The fight is tough, and the Presidency is hard. It's hard work. I know, because he said so in the debates with John Kerry. OTOH, he wouldn't know hard work if it came up and bit him in the ass. His entire life, it's been the easy way. Whenever anything got tough, he bailed. Whenever he flopped,which apparently was as regular as I am, someone bailed him out. I think his 'stay the course' crap is him waiting for the bailout. It certainly isn't character.

POW's are to be treated with respect, as people who have served their own country and been captured as a result.  That is such a simple concept I can't believe any rational person could fail to understand it.  We have no business engaging in a "war" with a group whose culture we lack any understanding of.  If we had that understanding we would all recognize what actions would be degrading to members of that culture.

Frankly, our CIA interrogators do understand the Moslem culture and do know what are degrading treatments for members of that culture.  That's exactly why those treatments are being used.  So, the whole discussion is fake.

The Bush administration wants permission from Congress to violate the Geneva Conventions.  They want permission to treat Moslem prisoners of war however they wish, in the hope that some of them will tell them things that will support their fantasies about a "global war by terrorists". (And don't try the crap about them not being POW's.  It is that same administration that insists upon calling what they are doing a "war".)

Congress cannot override the US Constitution, except by amending it, with 2/3 of the states ratifying the amendment.  And, the US Constitution, article 6, says that the Geneva Conventions are part of the Supreme Law of the Land.  So, any law the Congress passes that approves violating the Geneva Conventions is illegal, unless we rescind our ratification of those conventions. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

For the safety of our own troops, it is absolutely imperative that we take an unequivocal stand against the use of torture on all enemy detainees. Not only is it the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do.

Not only for the safety of our troops today but for the honor of those who have fought and served before, both in and out of uniform.  This is a debate that I would never have imagined that we'd be having in this country.  It goes right to the core of our principles as a nation, for which many have fought and died.  Are we willing to sacrifice our long held belief in the dignity of the individual human being and our disdain for abuse for what experts view as dubious intelligence?  As Senator McCain said last year, "It's not about them; it's about us."  Codifying and employing methods that can't be brought out into the light of day and maintaining prisons on foreign soil for the sole purpose of being beyond judicial reach implies that we are no better than those we ostensibly oppose.  If we are to represent ourselves to the rest of the world as a nation of high ideals and principles and a nation that stands by those ideals and principles, Congress cannot give in on the issue of detainee treatment.  If Congress addresses the vagueness of Article 3, as the administration euphemistically terms it, by caving in to the administration, we truly will have become infidels, and  it will be another day that lives in infamy.  It's past time to scuttle the S.S. Trust Me, captained by GWB.

Glenn
Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.-Hubert H. Humphrey

[deleted duplicate]

Most grown-ups in the room understand that what is not specified is permitted. Thus exact statements of what is allowable or not are not clarifications per the President, but limitations: "these, and only these."

The issue of cultural differences is really something of a red herring. As the fifty year record already demonstrates, a broad consensus is available at the international level.

Yet even more than cultural terms, it will be the technology that changes. To keep up with these changes, we will need the conceptual tools that are sufficiently flexible. This too, recommends keeping the present wording.

Are drug dealers tortured? Do they go to trial without being able to see the evidence against them?

It's just a new kind of war. We're better off staying with the "prisoner of war" definition.

And by the way, our effort is Iraq would have been much more successful if we had NEVER gotten ourselves into the mess of Abu Ghraib.

Terrorists are people who use civilians as targets for political reasons. They are not deranged semi-humans.

Since torture has been proven not to work, and the impact on war morale is so extreme, why not do as McCain and others want? It would honor us, help our efforts against Al Qaeda, and in sum bring us far more information than the tiny amount we might lose -- and I emphasize MIGHT -- by using torture.

What about the French in Algiers? Well, torturing the cell members of the guerillas did lead to enough clues to beat them in the capital city -- but it destroyed political support in Algeria, France, and the rest of the world. That's what happens with terrorists, if you're not paying attention. You win the military combat -- you walk into Baghdad -- but you lose the war.

