Holy ****! (Iraq) Helo shot down, up to 35 aboard, 20+ casualties

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Oerdin
So you tell me Techumseh why we should ignore the treaties direct requirements and declarations? Now that I have quoted the treaty and it's requirements as well as shown that the people who don't meet those requirements are specifically excluded from the treaty's protections how am I wrong? I suspect you will avoid these question and instead post yet more opinion pieces instead of real legal wording from the treaty but you might surprise me.

Why would I argue a premise I never made? If you want to argue the specific provisions of the Geneva Convention, go ahead. Does misstating somone's postion and then geefully knocking it down pass for great debate on OT? There seems to be a lot of it going around.

What I said (again), is "Conditions at Gitmo - people held without charges, no rights, denied the status of Prisoners of War, under threat of execution by military tribunal - has produced many attempted suicides. The American government will not dissavow the use of torture there. It is noteworthy that these conditions would not be considered legal within the US proper."

Even people who AGREE with your postion (such as the European Parliament - to whose resolution I linked) argue that it does NOT mean that such persons should lose all rights. This is the real issue.

The very fact that the Bush regime has located this camp outside American soveriegn territory is evidence that human rights and protections provided by the American constitution (you know, that thing the President swears to uphold?) are being circumvented.

The regime in Washington has found a way around the GC and American law. They COULDA extended POW rights or other rights, such as the right to due process. COULDA and SHOULDA.

That people rationalize away such rights is proof to me that the United States has lost all moral authority. It is now a place in which force of arms has replaced the rule of law in international affairs. The world is left to draw it's own conclusions.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
So some European leftists have whinged. OK, I'm impressed now.

Just wait for the Yankee whining when other states start copying your methods.

[Ted Striker]

Deine Mutti!!!

[HershOstropoler]

I'm sure you didn't.

[Ted Striker]

[Ned]

I am not truely clear on what the Europeans and Canadians want as a final result? Release of the AQ to kill more Americans?

That said, I would be supportive of turning the detainees over to an allied Arab government, such as Morrocco, to be held as POWs until the war with AQ is over.

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Ned
I am not truely clear on what the Europeans and Canadians want as a final result? Release of the AQ to kill more Americans?

That said, I would be supportive of turning the detainees over to an allied Arab government, such as Morrocco, to be held as POWs until the war with AQ is over.

If they were granted the rights of POW's under US control, how would that harm the interests of US security? If there were a prima facie case of war crimes, they could still be tried for that at the Hague.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
If the Guantánamo prisoners are deemed to be POWs, would America's detention of these prisoners (without trial) pending the final resolution of the war be in accord with international law?

Initially, the big issue is interrogation and intel - we can't interrogate POW's beyond nationality, name, rank, identifying number and date of birth, and we can't reward or coerce, by even the mildest coercion, or substantial rewards, POW's to give up intel info.

IF we go the route of reclassifying them now, in theory the ones not personally charged with criminal offenses under the UCMJ at the end of hostilities in Afghanistan should have been repatriated to their country of origin. There's a sticky area with POW's under investigation for specific crimes punishable under the UCMJ, but not charged as of the end of the conflict.


We don't have Afghani Taleban at Gitmo (or at least we have damned few), since they were almost all presumptive POW's and remained in local custody. That wasn't a problem, because the NA in Afghanistant aren't signatories to the Geneva convention, nor is the Karzai government, so they could question away.

The al Qaeda prisoners taken as irregular combatants in Afghanistant would have to have been repatriated by now, since none have been charged under the UCMJ or international war crimes tribunals.

That's the huge significance in their status. Al Qaeda *******s like Ramsi Binalshibh, KSM, etc. are a bit of a different issue, since they were part of the terrorist side of AQ, not the irregular foreign militia side fighting the NA in Afghanistan. The right to detain them as well as interrogate them coercively would be a lot more wide open, since you get into the whole can of worms of what is Al Qaeda, when is the "war" over, etc.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by techumseh


If they were granted the rights of POW's under US control, how would that harm the interests of US security? If there were a prima facie case of war crimes, they could still be tried for that at the Hague.

We can try them for criminal offenses under the UCMJ, but since none have been charged, those Al Qaeda taken as a result of the Afghan war would have to be released, so we would be putting a good number of trained Al Qaeda members back on the loose, while the organization itself still considers itself at war with the US.

[The Mad Monk]

U.S. helicopter crashes a day after Polish major and two more Americans killed
ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 6, 2003
©2003 Associated Press

URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/11/06/international0237EST0431.DTL


(11-06) 23:47 PST BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) --

An Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed Friday near the north-central city of Tikrit, the U.S. military said. The crash came a day after Poland suffered its first combat death since the aftermath of World War II and two American soldiers died in attacks near Baghdad and along the Syrian border.

