I guess I understand what he is trying to say. That our troops need to be above reproach. But we have to be able to interrogate these people. They aren’t POW’s. They’re enemy combatants who don’t hold to the rules of war. We have been and of course will continue to do so. Temperature changes and bad music is hardly a death camp. I don’t think the comparison is fair. So…. What do you think?
*steps out of the thread before getting stuff thrown at my bad ankle*
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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No, he said that what US soldiers had done would look to US civilians like the work of Nazis or the like if they didn't know otherwise, which is not the same thing.
Would you care to explain to me the difference between an enemy combatant captured in combat and a POW?
Not to mention that the evidence against many of them is so ridiculously weak the lawyers they finally managed to get are doing a bangup job of getting them off the hook, so I wonder where you're getting that they're all definitely people who don't hold to the rules of war.
Not to mention that the geneva conventions don't apply only to people we approve of -- that's part of the point, getting countries to provide decent care to people they may very well hate, because it sucks to be on the other end.
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quote: If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.
Hm. Sounds to me like he was being both accurate and respectful. The implication in his statement is that we're not Nazis nor Soviets, and it's a shame that we'd ever act close enough to make a comparison possible.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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They don't hold to the rules of war because we said so. Convenient, no?
This sort of thing doesn't help anyone, but I think underlying this stuff is the feeling that if reasonable criticism were floated, it'd be polarized and blown out of porportion anyway, in the current climate. A fear of if you moderate the "message" then the old "give an inch, they take a mile" proverb would come true.
If you want more moderation in message, then it has to come from those IN power first, I think.
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I'm actually disturbed by the distortion of fact used in the article's headline. Of course, it is WorldNetDaily, so what should I have expected?
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"Would you care to explain to me the difference between an enemy combatant captured in combat and a POW?" Enemy Combatant From http://www.cfr.org/publication.php?id=5312 An "enemy combatant" is an individual who, under the laws and customs of war, may be detained for the duration of an armed conflict. In the current conflict with al Qaida and the Taliban, the term includes a member, agent, or associate of al Qaida or the Taliban. In applying this definition, the United States government has acted consistently with the observation of the Supreme Court of the United States in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 37-38 (1942): "Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war."
"Enemy combatant" is a general category that subsumes two sub-categories: lawful and unlawful combatants. See Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38. Lawful combatants receive prisoner of war (POW) status and the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. Unlawful combatants do not receive POW status and do not receive the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention. (The treatment accorded to unlawful combatants is discussed below).
POW from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_War A prisoner of war (POW, PoW, or PW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict.
The laws apply from the moment a prisoner is captured until he is released or repatriated. One of the main provisions of the convention makes it illegal to torture prisoners, and states that a prisoner can only be required to give his name, date of birth, rank and service number (if applicable).
Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention protects captured military personnel, some guerrilla fighters and certain civilians.
In principle, to be entitled to prisoner of war status, the captured servicemember must have conducted operations according to the laws and customs of war, e.g. be part of a chain of command, wear a uniform and bear arms openly. Thus, franc-tireurs, terrorists and spies may be excluded. In practise these criteria are not always interpreted strictly. Guerrillas, for example, may not wear a uniform or carry arms openly, yet are typically granted POW status if captured. However, guerrillas or any other combatant may not be granted the status if they try to use both the civilian and the military status. Thus, the importance of uniforms -or as in the guerrilla case, a badge- to keep this important rule of warfare.
The status of POW does not include unarmed non-combatants who are captured in time of war; they are protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention rather than the Third Geneva Convention.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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You know, someone breaking the rules does not mean we should then break the rules. I mean, it's Childcare 101. "He did it first!" does not mean that the second party to do it is absolved of guilt; it means both parties are in the wrong.
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I see a difference between beheadings, burning bodies, dragging them through the streets, hanging them off of bridges, kidnapping civilians and being in a hot or cold room with loud music. I think that we treat our prisoners much better than they have treated their prisoners.
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Illegal combatants are non uniformed people that don’t have any allegiance to a country. Where as a POW is a solider from a specific country and under Geneva conventions.
