DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: sirs on September 22, 2006, 03:22:29 AM
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Pardon my controlled bluntness, but after reading this article, for those BDS folks & anti-war folks who still spew the dren of how we "torture & abuse" the prisoners we capture in this current war, comparable to what terrorists perform on their prisoners and who could give a flying flip at the Geneva Convention, your continued asanine portrayals of just how thug like and evil our Military & Administration are, simply demonstrates how utterly devoid you folks are at objectivity and critical reasoning
A DEADLY KINDNESS
AT GITMO, PC RULES LET QAEDAS PLOT ON
by RICHARD MINITER
September 15, 2006 -- GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA
ON the military plane back from America's most fa mous terrorist holding pen, the in-flight film was "V for Vendetta," a screed that tries to justify terrorism. It was a fitting end to a surreal, military-sponsored trip.
The Pentagon seemed to be hoping to disarm its critics by showing them how well it cares for captured terrorists. The trip was more alarming than disarming. I spent several hours with Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., who heads the joint task force that houses and interrogates the detainees. (The military isn't allowed to call them "prisoners.")
Harris, a distinguished Navy veteran who was born in Japan and educated at Annapolis and Harvard, is a serious man trying to do a politically impossible job. I spoke with him at length, and with a dozen other officers and guards, and visited three different detention blocks.
The high-minded critics who complain about torture are wrong. We are far too soft on these guys - and, as a result, aren't getting the valuable intelligence we need to save American lives.
The politically correct regulations are unbelievable. Detainees are entitled to a full eight hours sleep and can't be woken up for interrogations. They enjoy three meals and five prayers per day, without interruption. They are entitled to a minimum of two hours of outdoor recreation per day.
Interrogations are limited to four hours, usually running two - and (of course) are interrupted for prayers. One interrogator actually bakes cookies for detainees, while another serves them Subway or McDonald's sandwiches. Both are available on base. (Filet o' Fish is an al Qaeda favorite.)
Interrogations are not video or audio taped, perhaps to preserve detainee privacy.
Call it excessive compassion by a nation devoted to therapy, but it's dangerous. Adm. Harris admitted to me that a multi-cell al Qaeda network has developed in the camp. Military intelligence can't yet identify their leaders, but notes that they have cells for monitoring the movements and identities of guards and doctors, cells dedicated to training, others for making weapons and so on.
And they can make weapons from almost anything. Guards have been attacked with springs taken from inside faucets, broken fluorescent light bulbs and fan blades. Some are more elaborate. "These folks are MacGyvers," Harris said.
Other cells pass messages from leaders in one camp to followers in others. How? Detainees use the envelopes sent to them by their attorneys to pass messages. (Some 1,000 lawyers represent 440 prisoners, all on a pro bono basis, with more than 18,500 letters in and out of Gitmo in the past year.) Guards are not allowed to look inside these envelopes because of "attorney-client privilege" - even if they know the document inside is an Arabic-language note written by a prisoner to another prisoner and not a letter to or from a lawyer.
That's right: Accidentally or not, American lawyers are helping al Qaeda prisoners continue to plot.
There is little doubt what this note-passing and weapons-making is used for. The military recorded 3,232 incidents of detainee misconduct from July 2005 to August 2006 - an average of more than eight incidents per day. Some are nonviolent, but the tally includes coordinated attacks involving everything from throwing bodily fluids on guards (432 times) to 90 stabbings with homemade knives.
One detainee slashed a doctor who was trying to save his life; the doctors wear body armor to treat their patients.
The kinder we are to terrorists, the harsher we are to their potential victims.
Striking the balance between these two goods (humane treatment, foreknowledge of deadly attacks) is difficult, but the Bush administration seems to lean too far in the direction of the detainees. No expense spared for al Qaeda health care: Some 5,000 dental operations (including teeth cleanings) and 5,000 vaccinations on a total of 550 detainees have been performed since 2002 - all at taxpayer expense. Eyeglasses? 174 pairs handed out. Twenty two detainees have taxpayer-paid prosthetic limbs. And so on.
What if a detainee confesses a weakness (like fear of the dark) to a doctor that might be useful to interrogators, I asked the doctor in charge, would he share that information with them? "My job is not to make interrogations more efficient," he said firmly. He cited doctor-patient privacy. (He also asked that his name not be printed, citing the potential for al Qaeda retaliation.)
Food is strictly halal and averages 4,200 calories per day. (The guards eat the same chow as the detainees, unless they venture to one of the on-base fast-food joints.) Most prisoners have gained weight.
