APP - Marine who built Gitmo: US lost moral high ground

Lowaicue said:
Greatest per capita polluter on the planet. Greatest warmongering nation on the planet. Greatest arms dealer on the planet. Greatest producer of pornography on the planet. Greatest exporter of dangerous drugs on the planet. Most violent first world nation on the planet.
I would suggest that your high ground is way below the water table.
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Low, I suspect you mean importer not exporter of drugs.
 
TuTu Monroe said:
The Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists in any way. They are not qualified for the rules of the Convention. The end.
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Why not? Are you sure they are terrorists, must we ask these questions, again?
 
froggie said:
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=3661

It appears there are those that are not in agreement with you on this legal matter.
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PETRAEUS: What I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool, which again they have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Convention, we rightly have been criticized. And so as we move forward, I think it is important to again live our values to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.
 
froggie said:
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=3661

It appears there are those that are not in agreement with you on this legal matter.
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great link....i wasn't aware of that new development, my understanding was that the GC applied in a guerrilla warfare capacity, eg., not uniforumed enemy combatants, i did not realize hamdi spoke of common article 3, i thought that case was just about habeas corpus
 
Southern Man said:
Sometimes you have to climb into the gutter to clean it out. That's reality, and it doesn't make the cleaner evil.
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so if I find litter in the gutter I can inflict pain on people until they tell me who threw the trash? No. I don't know if you served, but they taught us that beating information out of people was not a valid means of extracting information and they we were as likely to get lies as truth. Waterboarding is EXACTLY that kind of treatment that the military taught me was a faulty means of extracting information. That behavior is anti-thetical to what the US stands for. It gives our enemies valuable ammunition against us. It says that we will resort to torture (no debate as to whether it is or not we both know that we disagree) against Moslems, regardless of what they know or don't know. It LOOKS enough like torture to be considered that and that harms our image in the world. When our nation behaves this way, the 9-11 conspirators succeeded. They made us so scared that we reject basic principles that we have abided by since WWII. That makes us the loser.
 
In the Geneva Convention of 1949, the following was signed into international law:

"Part II. General Protection of Populations Against Certain Consequences of War

Art. 13. The provisions of Part II cover the whole of the populations of the countries in conflict, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, nationality, religion or political opinion, and are intended to alleviate the sufferings caused by war."


I will read and research more, but I believe there is no distinction made between combatants in a regular army and combatants that have taken it on themselves to act.

I am also thinking that those who agreed to abide by the Geneva Convention did so with the understanding that they must abide by the rules, even if their enemies did not.
 
Socrtease said:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090925/ap_on_re_us/us_marine_guantanamo

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – The Marine commander who built the Guantanamo Bay prison said Thursday the U.S. lost the "moral high ground" with its brutal treatment of prisoners, and the facility should be closed as quickly as possible.

It was the first time Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert publicly acknowledged his doubts, although he said he did make his concerns known through the appropriate chain of command.

Lehnert, 58, was commander of Joint Task Force 160 when it was assigned to build prison cells in 2001 at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba to hold designated "enemy combatants" from Afghanistan and elsewhere.

He said he was given little guidance from the Pentagon, but he did have his staff read the Geneva Convention, the international agreement governing treatment of prisoners.

"I wanted to run it close to Geneva Convention rules," Lehnert said. "Our job was to take them out of the fight, and once we had done that, I felt we had a moral responsibility to take care of them."

However, another task force was put in charge of interrogating detainees, and there were disagreements over their treatment, Lehnert said.

"I think it is extraordinarily important how we treat prisoners," he said. "Obviously, there were other views."

"I came to the conclusion very soon that this probably wasn't the right way to go," said Lehnert, who served just 100 days at the base.

"Probably before I left Guantanamo, I was of the opinion it needed to go away as soon as possible," he said.

The general said he didn't feel the U.S. would get much useful information by using the techniques.

"I think we lost the moral high ground," he said.

President Barack Obama has ordered the prison to close by January 2010, but it's unclear where about 200 remaining prisoners would go.

Lehnert is opposed to sending some to stateside military bases, including Camp Pendleton.

"It would fundamentally change the mission of that base," he said. "The entire focus would shift to long-term incarceration of detainees."

Lehnert now oversees seven West Coast Marine bases. He retires Tuesday.
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Seems to me the builder was the problem. If such a dilemma he should have put up a stink then, but he didn't. So false target. It was the whiner that should be up for trial.
 
Socrtease said:
so if I find litter in the gutter I can inflict pain on people until they tell me who threw the trash? No. I don't know if you served, but they taught us that beating information out of people was not a valid means of extracting information and they we were as likely to get lies as truth. Waterboarding is EXACTLY that kind of treatment that the military taught me was a faulty means of extracting information. That behavior is anti-thetical to what the US stands for. It gives our enemies valuable ammunition against us. It says that we will resort to torture (no debate as to whether it is or not we both know that we disagree) against Moslems, regardless of what they know or don't know. It LOOKS enough like torture to be considered that and that harms our image in the world. When our nation behaves this way, the 9-11 conspirators succeeded. They made us so scared that we reject basic principles that we have abided by since WWII. That makes us the loser.
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You are denying the obvious, that the CIA obtained useful information.
 
TuTu Monroe said:
The Geneva Convention clearly states the rules to determine if someone is a POW. Terrorists are not POWS.
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Neither were they terrorists. The most you can say is that they were detainees.
Unless you know better than your own people, of course, in which case I am sure you will be asked to appear at the trials.
 
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