War Criminals or Illegal Combatants?

Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com
Sat Apr 26 14:45:46 PDT 2003


At 02:19 PM 04/25/2003 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>Bottom Line: These so-called Americans have got to go.
>
>CNN is reporting that the Big Debate about the rounded-up Iraqi leadership 
>is whether the many Liberated Illegal Regime Members, a la Tariq Aziz and 
>the other 54 spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds, are to be treated as 
>"prisoners of war," and hence subject to the Geneva Conventions ("name, 
>rank, serial number") or are to be treated as "illegal combatants" 
>(torture, metal cages, withholding of food and water, sodium pentothal, 
>shipment to Guantanamo Bay in metal boxes).
>
>When one is an "illegal combatant" in one's own country, we know the U.S. 
>is run by characters out of Alice in Wonderland.

They already invented that one for Afghanistan.
It's one thing to treat Al Qaeda that way (an evil thing, of course),
but it's quite another to treat the Taliban that way.

They were the government of their country, and the US invaded them.
The US government contends that it was justified because they were
harboring and supporting Osama bin Laden, who made war on the US;
if so, that may make them a government at war with us,
in which case they should be treated as POWs,
and if they're going to hang them like defeated Nazis war criminals,
they're supposed to give them a Nuremberg-style trial first.
But it doesn't give the US the right to torture them to death
without a trial after the war's over.

And if you're going to call somebody "illegal", that implies
that you're following legal processes, which isn't happening here.

Furthermore, the US government asserts that it has no requirement
to follow US laws outside the US borders, and that
Guantanamo Bay is a Legally Special Place, outside the laws of mankind,
because US law doesn't apply there since it's not US territory,
but Cuban law has no power there because it's occupied by the US military.

Perhaps the pre-Castro Cuban government has legal authority there?
Are there any old Mafiosi who want to claim it's theirs,
or any old Batista-governent-in-exile geezers in Miami that are willing
to order the Marines to follow old Cuban law?

~~~~
Are there still more IRA Republicans in Boston than Bush Republicans?
Is it time to call the Bush Republicans "illegal combatants" for
failing to stomp out the other Republicans?





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