By the way, where is this evidence you speak of? Can I get a link to the charges that you speak of? I imagine that these terrorists who want to kill us don’t leave much of a trail and they’re held for reasons that might need to be kept secret.
Comparing our troops treatment of prisoners to death camps is accurate and respectful?!?!?!? Ok, that’s a bit of a leap. Wait, let me drink some more of the kool-aide and maybe I’ll see it….. gulp gulp gulp….. hum…. Nope, still don’t see it. Oh wait. My DNC goggles aren’t in yet. Silly me. The point is the comparison is totally inaccurate and will do nothing but empower terrorists in their recruiting and propaganda.
How is the headline inaccurate? He compared our troops to Nazis. You can hardly argue that point when you yourself said “it's a shame that we'd ever act close enough to make a comparison possible.” And again, I say, the comparison is not there.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:I think that we treat our prisoners much better than they have treated their prisoners.
Again, any degree of immoral behavior on their part does not excuse any degree of immoral behavior on ours. Sorry, but that's not the way it works. If we want to take the moral high ground, we need to keep it by not acting immorally.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote: Comparing our troops treatment of prisoners to death camps is accurate and respectful?!?!?!?
Specifically, what he said is that our poor treatment of these prisoners is something that we do not mentally associate with American troops, but rather with gulags and death camps.
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Specifically what he said was "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners." He absolutely equates what he said we have done to being in a gulag or death camp. He specifically says that things were done by people who have no concern for human beings.
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Again, any degree of immoral behavior on their part does not excuse any degree of immoral behavior on ours.
That is just not possible. Any degree of immoral behavior is sort of hard to define and can be interperted too many different ways. Is it moral to detain any one? These detainees are treated better than prisoners in our own jails. No mention is being made about the extradinarily lengths we have gone to supplying Korans, prayer rugs, time to pray, special meals, and so on.
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I understand different rules for war and peace. But torture is immoral under any circumstances.
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"He specifically says that things were done by people who have no concern for human beings."
Nope. He says that Nazis, Soviets, and Pol Pot had no concern for human beings, and that a casual listener hearing our camps described "would most certainly believe" that Nazis, Soviets, and/or Pol Pot were in charge of the camps. There's actually a very vital distinction.
In case you missed it, here it is: we are and can be assumed to be better than we're acting. So we shouldn't act that way.
"That is just not possible."
Sure it is. Of course, it's not possible once we've decided to interrogate these people.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Well, unfortunatly even torture is hard to define. Listening to loud rap music may be enjoyable for some, and painful for others. How do we define what the room temperature should be? Being in a hot room is not, to me, torture. Yes it is very uncomfortable, but I don't think I would consider it torture. Then again, I do live in PA and we have hot summers and cold winters so you kinda get used to being in very hot or very cold circumstances We have not mutliated them, cut them, hung them, burned them. That is what I would consider torture
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I am a casual listener and there is no way I would ever think sitting in a hot room is remotely like being in a death camp. Only someone who does not know anything about death camps or the gulags might think that there is some sort of comparision between us and Nazis, Soviets, etc. Millions died in the gulags. I would choose to be detained by us than by the Nazis, Pol Pot, or the Soviets.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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So it's the degree to which we make someone miserable in order to get information out of them that distinguishes Abu Ghraib or Gitmo from a gulag?
That said, I'm glad that we're still more pleasant captors than the Soviets, Muslim terrorists, the Germans, or the Khmer Rouge. It's nice to hold a moral high ground.
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It's understood that circumstances will not always permit ideal conditions. However, it is our duty to always make the conditions as comfortable as is possible under the circumstances.
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So it's the degree to which we make someone miserable in order to get information out of them that distinguishes Abu Ghraib or Gitmo from a gulag? Yes, absolutely. Just like making a child sit on a chair for 10 minutes for a 'time out' is a different degree than taping a child to a chair and putting him in a dark closet for a week. They are the same thing, just different degrees.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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So….. what are we supposed to do to integrate prisoners? How do we get information to stop terrorist acts before they occur? What is your alternative solution? I really want to hear ideas. Saying don’t doesn’t solve the problem.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: Hm. Sounds to me like he was being both accurate and respectful. The implication in his statement is that we're not Nazis nor Soviets, and it's a shame that we'd ever act close enough to make a comparison possible.
