Here's the problem with "detainees" - Democratic Underground

frogcycle

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Fri May-22-09 08:13 AM
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Here's the problem with "detainees"

Two ways we can legally incarcerate are through the criminal justice system and as POWs in time of declared war.

There is no war. The "war on terror" is no more a war by GC standards than the "war on poverty" or the "war on drugs."

By any rational definition it has to be considered a law enforcement activity. I personally think it not unreasonable to apply the protections of the Constitution only to US Citizens and legal residents, and to declare that "law enforcement" has the right to treat foreigners breaking our laws on our soil or against our sovereign property overseas (ships, embassies) as assailants (that would probably have to include drug smugglers and human traffickers) and to declare the right to "go after them" like attacking the Afghan training camps, including, perhaps, without host country consent (equate it to "hot pursuit"). It might be able to include those conspiring to do so. Kind of a "RICO for terrorists" concept. I think this could be carefully worded and issued as an assertion of international rights that would hold up. We'd have to live with other countries having the same rights.

So you assert the right to "go get them" and exterminate them. We just blow them away on the "battlefield." We don't try them; we shred them. These 40 or so that are neither fish not fowl - truly demonstrable bad guys, with records, not just aspirations, put themselves into this no man's land and bushco exacerbated the problem by putting them in a highly-publicized concentration camp, creating a huge worldwide embarrassment and recruiting tool for the other guys. Bush did the equivalent of the medieval warlords who put enemies heads on a pike to intimidate their brethren by creating and bragging about Gitmo. But Just as capital punishment is not a deterrent, Gitmo is not a deterrent. There is NO good solution.

We need Gitmo to "go away" and we need these 40 or so to "go away." If they were still on the loose we'd be hunting them down in whatever country they are hiding in, firing missiles at them from Predator drones. If we knew where bin Laden was, we'd smoke him in a New York minute. No trial. We have KSM; he doesn't know squat that could be useful to us now.

We should either line them up against a wall and shoot them, or else take them somewhere and release them; then smoke them. I'm serious. Agonizing over their "human rights" and all is absurdly hypocritical when we are doing the shit we are doing unapologetically in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Say, here's a suggestion:

Remember the WKRP episode with the turkeys? The radio station ran a promo where they dropped live turkeys from a plane for people to capture for thanksgiving dinner. But they were the overfed domestic turkeys. The punchline to the show from the station manager was "as god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly"

Maybe we could deliver them to their new home by parachute. Have KBR consultants fold and prep the parachutes.