BF2S Forums No more 'enemy combatants' at Guantanamo Bay

Can we send them to your house? We will cover the airfare...

Let's call them enemy casualties. .. the ones caught on the battlefield that is.

Flecco wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

Let's call them enemy casualties. .. the ones caught on the battlefield that is.

Wish procedure was so simple.

Hell, wish the insurgents would play by regular rules. The mess in Iraq and Afghanistan that our countries were/are involved in would be far more simple.

Used to be. When we were landing on the beaches of normandy we didn't have 24 hours a day cable news critiquing the event.

Red this a while ago and thought it was funny/semi-ontopic.
It's just stupid that we can no longer call them "enemy combatants", this is being too soft on terror, such as no more mention of "War on Terror". I believe, in the words of Joe Biden, "The world will test this president soon." I think this will look like a retreat to AQ and Taliban leaders, and they will probably soon attack us.


Dear Concerned Citizen:

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

My administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington.

You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the "Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care.

Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday.

Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment. It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers. We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in your letter.

Ahmed's meal requirements are simple, but we strongly suggest serving meals that do not require utensils, particularly knives and forks. Also, these should be "one-handed" foods; Ahmed will not eat with his left hand since he uses that for personal matters.

He generally bathes quarterly with the change of seasons, assuming that it rains, and he washes his clothes simultaneously. This should help with your water bill. Also, your new friend has a really bad case of body lice that hasn't been completely remedied. Please heed the large orange notice attached to your detainee's cage: "Does not play well with others."

Although Ahmed is sociopathic and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his "attitudinal problem" will help him overcome these character flaws.

Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. He will bite you, given the chance, but his rabies test came back negative, so not to worry. We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We do not suggest that you ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters (except sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. However, he will be eager to assist with the education of your sons; have available for their use several copies of the Q'uran.

Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you, who know so much, keep us informed of the proper way to do our job. We think this watching over each other's shoulder is such a good way for people to interact that we will be sending a team of federal officials with expertise in your line of work to your place of business soon, just to help you do your job better. Don't be concerned that they have the power to close your business, seize your property, and arrest you for any violation of the 4,850,206 laws, codes, regulations and rules that apply to your profession. They're really there just to make sure you're doing everything the proper way. That is what you wanted, right?

Well, thank you for this opportunity to interact with such a valued member of the citizenry. You take good care of Ahmed - and remember...we'll be watching.

Last edited by nickb64 (2009-03-14 08:36:29)

Turquoise wrote:

Kmarion wrote:

Flecco wrote:

Wish procedure was so simple.

Hell, wish the insurgents would play by regular rules. The mess in Iraq and Afghanistan that our countries were/are involved in would be far more simple.

Used to be. When we were landing on the beaches of normandy we didn't have 24 hours a day cable news critiquing the event.

True, but on the other hand...  Just because the press is there doesn't mean we can't just do whatever we need to anyway.

For example, say we decided to use our old WW2 techniques.  The press makes a big deal out of it, and then Obama comes on TV and says, "Guess what folks?  I'm authorizing the military to do whatever is necessary to win this.  You  might not like it, but after it's all said and done, you'll come to accept it."

In the short run, people would be pissed, but in the long run, they'd get over it.

Yes, but in the short run, he'd lose the next election and his political career would die.

Turquoise wrote:

Flecco wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

True, but on the other hand...  Just because the press is there doesn't mean we can't just do whatever we need to anyway.

For example, say we decided to use our old WW2 techniques.  The press makes a big deal out of it, and then Obama comes on TV and says, "Guess what folks?  I'm authorizing the military to do whatever is necessary to win this.  You  might not like it, but after it's all said and done, you'll come to accept it."

In the short run, people would be pissed, but in the long run, they'd get over it.

Yes, but in the short run, he'd lose the next election and his political career would die.

That depends on if the war ended before the next election or not.

Person he would be running against would paint him as an inhumane war criminal.


Historic trends also show that the USA generally will vote to keep an incumbent president in if engaged in a War during the election, so still being at war would probably help more than hinder.

So wait, under Bush we wanted to keep them indefinitely but wouldn't give them a trial/hearing and the international community hates us.

Now under Obama we gave them a trial/hearing and deem them 'FREE', but their country of origin won't take them so we are keeping them indefinitely and the international community is happy about us.

ok...

Flecco wrote:

Harmor, why would a country take back a person that has been locked up for 3+ years? As stated, tends to piss people off when you do that and go 'oh sorry, made a mistake, no harm done then...'


If these guys weren't terrorists before they probably are now.

Sadly, that last part is probably true.

Maybe we should bury all of them in the desert and be done with it.

Apart from:

Resolving matters through the UN - which the US signed up to do.
The Convention on Torture
The International Convention on Human Rights
The Geneva Convention

Yes they've been meeting their obligations

Flecco wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Apart from:

Resolving matters through the UN - which the US signed up to do.
The Convention on Torture
The International Convention on Human Rights
The Geneva Convention

Yes they've been meeting their obligations

Forgot the NPT. The US singed that didn't they?

Signed UN docs?  They are about as useless as the UN is.  Our enemies all ready proved that.

FEOS wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

The US is finally starting to meet its treaty commitments and international obligations

Good.

The US has been meeting its treaty commitments and international obligations from day one.

You just have to actually read those treaties and obligations in order to understand that.

Torturing people is hardly meeting international obligations now is it.

More and more is coming out about all the rendition flights and torturing of detainees now that they're all being released. It's not suddenly ok to torture people if you take them to other countries - that's not how these obligations work and to claim the US has been honouring their obligations is exceedingly naive.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Apart from:

Resolving matters through the UN - which the US signed up to do.

And when the UN doesn't resolve matters, every country has a right to act in its own interests. No country abrogates their inherent sovereign rights to the UN.

The Convention on Torture

Inherently subjective. One can argue either way whether it has been violated or not.

The International Convention on Human Rights

Article 5: subjective (see above)
Article 9: not violated

The Geneva Convention

Not violated

Yes they've been meeting their obligations

I suppose if you only pay attention to a single side of an argument, refuse to acknowledge any other circumstance, say that any explanation is false (regardless of the facts), etc...then you'll likely come to the conclusions you come to regularly.