I didn't actually call him a s**thead. I just said that, based upon his thought processes, if most people saw how stupid he was, they'd come to the conclusion that that his head was made of s**t.
I didn't call her a fat pig. I only said that if someone saw her, a human being, walking down the street, they'd assume that she was a pig because of how her body is shaped.
See, it's not an insult. I'm only being accurate and respectful. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:So….. what are we supposed to do to integrate prisoners? How do we get information to stop terrorist acts before they occur? What is your alternative solution? I really want to hear ideas. Saying don’t doesn’t solve the problem.
There is no problem. Don't torture people, and if that means in some situations we'll miss out on important information, then so be it. It's not always beneficial to do the right thing.
The only good argument for the position that torture is OK is the ticking time-bomb scenario, which is something that hasn't happened yet in the history of the war on terror. (Or else if it has happened, it is being kept from the public along with all the rest of the important information about what our government is doing.)
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Did anyone read the rest of the speech Durbin made? He actually makes some extremely good points
quote: The administration acknowledges detainees can challenge their detention in court, but it still claims that once they get to court, they have no legal rights. In other words, the administration believes a detainee can get to the courthouse door but cannot come inside.
quote: A Federal court has already held the administration has failed to comply with the Supreme Court’s rulings. The court concluded that the detainees do have legal rights
This one I think is really important:
quote:Remember what Secretary of State Colin Powell said? It is not a matter of following the law because we said we would, it is a matter of how our troops will be treated in the future. That is something often overlooked here. If we want standards of civilized conduct to be applied to Americans captured in a warlike situation, we have to extend the same manner and type of treatment to those whom we detain, our prisoners
quote: In one e-mail that has been made public, an FBI agent complained that interrogators were using ‘‘torture techniques.’’
He then talks about the administration making rules and claiming that the courts and congress have no right to interfere. Which he follows up by saying the constitution actually guarantees that very right, and that Madison called the concentration of legislative, judicial and executive powers in one person's hand the very definition of a tyranny. Not a farfetched comparison if you ask me.
The following is part of a letter written from a former Congressman and former POW in Vietnam to Durbin.
quote: From my 61⁄2 years of captivity in Vietnam,I know what life in a foreign prison is like. To a large degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival. . . . This is one reason the United States has led the world in upholding treaties governing the status and care of enemy prisoners: because these standards also protect us. . . . We need absolute clarity that America will continue to set the gold standard in the treatment of prisoners in wartime.
And by the way, the quote about the FBI report isn't just loud music and temperature extremes, here is the FULL version of what Durbin said:
quote:On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18–24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
Sorry I know that was a lot to quote in one post, but some people can't read the PDF file that the text of his speech is on, and some may not want to, so I posted what I thought were the more important lines from it.
I'm insanely surprised that Fox News decided to only talk about the Nazi line ( ), and leave out the main thrust of Durbin's point, that torture on enemy combatants could affect how our troops are treated when they become POWs behind enemy lines.
If our next war is against an enemy that can actually defend itself, a real country that is supposed to follow the rules of war, do you want them to throw out the rules and act as we have at Gitmo?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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One more thing, this was at the end of Durbin's speech on the floor. When Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, which allowed detainees in the Civil War to challenge their detainment, the Supreme Court answered back with this:
quote: The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions could be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism.
Edit to add: Next time, for those of you who freely bashed Durbin, you might want to read all the facts before just buying into what Fox News tells you. For those of you who said it, saying that Durbin doesn't care about the troops just looks silly to me now.
posted
His speech was no so unreasonable. I think the way the prisoners have been treated is deplorable and could lead to our own troops being treated even worse.
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When Amnesty International came out with their report showing credible problems with Gitmo, the administration took one word--Gulag-- and harped on it. They took that one word, not from the report, but from an excited presenter talking about that report, and discredit a noble organization in the mind of the public.
