To which I also stated in my 2nd post:

Yes, there are lines to be drawn but they shouldn't be drawn at the "your pants are way down" line.
What don't you understand AL? The Geneva Convention does not cover terrorists. It is not meant to cover terrorists. The GC is for the treatment of uniformed combatants. What is so hard for you to understand about that?[/quote]
What is so hard for you to understand that terrorists can be uniformed?

What is so hard for you to understand that the world will laugh at you when the time comes and proclaim that "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter"?

Just look at what the world had done to Israel any and every time it lifts a finger to defend itself. Why learn the hard way when someone else has already been through it.
And I'm saying that you should keep in mind that it's 2006 and the UN still has not defined what constitutes terrorism. Hint. Hint. Nudge. Nudge.
And all I'm saying is the GC as it stands, along with the world's anti-Americanism, along with today's terrorist conivences, along with much of the world's upsidedown moral logic today, will have US forces' hands tied behind their backs on day 1 of the next relevant conflict.

Yes, I don't know what worries me more...the fact that these people from the dark ages are trying to kill us, or the fact that we're chasing them back into the dark ages....

So let me get this right:
He's another that thinks terrorist should be covered under the GC.
His second paragraph thinks that we should totally ignore the convention because nations we have fought against before didn't go by it so screw the convention, we'll do whatever it takes to extract information because they are going to torture our troops anyway.
Those countries lost didn't they. Might be saying something there! Like we weren't like them. Lets not make ourselves like them shall we.

Abuse our troops and we will hunt you down and kill you no matter what it takes! Thats what we have going for us! The rage of the rightious.
Not; Well we torture their troops, so we can't say anything about their torture of ours.

Edit: Had to edit because my temper was getting to my post. :)
2nd Edit: BlackFive is a clown in my opinion after reading that article.

Aha! :P

this one is as well nice and ambigous.

As for the GC. It was crafted in response to the huge scale of modernized warfare. When millions of men were conscripted, low of morale from the beginning, and probably likely to surrender at the first given opportunity.

I agree with TAL that the convention does not cover the kind of terrorists we see today. But I still don't think that Guantanamo is solving anything, it just shows the predicament that the war on terror put the USA in. What to do with these terrorists? Well, for starters, if they are terrorists, why no judge them for their crimes? That they receive no trial is to me the biggest mystery of all in this. Trial them, kill them (which is judging them at least) or release them.

You know, I haven't seen Friederich Nietsche, Aesop or Jewish Medrashic Quotation around here lately. I miss them. Jewish Medrashic Quotation and I used to play internet checkers when I first joined this board. He was actually the one who introduced by to Fried and Aesop. They called us the three amigos, mostly because the members just ignored me. I wish that old Jewy-Med, as I called him, would return to us.

By the way TteFaboB, congratulations on your award from the Kansas City St. Andrews Society. That's quite an honor.

The GC in the main is one thing: the codification of a spirit, an attitude of mind, a moral demand, an approach to deal with the consequences of war.

I would like to see it being used on any opponent that uses it and respects it with regard to "us".

I do not understand why it should make us protect the interests and potentials of an attacker that does not see it valid for protecting us.

the tricky part is to prevent abusing it, or hollowing it out, and making reasonable judgements (not biased ones) when deciding for whom it should be used, and for whom not. as you see, I have slightly changed my opinion a bit during the last three years. But Bush wants card blanche. That is too much, even more so since he directs his creation, this illogical and hollow phrase "war on terror", to serve the interests of a certain political agenda (which does not mean that our very real Islamic enemy is less harmful to us).

As TteFAboB has it so wonderfully summed up in his sig: I will not allow others, in the name of their principles (or lack thereof), to deny me what I would never deny them in the name of mine.

Edit. I am contradicting myself. Here I say "GC yes", in other threads I argued in favour of "use moral to decide about peace or war, but once in war fight with all that you have, without moral." The problem for me seem to be that I differ again between "action of war" and combat, and treatment of prisoners. It seems to me I see the GC limited for the treatment of prisoners (that are at your mercy already), but not for the action of war, whereas the GC wants to have a say in both.

