You can throw grenades at Americans, but you can't take tinkling on yourself?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Flubber
This one seems pretty simple-- If there is clearcut evidence, try him and hold him.


The more difficult scenario are the folks that you are "pretty sure" are terrorist but you don't have enough evidence for anywhere near "beyond reasonable doubt"-- Then you have competing interests of trying to protect your populace with the interest of not incarcerating innocent people for no reason.

In regular domestic situations we let the worst scummy gangbanger and drug lords go free if we don't have enough evidence. Sometimes I don't like that result but compared with the possibility of the state determining who to jail without any evidentary requirements I'll live with that result.

With terrorists, the result of making such a call could be hundreds or thousands dead . .. so jailing people without trial or hearing seems seductive, almost palatable. But it shouldn't be.

What all this highlights is the inadequacy of a court or criminal justice system to deal with what will likely be an ongoing, almost perpetual "state of war". These systems are not designed to deal with the likes of terrorism. I just don't know what model would work better

I wonder if this sort of ambiguity could at least be confined soley to gitmo and if the population of prisoners who could be held in this manner in gitmo could be capped somehow. At least then the government would need to onl single out the most dangerous cases for such incarceration.

As things currently stands it seems they can jail as many as they like in this way and don't seem to have the slightest incentive to ever go the route of a formal trial ample evidence or no

[laurentius]

Ok, let me get this straight according to Oerdins rather narrow interpetation of an unlawful combatant it seems evident that the foreigners who traveled to Spain during the civil war to fight fascists were unlawful combatants as well. The same applies to foreigners working in the French resistance, or foreigners fighting woth Greek or Italian partisans. What makes this interesting is that he and the US. government seems to equal unlawful combatant with terrorits, of course this is excatly the name the nazis and fascists used from the partisans as well.

What makes Oerdins interpretation even more interesting is that it makes the american and foreign private "security personnel" ie mercs unlawful combatants/terrorists as well. So its fair to say that the Americans are working and using more terrorists than any other country in the world. People form a nation, nations form in most cases states, states create armies, armies out sourcing creates mercs, mercs are terrorists. In Afghanistan the nation out sourced fighting to terrorists. In America its the state who out sources to mercs.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's a very interesting argument with mercenaries. Can they be said to be a part of a country's armed forces (do they have a distinctive sign and do they carry their arms openly)? A case can be made for no. Never considered that.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
That's a very interesting argument with mercenaries. Can they be said to be a part of a country's armed forces (do they have a distinctive sign and do they carry their arms openly)? A case can be made for no. Never considered that.

In the Abu Ghraib case, the military said it has no jurisdiction over military intelligence contractors who might have been involved, so...

[laurentius]

so, lets have UN build their own GITMO in Siberia to put the "military contrators" it captures and held them there for AT LEAST 4 years without trial or toilet paper!

[Dinner]

Well, it is St. Valentine's day and I'm off to romance my lady friend. You celibant males can feel free to continuing whining about US foreign policy. I'll respond later.

[laurentius]

He seems to have realised how pwned he is in these arguments. So he escapes the reality to paid love.

[laurentius]

Yep and your one line replies arent really helping it much to get back on track. I said what I thought earlier and hope to have brought something new to the discussion, maybe you would like to comment it?

[Ted Striker]

SCROTUM

[Ted Striker]

[Ben Kenobi]

Uh, no one should be abused that way no matter how much you don't like them and no matter what mistakes they have made. They are human, they were born human, and they will remain human forever. When you degrade a fellow human, you degrade me and you degrade yourself.

Let's see. He threw a grenade at an unarmed medic, and killed him.

You are right that it is wrong to degrade a person, just as it is wrong to kill an unarmed man, regardless of the circumstances.

If the Canadian police were to shoot an unarmed suspect you'd be calling for him to be drawn and quartered? Where's the outrage here? Why shouldn't this man be punished for killing another person?

As for abuse, if pissing on himself is the worse that has been done to him, he should be thankful.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, it is St. Valentine's day and I'm off to romance my lady friend. You celibant males can feel free to continuing whining about US foreign policy. I'll respond later.

And here I thought we were on the same side.

[Berzerker]

Poor baby. You can throw grenades at Americans, but you can't take tinkling on yourself? Aww. We feel so bad.

Put him on a mini bike near Aspen in January and that would feel rather good.

Sounds like a real winner there, but then again I stopped believing the government and Fox a while back.
But if the Canadians think he's a rat hole I'd almost consider that corroboration.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Let's see. He threw a grenade at an unarmed medic, and killed him.

The article quoted by the OP does not say the medic was unarmed. In fact, combat medics carry sidearms.

[Skanky Burns]

There is no doubt that a terrorist is precisely what he is.

That is the part where I stopped reading.