hospitality, then...? Alternative forms of interrogation are methods of torture that try to mimic a non-torturing treatment, and hide from the public where pain and suffering and fear of death is inflicted during interrogation.

Guantanamo is a shame for your country. Get rid of it, and get rid of those criminals who talked you into accepting it. America should and mujst be better than this.

C'mon, you can take this as a compliment. Despite the recent developments the US is still perceived as a pillar of civilization. That's why the current government won't get away with what they've done.

Only if torture and disregard for foreigners becomes accepted in the most civilized countries, we are in real trouble.

If those who were detained were terrorists or prisoners of war then maybe I wouldn't object to the way they were treated, but Iran is not at war with Britain.

IMO, there's a big distinction between that situation and a few others that some people are so quick to compare.

I see you spotted the UN flaw. :hmm:


This country must in sure this sort of thing never happens again.

Nevertheless you must proove that they are terrorists - instead of holding them for years and years without court procedures. When you are basing your argument on "If those who were detained were terrorists or prisoners of war then..." - you still must make sure that there are counter-checkable procedures to examine if they really are what you imagine they are.

I suspect you of being a terrorist, fredbass. I send you to jail that is not operating by legal standards, because I label you to be an illegal terrorist. I am accepting that you will be tortured, and call that alternative interrogations. Because if you were not a terrorist, you wouldn't be in jail. - Is that the kind of "logic" you want your legal system being run by? Do you want your children being made subject of such procedures? What separates you from your enemies being mislead by similiar queer distortions of logic, caused by their inhumane religious beliefs? You two are of the same kind if you both behave in the same way.

Imaginations, assumptions, hear-say - all that does not and cannot replace the need of evidence and prooving the guilt of the accused - within reasonable time-frames. Not years and years.

the iranians are now ask for a goodwill gesture of britian for thanks for releasing the 15.

how about -'in thanks we promise not to go into iranian waters kidnap sailors and use them for idiotic and obvious political posturing'

Yes, I am making some assumptions as you have. It's just that my assumptions are somewhat different that yours. People have been released without spending years and some have not. I have much more faith in what my government does to its prisoners than what most other governments would do, though I'm sure you would disagree. :roll:

How about this gesture:

-Don't take our soldiers again because we won't be so nice next time- :yep: :know:

Ummmm
It's a political question.
They are political Prisioniers.
And USA have a lot of political Prisoners jailed

This is not an "if-or" statement. I'd argue that they made the smart and equally courageous choice. It is not physically courageous, certainly. But then, physical courage is easy (relatively) or at least common. Countless Japanese died showing how common it is in WWII, as do Palestinian car-bombers, 9/11 kamikaze hijackers ... etc.

Their decision to talk was not only self-preserving, but morally courageous. Freeing yourselves from the shackles of ironbound rules and traditions to make an intelligent decision requires this moral courage. Loss of telling to country = minimal to none. Loss of not cooperating = great personal pain, probable eventual acquiesance and damage to national morale from loss of personnel. Decision = Cooperate.

In pure quantity, moral courage may or may not be higher than physical courage. What's definite is that it is a much rarer trait. Countless Japanese died because they lacked the moral courage to buck their tradition and laws. Moral courage is generally so lacking it can't be invoked in experimental situations (see, Milgram).

No doubt self-preservation played a part, but this moral courage might have been the other part of it too.

Really Imp? We jail political protestors at every rally and send them to guantan? Interesting that I didn't hear anything about it until you mentioned it. Could you be so kind as to provide us with evidence of this?

I think they were not. If they were they should have backup and not come in poorly armed inflatable's..

You just have given up the traditional basis of legal system in a democratic environment. You are accepting to run justice by hear-say and imagination - instead of evidence, checks and balances. However you call it - it has nothing to do with a democratic understanding of a "state", but a tyranny. believing you can a lot. What you actually can gain knowledge about - this is what decides democracy. A president ruling that certain checks and balances are no longer conducted, and shall be unavailable to the people, the public, the outside - such a president has striking similiarities with Big Brother, and should make you worry about your country.

Such thinking has not much to do anymore with the America of the past that came to help to defeat the Nazis. Maybe exactly the opposite.

Democracy is not about blind belief, or blind trust. It is about this: checks and balances, the majority deciding the general course, justice oin the basis of what is to be proven, not on the basis of trusting hear-say of lobbies. What you just said is calling for the strong Führer whom you believe in. And that is alarming an attitude.

In the past, I sometimes was rethoricallyy asked how it could have happened that Germans fell for their Führer, and did not perceive the truth and acted while their still was time. Look at what Bush is doing to your country, then you know the answer.