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

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by BeBro

Yeah that confused me too with him being a pacifist.

[BeBMan]

Lead me to the sign up page as well....

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Yeah that confused me too with him being a pacifist.

BK's a pacifist? Now maybe he just can't show it that openly.....

With such pacifists running around I prefer the warmongers

[civman2000]

I seriously doubt whether the torture allegations are true. But saying it would be OK if they were is .

[Last Conformist]

BK is probably the only person ever to tell me I should not base my expectations of a group on my previous experience with them, but on his with a similar group.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Try him or let him go. I mean they have plenty on him, what's the reason for not trying him?

Imran, why in the world do we have to "try" POWs or let them go. All we have to do is give them an opportunity to demonstrate in court that they are not enemy combatants. If they cannot, they stay locked up.

The philosophy that we have to "try" these folks or let them go is so-Bill Clintonish as to be laughable. Bill Clinton approached the war on terror as a law enforcement problem. I suspect that Dems still have the same view.

[St Leo]

And he walked in all the sins of his father

If a 14-year-old Canadian boy got his hands on a grenade and lobbed it into the crowd at, say, the Calgary Stampede, he'd have a very real possibility of being out of custody before his 21st birthday. It's a source of endless debate, but the basic principle is mostly accepted in western societies: children should be, and are, treated differently than adults when they break the law. The capacity for mercy is greater, rehabilitation is given preference over punishment, and "root causes" are examined more closely — an extraordinarily abusive upbringing, for instance, would almost certainly factor into sentencing.

Omar Khadr did not lob his grenade at the Calgary Stampede. Of this I am aware. His upbringing taught him that, if imprisoned by infidels, he should tell stories about being tortured whether or not they're true. Of this I am also aware. But Omar's upbringing is a rather crucial point that's being ignored in all this, I think. "All of those persons who have been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own purposes," wrote a Foreign Affairs official. "In this group can be included his parents and grandparents, his associates in Afghanistan, and fellow detainees in Camp Delta."

This kid has had it world-class bad from day one, basically. It doesn't matter to me as far as his indefinite imprisonment goes whether or not he did in fact throw the grenade that killed Sgt First Class Christopher Speer. I think children deserve mercy before the justice system, and thus his treatment — even the official version of his treatment — offends me. The fact that Omar's parents are/were world class *******s doesn't lessen my anger. Quite the contrary, they are solely responsible for turning their four sons into terrorists and/or putting them in the line of fire of those fighting terrorists. (What the hell ever happened to that child abuse investigation? You know, the one that was obviously a slam-dunk?)

Yet Omar's last name obviously does matter, hence the deafening silence in response to his mistreatment — and again, I call even the American version of events (or lack thereof) mistreatment. Since his 15th birthday, he has been held, treated and interrogated in just the same way as men 30 years his senior — men who made their own choices, who had chances to turn away from their pathetic terrorist lives and didn't. From the sounds of it, Omar is not someone we want walking around on Canadian streets — the aforementioned Foreign Affairs official described him, not surprisingly, as "thoroughly screwed up" — but surely anti-terrorist sentiments can be combined with a modicum of compassion.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Ned


Imran, why in the world do we have to "try" POWs or let them go. All we have to do is give them an opportunity to demonstrate in court that they are not enemy combatants. If they cannot, they stay locked up.

How about, 'cos you're denying they're POWs?

[Ned]

Originally posted by Last Conformist



How about, 'cos you're denying they're POWs?

No. We are denying that they are POWs under any of our treaties with other nations that protect national combatants fighting for such treatied nations. This is a distinction that everyone seems to know about, but studiously ignore.

[Last Conformist]

By that logic you can imprison anyone indefinitely.

[Ned]

Last Conformist, the duration of the conflict. Yes. The goal is not to punish, but to confine.

[Last Conformist]

The duration of this conflict is however long the US gov't feels like.

[Ned]

Really?

Endless war for unending peace, and all that kind of thing ala Pat Buchanan?

The war continues until the nations of Islam are democratic.

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Ned
Last Conformist, the duration of the conflict. Yes. The goal is not to punish, but to confine.

The problem with this argument is that the conflict is not clearly defined. We've declared war on terrorism, but only islamic terrorism. Moreover, our enemy(s) are not confined to states, and it is unclear when we have "won." There will always be terrorism, so essentially, by holding people for the duration of the conflict, the government allows themselves to hold people indefinitely. And that is not acceptable, non-Constitutional, and this should worry you. What does it say about a goverment when it wants the ability to hold people in legal limbo indefinitely?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Ned
Really?

Endless war for unending peace, and all that kind of thing ala Pat Buchanan?

The war continues until the nations of Islam are democratic.

That's unlikely to happen within the lifetime of anyone at Gitmo.

But Bush did not declare war on undemocratic Muslims, but on terror itself. People who will use terror to further their aims will exist as long as humanity as we know it; there will never come a time when the US gov't cannot plausibly say the fight is not still going on.