And nobody said, "But what about the problems they mentioned?"
Now Sentator Durbin has said that. He brings a list of those problems to our attention. And again, one word, "nazi" is singled out and blown out of proportion to discredit the man and get our attention off of the problems.
Here is a list of the problems as I see them.
1) POW vs ENEMY COMBATANT. What we have done is said that the basic rights afforded to these people in our custody are not gauranteed. Because of legal loopholes that will stand up in court, we get to decide how we will treat these people, and while we promise to treat them well, thier final treatment is simply left to our whim.
A) This is legal. B) While I do not doubt the honor and compassion of this administration, this sets a terrible precedent for abuse in the future, or abuse by those elsewhere along the chain of command. Do you trust future Presidents with this power? How about every officer or soldier who may be eventually placed in a position of power at Gitmo? C) The need for intense security feeds those who sell the scarey scenarios. And AlQueda has proven adept at selling those scenarios. The result is that Gitmo is a anchor around our necks and a source of recruitment for terrorist organizations around the world. The evil that a small group of men can do with knives and explosives scares us, but the evil the greatest country on earth could do in the secret bowels of its most devious places terrifies them. And the most common response to fear, when there is no where to run, is to fight back with all means neccesary.
2) What is the difference between guerilla soldiers we gave POW status too in the past and Taliban soldiers defending their homes in Afghanistan?
There are technical answers I am sure, but to the Taliban fighter, their friend and families back in Afghanistan, and most of the rest of the world, this switch to less than legal status is seen as a forced cheat and unfair practice.
3) The beheaders and bomb planters and child killers that we fear are in Gitmo aren't. Most of them are still kept in prisons in Iraq. The Taliban and Afghanistan Al Queda people we think we have in Gitmo are there under very questionable circumstances. Someone said Ali was a Taliban so he was scooped up with the rest of those who may be Taliban and sent to Gitmo to be sorted out, but nobody ever sorted them out. Other than sorting out the most dangerous from the less dangerous, and the most valuable from the majority of nobodies, it took an order from the courts for the people to begin to have thier files reviewed. We have a lot of innocent people in Gitmo.
4) There is no exit strategy. Since Terror is not a political or military enemy that can be beaten, the war can never be won. Enemy Combatants are held until the end of the war. Hence, Guantanamo has no exit strategy, and will remain until all of those held there die. Thirty, Fourty, Fifty years from now we can still be talking about those held in Guantanamo. How long were the POW's held in Vietnam?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Talk of their release will only come about when the Administration is satisfied that the network of terrorist organizations in the Middle East is effectively dismantled. Until then, releasing them only poses a threat to the nation.
That's what they will say anyway. Realistically, I don't see what can be done with them. Many of them really are enemy combatants, and releasing them will only cause more problems. For the rest, they could try and wait for a stable government to form in Iraq, and then transfer the prisoners to them and their justice system, but how much will we trust it?
Best idea I can think of would be to find a neutral third party (Hellloooooo Hague) and send them there. Takes the pressure, focus and criticism off us, and will probably be more humane. Of course we'd be the laughing stock of the world if we did that.
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A lot of people think there are still POWs in Vietnam. At least, that's the idea I got from the ongoing POW/MIA publicity around D.C. I'm for the war on Terror, but don't support the continued detention of prisoners at Guantanamo. (Where did "Gitmo" come from, anyway?) If we have changed the regime in Afghanistan, I say send them back there. Though I seem to recall that being labelled as "outsourcing of torture".
And supporting the government even when it's wrong is no better than calling them "nazi" or supporting someone calling them "nazi".
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:We are conducting military tribunals in Cuba, and many detainees have been released.
That's not due process, it's a separate standard that is normally only applied to members of the US military who've signed up to be subject to it. Besides which, I don't think it's constitutional even when applied to volunteer soldiers. All the amendments in the Bill of Rights say "no person shall be denied...", not "No civilian US citizen."
