The baddest of the bad Gitmo style

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13184845
So to be very generous America thought 1 in 4 detainees worth throwing their nations standing into the cess pit of modern history were actualy possibly dangerous and 1 in 5 were known to be really innocent entirely but may have had some scraps of information about something pretty irrelevant on any level if they are tortured enough.

USAUSAUSA
What a sorry state the supporters of these measures have left their country in.
Good luck in the search for paying someone to get the innocent released or in ever getting any reasonable conviction of any of the guilty

[Onkel Neal]

Ignore.

Ignore.

Its US taxpayer that pick up the bill

USAUSAUSA

This of course refers not to Americans but only those who rock with the USA chant in a my country right or wrong you are with us ior against us way instead of thinking.

[mookiemookie]

How many terrorists has the existence of Gitmo created vs how many has it stopped? And Tribesman brings up a good point - how much have we been paying to put lowly foot soldiers under maximum security conditions? This place is a stain on our national history.

how much have we been paying to put lowly foot soldiers under maximum security conditions?

Foot soldiers? at least there would be some sort of rationale there.
But there is the taxi driver sent there because ....well taxi drivers know what goes on in the area they drive round??????
The bloke who was a prisoner of the Taliban ....well he understands their interrogation proceedures??????

Pure wasteful madness.

[Growler]

The reality lies somewhere between these extremes, gentlemen.

Are there innocents in Gitmo? Perhaps. Are there guilty in Gitmo? Perhaps.

Replace "Gitmo" with the name of any other prison in any other country at any other time in history, and the statement still stands.

There are far greater forms of evil than Gitmo, and there are far greater forms of good than Gitmo.

Look to your own neighborhoods before casting aspersions at distant ones.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Growler

The reality lies somewhere between these extremes, gentlemen.

Are there innocents in Gitmo? Perhaps. Are there guilty in Gitmo? Perhaps.

Replace "Gitmo" with the name of any other prison in any other country at any other time in history, and the statement still stands.

There are far greater forms of evil than Gitmo, and there are far greater forms of good than Gitmo.

Look to your own neighborhoods before casting aspersions at distant ones.

It's not the conditions of Gitmo that are the problem - it's not even the fact that innocent people have been rounded up. It's the fact that it's a symbol of the abdication of 800 years of judicial tradition. If you imprison someone with no trial proving their guilt, then that. is. wrong.

[Feuer Frei!]

Take it all with a shaker full of salt.
And to think that al-Qaida wanted to set off bombs concealed in your game cartridges once!

[tater]

How many POWs did we have during ww2? How many were "dangerous?"

How dangerous they are doesn't matter. They were grabbed as POWs, and as far as I'm concerned they should all be held until AQ unconditionally surrenders.

The total number detained in tiny compared to the number of people killed. The total number of innocents wrongly held at Gitmo is a vanishingly small % of the number of combatants, and the number of combatants and non-combatrants killed in the theaters of operations.

As I said in some other threads, the comparison needs to be made with how many would be dead if we used more "military" and less "police" tactics. Instead of grabbing people up, just kill threats (real, perceived, or wrongly accused by intel assets).

For example:
Potential target of value in that house compound over there. Send troops at grave personal risk to clear the house, using minimal force. 3 guys are grabbed up, of which we'll say NONE are guilty for argument. That's 3 guys who lose their liberty, which is bad. The compound, however, contained 4 men, 3 women, and 4 kids. 3/11 lose liberty, happily none were killed.

Alternate tactic. Potential target of value in compound. JDAM hits compound. 6 people killed, 3 wounded, 1 unharmed (other than his extended family all getting killed or maimed).

Which scenario is better?

[Growler]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

If you imprison someone with no trial proving their guilt, then that. is. wrong.

That's obfuscation, mookie. Fact is, most nation imprison people before proving guilt. these folks in Gitmo are still alive - that's something others like them are no longer capable of saying, either through misidentification, accident, or genuine malice.

Justice is a perfect ideal imperfectly strived for.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Growler

That's obfuscation, mookie. Fact is, most nation imprison people before proving guilt.

Indefinitely? No? That's what I thought.

these folks in Gitmo are still alive - that's something others like them are no longer capable of saying, either through misidentification, accident, or genuine malice.

"We're going to take away your rights but you're still alive" is a terrible argument.

[tater]

POWs are not given due process. Never have been—except after hostilities end, THEN, some might be tried for war crimes.

Saboteurs, etc, were sometimes tried during wartime, and sometimes executed (very quickly, in the case of the Germans captured in NY).