Edit 2: Further thinking about it, what is a prisoner that holds a potentially valuable information that would influence your capacity to fight - is he a prisoner, or does this passive potential turn him into a fighter again even when being imprisoned a slong as he withhold that information from you (becasue he an indirectly harm you by limiting your abilties to fight when hiding that information from you so that you cannot make use of it)?
Hm, I need to sit down and think this through. You know that first or second Dirty Harry movie? He has caught the bad guy who has kidnapped a girl that will die within a shgort period of time due to lack of oxygene, if she is not freed. Callaghan does not protect the right of the priosner to stay silent, he tortures him to force him to give away the life-saving info. He made a clear hierarchy: the interests of the innocent victim uncompromisingly go first, befor the interests of the criminal. But the constellation is clear: a bad guy and offender of moral rules, and his innocent victim. This constellation is less clearly to be defined in war. Think of German soldiers or British soldiers being caught in WWII. while participants of SS-slaiughterings can be argued to be criminals, the oprdinary wehrmacht grunt can be argued not to be that, maybe even to be a victim himself. Here, the principle of justice used by Callaghan could only be repalced by the rule of selfish interests of two war-waging sides. And would this be enough to skip legal protection for some prisoner that holds valuable information?

That Dirty Harry movie caused a moral uproar of the public in Germany when it was released, btw. Of course, against Callaghan's action. I was still at schooll, but found the trouble most irritating and unreasonable. The onyl defendig argument was: Callaghans's actions casued a precedent by which the gewneral protection and validity of the law could get hollowed out: ba defining more cases as "exceptions from the rules". which is, however, a valid argument.

1. Torture is not acceptable as a principle, period. One might reasonably argue and excuse a specific case or series of cases where its application was neccesary, but codifying torture in international regulations is unacceptable.
I think one of the characteristics of 'terror nations' that we've seen so far has been the use of torture. What does that make our oh-so-civilized society if we stoop to that? I'm not keen on having another medieval feature here...

2. International conventions such as this should apply on a mutual basis, but they do stem and should stem from moral principles of our culture, not eye-for-eye. If an individual combatant violates conventions, he should be prosecuted for this duly, not denied rights and treated as his captors would prefer without proper investigation.
Idealistic, yes, very. But you can't run around saying conventions don't count. You get into a foggy territory where you can brand someone a terrorist without so much proof as catching him with a weapon, and treat him as you want.
I can safely say that this is precisely what Bush wants to do here - have the right to catch suspicious blokes in the bush, let his guys whatever he wants with them, and whether whatr they did was right or done for the right reason, proclaim that it's all legit and for great democracy. Because he can. Woot.
These new wars are all a grey area that certain people want to paint black and white. This is part of that effort.

3. It is completely unacceptable to have the denial of human rights codified in international regulation that specifically deals with them in the first place.
Think of the precedent this sets. We're better off not having a convention at all than having 'unpersons' codified into it and having 'legitimate' precedents of all this stuff...

None of this will make war crimes or torture go away. But at least let's not give up on modern post-Enlightenment moral principles just yet when it comes to international law...

If its true that bush wants to make changes to suit the CIA (another form of Terroist?) then it will be the downfall of democracy and all those assicated with them. The old saying if ya can't beat em join em does not always work. America and the rest that follow are at the top because they dont act like savages. Do we really want to resort to these tactics?... Desperados?

The background is that his attempt to allow a wider spectrum of "non-conventional" interrogation methods to be used in Guantanamo was brought to a stop even by his own Republican party that rejected him the needed support. He now tries it through the backdoor, somewhat distracting from or evading his defeat by that.