Much has been written about the elaborate and unprecedented appeal process. Detainees have their cases reviewed once a year and get rights roughly equivalent to criminals held in domestic prisons. I asked a military legal adviser: In what previous war were captured enemy combatants eligible for review before the war ended? None, he said.
America has never faced an enemy who has so ruthlessly broken all of the rules of war - yet never has an enemy been treated so well.
Of Gitmo's several camps, military records show that the one with the most lenient rules is the one with the most incidents and vice versa. There is a lesson in this: We should worry less about detainee safety and more about our own.
Some 20 current detainees have direct personal knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and nearly everyone of the current 440 say they would honored to attack America again. Let's take them at their word.
>:(
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/a_deadly_kindness_opedcolumnists_richard_miniter.htm
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Sometimes it does work to kill them with kindness.
Any idea what the colestorol rate is in the diet of these guys?
Seriously though , this reminds me of "The Great Escape" or "Escape from Colditz" two movies and books I love but would not want in the Gitmo liabrary. There is some possibility that some prisoners will respond to kind treatment and turn over to our side.This is usually a scarce event in any circumstance but in the case of a strong prisoner organization it becomes even more unlikely.
If we are going to treat them so well , it would be best to isolate them from the potential of co-operation , and maximise every chance for them to realise their error and change sides.
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Pardon my controlled bluntness, but after reading this article, for those BDS folks & anti-war folks who still spew the dren of how we "torture & abuse" the prisoners we capture in this current war, comparable to what terrorists perform on their prisoners and who could give a flying flip at the Geneva Convention, your continued asanine portrayals of just how thug like and evil our Military & Administration are, simply demonstrates how utterly devoid you folks are at objectivity and critical reasoning
Pardon my bluntness, but don't be a d*ck.
If the abuses hadn't been uncovered and made public, do you think we would be going out of our way now to treat them correctly? And any comparison to whether or not the terrorists recognize or adhere to the Geneva Conventions is null and void; they are not signatories, we are. If we don't intend to honor the Conventions, maybe Bush should just be honest and repudiate them.
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Pardon my bluntness, but don't be a d*ck. If the abuses hadn't been uncovered and made public, do you think we would be going out of our way now to treat them correctly?
Try practicing what you preach. Now, subtracting the effort at distracting from the point being made, you're assuming such abuses were rampant, and such current "niceties" are only now being implimented by the supposed rampant abuse? A) no facts to back up that assumption B) the abuses are being dealt with, and C) the point of the article remains unrefuted, and this is in no way "treating them correctly".
(http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/060921/varvel.jpg)
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(http://cagle.msnbc.com/working/060923/trever.gif)
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Boo-freaking-hoo.
A) no facts to back up that assumption
None refute it, either.
B) the abuses are being dealt with
As though they could be ignored or swept under the rug once they were made public.
C) the point of the article remains unrefuted
What point? That you don't like that they are getting Filet O' Fish sandwiches? I don't particularly agree with coddling them, either, no more than I agree with coddling convicted murderers, rapists, thugs or other assorted nasties. Oh, wait, they haven't been convicted of anything yet, or even gone to trial. Sorry, my bad.
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What point?
The point that we are in no way treating them anything remotely close to what the Tee's of the world keep claiming we do. If anything, just the opposite
I don't particularly agree with coddling them, either, no more than I agree with coddling convicted murderers, rapists, thugs or other assorted nasties. Oh, wait, they haven't been convicted of anything yet, or even gone to trial. Sorry, my bad.
Yea, it is your bad. They're not your damn petty criminals H. They didn't just try to hold up a 7/11 with a squirt gun. They didn't just rough up some grandma and snatch her purse. This isn't some crime investigation. These are enemies taken during wartime acts. Were you decrying the U.S. for daring to hold thousands upon thousands of Germans during WWII without "having been convicted yet"?? >:(
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<<Were you decrying the U.S. for daring to hold thousands upon thousands of Germans during WWII without "having been convicted yet"?? >>
Decry what? They were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, weren't they?
<<They're not your damn petty criminals H. They didn't just try to hold up a 7/11 with a squirt gun. They didn't just rough up some grandma and snatch her purse. This isn't some crime investigation. These are enemies taken during wartime acts. >>
Still don't get it, do ya? That if they're criminals, they're not convicted of anything yet, and if they're "enemies taken during wartime acts," then they're entitled to the same Geneva Convention protection as the Nazis taken in WWII.
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Decry what? They were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, weren't they?
