George Bush found Guilty of War Crimes in Malaysia

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**LoneLictor**

Linky

I guess Bush can't go on vacation to Malaysia or any countries that extradite there (assuming any countries extradite there). Considering the crimes that Bush was convicted of, Obama could probably be convicted too. He's still running gitmo. But yeah, this news probably won't affect Bush much.

**Frazzled**

Awesome.

**LoneLictor**

Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. People are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

**Frazzled**

LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. Foreigners who have no rights and tried to kill Americans are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Corrected your typo. But yea its awesome. The US should respond with a very polite "oops sorry, did we just cut all your foreign aid? Oh wow, you say your navy just mysteriously sank? We're as shocked as you are."

**Hordini**

LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. People are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Barring a few of the more high profile exceptions, aren't most of the prisoners people who got picked up as enemy combatants in Iraq or Afghanistan? That's a little bit different than just being "whisked away." And how is it different than basically any prisoner of war camp ever? If someone gets captured during a fight with US forces, you don't lock them up to charge them with a crime and make them stand trial. You lock them up until the fighting is over in order to keep them off the battlefield without killing them.

**LoneLictor**

Frazzled wrote:
LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. Foreigners who have no rights and tried to kill Americans are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Corrected your typo. But yea its awesome. The US should respond with a very polite "oops sorry, did we just cut all your foreign aid? Oh wow, you say your navy just mysteriously sank? We're as shocked as you are."

How do we know if they killed people IF THEY DIDN'T GET TRIALS?

**Frazzled**

LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. Foreigners who have no rights and tried to kill Americans are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Corrected your typo. But yea its awesome. The US should respond with a very polite "oops sorry, did we just cut all your foreign aid? Oh wow, you say your navy just mysteriously sank? We're as shocked as you are."

How do we know if they killed people IF THEY DIDN'T GET TRIALS?

They were prisoners caught shooting at US troops is usually an excellent indicator.

**LoneLictor**

Frazzled wrote:They were prisoners caught shooting at US troops is usually an excellent indicator.

[sarcasm]Yes, because it's a known, sourced and well documented fact that every single prisoner in Gitmo was caught shooting at US troops.[/sarcasm]

**dæl**

They should do the same to Blair, i'd happily drive him to the airport.

Guantanamo is just evil, and the Foreign office and MI5 are just as guilty, allowing the torture of people they knew were working in a branch of Currys when it was alleged they were at a terrorist training camp.

**Hordini**

Frazzled wrote:
LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:
LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. Foreigners who have no rights and tried to kill Americans are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Corrected your typo. But yea its awesome. The US should respond with a very polite "oops sorry, did we just cut all your foreign aid? Oh wow, you say your navy just mysteriously sank? We're as shocked as you are."

How do we know if they killed people IF THEY DIDN'T GET TRIALS?

They were prisoners caught shooting at US troops is usually an excellent indicator.

Yeah, you beat me to it Frazzled. I don't get why so many people have such a hard time figuring out how the whole prisoner of war thing works, and why it doesn't always involve trials if the guys who got captured didn't commit any war crimes. If you don't want to get stuck in Guantanamo for years, don't take pot shots at US or coalition soldiers.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:They were prisoners caught shooting at US troops is usually an excellent indicator.

[sarcasm]Yes, because it's a known, sourced and well documented fact that every single prisoner in Gitmo was caught shooting at US troops.[/sarcasm]

I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

**Polonius**

As a rule, combatents dont' get trials. The thought is, fighting as a soldier is not a crime. Getting captured is unfortunate, but that means you get to sit out the conflict.

Note that this typically only applies to organized forces. For non-uniformed fighters, the geneva conventions don't strictly apply.

What's interesting about the gitmo controversy is that it's really only a controversy because they were moved out of theater and interrogated. As non-uniformed fighters, IIRC, they could simply be executed by military tribunals. Especially given the low numbers involved, that sort of policy would probably not have resulted in substantial controversy.

Neither domestic criminal law nor international war crimes law really cover insurgents.

**Hordini**

dæl wrote:They should do the same to Blair, i'd happily drive him to the airport.

Guantanamo is just evil, and the Foreign office and MI5 are just as guilty, allowing the torture of people they knew were working in a branch of Currys when it was alleged they were at a terrorist training camp.

Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested in doing some further reading, if you've got a link or two.