I think it's rather nice of us to even consider giving them due process before hostilities end. (if the combatants are AQ, then hold until AQ surrenders, if Taliban, then hold til that war is over, Iraqis could likely be repatriated soon (when US forces are gone), and only try those who we can charge with war crimes, etc).

It's a cliché, but this is indeed a different kind of conflict, and I think that the "rules" should be reevaluated. The GC as originally drawn up and understood, was an agreement between powers (and their clients) that was considered reciprocal. All the wording implies reciprocity, and testing for same (why define how combatants are supposed to appear/behave if there is no sanction for not appearing/behaving in that way? The implication is clearly "to be treated as defined in this document, then you must do X, Y, and Z" (else you won't be treated that way). It has since been considered largely unilateral. Regardless, it is designed for use with nations that have an interest in being part of a larger community of nations.

Non-state actors like AQ exist outside any limitation on behavior. Treating their combatants the same way as soldiers of nations is anachronistic, IMHO. "Rules" for combat need a carrot and a stick approach. The penalty for intentionally targeting civilians, or for murdering prisoners, etc, should be harsh. In WW2, the Allies largely followed the GC, and the rules of war, but vs combatants who were in clear violation (or who were not even signers, like the Empire of Japan), we violated those rules with our eyes wide open. The obvious example being area bombing. They started it and broke the rules, so that rule is now off the table. We largely treated prisoners very well, indeed, but there were many cases of summary execution in WW2, as well as shooting survivors in the water, etc (not just subs, I'm thinking about the Battle of the Bismark Sea).

I think for the modern world, terrorists should be considered, to use an old term, "outlaws."

Outlaws were "outside the protection of the law." Legally no longer people. Shoot an outlaw in the street, and you might get charged with "discharging a weapon within city limits," but nothing more. IMO, AQ absolutely deserve this treatment. Clearly US citizens would require some sort of due process to be made "outlaws," though this could happen in absentia, obviously (my passport says that citizenship can be revoked for joining a foreign military, I'd say going to any AQ camp should result in summary removal of citizenship, and outlaw status).

The carrot would be that if they changed their ways, and adopted uniforms, badges of rank, and ceased intentionally attacking civilians, etc, that they'd get treated as legal combatants, instead.

[Growler]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Indefinitely? No? That's what I thought.

Pretty sure I never said that - again, obfuscation and distraction. Fact: We KNOW innocents have been held in prison for years - HERE (30 years)- is an example. HERE (26 years) is another. HERE (combined 30 years) a third. Four men, three cases, nearly ninety years in jail combined. Innocents go to jail all the time, and aren't always quickly exonerated. That's the facts of the system.

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

"We're going to take away your rights but you're still alive" is a terrible argument.

Being unjustly killed is better than being unjustly held? That's a stretch, amigo.

And with that, off to the dentist. I think I'd rather stay here and speak about this.

[tater]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Indefinitely? No? That's what I thought.

Not indefinitely, until hostilities are over. In the case of AQ, I'd say that we should require unconditional surrender from them.

"We're going to take away your rights but you're still alive" is a terrible argument.

No, it's a good argument. The alternative to grabbing up possible threats is to deal with them as targets. If every person grabbed up in Afghanistan had instead been killed by the least dangerous (for Allied forces) way, MANY more people would be dead, including many more innocents.

Loss of freedom for a few is a grossly lower "cost" than loss of life for even the same few, and certainly for the larger number it would be (bombs are not terribly discriminating).

Realistically, that is the choice. Many compounds have been bombed over the years, we hear about those far, far less than "Gitmo." if people are gonna keep whining about holding people, we should cease taking prisoners from combatants out of uniform. Think that is a house of bad guys? Bomb it. Thousands of Allied lives have been lost walking patrols, and entering houses to mitigate the danger to innocents. It would be interesting to look at how many Americans have died doing such duty compared to the number held in Gitmo as the result of such duty. Those guys lost everything to deny a few liberty so that innocents might live.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Growler

Pretty sure I never said that - again, obfuscation and distraction. Fact: We KNOW innocents have been held in prison for years - HERE (30 years)- is an example. HERE (26 years) is another. HERE (combined 30 years) a third. Four men, three cases, nearly ninety years in jail combined. Innocents go to jail all the time, and aren't always quickly exonerated. That's the facts of the system.

Sentencing an innocent to jail after a fair trial is not analogous to sentencing an innocent to jail with no trial.

Being unjustly killed is better than being unjustly held? That's a stretch, amigo.

How about we do neither?