What’s the big deal? 550 people captured on the battlefield and the war ain’t over. They are being detained until the end of the conflict. They are being treated well. That is enough. They are not entitled to Geneva Convention protections but they are being given them anyway so what’s your beef? Geneva does not entail holding trials. It specifically and expressly forbids them does it not? So the US is following the Geneva Convention. AND you have the audacity to criticize us for that? haha
Determined that they were no longer a risk. Most were captured on the battlefield so don’t pretend this is an example of someone out walking their dog who gets thrown in a van and sent to Afghanistan.
Actually, they are Rascal. They have been arresting and detaining people for 20 years in France for up to three years without a trial on the suspicion of terrorism. Also, how many of Germany’s asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are treated so well. Amnesty International also had quite a bit to say about your country. Why don’t you clean up the mess at home and worry only when we arrest Germans. If you have a beef with the “innocent” victims who are captured fighting us in various theaters around the world, sorry, but I don’t really give a shit. It’s not your call as to how they will be detained. And if you are worried about such detentions, why don’t you get your close ally and friend France to desist from such measures first. How’s about that? haha
Yes, Rascal. I know how you feel. Most European countries were amazed at Germany’s flouting of the Euro financial pact. We are also wondering why if the UN is the ne plus ultra why you have not complied with UN requests to send troops and money to Iraq to aid in the reconstruction and in stabilizing the country.
Also, how’s that case going? You know the one where Iran is suing your government because you sold 50 percent or more of all Saddam’s chemical, nuclear and missile equipment and technology. Iran after all is suing only one country. Why is that country Germany? haha
Yes, let’s do talk about hypocrisy. What next? Germans ponitificating on the anti-Semitism or concentration camps in other countries? That will be rich indeed.
This is the second or third time I’ve read someone saying something like this, but so far nobody has explained why it is that a person must choose between (a) agreeing with everything Organization X says, or (b) agreeing with nothing that Organization X says.
I would actually think that most reasonable adults would sometimes disagree with the views of an organization that they generally support. How would it “hypocrisy” for me to say [color=black]“Yes, Amnesty International get a lot of issues right, and have done some great work over the years. But in my opinion they got this issue dead wrong.” [/color]
-----> Can I not both (a) Agree with Rascal’s posts on Topic A and also (b) disagree with Rascal’s posts on Topic B?
-----> Can a reader of the New York Times not both (a) generally agree with the NYT on most issues, and also (b) criticize the NYT with respect to their coverage of WMDs in the lead-up to the Iraq war?
This notion that one cannot criticize an organization that one has agreed with on other issues in the past just seems very strange to me… :s
I see what you are getting at but then for Rumsfeld (and Bush etc.) it is hypocritical - because they only seem to “agree” when it suits their position, and when it doesn’t they don’t.
And that’s notwithstanding the fact that agreement does not equal being correct, i.e. Rumsfeld “agreement” with AI means he accepts their report against Iraq as being factually correct but when it’s against the US then AI has to be wrong.
Thus it’s not a matter of agreement, it’s a matter of selectively choosing your source where it fits and rejecting it when it doesn’t - and that’s what I think is hypocritical.
Hmmm… so, in this situation, you believe that the US must be guilty.
Let’s apply this logic to another recent situation:
However, in the above situation, Saddam must be innocent.
Nice double standard, mofangongren. [/quote]
Really? Let’s take your comparison to its ridiculous ends. Do we allow in UN inspectors at Gitmo? Did the Gitmo commanders turn over 10,000 pages of documents that, to this day, are still considered to be the most thorough accounting of prisoner abuse at Gitmo? Has Gitmo been under 12 years of sanctions intended to prevent the abuse of Korans?
Nice intellectual wobbling, Tigerman. Did someone slip some Budweiser into your Belgian ale?
I see what you are getting at but then for Rumsfeld (and Bush etc.) it is hypocritical - because they only seem to “agree” when it suits their position, and when it doesn’t they don’t.
And that’s notwithstanding the fact that agreement does not equal being correct, i.e. Rumsfeld “agreement” with AI means he accepts their report against Iraq as being factually correct but when it’s against the US then AI has to be wrong.