**Polonius**

Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

there is literally no way of knowing.

The problem is that any given source of any information has every reason to lie (the US military and government vs. the prisoner).

Your view on the issue will almost assuredly come down to how much you trust the Bush administration.

**LoneLictor**

Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

We don't know. Maybe if we gave them trials we could find out.

But basically, what we do is whisk people away and then torture them because there's a chance that they might be useful to us. And for some reason, very few people view this as immoral.

**Polonius**

LoneLictor wrote:
Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

We don't know. Maybe if we gave them trials we could find out.

But basically, what we do is whisk people away and then torture them because there's a chance that they might be useful to us. And for some reason, very few people view this as immoral.

Welcome to international relations when you're a superpower. Individual morality seldom controls.

Also, while I doubt every gitmo prisoner was a confirmed jihadist trying to kill americans, let's not paint the situation as American soldiers grabbing random people from their beds in the night to torture them for a decade.

As always, nuance is your friend.

**Hordini**

Polonius wrote:
Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

there is literally no way of knowing.

The problem is that any given source of any information has every reason to lie (the US military and government vs. the prisoner).

Your view on the issue will almost assuredly come down to how much you trust the Bush administration.

Well, and how much you trust Obama and his administration, since he promised to close it and then decided it was so important it needed to stay open. Maybe it says something about the situation that two Presidents from opposing parties decided to keep it open, one even going to far as to go back on a pretty significant campaign promise to do it.

LoneLictor wrote:
Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

We don't know. Maybe if we gave them trials we could find out.

But basically, what we do is whisk people away and then torture them because there's a chance that they might be useful to us. And for some reason, very few people view this as immoral.

Why should we give an enemy combatant a trial? What crime should we charge them with? Again, the point of taking prisoners of war isn't to charge them with crimes and punish them, it's to keep them off the battlefield without killing them. Should we just send them back to Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever to be recycled into the local insurgent groups and militias, until they get killed or recaptured, and possibly killing other people in the process?

**dæl**

Hordini wrote:Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested in doing some further reading, if you've got a link or two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipton_Three
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/04/afghanistan.usa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/mar/14/terrorism.guantanamo
http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/resources/library/documents-and-reports/tipton_report.pdf

**AustonT**

LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Barack "The Failure" Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconsitutional thing imaginable. People are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

I made your post bipartisan. You are welcome.
To my knowledge the constitution does not grant rights to the citizens of other countries.

**Hordini**

That situation sounds unfortunate dael, and like I said, I'm not saying that it's impossible that there are people in Guantanamo that shouldn't be. However, that doesn't mean that it should become standard procedure to charge combatants picked up in firefights in Iraq or Afghanistan with crimes and put them on trial, when the point is keeping them off the battlefield. Even if Guantanamo closed, we'd still need a place to hold prisoners of war, and they would just end up being held somewhere else.

**Polonius**

Hordini wrote:
Polonius wrote:
Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

there is literally no way of knowing.

The problem is that any given source of any information has every reason to lie (the US military and government vs. the prisoner).

Your view on the issue will almost assuredly come down to how much you trust the Bush administration.

Well, and how much you trust Obama and his administration, since he promised to close it and then decided it was so important it needed to stay open. Maybe it says something about the situation that two Presidents from opposing parties decided to keep it open, one even going to far as to go back on a pretty significant campaign promise to do it.

True, although I think most Obama defenders would point out that far fewer remained at Gitmo under Obama.

Myself? I don't lose a lot of sleep about it.

**ShumaGorath**

Frazzled wrote:
LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. Foreigners who have no rights and tried to kill Americans are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Corrected your typo. But yea its awesome. The US should respond with a very polite "oops sorry, did we just cut all your foreign aid? Oh wow, you say your navy just mysteriously sank? We're as shocked as you are."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay
Where is the comic book that you live in? Does Nicholas Cage own it? It's probably an original.

**Hordini**

Polonius wrote:
Hordini wrote:
Polonius wrote:
Hordini wrote:I'm not saying there's no chance that some people who are in Guantanamo might be there for the wrong reasons, but seriously, aren't the majority of them enemy combatants?

there is literally no way of knowing.

The problem is that any given source of any information has every reason to lie (the US military and government vs. the prisoner).

Your view on the issue will almost assuredly come down to how much you trust the Bush administration.

