Forbidden Donut

<3

It's surreal that diplomacy is so evil. Our leadership being able to smile and shake hands with a man who has repeatedly stated that his country is at war with the US is a good thing, right?

U.S. agents torturing somebody through waterboarding/sleep deprivation/etc is the most heinous and malicious criminal activity that anybody could ever do?

It seems to me like those techniques were not specifically outlawed at the time, that certain lawmakers thought using those techniques was within the law and that the leadership ordered them to be used. The agents did what they were ordered to do and they knew somebody had made the decision that what they were doing was legal.

Personally, I don't think anybody deserves prosecution, but if you want to hang someone out to dry then go after those who interpreted the law incorrectly and those that ordered the actions, not the friggen agents.

And ANunes, I don't like that Obama is going all over the world apologizing for American arrogance and past digressions. Sure he did it to get the other countries to see that we are turning a new leaf, but we gained nothing from it. No other country apologized for shit (England-colonialism?, Germany-holocaust?, France-Algeria,Vietnam?, Turkey-Armenia?, Russia-30milliondeadunderStalin?, China-70milliondeadunderMao?). No other foreign leader trashed their predecessor like he did Bush (Sarkozy mum on Chirac, Brown mum on Blair, Merkel mum on Schroeder, Medvedev mum on Putin). Did NATO nations offer more troops for Afghanistan..did Russia offer to help talk to Iran or let the missile defense projects go forward..did China offer to do anything more with N.Korea..did Europe pony up for more bailouts or accept Guantanamo prisoners.. ?????? Sure plenty of good will was formed but that isn't worth a fuck of a lot. Oh and certain regimes in South America have a ridiculous amount that they could apologize for.

Yes, I think putting someone in a state of physical and mental anguish that is so overwhelming that they would beg not for life but for death is absolutely one of the most heinous and malicious things one human being can do to another. I can't even fathom something that would come close. And to that end, the international community once agreed with me. In fact, they agreed with me so much as to pass international laws that demand a death sentence to those who commit the atrocities. Most of these same countries don't even allow the death sentence for serial murdering child molesters! In every country that at least attempts to be a free society, torture is the worst of all offenses. That is, of course, except for the US. In the US, torture is only heinous, evil, and worthy of immediate execution when the Japanese do it to us decades in the past.

Thinking that something is lawful does not, has not, never did, and never should be confused with something actually being legal. To say there is even a single case where thinking something is legal is "good enough" is to throw our entire fucking legal society out the window. And being ordered to do unlawful deeds is equally not to be confused with something actually being legal. People should get medals for standing up against illegal orders! First and foremost, they swear an oath to protect this country -- that includes the people that live in it and the principles that define and unify them. Any single one of them, whether they were ordered to do so or not, failed to uphold that oath. They failed their oath, and they failed this country. Beyond that, there is substantial legal precedent throughout even our military courts that illegal acts conducted by soldiers and civilians alike are not justifiable even under direct influence by superiors.

I absolutely positively agree with you that those that gave the orders should be dealt the most severe punishments. I could not agree with you more. But that changes nothing. Everyone involved deserves just punishment, and the only way to figure out who was involved and exactly what punishment is best to fit their particular role is to prosecute! We're not talking about a fucking lynch mob! We're talking about due-process that is guaranteed to every citizen of the United States by our constitution -- a process where an individual needs only to defend their innocence rather than disprove their guilt. THIS IS WHY WE HAVE A THIRD FUCKING BRANCH. Jesus FUCKING christ why is this such a god damn difficult concept to understand? Did someone methodically lobotomize half this country over the past fifty years?

WHY IS IT SO GOD DAMN HARD TO UPHOLD AT LEAST THE FRONT OF BORDERLINE RATIONALITY

P.S., Germany has apologized for the Holocaust, and they even went as far as to ban any positive references to things resembling the Nazis. The soviet union no longer exists, but you are more than welcome to keep pressing imaginationland for apologies. Russia, however, is so ashamed by the actions of Stalin that they've renamed everything that held his namesake and have toppled most physical references to him. China...is not an example you should expect us to follow.

P.S.S., Even if we were the only country to ever apologize for the shitty things we've done (which we're not), why would that matter? I didn't realize conformity was necessary for progress.

P.S.S.S(?)., Foreign relations is good will. If countries have good will toward each other, they have more open trade, less conflict, and an overall easier-going relationship.

P.S....S., I wasn't aware that the reason you should apologize for your mistakes is to immediately receive favors from all the people you've fucked. In the future, I will make sure to make retarded mistakes, apologize, then throw a temper tantrum when people don't offer to do shit for me.