Paul Rieckhoff is the Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (www.IAVA.org) and the author of critically-acclaimed Chasing Ghosts (www.ChasingGhosts.com)

The better case against it appears to be that it dishonors us and contradicts our principles .

And there's also the case that we have agreed not to do it.

Related subject: Jonathan Turley and Keith Olberman discussed tonight whether part of Bush's motivation in seeking immedidate  Congressional action re Geneva Article 3 is that  we have in fact been violating that article  and now that those 14 prisoners are at GITMO they are , for the first time , accessible to the Red Cross. Presumably Congressional action which now defined acceptable behavior under Geneva 3 in such a way as to plausibly cover what we have already done would provide retroactive cover even if the word retroactive never appears.

And of course it provides a platform for the ever popular disparagement of "foreign courts ".

But is any of this worth discussing ? The Supreme Court decision is three months old . Was there any pressing reason for those 14 prisoners to be sent to GITMO 2 months and three weeks later ? No prize for the right answer. . Does any one doubt that they were moved to GITMO solely to create a Potemkin justification for Bush to demand a congressional vote which would hurt the democrats in November ?

Of course  toying in this way  with our long established and vital  judicial principles and doing it for transient political gain is , dare I say it ,unpatriotic . But consider the source , as the farmer said when "insulted" by his mule.

In reality we don't have a war on . . . .

Nor do we have a war on terror except as a rhetorical device.

If, as you argued, by calling the government's anti-terrorist actions the WOT Bush has converted  captured terrorists into POWs, then, he has done so in rhetorical name only, and virtual POWs, rhetorically created, are not mentioned in the Geneva Convention.

Nor do we have a war on terror except as a rhetorical device.

For me this gets right to the heart of it...John Yoo's pretzel logic notwithstanding.  There is no "declared" war against another sovereign nation since...damn when was the last we were officially "at war" with another country by congressional decree? WWII?  That aside, to me it is simple...no declared war, no presidential "war powers".  And since there is no war the "alleged terrorist" (they are yet to be found guilty of anything) should have the rights of any criminal defendant...even though that ain't happening.

Ellen, you just get sillier and sillier:

...virtual POWs, rhetorically created, are not mentioned in the Geneva Convention.

You seem to have the same lack of intellectual curiosity (or is it depth?) that many see in our 911-invoker-in-chief. I agree that there is no "War on Terror" but we are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It just has a more realistic name. Just plain war.

Why don't you ask the original poster here if he was in a "virtual war;" if his comrades sustained "virtual wounds," or, the more unlucky ones, if they are "virtually dead."

Jan Knaus

I agree wholeheartedly...and I was pretty sure it was WWII, thanks. 

I guess if I had one small quibble is how many Americans even know Congress are the only ones who can declare war?  Sure people that follow government affairs and politics know that fact.  But how many average Americans listening to the president speak know that?  I bet much less then we would care to think...

You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Paul,
as one of the most articulate Iraq war veterans I think you should run for public office. The nation needs you. You can take on the chickenhawks with authority.

I think you greatly underestimate the skills of our CIA torturers.

We must keep in mind that, in most every case, they're not interrogating an unknown subject. They already have a good deal of information about his and his organization's background and personnel relationships.

Indeed, much of what a recalcitrant subject tells the interrogator will be identified by the latter as lies, and the subject will be harshly punished for them. And too, the consistency of the subject's responses will be confirmed through repeated additional torture. And presuming that the interrogators have several related subjects in the torture chamber, their stories can be crosschecked and backchecked.

The concern that unreliable information may make its way into operational areas is no more than a concern that any and all information is always possibly false. The amount of resources to be expended on the operation is a matter of judgment and depends on the level of confidence versus the level of harm sought to be averted.

The French would seem to have proven torture's effectiveness.

Why don't you ask the original poster . . . .

Since I was responding to hoppycalif2's comment, asking the "original poster" -- he does have a name, doesn't he -- would hardly be appropriate.

