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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (80457)	3/8/2003 4:56:34 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

<When involved in extracting cooperation and information from enemy captives, the use of reward and punishment approach is very useful.> The most powerful reward we could dangle, would be freedom. Moving them from a 6-by-8 cage to a slightly larger cage, is a paltry reward, compared to sending them back to their mothers and wives. The use of "punishment" to extract information from prisoners of war, is banned by the Geneva Convention. Explicitly, clearly. Even if you don't have any moral qualms about this, you should consider the implications for American soldiers in enemy hands. There are reasons why we signed that treaty, good reasons. And I would also say, that trying to finesse the definition of "punishment", is not in our long-term interests. Most of the captives at Guantanamo are low-level foot-soldiers, who never had any useful info. The small minority who did, no longer do. Most of them have been there now, for over a year, and any info they have is long out of date. So, holding them there as a source of intel, is no longer credible, and gets less credible with each passing month. I think the reason they are still being held, is because nobody quite knows what to do with them now. And that is not a good reason for handing out 600 life sentences.