1. The Geneva Conventions were passed while European nations were still using the death penalty, so its not like those countries are saying torture is worse than a serial raping pedophile murderer.
2. Thinking that something was lawful might be a defense to a crime in certain circumstances, I will get back to you on this. And why did the Nazi troops following orders get let off?
3. If you like more open trade and less conflict then you should be happy to let our navy police the seas =)

Your refutation seems to attack individual aspects of Court's argument instead of it as a whole. I suggest you come up with something more substantial.

1. You are arguing here that because other European countries do not believe torture is a worse crime than serial raping, torture is not as bad as it seems. This is called legality by conformity, which will later be contradicted by your second point. It is the same as those who believe digital pirating is legal because enough people do it.

2. Your implication here is that because in one certain case, a group of people were let off, it grants everyone the same right. If this were true, there would never be any need to amend any constitutions. First, Germans would not have been able to commit the crimes they did without instilled hatred. This view is the popular one accepted by historians. (I only used this point because you seem so keen on using popular opinion as substance). Second, correct if I'm wrong, but you're suggesting that German troops were "let off" because they were forced to do things, as the torturers here themselves did not have a choice. Yale psychologists would no doubt agree with the assessment that entire populations, let alone specific individuals, can be manipulated by authority. But that argument also has some very strong opposition, which I will not go into detail because it's missing the point. (The same Yale professors would agree that it is the authority figures to blame instead of no blame on anyone at all). What you are saying is that the situation between the torturers in the United States is in a comparable circumstance to the Nazi troops who themselves were torturers. If I were to use the tactics you've been using, I can attack your argument through this specific point, but the real question is, "does one group being let off the hook in ANY case for ANY crime suggest to you that anyone unrelated to the original group committing the same crime in another pretense be entitled to being let off as well?" If the answer is yes, the I think you have confirmed my first point and this boils down to people not willing to make the hard decisions. Think back to the strip-search case of Safford, Arizona. The principal denied any responsibility by taking the easy way out and saying he follows protocol blindly. I am not saying the principal committed any crime. What I'm saying is that the key in determining if someone who followed orders is guilty of torture is by studying whether an individual had enough prior knowledge of what they are doing and their intentions for following orders. This means that it will differ from circumstance to circumstance.

3. I don't think this is a related issue... but you're assuming what people care about is results. You should probably consolidate your thoughts before making such general statements.

Your entire refutation has been focused on attacking points in Court's own refutation. In a court of law, you're absolutely right in the your way of presenting a case. But this is not here nor there. I hope you see the difference in what a lawyer wants to accomplish and what a political discussion should accomplish. I thought the point he was originally making was that John Ensign took the easy way out instead of prosecuting the criminals.

Yeah I couldn't attack Court's arguments because his view is completely correct. I just wanted to point out some areas that he might be wrong on, but it doesn't change the fact that his logic makes perfect sense. I guess I don't want the prosecutions to happen and I don't really have a good explanation for why except that it would be bad for the country. (Obama agrees!)

Actually, I'll ask this: what crime would you charge the agents with?

update: I just heard on the radio that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was waterboarded 83 times in one month. That is out of fucking control and any agent could have realized that continuing to do it would not yield any more information. I might need to rethink my position because I didn't think the agents would have had any sort of chance to see that their actions were useless and outrageous =\.

I'm just going to throw out the idea that one time is too many times, since it's been proven a hundred god damn times that torture yields no tenable information.

Check out the Stanford Prison Experiment (youtube it). If you give anyone that much control over another human life, things become inhumane.

As for the Nazis being let off the hook, check out Stanley Milgram's famous experiment (again youtube). This by no means justifies what they did, but it shows how they were manipulated into doing it. I've been a firm believer in personal responsibility, so I'd have voted for their punishment in full. With that said, this experiment was created to investigate how the average person acts in a situation like the German soldiers.


on another note: I wish Psychology was cool, again...

It was ONE HUNDRED 83 times in one month. To put that in perspective, if he were up 24 hours a day, which he probably was, and the month was a 30 day month, that means he was waterboarded once every 4 hours.

If he were up 18 hours, like a normal person, it would be once every 3 hours.

"Hey Gary! He's still not talking!"
"Well, he must know something. How many times was that last waterboard?"
"170."
"Do it again. In three hours."

Nope, totally not monsters.

the 83? yeah that was somebody else. Abu Zubaydah to be specific. "A former CIA officer had told news organisations that he had been subjected to only 35 seconds under water before agreeing to tell everything he knew."

Also from the article:
"A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo said that waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the CIA rules permitted"

I did say something about Yale professors didn't I?

Keep in mind the last round of Geneva Conventions of warfare in its current form, where the punishments were defined, was last heavily modified in 1949. Almost every country on the planet was still making somewhat frequent use of the Death Penalty at that time. Things have changed in the last 60 years. To the point that when the War Crimes tribunal's started up for the stuff in Yugoslavia, a lot of the EU nations were pushing for the Death Penalty not being applied.