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quote:Originally posted by Synesthesia: His speech was no so unreasonable. I think the way the prisoners have been treated is deplorable and could lead to our own troops being treated even worse.
Exactly. Which is one reason why many military lawyers objected to the administration weakening our adherence to the Geneva Conventions. One Bush lawyer even called GC "quaint"--our current attorney general.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I support everything Durbin said, with the exception of that one sentence where he uses the Nazi Card.
I couldn't care less about that statement, it has little to do with the actual point of his argument, and though it was stupid, and misleading, it doesn't negate his point.
I think he might have said it just for the sake of bringing attention to the issue, it seems to be the only way these days to do so. But it's counterproductive, and only brings negative short sighted attention.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Basically, if Durbin had spent any time at all on Internet Forums, he would know that playing the Nazi card means that no-one is going to pay attention to anything else you've said. I think we've seen examples of that here already. People get so up in arms, or try to nitpick the analogy, that ones main point is instantly and irrevocably lost.
I would expect better of a Senator. I mean, isn't one of the pre-requisites a certain facility of language and clarity of thought. Surely he knows that inflammatory rhetoric never wins an argument.
So, maybe it's just what adam613 says -- a way to talk show voters he's tough? Pretty stupid if you ask me, but then, if I were represented by this guy and he said this, would I be LESS likely to vote for him? Nah, probably not. Because I agree with much of what he said and I disagree strongly with the people who justify use of torture by US troops. Even "mild" forms of torture are still torture. Illegal under the treaties we signed. Short-sighted in that they give a built-in excuse for others to do worse to our troops (and civilians). And, from everything I've read, essentially useless as an interrogation technique.
I would just like to add that if we violate our own laws in response to bad actions of others, then we become more like them and less like us. Either we have ideals and try to live up to them, or we become something less. I would prefer that if we are going to go that route, we do it as a conscious choice where every person has a say in what our government does in our name. Nobody ever said a vote for Bush is a vote in favor of torturing prisoners (even mildly torturing them). I suspect that if the question were put to the voters with all the details laid out, we would have a different head of state.
I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time that I've been so out of synch with the rest of this country that I would miss our preference for brutality over our own stated goals and ideals.
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I think it all went wrong when they decided to house the captives at Guantanamo... not in the 50 states.
I believe it was a conscious decision that was based not on security for US citizens, but to keep it away from prying eyes.
I still think that if the "detainees" are not under the Geneva Convention rules, we should still afford them the protections that we afford inmates in the US.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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C'mon people, it must take a lot of brain work to really try to be "ashamed" of this Senator for speaking out the way he did. Regardless of your political beliefs, the message should still be heard, and it is this: We are being lied to. For a Senator to speak out like this is both politically dangerous and life threatening, so even if I'm ignorant enough to believe he's lying, I'd still respect his fearlessness. To say you are ashamed or would expect better from a senator is the equivalent of saying "I wish he had just kept his mouth shut", and if that's the case, then you belong in jail because you are obviously aware of the lies fed to us by the government and are more than alright with the continuation of such atrocities.
Posts: 62 | Registered: Aug 2000
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It's interesting to note that, if you read the actual text of the original treaties, they are very much in the old tradition of Great Power politics, and international law based on force. Which is to say, they are agreements between nations with a capacity to be extremely nasty, who agree that they won't behave in certain ways, on pain of retaliation in kind. They spend quite a bit of text making it clear that, if one of the High Contracting Parties breaks the treaty, the others are entirely within their rights to do the same.
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Those treaties need to be rewritten to better represent the realities of a changing world.
Nations don't sign papers officially declaring war. There is no formality anymore. I don't think the law should be limited by rules written fifty years ago. The world has changed too much.
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Lyrhawn, I'd agree, except that recent experience has shown us (the U.S.) incapable of playing well within that new reality. We refused to sign a ban on land mines for crying out loud. We apparently hate the idea of limits on greenhouse gases.
I think our idea is that in any international treaty, we have the most to lose. That may be true (e.g., Kyoto is a lot easier on developing nations than it is on the industrialized ones), but I think we'd be giving from our enormous excess whereas most countries would be giving from their base.
