Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
From your own post. Wrong convention.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
^^ The laws of armed conflict represent a body of laws, incorporating many historical agreements, including the Conventions. Are you having a hard time understanding that the Protection of Victims may also apply here? Is the Gupshup Human Rights Ambassador abandoning the civilians in this conflict? Do you understand that long before your fat arse was born that people were trying to figure out how to motivate armies to avoid civilian deaths?
It is amazing to me that people spouting "Human Rights" have no ability to look beyond the perpetrators, and look at the actions of the perpetrators on the battlefield. Hiding behind civilians as a method of operation must be punished. You are obviously in sympathy with this behavior, as you do not recognize the harm of hiding behind women and children.
The lack of any sort of intellectual depth as to WHY the US does not want to grant POW status is appalling. There are rational and logical and moral reasons why the Laws of Armed Conflict exist. Worse yet, hiding behind civilians is more than a heinous and cowardly way to fight. The Taliban/Al Qaeda WANTED civilian deaths because they could then propagandize that the US was at fault. Obviously you do not have the mental horsepower to see through this behavior and it's consequences.
On the other hand, the civilians we are talking about are Muslims. Why do I care? Why do you not care? You are making Muslim blood cheaper by the minute.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
Long winded with no substance as always..
The convention is titled: Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War
For this convention POWs are defined as Article 4 lists them. The US is violating this convention, is it not?
Once we deal with this convention we can deal with the other protocols.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
No comments?
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
This thread is a great example of why people unschooled in interpreting legal documents should confine themselves to issues of diplomacy rather than law. You cannot ever take a single provision out of a body of interrelated provisions and draw any definitive conclusions from the provision taken out of context.
OG has done an excellent job of weaving together the interrelated provisions. CM ought to listen to the Professor and try to learn. A Mark Twain witticism comes to mind: "Better to remain silent and appear the fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt."
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
I don't care much for all the debate about whether the Gitmo people are combatants, terorists, civilians, etc.
The bottom line is that these people were abducted from a foreign country, humiliated, tortured, incarcerated, and after YEARS still not charged or given access to legal means.
I don't care what stupid reason anyone gives why the USA can do what they did. I only know that the USA is making new rules and it's citizens will one day also be subjected to these self same rules. Please don't cry foul then.....
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
^ bravo
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
too right Old Man. any convention or constituion that permits or ignores whats happening in gitmo, is not worth the paper its written on. Niether is it something to be proud of. i dinnae enter this thread earlier, cuz IMO focussing and twisting the meanings of words and laws is useless. we all know whats going on is unjustifiable, whichever angle you look at it.
og: if we were to mete out treatment on the basis of the actions of perpetrators, prisoners in america would be treated a whole lot differently. the system doesnae work that way and you an I bloody well know that. so do us a favour an quit with the defensiveness already.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
Anthony Lewis sums up the issue in todays NYTimes quite nicely.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/opinion/21lewis.html
On the same token Gupshups favorite journalist Nicholas Kristof also in today’s NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/opinion/21kristof.html wrote a very interesting statement
Now I dont work in UN nor am I well versed in Law, but one thing I can see from lewis’s article is that it was Bush’s orders that screwed everything up and it was his statements that led to the prisoners abuse, Not rumsfeld, not cheney, but Bush the friend of Arabs, saudis in particular.
Kristoff is right too, instead of hiding it we the Americans the most indegenous nation in the entire world brought it out to the public, rather than hiding it.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
Ma,
First, the US certainly does treat different perpetrators differently:
Death Penalty
Life in Prison
Maximum Security Prison
Medium Security Prison
Minimum Security Prison
Half Way House
Time off for good Behavior
Parole
Second, just for the record, Human Rights Watch quietly agrees that Al Qaedda prisoners probably do not deserve POW status:
"Al-Qaeda fighters, unless they can show that they were part of the Taliban armed forces, must meet the specific standards for POW status for members of irregular forces. First, they must be members of “militias [or] other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory.” Second, they have to fulfill some minimum conditions: they must be under responsible command; have a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; carry arms openly; and conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
The members of al-Qaeda may not be entitled to POW status because they may not meet all of these criteria; in particular they have made clear that they do not conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. While such persons may more appropriately be called “unlawful” or “non-privileged” combatants, it does not follow that they can be denied all protections of the Geneva Conventions, such as humane treatment."