I'd go a step further and say that if a lot of countries thought it would fly, they'd be pushing to amend the death penalty out of the Geneva Conventions. Most of then simply console themselves by trying to make sure things don't reach the point where the Conventions would apply in the first place(or otherwise re-interpret things so that the Geneva Conventions are N/A -- "It's a law enforcement issue, not a military one.").

The death penalty still exists in the Geneva Conventions because removing the death penalty from it is a far more onerous/difficult task than modifying national laws to no longer have a death penalty for heinous crimes. As you are no longer talking about modifying one nations laws, but getting dozens of other nations to agree to the change as well.



I think there has to be some degree of "reasonable person" behavior on this one. I may hold something to immoral, questionably ethical, or very morally grey in general. I may even question whether or not it's legal(and in that case, likely refuse to do it), but I'm still going to be able to be convinced otherwise if the right sources come back and tell me it is legal. (IE: Lawyers/other people who deal in international law as their normal job) If they're telling me its legal, within certain contexts(military organization), I'll probably go ahead and do it at that point.... Depending on how strongly I feel about the practice in question, I could possibly pull the conscientious objector card, but that threshold has an exceptionally high bar to clear.

Do keep in mind that if I'm having JAG(my background being prior Navy) coming back and saying what they want me to do is legal, the only way out I have at that point is conscientious objector status, and pulling that card, even if successful, is likely to effectively end any hope of pursuing a career in that Government Agency. Which isn't to mention the things that could happen if my petition for C.O. status was declined.

Most people are simply going to shrug their shoulders and go along. It doesn't make what they did right, but they're prisoners of a sort in their own right.

Saying "I thought it was legal" is one thing (ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law). Saying "I thought it was illegal, but JAG/State Department/US Attorney General's Office/other people I believed to be legal experts on the matter came back and told me it was legal, so I did it." Is a slightly different matter entirely.

But that argument doesn't apply to whether someone should be prosecuted; it only applies to what their punishment should be, and that is why our judicial system gets a lot of flexibility when determining just punishment given the circumstances of the crime and the person committing it.

Not knowing that something is illegal doesn't make you innocent, but it could play a big role in determining exactly what punishment you'd face for the crimes you committed. And if it comes out during the prosecution that these people were told their actions were legal, then it will come out in prosecution who told them that. This is how everyone involved is ultimately going to be held responsible.

very good post TheDeamon, those are the two points I wish I could have made stick =). Are you a lawyer? Your explanation of the law here is very accurate- ie if an AG states that the law is to be interpreted in a certain way which makes an act legal or you get written confirmation that something is not against the law from him, then that can be a defense.

Which is absolutely irrelevant to a discussion about whether these people should be prosecuted!

Of course, you also have to decide which legal "school of thought" you want to subscribe to on this one. Is the Geneva Convention to be treated like a "living document" much like some want to do with the Consitiution of the US. Or is it something that should be viewed more narrowly, and restricted to within the constraints that the writers likely had in mind.

Keep in mind that while Governor may want to throw a lot of aspersions against what the US had been doing under Bush, nobody is know to have died, or otherwise suffered lasting physical harm from being in US custody.

Which is a far cry from what happened with the war criminals that were executed at the end of World War 2. Where hundreds, if not thousands of Prisoners of War were maimed, (unjustifiably) killed, and otherwise put into rather extreme physical danger. Japan being the main offender in that department. The Nazi's reserving their more heinous behavior for the Jews instead.

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Khalid Sheikh Muhammad getting waterboarded 183 in the span of a month is clearly excessive and unacceptable. However, waterboarding in a generally controlled environment with more then adequate care being provided for any (physical) harms done is a far cry from the Bataan Death March where:



The primary concern of the writers of the Geneva Conventions, circa 1949, was that they specifically didn't want to see their soldiers who were able bodied and in good health at time of capture, ending up dead or in extremely poor health by the time they were released. Bataan is a good example of that, as I seem to recall a significant number of the soldiers who survived that came out looking much like the concentration camp survivors did in Germany.

There probably should be protections added for the "psychological health" of prisoners or war as well as their physical, but that is beyond the general scope of the Conventions.

However, the even bigger argument that still goes on, and I know I'm on opposing sides with Governor on this, is that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad does in fact exist in a special category of people. One that does exist both outside the Geneva Conventions and the normal rule of (criminal) law. As I'm sure you'd find the framers of the Geneva Conventions would have had little/no interest in protecting the welfare of people like him.

