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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: tejek who wrote (160412)	2/9/2003 1:06:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) of 1578100

A recent story in the Los Angeles Times reports that at least 10 percent of the 625 war prisoners captured in Afghanistan and now held at the notorious US naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay have “no meaningful connection” with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. to the extent that is true it is in my opinion a lot more serious then the whole Geneva convention issue. The article also said that many Afghans now in Guantanamo Bay were forcibly conscripted into the Taliban army A lot of enemy prisoners that we have taken in every war where foricbly conscripted. The prisoners have been deemed “unlawful combatants” by the US authorities in order to deny them official prisoner-of-war status and the most rudimentary human rights. They have no access to their families or lawyers and the US government has given no indication when or if the prisoners, some of whom are only 16 years of age, will ever be charged or brought to trial. Under their current status, the prisoners can be held as long as the US government decrees. The actual treatment you mention above (as oppose to the offical legal status) is no different then that given to regular POWs. They can be held indefinitly (or at least to the end of the war) and they don't get to see family or lawyers, and they don't have to be brought to trial. These and other human rights organisations have pointed out that the detainees are being held in contravention of the Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the US Constitution. Its easy to make those charges but the article says nothing to actually back them up. Amnesty International has described the conditions at Camp Delta as “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment Of course they don't have access to cable TV and comfortable air conditioned rooms... The conditionas are spartan, maybe even harsh but nothing discribed in the article is cruel and inhuman. in violation of international law” Again easy to make the charge but they develop no logical argument for it. and called for all interrogations to be halted until the detainees are given the opportunity to consult lawyers. No law, national or international gives them any rights to consult lawyers. Even though the Geneva convention doesn't apply if it did it would not give them the right to a lawyer, just as the German and Japanese POWs in WWII did not talk to lawyers or get trials. The US is holding two Australian citizens who haven’t been charged with anything. Enemies captured as part of a war don't get charged with anything. They are just locked up as an alternative t oshooting them. Someone has asked why haven’t the inspectors gone into America. Why are they allowed to have weapons of mass destruction and no one else? We didn't sign a ceasefire agreement or other treaty obliging us to get rid of our WMD. Also there is the purely practical self interest of the US at stake. I see nothing wrong with acting in that self interest esp. when it is also reduces the threat to other countries. Tim

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