They wore uniforms, didn't they
if they're criminals, they're not convicted of anything yet, and if they're "enemies taken during wartime acts," then they're entitled to the same Geneva Convention protection as the Nazis taken in WWII.
Still don't get it yet, do you. Geneva convention, when it was applied, applied to unformed soldiers captured in war. There was no provision applied to non-uniformed military combatants captured in war. Which again is neither here nor there, as it relates to the asanine cliams you keep making of how Taliban our current military is, in treating prisoners
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<<Were you decrying the U.S. for daring to hold thousands upon thousands of Germans during WWII without "having been convicted yet"?? >>
Decry what? They were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, weren't they?
<<They're not your damn petty criminals H. They didn't just try to hold up a 7/11 with a squirt gun. They didn't just rough up some grandma and snatch her purse. This isn't some crime investigation. These are enemies taken during wartime acts. >>
Still don't get it, do ya? That if they're criminals, they're not convicted of anything yet, and if they're "enemies taken during wartime acts," then they're entitled to the same Geneva Convention protection as the Nazis taken in WWII.
' It's hard to picture Haji Nasrat Khan as an international terrorist. For a start, the grey-bearded Afghan can barely walk, shuffling along on a three-wheeled walking frame. His sight is terrible -- he squints through milky eyes that sometimes roll towards the heavens -- while his helpers have to shout to make themselves heard. And as for his age -- nobody knows for sure, not even Nasrat himself. "I think I am 78, or maybe 79," he ventures uncertainly, pausing over a cup of green tea.
Yet for three and a half years the US government deemed this elderly, infirm man an "enemy combatant", so dangerous to America's security that he was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. '
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1878415,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12
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These are enemies taken during wartime acts. Were you decrying the U.S. for daring to hold thousands upon thousands of Germans during WWII without "having been convicted yet"??
So they're POWs, then? Have they been treated as such? Given the same rights and privileges, under the Geneva conventions? Or did we treat the German and Japanese POWs we captured during WWII to the same abuses, secret prisons (oops, 'detention centers'), et cetera?
(Wait for it...)
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sirs: <<Were you [hnumpah] decrying the U.S. for daring to hold thousands upon thousands of Germans during WWII without "having been convicted yet"?? They're not your damn petty criminals H. They didn't just try to hold up a 7/11 with a squirt gun. They didn't just rough up some grandma and snatch her purse. This isn't some crime investigation. These are enemies taken during wartime acts. >>
MT: <<Decry what? They were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, weren't they? >>
sirs: <<Still don't get it yet, do you. Geneva convention, when it was applied, applied to unformed soldiers captured in war. There was no provision applied to non-uniformed military combatants captured in war. >>
OY. OY. OY! WHY on earth would hnumpah "decry" the U.S. treatment of German POWs if it was in accordance with the Geneva Conventions? And if these men are "non-uniformed military combatants captured in war" and thus NOT entitled to the Geneva Conventions protection, why not just SHOOT the whole damn bunch of Islamofascist beheading barbarians (which is EXACTLY what the US did (without ANY public outcry) to German soldiers captured out of uniform in WWII?
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T: if these men are "non-uniformed military combatants captured in war" and thus NOT entitled to the Geneva Conventions protection, why not just SHOOT the whole damn bunch of Islamofascist beheading barbarians
Because, unlike your twisted alternate reality of what america supposedly is, we don't do that
H: So they're POWs, then? Have they been treated as such? Given the same rights and privileges, under the Geneva conventions? Or did we treat the German and Japanese POWs we captured during WWII to the same abuses, secret prisons
Were they uniformed or were they not? Which Country's army were they clearly representing?
L: ' It's hard to picture Haji Nasrat Khan as an international terrorist. ...Yet for three and a half years the US government deemed this elderly, infirm man an "enemy combatant", so dangerous to America's security that he was imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay.
Yea, and I hear that Usama has a pretty bad kidney condition as well. Perhaps has a really hard time walking himself. Best we stop trying to catch him as well, right, Lanya? Poor fella
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<<Because, unlike your twisted alternate reality of what america supposedly is, we don't do that [shoot enemy combatants captured out of uniform]>>
Oh. So then those newsreels I watched where GI firing squads executed Nazi infiltrators captured out of uniform during the Battle of the Bulge were all faked, by Nazi sympathizers, perhaps? I'm sure glad I have you around to straighten out my "twisted alternate reality," sirs. This is every bit as informative as learning that the Treaty of Versailles was "never enforced" against Germany.
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Not that I'm aware of. Should we go after those ruthless no-good american soldiers that did such a dispicable act against those Nazi infiltrators. Good luck with that