If they could have foreseen the advent of (non-state sponsored) international terrorism that we face today when they were doing that 60 years ago. It probably would have received its own completely separate protocol in regards to how you deal with them.

But then, that assumes that people are able/willing to view things in their proper historical perspective. And being aware of what "normal treatment" was for Prisoners of War prior to any (respective) version of the Geneva Conventions.

Have you read a history book? Like... ever? We convicted Japanese SOLDIERS (read: the people 'carrying out orders in good faith') for Waterboarding their US POW's AFTER we fucking dropped two bombs on them destroying two of their major cities and killing a quarter of their populations.

Then we started waterboarding ourselves.

There is ZERO. FUCKING ZERO justification for that. When torture is shown to not produce accurate information, the methods are shown to be barbaric, and the application is excessive people STILL try and make it sound like we don't deserve every ounce of hatred and ridicule we get from around the world.

There is no "legal school of thought" that says torture might be legal. The Geneva Convention is not "A living document" as it can't be amended. But good for us, because when we torture people, we don't leave marks and they stay alive /biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> emirite?

Let's play a game, where I say, "torture is universally bad and should never be performed" and you bring up 50 year old events that are unilaterally decried as inhumane acts of unmitigated evil and compare them to what we're doing. It'll really strengthen your case that the US policy of torture for information is not *necessarily* bad and that the soldiers who did it are not terrible people.

/sorry, I'm having a shitty day.

what isn't apparent to most Americans that is very apparent to the rest of the world is the inconsistencies in the US foreign policies, which somehow always work to its own benefit.

lol doesnt that show consistency? albeit a consistency you might not like.

I think he was referring to the fact that we convicted japanese soldiers of war crimes when it was our soldiers being tortured. But when it's our soldiers doing the same exact thing to another country, suddenly it's not a punishable offense for our soliders, and in fact, isn't torture.

That's not very consistent.

Not just that. The Algerian incident is very inconsistent too.

So there's another twist here.

“It worked. It’s been enormously valuable in terms of saving lives,” Cheney said on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity.” “I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

But those reports were not revealed along with the other legal memos released by Obama, he said. “I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there, and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was,” Cheney said. “If we’re going to have this debate, let’s have an honest debate.”

Frankly, I believe that what we learned and how many American lives we saved are irrelevant compared to the blow delivered to American integrity. But I concede that this is simply opinion, and we all seem to have varying degrees of hard-linedness about the issue. But I would still like to see it if there really is something out there that shows us to maybe be a little bit successful in preventing an incident.

Also frankly, I'm not sure I'd buy that these memos wouldn't be manufactured to cover the asses of the people in charge.

How many lives is integrity worth?

All of them. Mine included.

I wouldn't pull an "integrity or death!", but if it's between a plane smashing into W.L.Gore with me inside one day in the unforeseeable future and torturing a guy to potentially avoid that, bring on the plane. I won't be missed nearly as much as America's moral compass...

Actually, the Geneva Conventions have been amended a couple times since 1949, however, unlike the US Constitution, X number of nations ratifying the additional protocols doesn't mean everyone who ratified the 1949 document is subject to it. The most recent protocol addition was in 2005, but nobody has actually ratified it as of right now.

And did you read my commentary about the likely intentions of the framers of the 1949 (and earlier) versions of the Geneva Conventions? I find it unlikely that they would have considered international terror organizations as being subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Much like I would challenge you to find any protocols, anywhere, in international law as to how nations are expected to handle spies/espionage. (Hint: The closest you will come to finding anything like that is where parties with diplomatic immunity come into play)

So while yes, in the context of (ir)regular military forces being taken as a Prisoner of War and being waterboarded, it possibly is a violation of the Geneva Conventions(but I will admit I haven't done research on the "history of waterboarding" just yet to see if it was the single basis of someone being convicted of war crimes in the past)...

These guys aren't even irregular military, and once again, the very premise of the Geneva Conventions on warfare are invalid where international (non-state sponsored) terror organizations are concerned. It was not designed to protect people who engage in that type of warfare, as those tactics were considered to be so low that they were beneath mention(and inconceivable that it would be possible to have happen on anything beyond a national internal rebellion level).

Edit: and a trip to wiki finds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding


But then, the operative part there is "using a form of" and that he was using it on a civilian in that specific case.

However, as I mentioned earlier, it was part of an "in total" charge. It wasn't water boarding alone that resulted in that person's prosecution.

Slightly more relevant as well is that Wikipedia reports the French military using waterboarding in Algeria in the 1950's, not even 6 years after the 1949 Geneva Convention.... It resulted in some public outrage, but no prosecutions, and considering how recent that was to the Nuremberg Trials and the crafting of the 1949 conventions, I'd think the drafters of those conventions would have been screaming pretty loudly about it if they felt it truly was a war crime in and of itself.

