"If you mean whats at issue with you and Calor then Im just as interested as you to hear precisely what Bush wants to be able to do to detainees to make them talk. Im hoping Calor can clear that up." |
Me too. I wanted to preemptively rip into what he'd say so I looked for 15 minutes or so through various news sources and all I could come up with is stuff like this blog, and real news reports that spoke about the parts of the Geneva Convention I listed.
I'm thinking this is abandoned, and for good reason. The point was simply to, yet again, associate Bush with an outrage in drive-by fashion.
"However my concerns with the bill in general is that its not just simply requesting a clearer set of guidelines and definitions by which to operate but that it is seeking to introduce new capabilities as well... such as the military tribunals, such as conviction without the right to defend oneself against evidence because its been withheld." |
I don't think it is any kind of new extension as much as it is simply an outlining of what has gone on during warfare for ages. Granted, a loophole has occurred because of the terrorism thing regarding prisoner of war status, but in previous wars you wouldn't have seen non-military resistance treated like PoWs often, they'd have just been shot.
And sadly that is what will start happening. Once we get this all nicely smoothed out according to the most liberal definition of torture, PoW status, etc., you'll just see more and more of these people shot in the back of the head on the battlefield. People don't tolerate risking their lives to capture people so that they can be pampered and released to go back to setting roadside bombs again...
"If the people captured are so obviously evil terrorists, plotting and scheming Americas downfall then surely its a simple matter to prove it?" |
Are you kidding? Watch much CourtTV? Remember
Robert Durst?. A neighbor he'd been arguing with, shot with his pistol, in his kitchen, after which he dismembers the body and dumps it in the bay. Guilty? Heck no!
Imagine in a court system like that trying to convict people who never set foot on American soil. You can't try terrorists who committed their crimes in Afghanistan according to US laws. So what choice is there, just let them continue what they are doing?
Like I say, eventually we'll just kill them when we have no ability to hold them. There's really no way that we can just wave at them in the street and let them continue killing people.
"And you have to have justice even for the worst amongst us otherwise whose to say you're right? Without justice it might well be that its actually us that are the criminal. We who are the terrorists." |
Depends on who you are calling "us". If we have reached the point that it is now the grand, international us, I can see your point. I don't think, however, we owe civilian 'justice' to an enemy on a battlefield. I don't believe they should be afforded the protection of a Constitution they have no connection to.