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Originally posted by SimonWho:
Has there ever been a more heartless reaction to a suicde than this?

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Originally posted by Causal:
I'm afraid to post in this thread. PirateJenny might post some half-coherent rant about my lack of mental acuity.

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Originally posted by Causal:
I'm afraid to post in this thread. PirateJenny might post some half-coherent rant about my lack of mental acuity.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Originally posted by Causal:
I'm afraid to post in this thread. PirateJenny might post some half-coherent rant about my lack of mental acuity.

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C'mon, Causal, what is it? For God's sake, SPIT IT OUT!

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Originally posted by Causal:

Oh fine. What they mean when they say, "An act of assymetric warfare" is that the prisoners offed themselves (double points for the horrible grammar!) because they knew that it would attract media attention on the "plight" of the detainees at Gitmo--and hey, it worked!

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Originally posted by Khyron:
For somebody who's somewhat military-illiterate, what exactly is the difference between an "enemy combatant" and a POW? What is it in a conventional war and what is it in the war on terror (where even somebody's apartment can be seen as part of the battlefield)?

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Originally posted by Khyron:
For somebody who's somewhat military-illiterate, what exactly is the difference between an "enemy combatant" and a POW? What is it in a conventional war and what is it in the war on terror (where even somebody's apartment can be seen as part of the battlefield)?

I ask because the Geneva conventions don't seem to care about enemy combatants but take the welfare of POWs very seriously, and to a layperson such as myself the two seem to be the same (assuming the enemy combatant has been caught and is held as a prisoner).

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Other people can occasionally be useful, especially as minions. I want lots of minions.

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Originally posted by Khyron:
For somebody who's somewhat military-illiterate, what exactly is the difference between an "enemy combatant" and a POW? What is it in a conventional war and what is it in the war on terror (where even somebody's apartment can be seen as part of the battlefield)?

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Source: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/after_911/PDF/Enemy%20Combatant
s.pdf
The largest category of individuals in detention comprises the so-called “enemy
combatants.” These are individuals being treated not as civilians (as in INS and criminal
cases), but as members of a military force, either al Qaeda or the Taliban, and as
participants in an armed conflict pitting those forces against the United States. The
administration has designated these men as “unlawful combatants,” or “enemy
combatants,”1 rather than as “prisoners of war,” for the express purpose of denying them
the rights that combatants normally receive. At the same time, by considering these
detainees as “combatants,” the administration in effect asserts the right to detain them
indefinitely and without trial. Under international humanitarian law, combatants in
armed conflict who are captured by the enemy may be held in detention until the
“cessation of active hostilities.” 2 In this instance, the administration construes this term
to mean the end of the “war against terrorism.”

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Originally posted by christhecynic:
And of course the final words of the movie, which came not from an actor but from the President of the United States:
"Why are we proud? We are proud, first of all, because from the beginning of this Nation, a man can walk upright, no matter who he is, or who she is. He can walk upright and meet his friend—or his enemy; and he does not fear that because that enemy may be in a position of great power that he can be suddenly thrown in jail to rot there without charges and with no recourse to justice. We have the habeas corpus act, and we respect it."

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Originally posted by Geezer:
If most of the world recognizes the current Afgani or Iraqi governments as legitimate, and those governments declare the insurgents do not represent a valid resistance, are they then unlawful combatants, due no POW rights under the Geneva Convention?

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So all a country has to do to be able to do with the combatants it captures as it wishes is to declare war on an idea or an act (such as terrorism), and not on the carnal manifestation of that idea (i.e. terrorists)?

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Originally posted by Khyron:
Thanks for the helpful answers. The difference between the two in a conventional war is now clear to me, but when it comes to the so-called war on terror, aren't terrorists the enemy? So if somebody is accused of being a terrorist, then that makes him a (lawful) enemy combatant, one targetted by the war and thereby upon capture he's a POW. Right? Unless the war on terror is against not people but the idea of terror, in which case, wtf?

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Originally posted by Khyron:
Thanks for the helpful answers. The difference between the two in a conventional war is now clear to me, but when it comes to the so-called war on terror, aren't terrorists the enemy? So if somebody is accused of being a terrorist, then that makes him a (lawful) enemy combatant, one targetted by the war and thereby upon capture he's a POW. Right? Unless the war on terror is against not people but the idea of terror, in which case, wtf?...This seems to be a pretty big loophole in the Geneva Conventions.

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So all a country has to do to be able to do with the combatants it captures as it wishes is to declare war on an idea or an act (such as terrorism), and not on the carnal manifestation of that idea (i.e. terrorists)?

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And who defines a valid resistance?

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In the eyes of the invader, no resistance is valid.

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Or do the Conventions expect the leader of the invading forces to respond along the lines of "Oh well, they do have a good point for resisting. After all, we did murder their mothers and rape their children, so what the hell, we'll be nice and let the Geneva Conventions apply by acknowledging their resistance as being valid".

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Originally posted by citizen:
Of course when these Unlawful Combatants capture American Soldiers and mistreat them it's a terrible thing, but since they are unlawful combatants and they are not protected by the Geneva Convention, they aren't bound by it either. So surely it's okay for them to mistreat American Soldiers for the same reasons its okay for American Soldiers to mistreat unlawful combatants?

