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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (133231)	5/17/2004 1:33:37 PM
From: ManyMoose	Respond to of 281500

Well, we shall see. It will be interesting to see how Mac and Harm handle a case where the lines between military and contractors. The thing that is NOT obsolete, however, is the concept of minimizing pain and suffering and death of the most people. If the one guy who possesses knowledge that will make that happen gets a little stressed, is it a good trade off? Message #133232 from stockman_scott at May 17, 2004 8:44 AM TORTUREGATE: White House memo suggested Geneva Convention limitations "obsolete"...

To: stockman_scott who wrote (133231)	5/23/2004 2:49:36 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi stockman_scott; Re torture in Iraq. Remember back a year ago when the Iraqis gave out video of a few captured American soldiers? The response by the administration was that it was a sign of their desperation that they were willing to traduce the Geneva Convention. There is a certain truth in this, at least in my observation. It's easy enough to follow the rules when you have such overwhelming force that you can win with one hand tied behind your back. It's much harder to follow the rules when you suspect that you're going to lose. Desperate men make desperate decisions. Back during the Gulf War, it was obvious that we would win and we treated the huge numbers of Iraqi prisoners quite humanely. The Red Cross wasn't putting out reports that we were in violation of the Geneva Convention. Compare that to the current situation. The Administration got into a war that was more than they could handle. When it became obvious that Iraq wasn't getting pacified, they loosened up on the compliance with the Geneva Convention. This is what a loser does when he suddenly realizes that he is losing. I'm not saying that the Administration deliberately allowed the use of sexual humiliation against prisoners. What I'm referring to here is the Administration's decision to keep prisoners from receiving enough sleep (or food) prior to interrogation. This is clearly against not just the spirit but any reasonable reading of the Geneva Convention, but it is only just now being banned. By the way, on the practice of keeping black hoods on prisoners, and keeping them isolated for 23 hours per day (as opposed to using hoods only during the movement of prisoners), we do have good company in the practice, China did it when our boys dropped in on them uninvited recently: Former Kosovo POW can relate to surveillance plane crew's experience Dave Ornauer, Stars and Stripes, April 15, 2001 Andrew Ramirez and Steven Gonzales feel a special connection to the 24 EP-3E crewmembers detained for 12 days in China. ... While the EP-3E crew was kept together and allowed to see U.S. diplomats four times, "We were kept separated," Ramirez said. "Those were wartime conditions. We were not allowed to speak or see anybody from the U.S." For the first seven days, the three soldiers were hooded and cuffed, forced to lie on the floor and allowed to speak only when spoken to. "We were not treated very well," Ramirez said. "The first seven days were terrible." ... ww2.pstripes.osd.mil The oldest references I can find to the hooding of prisoners, keeping them in solitary confinement and forbidding them to speak date to the 19th century when Britain used them on prisoners. There's a reference to this practice in the fascinating book "The Custom of the Sea" by Neil Hanson, which is mostly about shipwrecks and cannibalism: search.barnesandnoble.com -- Carl