Responsible for our own prisoners

Well, here's a lot of right-wing nutbars saying of Afghanistan, "It's their country" (and therefore they can torture anyone they like).

Right, ... and Castro is an abomination who must be removed because .....?

If it's "their country" why are Canadian soldiers running around shooting at people?
Oh yeah, that's right, ... our puppet government is unpopular, to the extent that the dreadful Taliban is making a comeback.

Let me repeat that for you: The government that we're propping up is so bad that the Taliban is actually rising in popular opinion over there.

The welfare of our prisoners becomes Canada's business when we get ourselves into the position where we have captured people and have to turn them over to someone.

Regarding the general tendency of right-wing scumbags to cherry-pick international law in a desperate attempt to justify torture and murder, only forces that obey the laws of war merit the consideration of human rights.

By your logic, US soldiers attacking hospitals, raping civilians, etc., ... actually, engaged in the entire illegal invasion of Iraq, are therefore not lawful combatants and have no human rights that need to be respected.

I'll repeat: That is according to YOUR logic.

(What follows is an excerpted portion of my debate with someone from that hate site.)

You people are ridiculous. You cannot hold Canada up as an example of "civilization" on the one hand, and then dismiss allegations of torture and violations of human rights with the other.
It's really high time that you all realized your monkey-brained limitations, lowered your heads in shame, and renounced all claims on our political discussions. Because you truly are revolting.

You are cut from the same cloth as the Taliban fanatics.

[I've edited this to encompass a mini-exchange between myself and someone who has a relatively firm grasp (though I think an incorrect one) of the Geneva Conventions. I'm as unimpressed with his wider ravings and his nonchalant use of the word "leftard" but it's one of the better uses of the "we're allowed to execute or torture illegal combatants under the Geneva Conventions" that I've had to deal with.]



http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/03/08/3715494-ap.html
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/11/afghan1114.htm
By all means, torture anyone who disagrees.
Show them (your own twisted vision of) Canadian values.

The Geneva Conventions are what delusional leftards use to try to justify their fantasies with some thin veneer of authority when they think something should happen according to their opinion.

The Conventions are clear, unambiguous and clearly unread by the left. But then the facts are not the point. Lefty judges "read in" stuff into our constitution deliberately left out so there is certainly precedent to what these people are
doing. What is irksome is that they get away with it. No only are they adding stuff that isn't there, they're manipulating, distorting and rendering ineffective the reasoning for what IS there.

The GC's were for the protection of Civilians and legal militaries in that order. They were set up to enact swift and severe punishment to the violators for not obeying the rules of war. If combatants are allowed to hide amongst civilians and fight out of uniform they get civilians killed (and it's the ones hiding in civilian areas that are responsible for the deaths, not the legal combatants firing on them. In last year's Lebonon war, that would be Hezbollah that was committing war crimes not the Jews.) Therefore, It was clear that illegal combatants lose all
protections when they violate the conventions. This is not up for debate. It
couldn't be more clearly outlined in the documents. It could also not matter
less to the leftards who rely more on their feelings than the facts they can't
be bothered to learn.

Taliban prisoners are subject to whatever they get. They have NO rights under the GC's. None.

They DO have protection from the UN Treaty Against Torture. So, if you leftards want to thank me for taking the 20 seconds it takes to do your homework for you, I can proceed to draw the conclusion that although Taliban terrorists should not be tortured, they should just not be taken prisoner to begin with. Yes, that means shoot them on sight.

That's legal for terrorists under both treaties (GC's specifically condones it
and the Treaty Against Torture is silent on the matter.) Now if you're a
retard lefty who wants to dish out their usual idiot opinion, at least spend the
20 seconds required to get your F'ing facts correct. Or better yet, kill
yourself for being too stupid to live.


As for why someone would be for war, it's the wrong question. The correct question is why is there nothing important enough for you to fight for? Is your life that small? Do you have so little to defend that you don't value anything? Is there no one you care about that you'd defend?

Am I for war? Depends on who's on the menu. I'm against war with Haiti cause there isn't a point to it. They aren't a threat. I'm for the war against islamofascism cause they want to destroy my culture, country, family and aside from that I'd like to keep my head if at all possible. If that means some of the people doing the threatening lose theirs instead, so be it.


Funny, the leftards are now silent on the GC's.
I guess they've been properly educated. They've moved on to more base sophistry and petty insults and stopped trying to apply a thin veneer of credibility to their
stupidity.

At least its progress.

Well, "Warwick," thanks for the non-lesson. You do a good job of spinning for someone with zero-credibility.
The Geneva Conventions state that if there is any question as to the status of a prisoner, a competent tribunal should be formed to judge on their status.
Not, you p-o-m-p-o-u-s oaf, that the soldiers involved get to summarily execute everyone they capture, to explain it away later that all of the dead were "illegal combatants."
Furthermore, d1mw1t, as I already pointed out to you, ... by your own hateful, can't-wait-to-torture, tortured logic, all troops that have violated the laws of war have rendered themselves "illegal combatants" as well, and therefore, have no human rights whatsoever.
Way to dig your own grave.

