----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeffrey Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 3:21 PM Subject: Re: Egg on my face (was Re: Treatment Of Prisoners) > > I'd like to see us (the US) have a consistent moral stand in this - what > possible reason could we have for not affording them the full rights of > POWs and human & sensitive treatment?
As far as I know, if they had followed the "if" clauses, and attacked the WTC and the Pentagon with conventional bombers flown by pilots wearing uniforms, then those pilots would not be subject to prosecution. The Pentagon is certainly a legitimate war target, and if factories are legitimate targets, I'm guessing that the WTC would be too. After the end of the war, we would be required to free them unless they did something besides attacking these two targets. But, they did not use these methods. Rather, they dressed as civilians and used civilian airplanes as weapons. The Geneva convention can be seen as having a twofold purpose. It is to regulate how warfare is waged as well as how prisoners are treated. AQ violated the conventions rules on waging warfare, thus they are subjected to penelties that do not exist for those who follow the rules of warfare. > Note that I'm not saying that humane treatment isn't the case, but > between the military tribunals, the questions surrounding the issue of > human treatment raised by watchdog groups (who admittedly are more than > a little rabid, for good reason) we need transparency, openess, and > compassion. Either we are morally correct in this or we're not - its > hard to say how just we're being if we're hiding those actions. I thought the Red Cross/Red Cresent will have access to the prisoners. > What about flipping it around? What if the Taliban/AQ/Forces of Evil > managed to shoot down a helicopter and took the pilot prisoner, and > didn't treat them as a POW as outlined in the GC? Wouldn't we be as mad > as a nest of hornets? If our soldiers were treated in a similar manner, I would be extremely thankful and surprised. Remember, they promised to drag them through the streets. I'm guessing that Jeffery will not respond to this. If my last post sounded a bit short, the reasons for AQ not qualifying as POWs under the Geneva convention have been given several times. The last time, I quoted the convention. This wasn't even adressed in the origonal comment. Dan M.