And if you'd read hoppycalif2's original comment, you'd have understood the rhetorical nature of his argument.  On second thought that's probably presuming too much.  I suppose I could lead you through the steps in hoppycalif2's and my arguments, but I doubt the result would justify the effort.

Are we willing to sacrifice our long held belief in the dignity of the individual human being and our disdain for abuse . . . .

Well; are we?  It wouldn't be the first time.

My Lai -- approximately 500 civilians murdered; 26 officers and soldiers charged; 1 officer convicted of the premeditated murder of 22 civilians.

At least the "nation of high ideals and principles and a nation that stands by those ideals and principles" got it right that time. Convicted one of those miscreants and sent his sorry ass away to prison for uh -- uh -- oh, yes; now, I remember -- a few months.

Note: We can leave the Phoenix Program and the School of the Americas for another day.

Why Democrats lose #426:"they built a Gulag in Cuba and sent afghani prisoners of war (with the newly invented title Enemy Combatants) there to be tortured... like Japanese Interment camps." 

GITMO has a prison facility, not a gulag, turning down the AC and turning up the "Red Hot Chili Peppers" is not torture, and innocent, loyal Americans were forced into interment camps during WWII (and surprisingly that was before Florida 2000...I didn't think anything bad happened before then), unlawful combatants (not a new term) are being held in GITMO, so that they don't do anymore unlawful combating!

I'll be here in November if you guys are finally ready to understand why this keeps happening. 

Article V

Section [2] This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

This is what you were referring to, right Hoppy?

Satellite Sky Blog

Find the Truth. Do Justice.

Talk about dodging the argument. How about addressing Jan's actual argument that if we have "virtual POWs", we also have "virtually dead American troops"? No? Then don't reply.

Maybe - if as it turns out the CIA has been in the business of refining torture all along.  In any case, I guess this is the danger in arguing down the practicality chain, rather than the moral one.

You miss the main point, which is that there is justification for trying to find a new category for the Afghan captures, and that there was not a similar need in Iraq.

Common Article 3 avoids definitions so that common sense will apply. Coercion through degradation and discomfort is not humane. Period. You seem to want us to have a reputation like the WW II Japanese. No thanks.

It was our reputation as opposite to the Japanese that helped guys like the recently deceased US soldier that was credited with capturing over a thousand Japanese soldiers. It was why the Germans wanted to surrender to us instead of the Russians. It was why we got the lion's share of German expertise to come over to our side after the war.

You keep explaining why Dems lost recent elections, but not why they were so close. Obviously not every voter agrees with you.

You surprise me, Ellen.  I would have thought you of all people would have realized this is about what we consider humiliating and degrading treatment not what other cultures may think.  Integrity and honor are about adhering to one's own values.  We ask our soldiers to fight and die for our values.  Why would we ask them to violate those values?

This doesn't mean we should totally disregard the values of other cultures and accomodate them if possible.  But this is, as John McCain said, about who we are not who they are.

And don't forget the protection the vagueness provides to someone who may be ordered by a superior to do something to someone else they think is wrong.

That is exactly what I was referring to.  When the administration insists that we are at war, fighting a war on terrorism, at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a war president, having war powers, then for damn sure, prisoners taken during that "war" are POWs.  So, the president, thru his orders, is violating US laws and the Constitution when he he orders torture, whatever he choses to call torture.  That should call for (forbidden word).

On the other hand, of course, if we aren't engaged in a war, but only in a military engagement involving criminal activity by semi-organzed gangs, those captured are criminals.  And, the Constitution and our system of laws guides how we treat criminals.  Torture is  specifically forbidden by the Constitution.  So, our president, thru his orders, is violating US laws and the Constitution when he orders torture, whatever he choses to call torture.  That should call for (forbidden word).

Fortunately, I am much smarter, better informed, and rational than Abu Gonzalez.  But, who isn't? 

Hoppy in Sacramento

A huge problem that you don't adress in your reasoning is the anti-constitutionalism inherent in the thinking that the Geneva Conventions are no longer appliable.