BUSH YOU SILLY OLD...:x

Damnit, this sucks! The Genva Convention is a Good thing. Bush just wants to get rid of it so he can Torture and shoot everyone who he dislikes. THATS NAZILAND 2! This time it's no stupid bull****, this time it's serious!

The Problem is to define terrorism.

If this does not get clear, if you shout "America Sucks and all americans should die" (No offence against anyone, i am just making an excample) Bush can just say "He's a Terrorist, Torture him and Blow his Brain out".

Bush already did enought nazi-things, like saying "Torture is only Torture if it can kill you", and already did enough stupid and outright Facist things, like bringing people outta country to torture them. If they found out he wasn't anything bad, they thrown him in the woods of an unknown country! Secret Black CIA (Yes the are another form of Terrorists/Insurgents) Flights across Europe, Heard of it?

I know this sounds Stupid as hell, but this SERIOUSLY concerns me. The USA gets more Nazi alike every day. Lets make a Overview.

Nazi Germany

Discriminated
Jewish, Poles, Russians

Torturing Camps:
Concentration Camps

Army=Wehrmacht:
Does everything for thier Leader and Commits war Crimes

Gestapo:
Secret Police with Power over everything

Leader:
Uncle Adolf Heilstoned, der brave honest superman Fuehrer

Excuse to start war:
Attack of Poland on Germany (Germany only faked it in this case!)

Now Comes USA!

USA

Discriminated:
Islamists, Middle East People

Torturing Camps:
Secret Prisons, Abu Graib, Guantanamo

Army:
Does everything for thier Leader, and does war crimes too!

CIA, NSA, ect:
Secret Police with Power over everything

Leader:
Georgie Bush, the Clean Honest Democatic elected always says the thruth blah blah blah guy.

Excuse to start war:
Attack on the USA on 9/11. (True in this case)

Does anyone get the Pattern?

Anyway, the Point is, (Sorry but i can only express this in German, it's a...Redewedung here) "Der Zweck heiligt nicht die mittel!". It means you can't justify every action with that good what shall come out in the end. Because it is usually utter horsesh**.

You cannot justify the Torturing and Killing of People, even if they are Terrorists. You are going to thier level.

There is a great movie that shows what can come out of such stuff. It's called "The Siege" and it would not Suprise me if it is banned in America.

The Avon Lady, i would normally ask you "ARE YOU *MEEP*ING CRAZY?!" but i will not, since you can in my Opinion not judge this, since you are under terrorist Attacks for a Long time "down there" in Israel, and a certain hate has build up. It is right we need to Stop the terrorists. I hate Terrorism. It is GAY! The shall come out and FIGHT in a Open war, and not hide in thier holes like Bugs Bunny, but SUCH INHUMAN methods are just...wrong. We are Lowering to thier levels. We are going back in time...staight to Nazi Germany 1942.

Heil Bush! :nope:

(As usuall on my Political Comments if this gets to Offensive, remove it, no Problem. But i cannot hold myself on such terms like Removing GC.)

I do not agree on torturing people or changing the GC article three. However, as CCIP stated a few posts above:
It all comes down that us Westerners, we do "try" to adhere to the Geneva Convention, them (terrorists), on the other hand they do not and will never follow it. So I will never feel ashamed or feel like a monster if we use an occasional slap to make one cough up some valuable information. ;)

However, if it's true that Bush asked for a change in article three, from this point on, if I hear one word from Bush saying something about China's way, I will laugh hard.

The GC is humane and straightforward, we must follow it as much as we can, point.

We have lost the moral high-ground! :roll:

"assailed with loud Red Hot Chili Peppers music.":rotfl:

:rotfl:

Lest we forget, terrorism is not the invention of the palestinians or jihadists. It has been used widely across the world in modern times, by people of all faiths, but differing goals. The geneva convention is reserved for conventional warfare, not terrorism wars. A new set of doctrines must be formulated for how to respond to that type. What to do with capture terrorists etc.

To my surprise, Mr. Babylonian Talmud has dropped by to say hello at the American Spectator. :D