Freed after 14 years in prison without charges, Guantánamo torture victim speaks out

It was never our objective to charge many. Our objective was to take them off the battlefield.
The Geneva Conventions came from an era of mass armies in uniform. They are inadequate to face an un-uniformed enemy who deliberately takes positions among civilians, targets civilians, and seeks death himself.

 

Sounds like you got my position reversed somewhere .. .so no . not suggesting that at all.

Currently - in the present -- "Assad" is where our standards are .. worse truth be told.. What I am suggesting is that our standards shold be higher.

 

The US went specifically on a war on terror. And a war it was. They went there with their machines to kill around, and so I really fail to see how captured opponents do not fall under the Geneva Conventions as POW's. I am aware of the world lingo the US government tossed at it. And no doubt you can parrot it. But that is taking the word of the culprit who broke besides the Geneva Conventions also human rights laws by extensively torturing people around and locking them up without any kind of trial or evidence for decades. Nothing stood in the way to trial them in the US or something. But they chose to go down the wrong path, since we all know they had nothing on them. This is not just my opinion, but the opinion of the red cross. The US is a signatory of the GC and they just trashed it. Even worse. Afghanistan is a signatory too, and so the Taliban as it's governmental entity were protected by it on that side too. Eventually that nazi of a Rumsfeld lost the courtcase over it in the US (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) banning the US to apply not just torture but all kinds of inhumane degrading treatment. With that, the curtain fell. It seems you think you can pull it up again.

The idea was to get this crucial information out of those people about some potential terrorist strike. That's why Americans were torturing them people so extensively / attempting to find ways to do that while supposately not breaking the law. But in the end, they had absolutely no information. And the reason why the US kept those people for decades, is because the US didn't want them living in the US, while other countries refused to help out where they could to solve the problem the US created where those innocent people should go to. You simply can not trust the US. Nothing shows any kind of regret. Some president in the future can try that crap all over again, and than try to ditch that problem on it's allies again. Hence the allies mostly closed the doors on the US and hence got stuck with their problem.. as an ugly skit mark on a white coat reminding them to not do it again.

While your claim of taking them off the "battlefield" is actually you recognizing them as soldiers.

 

Mere presence on the battlefield does not confer status as lawful combatants.
Under enhanced interrogation one only asks questions to which one already knows the answers. It is to achieve compliance, not to elicit intelligence.
Counterterrorism operations were not conducted to generate trial cases. They were conducted to destroy the terrorist threat.

 

Not according to the concept of natural rights. No sir.

 

If someone here wants to end participation in the Geneva conventions, then that should be decided.

If we want to decide to torture humans, than we need to step up to the plate and STATE that is our intention. The idea of shuffling prisoners to backwaters that will torture humans for us, or to set up Bagram and other places that WE run as full on torture chambers, that THAT is what we need to say that is what America STANDS FOR.

The WORLD has the videos of what America did and continues to do.

Then, IDIOTS come to various countries and suggest THEY should care about the rule of law!!

How STUPID are you thinking that we should appear?

What is it that you think America stands for?

 

THANKS for correcting me!!

And, a big AMEN.

 

Which is unimportant.

 

We are free to defend ourselves. You should recall that since 1941 the US has not faced a single adversary that had any regard for the Geneva Conventions.
“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them
all they want.”

― William Tecumseh Sherman

 

Conquering Vietnam, LIbya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., is NOT defending ourselves.

In fact, WE got attacked on 911, because of OUR enslavement of the people of Saudi Arabia, carried out because of our desire to rule the world with our military.

We support Israel in their ethnic cleansing of Palestine, including the more than 20 years of constant war wrecked by Israel on the people of Gaza.

We eliminated the government of Iran, and conspire against Iran today to the extent that radicals are able to stay in power by pointing to America - and Israel, of course.

We laugh in the face of the UN and its work on human rights and government, as well as the clear analysis we toss in the garbage when we concoct lies such as how Iraq has WMDs, how Iraq is creating drones to spread those WMDs on America, and other well known falsehoods.

If we wanted to be safe, our military approach to everyone else living on Earth would be VERY, VERY different.

 

I will not honor that irrational, uninformed rant with a reply.

 

Too late!!

But, I do understand why you can't actually respond.

 

No. It's apparent you don't understand at all.

 

You are so steeped in the military approach to slaughtering people from pretty much anywhere that you just don't see issues such as the law, human rights, the codependence we have through economics, etc.

You're happy just killing those you THINK are somehow opposed to ideas of ethics and law that you think you have - but have NO intent to respect.

And, you seem SHOCKED when those in other lands strongly oppose being killed, tortured, having their land stolen, having their homes bombed and/or bulldozed, etc.

 

And to you as well AMEN .. you were probably so shocked that someone would take that side -- running against the herd of stampeding sheep - you just naturally assumed .. easy to do in long post.

 

Red Cross has an opinion I don't share. I don't share most of your opinions either, son.

 

Wrong again. No military forces in history have taken more pains (and risks) to minimize civilian casualties than those of the US in the modern era.

 

It is important if you consider what drove the founders to create the nation as a haven for human beings against the horrors of other types of regimes and systems. It is important if you believe the concepts outlined in the Dec of Ind, in the BOR and the 9th amendment. It is important if you grasp the morality of universal human rights. It is important if you want our nation to be an example for good in the world. But if none of this matters, then it is unimportant.

 

There are no natural rights or universal human rights. There are only those rights we can claim and defend, for ourselves and for others. The greatness of the US lies in our willingness to do that for ourselves and on behalf of those too weak to defend themselves. For this we are sometimes attacked, and we are fee to be as ruthless as necessary to defend ourselves and our allies.

 

Let's send him back to Afghanistan. And then kill him with a drone strike.

 

The catch is that the minimal is still monumentally unacceptable.

We had a revolution over representation - representation being an issue in which civilian casualties outside of criminal justice were not allowed. The point, as if that has to be explained, is that killing people is NOT the only imposition we wreck on civilians. We deprive civilians of representation, we support the theft of their land, we ensure the continuation of humanitarian atrocity by those we like. And, we do this by military force.

It goes beyond the military, too. We do foreign policy through the military - drastically reducing the influence of our State Department, failing to consider negotiation, supporting the perpetual war against Gaza and the humanitarian atrocities in West Bank through our military and financial support to Israel.

The problem is not limited to whether we actually kill them. But, we absolutely DO do that, too. I'm positive you understand that our military actions cause the death of large numbers of civilians.

I'm not a pacifist. We need military strength. But, what we do as policy with the monumental military power and pathetic diplomatic power is lethal and not successful.

 

This is a foundational element in the decision that other people's rights are to be totally ignored.

If others can't defend their rights against the military power of the USA, then those rights don't even exist - according to you.

And, I think applying that evil philosophy is something we do quite frequently.

Palestine can not defend itself against Israel. So, YOUR logic is that Palestinians have NO rights - not even rights to their own homes and property, their orchards, their water sources, their representation in the Israeli military government that rules much of their population, their ability to travel, to export goods, etc., etc.

That may be an extreme example, but it exists today, justified by YOUR philosophy that their rights are irrelevant, because they don't have a large enough military.

That is how your philosophy is applied, and not in just this one case.

 

Well that went right over your head. In one respect you are right, power dictates what are rights and who defends them. But the real origin of these ideas was not about power, it was about humanity. You might want to educate yourself on this topic, try philosophy.

 

Having been in the intelligence business for 34 years, and having spent 18 of those years abroad, I think your view is very incomplete.

 

The Palestinians are paying the price for generations of military incompetence and political stupidity. When a way forward was offered (Oslo) they walked away. Their predicament is of their own making.
In our defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War the US achieved the greatest act of liberation of other peoples in human history.