Thus it’s not a matter of agreement, it’s a matter of selectively choosing your source where it fits and rejecting it when it doesn’t - and that’s what I think is hypocritical.[/quote]
hmm.
Okay. I can accept that. If one assumes that Rumsfeld actually does agree with Amnesty about Guantanamo, and is just pretending to disagree with them because it suits his purposes in this case – then I can agree with you that this behaviour would be dishonest. (Still not sure I’d use the word hypocritical, but I don’t think that’s all that important – the bottom line is that I can see why you’d have a problem with it.)
Not the UN… but, unless I am mistaken, we did allow IRC inspectors into the camp. Or, am I mistaken?
Again, unless I am mistaken, the US has investigated abuse claims at Gitmo, and I would think that the report re the same would be the most thorough accounting of prisoner treatment at Gitmo.
No. But, what has that to do with anything?
I don’t think you’ve made your point. I think you have further illustrated my point, however.
And, FYI, I have over a case of the original Czech Budweiser at my house, with several bottles in addition to that sitting in my cooler. So, yes, I may have been drinking Budweiser, but it was of the Budvar variety… and there is no intellectual wobbling on my part.
You have convinced me further, however, of your own employment of a double standard in this case.
My idea is more that it seems awfully coincidental that AI is only regarded as ridiculous by the US authorities when they’re condemning US activities, and taken as unquestionable gospel when they’re criticizing those the US wants to criticize. If there has been some previous incident where the US authorities have questioned AI’s accuracy regarding another country or issue, then this makes sense, and if someone can point such out to me, I’d be most happy to retract my insinuations. The other aspect is the manner in which the rejection of AI’s findings has been delivered - it hasn’t been, as you mentioned above, “Amnesty has done good things, but we disagree strongly with them on this report,” it’s been “I don’t take them seriously” and “It’s absurd” and that it’s based on the reports of “people who hate America.” They haven’t disagreed with them, they’ve attacked them.
I’m not saying they’re being hypocritical, but their actions do seem odd to me.
Well, the US and AI disagree about a number of issues, while agreeing on yet other issues. For instance, the US has disagreed for years with AI’s characterization of the US’ use of capital punishment as “barbaric”. Also, in connection with the situation in Sudan, the US and AI have held different viewpoints. The US has for quite a long while deemed the actions in the Sudan to amount to “genocide”, while AI refuses to use the term “genocide” to refer to the crimes occurring there.
So, it isn’t odd, IMO, that the US and AI are once again at odds over the characterization of a single issue. The US asserts that the detainees at Gitmo are treated “humanly” while AI asserts (without evidence or proof) that the US is “torturing” the detainees.
Well, I think the US accurately describes what is taking place in the Sudan as “genocide” and that AI erroneously describes the treatment of Gitmo detainees as “torture”.
Actually, I find it difficult to understand how the crimes known to have been and continuing to be committed in the Sudan do not amount to “genocide” while mere allegations, absent any proof whatsoever, of abusive treatment of prisoners and of mere inappropriate handling of non-human objects (the Koran), amount to “torture”.
Good points, although one of them once again relates directly to the US itself, and the other is simply a difference of “we say it’s genocide, you don’t,” which is hardly on the same scale as “your statement is absurd and we don’t take you seriously.”
I agree on the Sudanese thing too. Although surely the infliction physical and psychological pain in an attempt to intimidate, punish, or extract information from prisoners is about as close to the very definition of torture as it’s possible to get.
There wouldn’t be one country in the world that doesn’t have problems with Amnesty International on some issue and there would be many times in the past when it has run foul of the US. If this kind of organization were doing its job one would expect that to be so.
I think gulag for our modern times is a fair description.
The war on terrorism isn’t a war. It’s like the war on drugs. It’s political speak, real politick in a Machivellian world devoid of ethics where necessity knows no laws. There has been a war against Iraq, but that wasn’t the war on terrorism, that was the war on Iraq. Now that Saddam has been toppled there are skirmishes against insurgents, but that cannot be described as a war either. There exists in the world terrorists, but they cannot be fought through war they can only be fought through legal frameworks and strong nation states.
