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

To: epsteinbd who wrote (96371)	4/26/2003 1:55:38 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

<as treaties could not taken into account a 9-11 scenario, they are not effective afterwards, thus they are void on that specific subject of detention, and even the Geneva convention is inoperative> Roper: So now you'd give the devil the benefit of law? More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil? Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that. More: Oh, and when the last law was down and the devil turned on you where would you hide Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake. (From "A Man for All Seasons", by Robert Bolt)

To: epsteinbd who wrote (96371)	4/26/2003 2:38:55 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<Imagine that some Guantanamo prisoners tell your officers....> I'm not a purist here, I have a sense of self-preservation as robust as anyone's. And I'll admit to valuing my own life, and the lives of my family and friends, higher than other lives. Idealy, that shouldn't be so, but I'm not that idealistic. So, in the weeks, perhaps months, after we set up the concentration camp at Guantanamo, I thought it was a nasty necessity. But the months are turning into years. What purpose is being served, by holding them? The reasons given are: 1. they have intel: Maybe, some of them did, a long time ago. But most of them were common foot soldiers, who never were told anything by their commanders. And, apparently, quite a few are there entirely by accident. And, even the ones who did have useful intel, it has to be out of date by now, right? 2. Opportunity to uncover sleeper cells: Al Queda has an organizational system of independent cells, specifically designed to survive in exactly this situation. Each cell is walled off, no information goes sideways in the heirarchy, and the bare minimum necessary goes up or down the chain of command. To find a cell, you have to catch a leader of Al Queda who is supervising the cell, or a member of the cell. Nobody else knows anything. 3. they will rejoin Al Queda as soon as we let them go: First, many of them were Taliban, who presumably just want to go home, and never aspired to international terrorism. Second, they are probably no more dangerous, no more likely to commit violence against the U.S., than a million young men in Karachi or Cairo. I'm having problems with the concept of life in prison for people who might do bad things.