http://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/pow-bck.htm
From a strictly legal standard, the debate about POW status is far more rational than the leftist press would have one believe. Now I agree that we can all debate “treatment”. Does US treatment constitute cruel, inhumane, humiliating and degrading treatment? By historical standards the 500 people at Guantanamo have extraordinarily good treatment. Two thirds of the prisoners in Russian and German and Japanese POW camps died before they were repatriated. Treatment of American Prisoners in Hanoi was horrific. That is principally the reason for the 1949 Conventions, large scale conflicts where tens of thousands of prisoners are held. Do American interrogation techniques cross a line over to torture? Certainly that is debatable. I personally think that Guantanamo is almost laboratory clean in in it’s approach to interrogations. My concern is not Guantanamo, but other prisons in other places.
However, I also hate to see the US as a soft target. Al Qaedda hit US embassies, the Cole, Khobar towers, and tried to get the WTC once before they got our full and complete attention. I think they figured that we would do a Clintonesque lob of a few missles in retaliation. They miscalculated. The US is not soft, and if a fight comes to our shores we will meet the challenge. That is the reason Guantanamo will stay open. We will not appear weak to Al Qaedda.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
also from the HRW site:
“The crimes at Abu Ghraib are part of a larger pattern of abuses against Muslim detainees around the world, Human Rights Watch said on the eve of the April 28 anniversary of the first pictures of U.S. soldiers brutalizing prisoners at the Iraqi jail.”
“Human Rights Watch also expressed concern that, despite all the damage that had been done by the detainee abuse scandal, the United States had not stopped the use of illegal coercive interrogation.”
naughty neo-cons
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
And what do Americans believe? Sounds like there must be a lot of “neo-cons” out there.
20%: Gitmo Prisoners Treated Unfairly
Survey of 1,000 Adults
June 20-21, 2005
Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanomo Bay
Unfair 20%
Better than they deserve 36%
About Right 34%
June 22, 2005--A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 20% of Americans believe prisoners at Guantanomo Bay have been treated unfairly. **Seven-out-of-ten adults believe the prisoners are being treated "better than they deserve" (36%) or "about right" (34%).**
The survey also found that just 14% agree with people who say that prisoner treatment at Guantanomo Bay is similar to Nazi tactics. Sixty-nine percent disagree with that comparison. This helps explain why Illinois Senator Dick Durbin apologized for making such a comparison.
Partisan differences concerning prisoner treatment are huge. Only 7% of Republicans believe Guantanomo prisoners are treated unfairly. Thirty percent (30%) of Democrats hold that view along with 22% of those not affiliated with either major party.
Forty-five percent (45%) of Republicans say the prisoners are treated better than they deserve. That view is shared by 28% of Democrats.
Seventeen percent (17%) of men say that the prisoners are treated unfairly along with 22% of women. Eighteen percent (18%) of married Americans hold that view along with 22% of those who are not married.
Among white Americans, 18% believe the prisoners are treated unfairly, a view shared by 23% of other Americans.
Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.
Our publications provide real-time information on consumer confidence, investor confidence, employment data, the political situation, and other topics of value and interest.
During Election 2004, RasmussenReports.com was the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many as all competitors combined.
Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.
Re: Gitmo bay and the Geneva Convention:
Its amazing Myvoice. For a lawyer you haven’t posted anything to state that i am wrong. Why is that? After all if you should be able to clear up this matter in a few seconds. You haven’t. You have actually been reading this but not commenting.
But lets play this game. I am not quoting a provision. I am quoting an entire legal text, which is completely independent of the protocols mentioned. This is the Geneva Convention. People do not quote the “Geneva protocols”. The legal definitions in the Protocols do not apply to the convention. The convention has its own definitions.
So any comments?