It was not known whether the Black Hawk helicopter went down due to mechanical failure of hostile fire.

The aircraft went down about 9:40 a.m. on a riverbank along the Tigris River about a half mile from the U.S. base in Saddam Hussein's former palace. The military said it did not know how many people were aboard.

White smoke was seen rising from the wreckage and three other choppers were hovering overhead.

"We don't know if it was a mechanical failure or hostile fire," Maj. Jossyln Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division, said.

On Sunday, a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter was shot down near Fallujah, killing 16 people and injuring 26.

On Oct, 25, a Black Hawk was shot down near Tikrit and one crew member was injured.

Also Friday, a U.S. convoy was ambushed with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, wounding at least five soldiers in the northern city of Mosul, 250 miles north of Baghdad.

After the clash, troops blocked off the section of town where the fighting had occurred. Witnesses said that two vehicles were left burning and that others were damaged.

A downtown hotel used as a military barracks in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city that until recently was considered safe from guerrilla strikes, was attacked late Thursday with rocket-propelled grenades, but no damage or casualties occurred, the military said.

In al-Assad, a windblown desert base 150 miles northwest of Baghdad, hundreds of soldiers, some wearing ceremonial spurs and black regimental hats, on Thursday remembered the comrades killed last weekend when their helicopter was shot down in the deadliest single attack against U.S. forces since the Iraq war began March 20.

The Polish major was wounded when insurgents attacked a convoy of 16 Polish soldiers returning from a promotion ceremony for Iraqi civilian defense trainees near Baghdad. Maj. Hieronim Kupczyk, 44, died at a military hospital in Karbala, the Polish Defense Ministry said.

None of the other Polish soldiers was killed or wounded, according to Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski.

"This tragic event proves that the situation in Iraq is getting complicated," Szmajdzinski told reporters in Warsaw. "The level of professionalism of the terrorists is increasing."

Elsewhere, one U.S. soldier from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was killed Thursday when his truck hit a land mine near the Husaybah border crossing point with Syria nearly 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

A paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne Division was killed and two others were wounded when their patrol came under rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire near Mahmudiyah, 15 miles south of Baghdad late Wednesday, the military said.

In Washington on Thursday, Bush signed an $87.5 billion package approved by Congress for Iraq and Afghanistan, calling the money a financial commitment by the United States to the global war to defeat terrorism.

"With this act of Congress, no enemy or friend can doubt that America has the resources and the will to see this war through to victory," Bush said at a White House ceremony.

At al-Assad, U.S. troops honored their colleagues killed Sunday when insurgents shot down a Chinook helicopter. Most of the soldiers were headed to home leave in the United States and elsewhere. Another of the wounded soldiers died in a hospital in Germany Thursday, bringing the Chinook death toll to 16.

The official count of the wounded had been 21 before the latest death. However, the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement later Thursday that 26 soldiers were recovering from their wounds. The statement did not elaborate.

The helicopter was shot down near Fallujah, one of the centers of Iraqi resistance about 40 miles west of Baghdad. On Wednesday, the 82nd Airborne Division said it captured two Iraqi army officers -- Lt. Gen. Khamis Saleh Ibrahim Al-Halbossi and Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Adwan Al-Alwani -- who were believed to have played a major role in attacks in the Fallujah area.

The deaths Thursday brought to 141 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq by hostile fire since President Bush declared an end to major combat May 1. A total of 114 U.S. soldiers were killed in action before Bush's declaration.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced plans to send 85,000 relief troops to Iraq early next year, part of a rotation plan that assumes Iraqis be able to assume more control and American troops in Iraq can be reduced from 131,600 today to 105,000 by May, senior officials said.

Concern over security mounted after a series of attacks around the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began here Oct. 27. Since then, insurgents have rocketed the Al-Rasheed Hotel, set off deadly car bombs in Baghdad, fired mortars at the coalition headquarters compound in Baghdad and shot down the Chinook.

The number of daily attacks on coalition forces dropped to 29 last week from a spike of 37 the week before, a U.S. military spokesman said Thursday.

However, the chief British representative here, Jeremy Greenstock, said coalition forces face a "rough winter" of attacks, The Times of London newspaper reported in Wednesday's edition.

Greenstock also said it would be difficult to defeat the insurgents without the sort of heavy-handed measures that would further alienate the Iraqi people, the newspaper said.

The Polish major was the first Polish soldier killed by hostile fire in more than a half century of post-World War II peacekeeping missions, including the Golan Heights, Lebanon, Haiti and the Balkans. More than 500,000 Polish soldiers died during World War II, and 20,000 more were killed in fighting along the eastern border that continued until 1947.