Next closest thing you have is a US soldier getting a court-martial and discharged from the service during Vietnam after being photographed waterboarding someone. However, he was charged under the UCMJ, and I'd lay odds at the charge being a variation of "failure to obey a lawful order" rather than committing a war crime. US General's had designated it as illegal(thus making it a "lawful order" that US service members shall not waterboard people in Vietnam), but US Generals != Arbiters of International Law.

So why exactly are we torturing them? We're treating them like military when convenient for us, and like armed combatants when that's handy.

Here's the convention's revisions as ratified
It describes minimal protections which must be adhered to by all individuals within a signatory's territory during an armed conflict not of an international character (regardless of citizenship or lack thereof): Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, including prohibition of outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The passing of sentences must also be pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples. Article 3's protections exist even though no one is classified as a prisoner of war.

What did we define these people as?

/my bad btw, I did think that the convention was a one off document.

Also, you're just sort of assuming that everyone we're waterboarding is clearly and obviously a member of a terrorist organization, or, as they liked to say in the "media" an "enemy combatant". You're automatically assuming that everyone we detained is "the right guy" and therefore outside of geneva conventions, and therefore ok for torture. Bad.

You are also assuming I don't support a different set of protocols being setup to detail how people in "that special category" should be handled once captured/detained.

Which would be incorrect. There should be a process in place for handling them, and in particular to help make sure we are handling the *right* people, rather than someone who simply happened to be in the right place at the wrong time.

However, in some cases, like KSM, I don't think any rational person is going to claim that he has been "unjustly" placed into that particular category. As there was a very large body of evidence regarding him running back to several years prior to his capture.

Not really. But it is nice of you to clear that up. I don't think it necessary to make a special set of rules for this special set of people, but it is one solution.

Civilians
Military

Period. That's 100% of a nations population. By definition, a civilian is somebody not in the military. And we're saying that there's a special group of people who aren't in a military, but are fighting our military. And that these people aren't civilians even though they aren't in the military. Then when it's good to compare them to civilians, we do. And when it's convenient to characterize them as military, we do that.

The system you're referring to is the lawful processing of POW's OR the lawful processing of civilians. How about we do that?

By they way, no rational person thought OJ was innocent, but our court of law found him that way and he got to go home until he pulled whatever dumb shit got him in jail now. Ton's of evidence? Present it in court and we'll see what a jury feels. Shit he sure isn't getting a jury of his peers...

Where do you categorize militia? Militia is sometimes defined as civilian military. I understand what you are getting at, but categorizing things gets muddy and opens things up for interpretation. It is hard to define some of these "enemy combatants" as civilians when they fire weapons, but equally difficult to define them as military when they aren't part of any formal military force.

In this case, I think we're looking for a third set which is loosely "non-state entities" which would be your dis-avowed spies working for foreign nations. Or foreign nationals acting in a para-military manner without state-entity backing.

This would be most of the international terrorists out there, and to some extent (international water) pirates, and organizations like Blackwater/Xe/whatever their name is this week.

Basically people that would normally be considered civilians due to lack of state (military) affiliation, but are engaged in militaristic operations of an international nature regardless of that fact.

The hard part on drawing that link is situations like a civil war(hence qualifies on the character of their actions being international in nature), occupation or assistance by a foreign (neighboring) power. So a civil war with the "rebel" faction crossing national borders to a neighboring (friendly to the established government) country to loot/sack the supply lines of their opposition, while technically international in nature doesn't exactly qualify.

But that's where it gets grey really quick. Like Iraq a couple years ago, Iraqi Baathist die-hards running into Jordan or Kuwait to mess with US supply lines = acceptable and to be handled within existing frameworks. Al-Qaeda operatives from outside Iraq doing the same thing from within Iraqi borders = would presumably qualify for the new framework. Al-Qaeda operative drawn from within the Iraqi population doing it from within Iraqi borders = extremely grey as to which one applies.

Which isn't to mention other such potential "fun" to be had looking at it historically. Depending on your point of view, how would a historical figure such as Baron Friedrich von Steuben fare in such a context. He was commissioned within the Continental Army as the Inspector General, so he would qualify as being part of a regular (rebel) force. However, he also was a foreign national involved in an internal rebellion.

This isn't some Clancy novel. The only reason these guys are operating internationally is because they are combating our army and our army has surrounded them in numerous other countries.

This is more like our revolutionary war in terms of combat status than any of the other situations you mentioned.

A non-military entourage engaged in militant acts against a much larger and better equipped official military which had, for all legal purposes, every right to the land which the militants were stealing from them. What if Britain were sending supplies through Canada (for some reason) and we had carried out a raid on those supply lines? Would you be singing the same tune of "what do we call these people!?"