Thwap,
Re the taliban, there are no questions as to their status under the GC's. None. They are subject to summary execution under GC rules as illegal combatants. This was routinely carried out prior to the baby boomer generation bastardizing society in the west. The status of the taliban is crystal clear to anyone with at least rudimentary reading comprehension skills.

Troops that violate the GC's but are otherwise legal combatants are subject to military discipline (including by the opposing army) as they would have committed a war crime. There is a difference here as well. If you torture a legal combatant or civilian and you yourself are a legal combatant you can be court martialled or held to account in a military tribunal such as in Nuremberg. War crimes necessitate a trial. Illegal combatants do not.

Taliban do not get protection against torture or execution under the GC's. They do get protection against torture under the UN Treaty Against Torture. As I stated earlier, the taliban should not be subjected to torture (see UN Treaty mentioned above.) They should be executed under the rules of the GC's. In other words, by taking prisoners, you are allowing these people to return to the community at some point to kill again. Why put the people of Afghanistan through that?
The other thing is that while we can be expected to be humane, we can't be expected to do the impossible. We don't have the troops to run a jail. We have to turn the taliban over to someone. If some other party is running jails in Afghanistan I'm all in favour of sending them there if it'll make you lot happy. Other than that, if there's no where else to send them, the Afghan government will have to deal with them. We can send them complaints if they're torturing people like the UN sends off all the time. It isn't Canada that is doing the torturing.

Part of the reason that the people of Afghanistan are loosing patience with the UN mission there is that they don't see that we have the balls to do what is necessary to keep them safe. They see all the fighting as futile as long as we lack the ruthlessness to eliminate the threat and allow their communities to be safe. If you think that our presence is just delaying the inevitable and you think that the taliban will be allowed to take over once the west loses interest, you can be forgiven for cynically calling for the troops to get on with it and leave. There's no point dying for a loss.

The taliban can read. They can see that support for the Afghan war is weakening.
They know that their attacks are what is weakening it and can see that the west
is now unwilling to do anything that is hard. They (rightly) see our society as effete and weak and our people as quitters who lose interest as soon as the going gets hard. We didn't learn the lessons of Vietnam, Rwanda and Somalia but they did. They know that they don't have to win a war, be able to win battles or keep territory like armies used to have to do to win. They just have to survive long enough and to inflict enough damage that we lose our will to continue. They don't have to earn victory, the just have to have the staying power to let us hand it to them. Defeatism earns defeat. Simple really.

Dig your own grave.

There's no spinning here. Just facts.

Warwick,

I will extend to you the compliment that you appear to be blessed with at least half a brain.

Obviously, I'll prefer to go with this interpretation of the GC's rather than with yours:

"The Geneva convention also makes it clear that it isn't for Rumsfeld to decide whether the detainees are ordinary criminal suspects rather than PoWs. Anyone detained in the course of an armed conflict is presumed to be a PoW until a competent court or tribunal determines otherwise. The record shows that those who negotiated the convention were intent on making it impossible for the determination to be made by any single person. "

from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,,632303,00.html


I cannot believe that there is a document that states that soldiers can unilaterally execute anyone they see, so long as they offer uninvestigated claims that those killed were "illegal" or "unlawful combatants."

Besides, as you, yourself point out, the torture violates a UN Treaty, if not the GC's. But let's continue ...

Regarding your contention that the people of Afghanistan are losing patience with the UN mission because we're not ruthless enough to keep them safe, I beg to differ.

As has been reported, and as I've stated, we're losing the popularity contest with the Taliban because our reconstruction has been a joke and because Karzai's government is brutal and corrupt.

If people over there were sick of our failure to destroy the Taliban, JOINING the Taliban seems like a strange way to express their anger at us AND them.

"Today the rural and lawless south has become the perfect hideaway for the insurgency and a breeding ground for future Taliban recruits. "The alienated tribes in the southern region have been subjected to bad governance, which has increased the difference between the tribes," said Koenigs. "This has created a huge discontent in the region." Disappointed with the Karzai government and the international community, the peasants in the south have begun to look to the Taliban for strong, trustworthy leadership. Koenigs stressed that this is an insurgency "with support from the people in the region." The consequences of ignoring it would be dire."

These are the "terrorists" we're fighting. You can find other sources for this. Very often, the foot-soldiers of the Taliban are Afghan peasants, moved to take up arms in anger at the government we've imposed upon them.

You might want to summarily execute these men, or carelessly toss them to the torturers, ... I do not.

We aren't losing because we're "effete" and "weak," or anything. We're losing because we have failed those people. And if the job was too big and doomed to failure, what did we get involved with it in the first place for?

For that matter, why did the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, work so much to create this nightmare so many years ago?