The Washington Post hurts my brain

[Jon Miller]

I think the problem is that they didn't do what was needed to figure out if they were enemy or not. And they didn't treat them like POW, which is what should have happened.

JM

[Theben]

Y'all are missing the point that this raises: regardless of whether they were dangerous when we picked them up, maybe they are dangerous now and just releasing them is a bad idea?

Aside from the little detail that this would be against international law (not that that has stopped us in the recent past), and that our actions can be used to support or curtail terrorist recruitment, your idea suggests that any person locked up for a length of time will be more dangerous in the future and therefore should stay in prison forever.

Better to shoot them in the back of the head. Bullets are cheaper than lawyers and life sentences. We could have little execution rooms set aside in our courthouses if the verdicts come back "guilty".

[Kuciwalker]

Aside from the little detail that this would be against international law (not that that has stopped us in the recent past), and that our actions can be used to support or curtail terrorist recruitment, your idea suggests that any person locked up for a length of time will be more dangerous in the future and therefore should stay in prison forever.

Yes, simple logic does suggest that's possible, doesn't it? Obviously some people are more likely to fall under this than others, e.g. people who have been locked up for years with nothing to read but a Koran.

My beef is that WaPo didn't even glance at this blatantly obvious issue suggested by their own subtitle.

[Kuciwalker]

Seriously. Their story is "man is released from Gitmo, kills people", and they don't ever stop and think "hey, maybe we shouldn't have released him then"?

[snoopy369]

re:snoopy

Weigh the evil of holding them against the evil of releasing. If there's a substantial likelihood that the person will kill himself and a dozen other people if released, then yeah, it is morally acceptable.

That doesn't make the policy acceptable, however, when you consider the overall implications... specifically that it suggests we may hold someone solely based on what they might potentially do without any evidence they (personally) will.

[Kuciwalker]

Sucks, doesn't it? But if releasing a person is more likely to produce a worse outcome than simply holding him, the choice is pretty obvious.

[snoopy369]

...

God, I hope you're not representative of the future leaders of this country...

[Kuciwalker]

Yeah, it'd be a crying shame if we made chose our actions based on their consequences.

[snoopy369]

Good lord, you're nearly as bad as Ben sometimes, Kuci ... an amoral, shortsighted Ben.

I wonder if this is what Colin Powell felt like taking to Bush/Cheney...

[Kuciwalker]

Let's look at this conversation. My only actual argument is we should do whatever produces the best results. This is pretty much a tautology. Since you don't seem to be able to articulate anything beyond "you're a bad person" and "you're just like Ben", I'm going to assume you don't actually have any arguments beyond "your ideas don't give me warm fuzzies".

[Wiglaf]

Good lord, you're nearly as bad as Ben sometimes, Kuci ... an amoral, shortsighted Ben.

I wonder if this is what Colin Powell felt like taking to Bush/Cheney...

Colin Powell did whatever they told him to do. He's not smarter because he's black and has fuzzy hair. Kuciwalker wins and this is the only post I read.

[Theben]

A) Young person has a tail light out, gets pulled over. Unbeknownst to him, license was suspended and has warrant for arrest. Judge sentences young person to 6 months jail, during which time he will learn how to be a better criminal and has a greater chance to act on it. Therefore, the officer pulling over the youth should instead shoot youth with bullet, so he cannot commit crime.

B) Gitmo inmate released, goes home and is pissed off at westerners, etc. Raises family, has child that does something in the future that benefits humanity in some way. Because of this 1 example, all prisoners should be freed immediately.

C) Prisoners should not be freed b/c they may commit a crime, but holding them indefinitely is a crime. However this is not an issue.

I assume that Kuci agrees with all 3 above statements.

[Theben]

I suppose hindsight being 20/20 doesn't need mentioning either.

[Elok]

Sloww is just... well... slow.

And yeah, we probably should've given the detainees all the Nietzsche, Rushdie and Dawkins they could read.

If I had nothing but that crap to read for years, I would go jihadi, and I'm not even Muslim. The whole waterboarding thing would make it worse.

[Lorizael]

Let's look at this conversation. My only actual argument is we should do whatever produces the best results. This is pretty much a tautology. Since you don't seem to be able to articulate anything beyond "you're a bad person" and "you're just like Ben", I'm going to assume you don't actually have any arguments beyond "your ideas don't give me warm fuzzies".

Your very thin argument produces a false dichotomy - specifically that our only choices are keeping locked up people locked up forever or releasing them into the wild again.