Hi CobaltBlue; By comparing how we are treating the detainees to "Andersonville, the Bataan Death March, the Hanoi Hilton", you're not likely to generate a lot of sympathy for your point.
I don't think we're getting a 43% death rate, as was the overall rate during the American revolution, or even as high as the 14% rate of the Civil War:
geocities.com
It's arguable that the South during the Civil War didn't have nearly enough resources (mostly farming manpower, I suppose) to adequately feed all those prisoners. When nations blockade food from each other (which is pretty much universal in war, if it can be done effectively. For example, we did just that to Japan in WW2, Germany in both wars, and Iraq currently), they can hardly expect their PoWs to be better fed than the starving enemy civilians. What should be done under that circumstance is that a neutral nation should be contracted with to hold the captured combatants for the duration.
Maybe we're illegally using the detainees to build bridges out of bamboo over the River Kwai, but I haven't seen any photographic proof. Similarly, we're not forcing them to walk without food or water in the heat of the Philippines until they drop, and then bayoneting them.
I guess we're probably torturing them until they make statements against Al Qaeda as happened during Vietnam.
-- Carl |