We managed to get the G-8 to rewrite their statement on global warming from "it's happening, it's going to get worse, and we need to do something about it now" to something like "climate change is an important topic that effects the entire globe."
If the rest of the world ever grows a spine, we are going to be in serious trouble.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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Kyoto places no restrictions on 'developing nations' like China while it would completely destroy most of our manufacturing plants in America. That is why we should not sign it. The rest of the world is trying to come to this nation, to work here, to live here. Although by reading this thread you would think we are the worst monsters ever in the history of humankind. Any allegation against the US is always correct, and no other country on earth ever has, or ever will do anything wrong that can compare to the atrocities that we have committed. I do apologize because that is more of a vent, but all that ever seems to happen anymore is the complete focus on the negative, like the US has never done anything positive ever. No one is spending any time here lashing out of Kofi Annan and how corrupt the UN is, just how terrible we are. No one is condemning most of the dictatorships around the world who actively torture their own citizens. I know the cries will go up that we have to be better than everyone else, we have to be do everything perfectly, we can never, ever make a mistake. Any small allegation, true or not, must have the immediate result of removing our power hungry dictator-President from office. Yet we have done the same and worse and there was not the same cries of America is a Monster. Clinton routinely sent enemy combatants captured to foriegn nations for torture, and as far as the press was concerned it was not that big of a deal. Let's also keep in mind that in the 1970's all scientists were completely convinced that we were headed for an ice age. Cosmos by Carl Sagan has that information in the foreward of the book.
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quote:For a Senator to speak out like this is both politically dangerous and life threatening, so even if I'm ignorant enough to believe he's lying, I'd still respect his fearlessness.
Oh, really?
quote:To say you are ashamed or would expect better from a senator is the equivalent of saying "I wish he had just kept his mouth shut",
Or "I wish he hadn't played the Nazi card.
quote:and if that's the case, then you belong in jail
Big freedom of speech supporter, are you?
quote: because you are obviously aware of the lies fed to us by the government and are more than alright with the continuation of such atrocities.
If someone doesn't like Nazi comparisons they are aware of government lies?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I hear Al-Jazeera is having a filed day with Durbin. I’m sure they’ll happily use him as a recruiting tool for more suicide bombers. Reason #1 why this is such a horrible statement.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I firmly believe in our rights to criticize our own government, and I don't think the senator should be censored, he had every right to say it.
And I have every right to be offended at what he said, since my father is serving right now in Guantanamo and I resent even the implication that he and the men and women serving with him can in any way be compared to Nazis.
The decent thing to do would be to come out and say that he regrets his unfortunate choice of words or some other pseudo-apology that politicians always try to get away with.
There are good, dedicated Americans serving us in Guantanamo. They're away from their families doing a difficult job in the midst of incredible scrutiny. They don't deserve to be insulted like this.
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quote: There are good, dedicated Americans serving us in Guantanamo.
There have been good, dedicated servicemen on every side in every war ever fought. The most terrible thing about war is that it convinces good, dedicated people to do terrible, depraved things.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Oh okay, Tom does it make you feel better to take pot shots at my Dad and the people with him? Do you feel righteous?
What I'm trying to get across is that there are hundreds (thousands?) of good soldiers down there who do not do terrible, depraved things to anyone - they are trying to do their job and when you make blanket statements like that it's just as offensive as what Durbin said.
There are a select few servicemen and women who did things to prisoners they shouldn't have. I have no problem with them being punished for it, I do have problems with calling all the people serving in Guantanamo analogous to Nazis or people who do terrible, depraved things. Do you know anyone there? Do you have any idea what their daily life is like, or what they go through or what it's like to serve in a hostile place away from your loved ones?
The vast majority of the people in Guantanamo don't even have even occasional contact with prisoners, but I guess that doesn't matter to you. To you and Durbin it's okay to insult them all, say they are terrible depraved people like Nazis. That's despicable.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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), and leave out the main thrust of Durbin's point, that torture on enemy combatants could affect how our troops are treated when they become POWs behind enemy lines. 