The United States, Britain and now Poland are the only coalition members to have suffered combat deaths in Iraq. One Dane was killed by friendly fire.

Poland has 2,400 soldiers in Iraq and are in charge of a large swath of south-central Iraq where about 9,500 soldiers of several nations help maintain security. Poland was among the strongest supporters of the U.S.-led war to remove Saddam Hussein, and 250 Polish special forces soldiers fought in the conflict.

The killing of the Polish major took place a few days before the planned visit of Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who is due here as part of a Middle East tour.

Despite the growing risk to coalition forces, a senior Japanese official said in Baghdad that his country would honor its commitment to send peacekeepers to Iraq.

The Japanese plan to send a 150-member advance contingent to southern Iraq by the end of the year and 550 soldiers early next year to provide water, medical care and other services.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi in al-Assad, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Jim Gomez in Tikrit and Mariam Fam in Mosul contributed to this report.
©2003 Associated Press

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/11/06/international0237EST0431.DTL&type=printable

Is it just me, or is their aim getting better?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by techumseh
That people rationalize away such rights is proof to me that the United States has lost all moral authority. It is now a place in which force of arms has replaced the rule of law in international affairs. The world is left to draw it's own conclusions.

So we're an empire. Is that really news to anyone? And "moral authority" - puhlease, other than posturing, when did we last have that in any significant measure, in either absolute terms or relative to our enemies? WW2, I'd say, only because Hitler and Tojo made it a no brainer.

Actually, though, to give credit where credit is due, we didn't find a way to circumvent the GC (whish has been applied to about 98% of prisoners of the Afghan war, at least vis-a-vis our handling of said prisoners), that was done by the Al Qaeda *******s.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/11/06/international0237EST0431.DTL&type=printable

Is it just me, or is their aim getting better?

No, we're just ****ing around with insufficient force for political reasons.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by techumseh
What I said (again), is "Conditions at Gitmo - people held without charges, no rights, denied the status of Prisoners of War, under threat of execution by military tribunal - has produced many attempted suicides.

Ok, I'll bite. Knowing that most of the prisoners were probably mentally ill before they arrived at Gitmo, remember they wanted to commit suicide attacks and were/are fanatical, can you prove that the 50 or so suicide attempts (out of several hundred inmates plus out of those 50 we have a dozen or so repeat offenders) are a direct result of the conditions you attribute them to and not something else? You claim it is a result of not being granted the status of POW, amoung other things, but you don't even entertain the idea that many of these mentally ill persons would likely attempt suicide as a result of imprisonment reguardless of the circumstances. You've shown a corolation but not causality there for your conclusions are not justified.

American government will not dissavow the use of torture there. It is noteworthy that these conditions would not be considered legal within the US proper."

That seems like a lie to me. Every single paper which I have read on this issue has stated without exception that no torture has been used nor will be used. To try to pretend otherwise is simply to lie and attempt to decieve.

Even people who AGREE with your postion (such as the European Parliament - to whose resolution I linked) argue that it does NOT mean that such persons should lose all rights. This is the real issue.

Once again you are stating an opinion which is not supported by the actual text of the treaties. The G&HCs expressly remove any and all protections for persons deemed to be unlawful combatants. No trials are required, no court hearings of any kind, in fact they are subject to summary execution. That's right, in the G&HCs it is 100% legal to simply line up unlawful combatants against a wall and to shoot them. The US has elected not to do this and instead has decided to hold them in prison for the length of hostilities. That the US has gone to such great lengths and has exceeded it's legal requirements by such a large margin show just how wrong you are.

The very fact that the Bush regime has located this camp outside American soveriegn territory is evidence that human rights and protections provided by the American constitution (you know, that thing the President swears to uphold?) are being circumvented.

No question they located the prison in Cuba on purpose. Still, for the last 200 years the Supreme court has held that the Constitution only applies to the territory of the US. This isn't a new thing it is centuries old and I don't see why it should change or why we should introduce yet another extra territoriality law. Frankly, I trust the US Supreme Court's opinion upon whither or not the Constitution is being up held far more then I trust your opinion.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler


Just wait for the Yankee whining when other states start copying your methods.

At least they'd have the balls to go out and do something to (theoretically) better the world. For mom, apple pie and oil. Or whatever floats their boats, or Mountain Navies, as the case may be.

[Dinner]

Is anyone besides techumseh surprised that people who wanted to commit suicide attacks are now trying to commit just plain suicide? I know I'm not.

BTW techumseh I don't think you are a bad guy and I do think you are arguing your case well but I believe the underlying assumptions you have made to reach your conclusions are based upon false premises.