The concept that people can be held for some undeterminable amount of time on the basis that they are combatants in a poorly defined if not actually fictional war for some kind of undefined end game represents a gulag for modern times in my mind.
[quote]Fox wrote:
I think gulag for our modern times is a fair description.
Soviet gulags: 20 million detained, 2-3 million dead from poor treatment, no state of hot war.
Guantanamo: 750 detained, none dead from poor treatment, al Qaeda still carrying out war against US.
What exactly were you saying about a “fair description?”[/quote]
I said it in my post.
Whilst the numbers are relevant, if I were going to make an ethical judgement on the camps I think “gulag for our modern times” is a fair term. People are being imprisioned for undefined periods, for something that has been very poorly described in terms of its ultimate objectives. This was one of the most disturbing features of the gulags.
I don’t think you can say nobody has died from poor treatment, if anybody has died in these camps and it wasn’t from genuine natural causes then poor treatment would be next on the list surely.
I’m sure the US cannot capture and detain the millions who think like the 750 they have already detained and the guys have been detained for so long that their intelligence value must be limited now. What is the relevance of detaining them? I think it is political. They cannot be released back now when the so called war on terrorism is so obviously not being won, because quite frankly it will never be won, because its a fiction. The only way a fiction can be won is by the author who writes it, and in this case the authors have gotten bogged down in the plot.
You must be joking. If you want to look at the gulags of our time, look at our prison system which has 2 million people but don’t give me this crap about 550 now in Guantanamo being a gulag.
Actually, I think that we can unless you know of someone who has died. Otherwise, er, idle speculation.
Why would we need to do so. The 550 who are now being detained in Guantanamo were captured fighting the US on the battlefield. They were not arrested and detained for how they thought, though I personally wonder if they do “think.”
To keep them from doing as other released detainees have done, going back to the battlefield to fight us again and perhaps kill some innocent American or allied soldiers in the process. It has happened already. Where is the left to apologize to the families of those whose sons and daughters have been killed because they thought that these people no longer posed a danger and should be released to do the “right thing.”
No it is logical.
People used to say that about communism. Ah well, but it was never put into practice truly so therefore it was never defeated? er?
Tell that to the families of the victims who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, air attacks, Madrid bombing, etc. etc. I think that it is all too real but we have been too complacent until now to deal with it. We are and we are winning.
So easy, so sophisticated to be cynical but ultimately so nihilistic. Best not to do anything but pontificate about the evils of government officials and bloviate about all societies and regimes being equal right? Sorry. I don’t buy it and neither do millions in the Middle East. Obviously, 60 percent of the Iraqis and millions more in Afghanistan were willing to risk their lives to vote. Why? Why would they do that if nothing mattered? If it was all a game?
People used to say that about communism. Ah well, but it was never put into practice truly so therefore it was never defeated? er? [/quote] coughCubacoughChinacoughVietnamcoughLaoscoughNorth Koreacough
But seriously, the War on Terrorism will be won, just like the War on Drugs was. Which is a shame, could damn could I use a joint right now. Damn that successful War on Drugs!
You think that China and Vietnam are “communist?” North Korea definitely is and look at what a model that is for worldwide emulation. I mean communism as a theory as a model as a goal as something worth fighting for has long been dead and gone. The War on Drugs is a lifestyle thing. Would you argue that terrorism is also a lifestyle or would you say this relates to political, economic and cultural aspirations?
Defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan did more than anything to prove that God was not on their side. Ditto for Iraq and then the happy faces voting voting voting. We are reaping the benefits but we are ignorant to pretend that somehow we can leave Syria and Iran alone and that they are not working to infiltrate and destroy what we are trying to build. They ARE in Iraq. We catch Iranian and Syrian agents all the time. There must be a cost for this. Let’s send Iraqi agents into their countries to bomb and destablize. We need to send a message that this is not going to be a risk-free activity.
Only if said communist party is running the country as a communist country.
In order for the country to be communist, its economic policy and operation must be primarily communist, regardless of the name of the ruling party at any given time.
Even when the Democratic party controls both the executive and legislative branches of the United States’ Government, the US remains a republic rather than a pure democracy.
You don’t believe that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is really a democratic republic, do you?
[/quote]