torture? abuse? you mean war crime ?

Isn't the T & A word debate just another smoke screen ?

It may be a few more letters but still only two syllables.

Why not call it what it really is and turn them all over to the Hague.

The war criminals can then be sorted out, tried, punished
or at least identified.

Torture, abuse they all look like war crimes to moof.

Oh sorry, does that violate the "you can't compare them to NAZI's"
clause ?

Seems like they gave up the right to negate that comparison when they invoked the "only following orders" line.

Just to insure that the stance here is understood, they all should
face the charges from the private to the president as well as those merely present. Anyone that witnessed any of these war crimes and remained silent sails on the same boat to the Hague as far as justice goes. This of course will be one of the larger ironys of this ordeal.
The small fish will be stripped and tossed in a pile by the higher ups the same way they stripped and piled up the Iraq detainees and with the same lack of thought and compassion.

It seems very unjust to destroy a few little fish if any big fish are allowed to get away but then again when was the last time that anyone
that was really responsible was actually held responsible ?

As far as war crimes are concerned, "war" is between two contracting parties to the Geneva Convention, and the current combatents in Iraq are not.

Neither are the people picked up subsequently on any other charge after the war.

They are just "prisoners". This is what a reasonable sounding expert on NPR outlined a few days ago.

Not that this fine distinction means much on the Arab street, or the rest of the world for that matter.

This not only undermines our war efforts, it undermines the long-standing U.S. position on human rights. If we treat prisoners this way, how can we complain about the behavior of other nations?

First some enlightenment, who are "two contracting parties to the Geneva Convention " involved in the dispute that Milososhit is being tried for in the Hague right now ? or isn't he being tried for war crimes ?

second , it is way more than a sore spot that this countries leadership keeps allowing these non war/wars to be waged.
That said since there is little likelyhood of of anyone getting any serious hard time over any of this wny not dispense with the futility
of a mock debate over if a war crime should be called abuse or torture?

As is pointed out below only the winners get to prosecute the war criminals. It would however be so very interesting to see a few of these war criminals taken prisoner by some resourceful group and turn them over to the Hague along with a few of the people they comitted the crimes against to bear witness. How far up the chain of command would they allow it to go before the special forces would be sent in to save them ?

Actually the US has not been to war since WWII - we've had lots of military actions but no war since Congress had not declared war and preferred to abdicate their constitutional responsiblity to "authorize" the executive to act militarily. It's sad, really. I think the framers of the Constitution were dead right on this one. This means that the last "war president" was Harry S Truman.

So these people are in a sense not guilty of war crimes since they are simi legal combatants. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway you can't try US soldiers in the Hague because we don't recognize its authority.

Between getting away with it or doing the perp walk at the Hague--Oh I forgot, only losers get tried for war crimes.

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."

Robert L. Jackson, Chief U.S. Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals

The words used in International Law are "miss-treatment" and "torture"; "abuse" is not used in it.

By calling it "abuse" they want to imply that it was a prank, nothing illegal.

Amnesty International calls it "torture" with good reason: by the definition it was torture, not just "miss-treatment" and certainly more than simply "abuse".

That kind of fraternity hazing is illegal and has been prosecuted. And the "victims" were voluntary pledges.

If Warner and DeLay uphold this, their heads should roll too!

This War IS crime. How many since the Geneva convention.

People are just like that. Don't think otherwise. We love our lifestyle. Quit bitching about its cost.
Without the present stucture we would be very unhappy. Well whatever.