Well, and how much you trust Obama and his administration, since he promised to close it and then decided it was so important it needed to stay open. Maybe it says something about the situation that two Presidents from opposing parties decided to keep it open, one even going to far as to go back on a pretty significant campaign promise to do it.

True, although I think most Obama defenders would point out that far fewer remained at Gitmo under Obama.

Myself? I don't lose a lot of sleep about it.

Well, that's fine, but there were never a lot of prisoners there to begin with. I think everyone agrees that if there are prisoners there who really don't belong, then they should be released, but I also think a good portion of the prisoners being held there (which, as has been said, isn't that many to begin with) are most likely there for a good reason.

I'm not losing too much sleep over it either, quite honestly. Don't shoot at US or coalition troops and don't go to Taliban or Al Qaeda training camps and your chances of ending up in Guantanamo will be drastically reduced.

**dæl**

A prison for combatants, don't have a problem with that. A place to torture people for years on end, with no burden of proof on whether they deserve to be there, thats wrong.

**Kid_Kyoto**

LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. People are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Obama's tried to close Guantanamo for years.

But congress passed a law prohibiting transporting any of its prisoners to the US, including for trial.

So keep the blame where it belongs.

**Sgt_Scruffy**

You say years on end, but KSM was the most heavily water-boarded individual at Gitmo and it all happened in one month.

I read the Red Cross report and there is nothing there that hasn't been used on US Soldiers as training with the exception of water boarding.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
LoneLictor wrote:
Frazzled wrote:Awesome.

What a thoughtful and indepth response.

It's a shame that both Mitt "The Gimp" Romney and Obama still support gitmo. That gak is the most fething unconstitutional thing imaginable. People are whisked away without trials and kept in jail indefinitely, with no contact with their friends and family.

Obama's tried to close Guantanamo for years.

But congress passed a law prohibiting transporting any of its prisoners to the US, including for trial.

So keep the blame where it belongs.

Ah, you mean the heavily Democrat controlled congress from 2009 til 2011?

**InquisitorVaron**

It may not be right but something I just want to say is.
There's two planes one's planning to be bombed, some information is gained through torture by another country.

How many people will pick the bombed plane?

I don't agree with torture but in cases like that we might aswell use it.

This is different, the army are not civs. They understand the dangers, torture shouldn't happen but keeping them away from the battlefield I agree with.

**ShumaGorath**

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:You say years on end, but KSM was the most heavily water-boarded individual at Gitmo and it all happened in one month.

I read the Red Cross report and there is nothing there that hasn't been used on US Soldiers as training with the exception of water boarding.

Non lethal Chemical weapons are used on US soldiers while training. Forced exercise (to the point of collapse) is used on US soldiers during training. They don't do a lot of torturing at Guantanamo, generally that kind of information is time sensitive so they just have it done in Turkey or (previously) Egypt. You send people to Guantanamo when you want them to dissapear.

**Polonius**

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
So keep the blame where it belongs.

Ah, you mean the heavily Democrat controlled congress from 2009 til 2011?

**AustonT**

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:You say years on end, but KSM was the most heavily water-boarded individual at Gitmo and it all happened in one month.

I read the Red Cross report and there is nothing there that hasn't been used on US Soldiers as training with the exception of water boarding.

So...no exceptions

CDR Frank Wead wrote:Then it was time for the dreaded waterboard. What I didn’t know then, but I do now, is that as in all interrogations, both for real world hostile terrorists (non-uniformed combatants) and in S.E.R.E. a highly trained group of doctors, psychologists, interrogators, and strap-in and strap-out rescue teams are always present. My first experience on the “waterboard” was to be laying on my back, on a board with my body at a 30 degree slope, feet in the air, head down, face-up. The straps are all-confining, with the only movement of your body that of the ability to move your head. Slowly water is poured in your face, up your nose, and some in your mouth. The questions from interrogators and amounts of water increase with each unsuccessful response. Soon they have your complete attention as you begin to believe you are going to drown.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23220

**ShumaGorath**

Polonius wrote:
Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
So keep the blame where it belongs.

Ah, you mean the heavily Democrat controlled congress from 2009 til 2011?

I'm glad to see we can focus on what's truely important: partisan bickering.

I'd focus more on the inherent indecency of Democracy. No state was willing to take detainees as no state legislature wanted to do the right thing to it's own political detriment.