Here’s the problem with that:
“There have been 759 people detained in Guantanamo. According to Department of Defense data, despite public assertions to the contrary by senior Department of Defense officials, only one of the 759 detainees was alleged to have been initially captured on a battlefield by United States forces.”
Quote by: Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, Seton Hall Law School, Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Law,December 11, 2007, in written testimony before the Senate subcommittee.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=3052&wit_id=6816

You presume that these are people that were caught in pitched gunbattles, then taken into custody. The reality seems to be these were people that bounty hunters brought in and claimed were reeeeeeeely bad terrorists. We accepted that and locked them up for six years and counting.

Does your opinion change if the people we’re abusing are innocent? Or does it not matter? If the whole point is to look vicious, then it doesn’t matter who we’re abusing. If the point is to fight the terrorists . . . then abusing innocent people doesn’t seem to have a purpose at all.

If the argument is we have to abuse and violate innocents until we randomly stumble across the possible “honest-to-God threat-to-America terrorist”, I just can’t agree with that, and I hope you don’t either.

You note that the Fighting spirit of the GIs “had an effect” on the Japaneese. What was the effect? Did they cede territory to us? Give up? Sure, they respected how fiercely we could fight . . . but they kept fighting. We respected how fierce they were . . . and we kept fighting. When the Japaneese resorted to Kamakaze attacks, we were “impressed” by how fanatical and dedicated they were . . . but we didn’t turn the ships around. Even presuming the attitudes changed, what was the practical effect?
If there’s no practical effect, then why sacrifice our integrity?

Take the japanese during WW2 for example, who say the Americans as weak and soft, not having the same willingness to die.

By the time Okinawa came around, with the savagery that took place, the Japanese knew that the Americans could be as ruthless as they and it had an effect.

But just as lack of national resolve in Vietnam led to us leaving just as we were winning, this discussion of whether waterboarding is torture only enables them.

If we think waterboarding is too tough and they see this national wreching over how bad we are, they will see us as weak and without resolve. I heard a discussion of this on Fox tonight with one commentator stating we should not do it (waterboard) because it might make the enemy do cruel things to our soldiers that they take prisoner. Fact is, #1) they don’t take prisoners, #2, they do far worse to our soldiers when they kill them than waterboarding, which DOESN’T KILL.

They must fear us as they try to make us fear them, it’s as simple as that.

Hume,
It is my understanding that nearly all of the early prisoners at GITMO were captured on the battlefield. I also understand that that has changed. But I also understand that GITMO is not our only detention center but is reserved for high value detainees. My point was this: the debate on GITMO, waterboarding, cruelty, Geneva convention, torture/not torture….. would end if we simply dropped them where they stood instead of taking them prisoner. Makes it a moot point.

Ellis, you stopped an article too late…Article 4 states who is afforded rights under the convention, 4.1.2 and 4.1.3 exclude our current enemy.

Could this commenter tell us what percentage of those held in GITMO were captured on the battlefied?

@ Marv:
“That’s what will end the war, not this namby pamby BS about whose more cruel, us or them….”

you really think that people who are willing to die are going to stop because we’re mean? “Gee, that Great Satan is too tough . . . guess we better quit.” Really? Seems a remarkably rational approatch for remarkably irrational people.

It’s called the Geneva Conventions. Here is the relevant part:

Article 5
The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

In other words, either a person is a civilian or an enemy soldier, and if you don’t know which they are, they get POW protections until a tribunal decides their status.

“Actually the US Congress and President did, many years ago when they ratified the Geneva Convention regarding torture.”

Actually, they didn’t slick. Feel free to go thru the GC and show me where it lists permissible and impermissible specific interregation techniques.

Furthermore, since our enemies are not following the geneva convention, I really don’t think they should be afforded its protections. And, since Al Queda is not a signer of the convention, nor is it following the tenants, the US has no legal obligation to follow it (moral, another story).

Your comment was deleted for being outrageously, over the top, ridiculous.

“Conservatives love torture?”

Proof please. And while you’re at it, include some proof that Bigfoot exists and that microwave ovens were invented by aliens.

So what are you basing such an assertion on and could you point out the ratified article?