IF the U.S. want to retract from them, it wouldn't have been any more problematic to take the issue to Congress than when abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But that wasn't done. And no-one in America (or virtually no-one) protested against this.

The only conclusion one can draw from this is that America, as a nation with elites and politicians and ordinary common people and everything, now advocates the position that international treaties no longer need to be honored or orderly withdrawn from.

The U.S. judiciary may yet repair this, but focus seems to be on the Bush-administration's anti-constitutionalism in domestic issues.

Ellen -- you are relying on the spurious definitions of status/rank etc. assigned by an administration which attempts to dignify its failed strategies by dehumanizing the enemy.

But the great thing about a civilized society is its commitment to treating everyone with dignity. Underlying the Geneva Conventions is a very good measure of how people must be treated: do unto others.

The "War on Drugs"? We have an ineffective, expensive ban on drugs labelled "War on Drugs" to -- once again -- dignify lousy policy and give us some military presence in the countries to our south. Drug dealers, credit card gougers, religious fanatics, pedophiles, Republican voters -- sometimes it's hard, but we do have to treat them as human beings.

Thou protesteth too much, Phelicity, thus I spent 4 days in a county jail (years ago).

The over-riding principle behind all that we were subjected to - or punished for - was directed at killing our spirit, our humaness, our humanity. (Put your blanket on a young woman as she was coming off drugs and shivering uncontrollably guaranteed that the blanket would be taken off her and confiscated from you. Human kindness deserved punishment, not reward.

So what kind of individual is that prison system likely to return to society?

What kind of individual - dehumanized, shamed, degraded - will Gitmo or Abu Ghreb return to society? It's not difficult to imagine that the individual, who may not have gone into prison a terrorist, will come out one.

Hoppy, Hoppy, you just don't get it do you? Go up and look at Ellen's message to you. Just put "virtual" in front of all those nasty nouns: war, war powers, prisoners, torture...and before you know it, it just all gets really easy! Then do the same with injuries and combat deaths, and the whole thing starts sounding like invaders being greeted with roses and candy -- just clap if you believe!!!!!

Now, put a big "virtual" in front of the Constitution, and you have a summary of the administration's view on things.

One noun that we should be addressing SANS "virtual" is -- OK, I'll say it!

Impeachment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jan Knaus

There was another reason why hijackings and terrorism were a non-starter in the USSR, apart from it being an excellent way to get killed: Total control of the media. If the media come up with some more or less plausible alternative explanation (industrial accident etc.), or just pretend that the whole thing never happened, terrorism completely loses its raison d'etre. You can't frighten people if they don't know they are supposed to be frightened.

I don’t know about international law but if pirates are reserved a status that denies them basic human rights and they are even defined as exceptionally abhorrent because they act outside of any state, this is not only unjust but, potentially, a dangerous slippery slope.

Many pirates may be very bad offenders but are they of a magnitude worse than your run-of-the-mill Jeffrey Dahmers or Timothy McVeighs?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Howard

I think you are absolutely right. Everybody talks about how fighting terrorists is a "new form" of warfare and that attempting to employ traditional tactics and strategies is foolhardy and worthless.

Couldn't the same be said for dealing with detainees who are not fighting on behalf of a "sovereign" state?

If new methods are needed to fight non-state terrorists and insurgents, it is only natural that new international rules need to be established regarding these stateless combatants.

And it's not as if this ambiguity will simply disappear when Bush leaves office.

OH NO!!!  You said that word!  Now we Democrats are forever doomed to be a minority party, never again to  organize Congress, never again to receive respect in the "librul media", and the world, as we know it, just ended!

 Hoppy in Sacramento

The case of Captain Kidd should give pause. Originally tasked with hunting pirates he ended up hanged as one. His pirate adversary neatly turned accusations against Kidd.

This resonates today, where the label "terrorist" enables denouncing the inconvenient competitor or just someone that won't be missed.

You are dealing with a situation where there was capture and at least some degree of judicial proceedings, for accusations to have come up. Kidd was a captive at this point.