It's a song we've been taught to sing ONLY when the tune sounds good in our ears. Apparently the case of Friedrich von Steuben is a gray area, the entire continental army he trained? What are they?

Under which of these is an al-Qaida fighter who is from Saudi Arabia and captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan? Are they combatants who have laid down their arms? I think that is meant for combatants who once fought but now don't instead of those that surrender on the field of battle. Not sure though.

And how do you side if a fighter engaged in conflict should be considered international in nature? By what one side says the conflict is about, by what the other side says the conflict is about, by what the world community says the conflict is about? Each one of those groupings would say al-Qaida v U.S. is an international fight. Even if we had no troops elsewhere in the world it would still be al-Qaida's stated intention to wipe us off the map...the fact that they would not be able to do that any time soon does not mean that when they attack us it shouldn't be considered an international war just because we could capture them and treat them as criminals.

Where is this gray area outlined where combatants who are international in nature are so special?

You're either fighting or not fighting, and you're either fighting a nation or a cause.

These people are fighting a nation. And the only reason that we can't call them straight up combatants is because we don't have balls as big as theirs to say this is a war. Then we throw a bunch of legal jargon around and behold! Suddenly the situation is so confusing as to warrant years of deliberation while we let these folks rot in jails.

Legal or not, we had the choice. We made the one that we would have condemned across the board and probably used as justification for military action against the aggressors.

We shouldn't be involved in fights between 2 parties that have no stake in our country, so that avoids your last paragraphs conundrum. Why not let the world community determine what is and is not acceptable treatment of civilians and soldiers in a war-like situation and let them deal with the rightness and wrongness of each side amongst themselves. After all, that's why they are fighting each other.

Perhaps the intention of the Geneva Convention was to only deal with one narrow band of foreign relations in explicitly declared war. Or perhaps they couldn't fathom a country as powerful as ours fighting a small group of rebels for such a protracted period of time while playing with definitions and bypassing the constitutional requirements to wage war. If we're fighting a group that is as organized as you seem to believe in Al-qaeda then what distinguishes them from a nation? The only thing they are missing is sovereignty, which is important to nation-hood, but not really in terms of defining the conflict. Call them a country, declare war, problem solved.

This was apparently too hard. Or too inconvenient. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

fair enough, I guess I'd be fine with declaring war on al-Qaida and treating their fighters as prisoners of war, but it brings up a lot of questions. If they were a nation under the Geneva Conventions then I guess we could count on them treating our soldiers the same, but we cannot count on that as it is today. Also, if we have prisoners of war that need to be returned, who do we give them to? Do we hold the prisoners of war until the war is over? Can the war be over, can they surrender in any sort of way?

If you were President when we sent troops into Afghanistan, what would you have done with the fighters we caught on the battlefield? Try them as soldiers? in military tribunal? with what charge? if you lose where do they go back to? if they lose where do you put them? If you'd put them in military prison in Afghanistan what would happen if their sentence is 30 years and we decide to pull all troops out of Afghanistan after 10 years?

Okay I have a really lame hypothetical. Let’s say Algeria is a failed state and anti-abortionists from the United States decide to start up their own government there to run according to their beliefs. They coerce the population and eventually gain tacit control of the country. Anti-abortion extremists are allowed to stay in Algeria and plan how to make the world abortion-free through violence. They decide to go to France to blow up abortion clinics until France sees the error of its ways. 3000 Frenchmen die in the explosions and France is pissed. Instead of just bombing Algeria or asking the UN for help, France decides to send troops to Algeria to start up a new regime that won’t harbor anti-abortionists that want to kill the French. France captures a lot of anti-abortionists on the battlefield in Algeria, what do they do with them?

Do they treat them as fighting for a country?- they are foreign transplants from all over the world and will still fight even if Algeria is gone, what if French soldiers in Morocco capture an antiabortionist from Canada who was shooting at them- is this person fighting for the country of Algeria?

Do they treat them as civilians committing violence and prosecute them criminally in their own courts?- should they mix their own prison population with these guys – will this deter others like them in the future?

Should they treat everybody captured in Algeria as prisoners of war and everybody captured anywhere else in the world as civilians to be tried in court?

What if antiabortionists keep blowing up clinics in France and France captures 1000s of foreigners in their country who they believe have bombed or are going to bomb- treat these 1000s as civilians? What if they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these people were going to set off a bomb? Release them back to their country of origin, back into the French population? What if all 500 who are released come back and do set off 1 bomb each and kill 3000 people? Would French citizens be happy with how their government treated the situation? Would showing the world how ethical they were be enough to console the French?

All valid points. More or less.

I suppose my point (goalposts adjusted) is that this situation we're in, along with the one you are describing, we're in somewhat uncharted territory. This happened before with piracy. A loosely organized effort to terrorize a population that wasn't centralized in a nation of any sort. The world had a choice then, as we do now, to stop fearing the pirates and trusting their ability to stave them off enough to drive them into obscurity, or to try, in futility, to hunt them down to the last pirate and destroy their will to pirate. Choosing the former, it took a long time to accomplish, and ships and sailors were of course lost, but the pirates also suffered heavy losses. In the end their numbers dwindled after pouring themselves on difficult to attack targets and the pieces were manageable afterward.
We chose the latter and the methods that go along with it. We too have found ourselves in a protracted conflict. We have endured many soldiers' deaths, and have caused a great many ourselves. The will to fight us remains, and the numbers to fulfill that will exist as well.

This is not about making our enemies love us. It's about our enemies' children not having fantastic reasons to hate us.

Depends on what the "legal status" of Algeria was prior to the bombings in France. If Algeria's Anti-Abortionist government is the recognized government of that nation, then they are members of the national military/government and would be treated as such. That "catch" in the case of Afghanistan is that the Taliban only ever managed to be recognized as the government of Afghanistan by 3 (small) nations prior to September 11th, 2001. Those nations quickly withdrew that recognition shortly thereafter.

So Taliban forces never were recognized as a "national force" by the international community and the Al-Qaeda people fighting in support of them never were considered part of the Taliban's national force to begin with, even as far as the Taliban was concerned.... So even if you recognized the Taliban as a legitimate government with a legitimate military force, AQ would still have the same "special status" it has now.

But working under the assumption that the Taliban's own forces were considered to be a "proper military" by international standards. Foreign nationals working in their employ should be getting treated in accordance with the same international standards as would be applied to a native of that nation. There are first world military forces that actively employ and use foreign nationals within their ranks. It is not a "forbidden practice" persay. The French Foreign Legion is perhaps the most famous example of this. There is a reason they were called The Foreign Legion, and it had little to do with where they were serving. Even the US Military has foriegn nationals within its ranks(it comes with the "perk" of citizenship being slightly easier to obtain while in it). Heck historically, you could even find the Roman's doing it.

Which is where the counter to the "Baron Friedrich von Steuben problem" I pointed out comes into play. While he was a foreign national, he became a commissioned officer within the Continental Army, which in turn was chartered by the (rebel) Continental Congress. Of course, the US Revolutionary War has other things that sets it apart from present day situations in many respects.

The Continental Congress gained recognition from several Nations shortly after word of their Declaration of Independence was received in those nations. Which included one of the then major powers of the time, in the form of France. France even took it a step further and provided military and logistical assistance and also declaring war on Britain themselves so as to help in the American cause of Independence (as it furthered their own agendas).



If they're a recognized government, depending on what they were caught doing, you treat them as prisoners of war.

If they were caught committing espionage on soil not under their control, they get treated as what they are: Spies, with no protections under the Geneva Conventions.

If they are caught trying to conduct a military operation under guise of being "protected persons" they get tried as war criminals, as per the Geneva Conventions.

...and so forth. but that relies on their being recognized as a national entity. (note: the fun "real world" national entity to use today would be Taiwan currently. It is officially recognized as a nation by only a very small number of countries(and unofficially by others, such as the US), should push come to shove with China, the legal status of their military forces could prove to be quite.... interesting should any of them get captured by China.)

Actually did attack Canada during the course of the Revolutionary War, and it wasn't just to mess with supply lines, there was a failed attempt at conquest as I recall(we were going to liberate the Canadians from British rule whether they wanted it or not... Only that expedition didn't fare too well.)

Do also keep in mind that Canada was part of the British Empire, and so were we (technically) at that time, so it would not have qualified as international in nature, as it would have been Intra-National as far as the British/anyone else who didn't recognize the US was concerned. =P It would only be an international act of aggression if you recognized the United States as a Nation rather than a colony... In which case you probably were providing support to the US anyhow and didn't care, as the US was in a state of War with Britain in the first place.

And the Continental Navy was having fun raiding British Shipping/Skirmishing with British Ships of War well beyond our own coast line. "I have not yet begun to fight" was uttered not too far off the coast of England. Incidentally, the American Fleet of ships used in the battle? All but one of them was given to the Colonials by the French.

The American Revolutionary War was "international in nature" as you'd describe it, because it
1) It involved the British Empire which was already impressively huge back then, however, likewise due to that size the number of actual nations involved was quite small.
and
2) It involved France which also had a fairly large empire of their own going on. Though in reality it pretty much was 2.5 nations having a war. France and Britain going at it again, with the American Rebels making up the other 0.5 in the equation.

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All that being said, the stuff I'm writing(and even international law) is generally trying to stay away from "internal strife/conflict" for much that reason. They don't want international law getting (too much) in the way of how a nation decides to handle its internal differences should it come to armed hostilities, or even how nationals of an occupied nation conduct them while being occupied(see: French Resistance in WW2). Which is why the international community generally only tries to mediate civil wars, with the possibility of peacekeepers going in to help protect a ceasefire... But is generally very leary of sending in combat troops to more forcefully end things(in the favor of one side over the other).

Which is why the qualifier is "international in nature" AQ's agenda/goal is international in nature.

The Irish Republican Army's gripe with Great Britain on the other hand, is/was more national in nature than anything else(even though it involves two nations in a somewhat direct manner).

Heck even many of the terror groups in/around Israeli occupied territories are national in nature. Their agenda is focused around a specific geography, and haven't bothered "taking it international"(outside that region) in a very long time. Which makes defining it perhaps the biggest challenge, as one person's freedom fighter can be another person's terrorist.

While terrorism is bad mmmkay, it's going to fall into the somewhat permissible(by international standards) territory as long as they stick to operating within certain lines and don't try to take it onto the global stage rather than the regional one it started in. As sometimes it isn't what you do, or how you do it, but who you have watching your back. It sucks, but that is politics for you regardless of what scale you're playing on, and the larger the scale in question, the greater the suck factor.

Some possible differences between terrorists and pirates:
-the terrorists are willing to come into our country to kill while the pirates will only go after ships near them
-the terrorists dont mind killing civilians and dont care about financial gain while the pirates do care about financial gain
-the terrorists will quit terrorizing when ____ while the pirates will quit pirating when they make no money off of it because they die every time trying it

Deterring terrorists instead of hunting them all down WOULD work but it would be different from the pirates. It would cost a lot to have perfect borders and perfect security. It would cost a lot to make perfect missile defense systems and gather perfect intelligence. It would take vigilance by citizens and a willingness to take small losses upon failures. And it would be downright impossible if the entire world was an Islamic Caliphate with all of the wealth and we were their only target. Fighting the pirates was not cost prohibitive, the ships just needed better weapons and only had to be ready for an attack when they were in certain areas.

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and from where are you getting the ideas for these possible differences?

al-Qaida's stated goals and past actions. I am just guessing on the pirates from centuries past though.

so you've generalized terrorists to al-Quaida and pirates to your own perception of them...

I'm going to make a throwback to the quote gov put up at the beginning of this monster of a thread(that after reading through all 3 pages of your guys' crap I have no clue what the hell is going on). I realize its almost 5 in the morning for me and this might not be making a lot of sense, so I apologize in advance, but bear with me.

My interpretation of the quote is that Obama is wanting to offer transparency as to what the government is doing on a sensitive issue to 'right' vs 'wrong'. There is only one good reason that I can think of why anything the government does should not be told to the public. And that is so that in a time of war, the people we are attacking aren't looking at our current strategies so they know which part of the sky they should have their guns pointed to as we blow them off the face of the planet. That example can be changed in scale, but within fine lines.

I just don't see how releasing information about what happened in the past in regard to the methods and success of us blatantly torturing the shit out of people is going to impact our national security. Its not like Obama wants to release what was analyzed from the information and subsequent courses of action were.

We have a right to know what our country is doing to protect itself, and us. If they American people want to take Andrew's stance and say no thanks, I'd rather sleep a little less sound at night then carry out X procedure to other human beings (possibly not what I would do, but my opinion only counts so much) THEN THAT'S HOW IT SHOULD BE.

Continuing on to the what I remember about the other things that have been said in no particular order what-so-ever. I laughed at the part where there were only civilians and military people. There is no such thing as perfect borders and perfect security, even in your imagination.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is if you step in shit, flinging your shoe around is only going to result in a shit shower. And you can't sit there and just stare at the shit, because its going to stink. You have to either clean your shoe, or buy a new pair. I'm willing to give the government the start of the Iraq war as stepping in shit that should have been avoided, but we were distracted playing grab ass. What I'm going to accuse the government of is flinging the shoe around, showering the place in shit. What John Ensign is asking for, is for us to sit there, staring up into the sky with out mouths open, as the shit starts to fall all over us.

The one thing that I hope everyone here realizes is that we're already in way over our heads, and we need to be trying to dig ourselves out, something that is going to be a difficult task enough as it, rather than adding more shit to the pile, or covering the shit with a pretty colored blanket and trying to pretend it isn't there.

That was the oddest metaphor that I've ever heard/read. The fact that it works blows my mind.

Just going to pop in to say:

Haha, Canada won.

The end. Resume the usual political bickering/banter.

Won...what?