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Originally posted by Khyron:
Thanks for the helpful answers. The difference between the two in a conventional war is now clear to me, but when it comes to the so-called war on terror, aren't terrorists the enemy? So if somebody is accused of being a terrorist, then that makes him a (lawful) enemy combatant, one targetted by the war and thereby upon capture he's a POW. Right? Unless the war on terror is against not people but the idea of terror, in which case, wtf?

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Originally posted by Geezer:
If most of the world recognizes the current Afgani or Iraqi governments as legitimate, and those governments declare the insurgents do not represent a valid resistance, are they then unlawful combatants, due no POW rights under the Geneva Convention?

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This seems to be a pretty big loophole in the Geneva Conventions. So all a country has to do to be able to do with the combatants it captures as it wishes is to declare war on an idea or an act (such as terrorism), and not on the carnal manifestation of that idea (i.e. terrorists)? And who defines a valid resistance? In the eyes of the invader, no resistance is valid. Or do the Conventions expect the leader of the invading forces to respond along the lines of "Oh well, they do have a good point for resisting. After all, we did murder their mothers and rape their children, so what the hell, we'll be nice and let the Geneva Conventions apply by acknowledging their resistance as being valid".

You're absolutely right, Geezer, lawyers will be loving this.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Tell you what- I'll roll you around and sit on you while you're stuffed head-first into a sleeping bag until you suffocate. That will end the discussion nicely.

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Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

Most coalition armed forces captured as lawful combatants (and yes, they're lawful combatants regardless of their nation's actions, just like individual German soldiers in WWII were lawful combatants)have been tortured and executed.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
No.

Please explain the difference.
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Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Tell you what. You let your big dog bark at me, and then I'll cut your head off with a dull knife, and then we'll talk equivalancies.

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Hmm. I thought I was discussing this with Citizen. Let me check... Yep.

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Most coalition armed forces captured as lawful combatants (and yes, they're lawful combatants regardless of their nation's actions, just like individual German soldiers in WWII were lawful combatants)have been tortured and executed. Since the establishment of the new Iraqi army, most Iraqi soldiers captured have also been tortured and executed. This is not isolated cases, it is policy.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Most coalition armed forces captured as lawful combatants (and yes, they're lawful combatants regardless of their nation's actions, just like individual German soldiers in WWII were lawful combatants)have been tortured and executed. Since the establishment of the new Iraqi army, most Iraqi soldiers captured have also been tortured and executed. This is not isolated cases, it is policy.

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So you want the 'unlawful combatants' to be bound by the Geneva Convention but not protected by it?

If someone is bound by the Geneva Convention they're also protected by it, so I'd of thought that's the last thing the Bush administration wants.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Considering the number of Afghan and Iraqi combatants we captured, the 800 or so sent to Guantanamo because we either knew they were terrorists or needed to make sure doesn't seem that excessive.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by Geezer:
Tell you what. You let your big dog bark at me, and then I'll cut your head off with a dull knife, and then we'll talk equivalancies.

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How about I kill your entire family in a bombing raid first?

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Originally posted by christhecynic:
the soldiers did not know they were killing civilians because they simply went door to door throwing grenades in houses, since they didn't bother to find out who was in the houses, the defense argues, they can't be blamed for the fact that the people living in the houses, whom they killed, were unarmed civilians.

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Originally posted by Geezer:
No. My remark, which you took out of context, was not meant to propose anything relating to the Geneva convention, as you know very well. It was part of a "compare and contrast" set of scenarios reflecting Coalition and insurgent tactics and policies.

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Since that's come up, do you see any difference between scenarios One and Two that I described above?

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BTW. I'm having trouble linking with FFF.net (maybe you are too?) so I'm gonna drop out for a while and pick this up later.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
War is so simple.

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Originally posted by christhecynic:
Nothing is new really, this whole semantic battle over who has what rights reminds me of Cicero, he couldn't change the laws so he tried to change what the words meant.

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Originally posted by BigDamnNobody:

My point is if, god forbid, there was another terror attack on U.S. soil, would the same people who are now speaking out about Gitmo et al change their tune? Would these same people begin to chastise the Government for not doing enough to ensure the security of the people?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
I was just glad it wasn't worse because the scenarios in my head were much, much more horrific.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Trouble here too. But I'm patient.

First of all, I question your scenario.

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Just out of curiosity Geezer: Have we ever taken "lawful combatants" prisoner in our war on terrorists? Considering that the Taliban was not recognized as the lawful government of Afghanistan (except by the UAE, to which we almost entrusted our port security... but that's another story) by definition I don't think there were any lawful combatants in that war. And while I suppose that Saddam's army consisted of lawful combatants, I'm not aware that we took any of them prisoner.

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It seems to me that all of our prisoners in Gitmo and most of them in Abu Ghraib are either "unlawful combatants", innocent bystanders (oops), and petty criminals.

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Feel free to let me know how we treated that minor percentage (if any) of our lawful combatant prisoners.

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As far as I know, according to you the rest are fair game.

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