Let me take what I'd assume everyone would consider a clear-cut example. It is 2003, just after the Iraqi invasion, and you are flying an F-16 on armed reconnaisance, ahead of the ground column. You see several T-72 tanks, and, in this particular context as opposed to 1991, only the Iraqis operate T-72s. You are armed with Maverick antitank missiles.

Do you immediately engage the tanks with your missiles, fly in circles and hope they will see you and wait until ground troops can take their surrender (ignoring that they might call for antiaircraft weapons or fighters), or go fly away since you can't give them an option of capture?

Now, you are in the control room of an armed Predator, flying over Iraq. Its cameras show you the image of a car, which exactly matches the description and direction reported by a hidden observation team that was watching a confirmed insurgent safehouse. Do you engage the car with your Hellfire missiles, take your delicate and low-observable UAV close enough so the occupants see it and would stop and park waiting for a ground force, or fly away?

Analogously, had you been captain of the frigate HMS Insubmergible, of 28 guns, closed in on an unflagged ship, which then raises the Jolly Roger and fires a broadside into you, what are your options? You happen to know that Kidd has a frigate of 44 guns, and he's the only pirate reported in these waters.

You can assume that despite the mismatch in number of guns, your experience is that your superior crew training could defeat a pirate 44, probably by sinking it with all hands. You do not have a large enough crew to have any significant chance to board the pirate and take control.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

No, I wasn't particularly dealing with the issue of torture, which I believe to be unwise under almost any possible circumstances. I was more focused on the issue that law enforcement models, when directed at non-state groups that have at least some nontrivial military capability, may not work.

The issue here is less on the rights in courts of any prisoners from the non-state group, as much that there's a need to accept the reality that the only options against presumed members of such a group is to kill them or let them go.

It's not always large nations, or the full force of large nations, that are challenged. Real-world situation: pirates in the Straits of Malacca may outgun a single patrol boat of the Indonesian Navy.

Pirates do not always act by our standards of rationality. IIRC the recent engagement, several boatloads of Somali pirates challenged a unit of two US warships, a Ticonderoga class cruiser and a Burke class destroyer -- Flight I and Flight II respectively, again IIRC. These are some of the most powerful vessels that have ever sailed; using SM-2 missiles in surface-to-surface mode, they might well have been able to decide any naval battle in history. Small boats, with machine guns and RPGs at the most, have zero chance of survival in a fight. Nevertheless, some of the pirates shot back, and the US ships only destroyed one. The weapons on those ships are of a nature that it's harder not to destroy a target than just to wound it.

The science fiction reference was to E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, where "Civilization" is led by our planet, under the mentorship of a race of super-beings who can't engage the other super-race in direct combat. The difference in fighting power between a first-rate naval combatant and a pirate fishing boat is on a par with the difference between superbeing craft and conventional ones. It's not completely irrelevant here.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I assumed on reading this comment that it had to be satire and, as such, I started to give it a 4 (excellent) rating. However, if it were not satire, the idea is unspeakably horrible. Hence this reply instead of a rating.

Sometimes short written comments of satire are so hard to detect as satire.

Here's the problem, soldiers are in uniform, identifiable and (supposedly) following the same "laws of war" once captured they are treated as POW's. They are housed humanely until the conflict is over, unless there is some sort of prisoner exchange. The terrorists hide amongst the people, use the people as shields and kill the people along with the soldiers they attack. These are all illegal actions under the same Geneva Convensions y'all keep refering to. As a matter of fact, if a uniformed soldier doned the clothes of the local populace and was captured by an enemy soldier he would lose his POW protections. This doesn't mean they can be tortured or executed but they are NOT POW's. Also a prisoner exchange with the terrorists we are fighting would be impossible since they tend to chop the heads off of anyone they take alive.

I suppose I support a position that I think is within the scope of the Conventions. My reference here is US Army Field Manual 27-10, Laws of Land Warfare, which I've never found to misquote an international convention. Some of the narrative about the 1949 convention on the treatment of POWs does state, with respect to Article 85 of the Convention: