"Norman" wrote in message
...
Been offline for awhile. You have good points. interleave below
"Eric" wrote in message
Last thought, and something for the Brits to chew over, Geneva
Convention.
That Armed Forces Geneva Convention Card troops carry is a bunch of
baloney
created post the big one. If it had been in place during WWII, England
would
have lost, US likely would have lost. At the top and bottom of that
Geneva
document it should have in very large letters, "YOU BREAK THESE RULES,
SO
DO
WE, WITH PAYBACK!" You don't win wars by tying hands behind back.

Norman

Which rule(s) should we break?
The big one in the news is torture. We should not be able to torture our
captives by "cruel and unusual" means as our constitution prohibits. We
cannot "win" this war by sinking to their level. It may sound like a
good
idea to be hypocritical and torture those we labeled terrorists in ways
that
we would never use on our own people, to obtain information on their
plans
or their leaders, but hypocrisy in a war on terror is always a bad idea.
When others hear about that, it simply breeds more terror. They are
following an idea, not a leader. If we could capture Bin Laden, they
could
simply declare a new leader.


Consititution? First, they are not citizens. Only rule that applies here
is
the Geneva convention. That is why troops carry the Geneva convention
card.
And the point of my previous meandering. Thankfully our leaders have
ignored
the whims of other countries that want us dragged into some international
court. Like justice real exists around the world. Troops mainly answer to
the UCMJ.
Norman

I understand you want to treat our citizens nice and do whatever we want to
our captives, but that's not how our current government sees it. They want
to apply the "no cruel and unusual means" clause of our constitution to our
captives as well, to avoid the hypocrisy. They don't want us to torture our
own citizens, so they don't want us to torture our enemies, in the hopes
that if our enemies capture our citizens they won't torture them either.
That most likely would not be the reality, but it might help convince other
nations to support us if indeed our enemies torture our people. Our
government and media has recently attacked our military for using such
torture methods on captured al Quaeda as water-boarding and sensory
deprivation. Next they got in trouble for handing over our prisoners to
other countries that didn't have laws against cruel torture methods.
Besides what other countries might think of us, or intend to do to our
people, we have to worry about what to do with our prisoners who are
suspected of terrorist acts and later found to be innocent.