Re: Scouted: Bush decides on prisoner status

[Bemmzim]

In a message dated 2/7/2002 6:47:37 PM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

I'm not assaulting Brett - but I'm _tired_ of this.  No one - and I mean _no
one_ who has accused the United States of acting improperly with regard to
these prisoners has presented a shred of evidence.  What I've heard on this
list are constant accusations and condemnations.  When Dan and I (among
others) presented fairly closely argued defenses of what was happening based
on the actual texts of the Geneva Conventions, we were ignored or told that
we were being obnoxious because we were so presumptuous as to back up our
opinions with actual facts.  God forbid someone should actually go ahead and
make a counterargument to support their opinion.  Brett's post, if I
understood it correctly, was a suggestion that American soldiers would now
be treated improperly because we had debated how we would treat soldiers who
are not actually protected by the Conventions.  Well, American soldiers have
been treated improperly in just about every war we've ever fought.  This
constant assumption - that everything that we do is wrong, and everything
our enemies do is a reaction to our own supposed malfeasance - gets to me
after a while.  I don't think everybody outside North America is
anti-American - but God knows I wonder about this list often enough.

Gautam

to me the issue was not how we treated the prisoners but how the administration presented itself (and by extension all of US). It is very important for us to build and maintain a multi-national consensus if we are to succeed in our fight against terrorism. So what is the harm in saying we will apply the Geneva Conventions until each case is evaluated.

Some of those captures were in essence soldiers others were much more. Why not decide this rationally? It is my understanding that our own military was and is very unhappy that we were not applying the Geneva Convention to at least some of the captives. This simply makes life more dangerous for them and to what end? That we can say that no one tells us how to behave?