Free Republic

To activists concerned about AIDS and prisoners' rights, it's an urgent, commonsense step that should already be nationwide policy -- letting inmates have condoms to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases behind bars. Yet their efforts have run headlong into a stronger political force: Authorities' desire not to encourage inmates who flout prison rules against sex. Only one state, Vermont, and five cities regularly hand out condoms to inmates. Mississippi does so only for inmates receiving conjugal visits from their spouses. Left out are the vast majority of America's 2.2 million prisoners -- many held in facilities where sex...

Based on a complaint lodged by Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, the United Nations may declare that the United States’ long running embargo of the island nation is illegal. “The Cuban complaint makes a persuasive case that the US embargo has contributed to human rights abuses in Cuba,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. “Because of the embargo, the Cuban government has been unable to acquire supplies from America to upgrade their facilities. As a result, political prisoners are being housed in filthy and decrepit buildings, locked up in rusted manacles and beaten with cracked and splintered clubs. So...

Beheaded at whim and worked to death: Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs22:59pm 18th September 2007 The sheer brutality of the battle for the Far East defies imagination. And in a new book, historian Max Hastings argues that Japanese intransigence made it far worse.  Yesterday, he explained why America had to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Here, in the final part of our exclusive serialisation, he reveals how the West was stunned when it emerged how cruelly their prisoners of war had suffered...As the men of the victorious British 14th Army advanced through Burma on the road to Mandalay...

Prime minister meets with Palestinian president, but leaders do not discuss number of prisoners to be released. Israel also promises to ease restrictions on Palestinians' movement in West Bank Ronny Sofer Latest Update: 09.10.07, 15:37 / Israel News Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Monday that they wanted "to contribute to the success of the planned international meeting." The two leaders, who met in Jerusalem, also stressed their commitment for a two-state solution and decided to appoint teams to advance this goal. Official sources in Jerusalem said that the Israeli team would include two representatives from...

Bergen County Jail inmates who want to brush up on their legal defense can do so now from their cells, a move that officials say is a first nationwide.  Jail officials have begun rolling out the first batch of 80 laptops – each about the size and heft of a large hardcover novel – to some of the 1,000 inmates who occupy the near-capacity lockup. About $100,000 has been spent so far from an account funded by profits from items purchased from inmates, such as toothpaste and candy bars, to buy the $1,200 notebooks and install the necessary wireless...

(SHANGHAI) - More than 10,000 people received liver transplants in China between March 2005 and May 2007. Most of the patients' information is registered with the China Liver Transplant Registration (CLTR) system. Several of Shanghai's more reputable hospitals, including Renji Hospital, Zhongshan Hospital and Ruijin Hospital, are participating in the system. The CLTR statistics showed that the one-year survival rate for people who have undergone a liver transplant has doubled in recent years. From 2003 to 2006, 84 percent of such patients survived for more than a year. And the three-year survival rate increased to about 75 percent in 2006...

Mainland China's well known media Southern Weekly , published a front page article titled "China Puts A Stop on 'Organ Transplant Tourism'" on July 19, 2007. The article reported on the recent restrictions imposed on organ transplants performed on foreigners by Chinese hospitals, and exposed the inside story behind these organ transplants in Mainland China, which are performed under the rule of the Communist Party. A Very Profitable Business Organ transplants skyrocketed after 1999 and hospitals reaped huge profits. The Southern Weekly mentioned that "liver transplants increased at a shocking rate: in 1999 only 24 liver transplants were performed; in...

(HONG KONG)--Paul Lee got his liver from an executed Chinese prisoner; Karam in Egypt bought a kidney for his sister for $5,300; in Istanbul Hakan is holding out for $30,700 for one of his kidneys. They are not so unusual: a dire shortage of donated organs in rich countries is sending foreigners with end-stage illnesses to poorer places like China, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Colombia and the Philippines to buy a new lease of life. Lee, a 53-year-old chief subway technician in Hong Kong, was diagnosed with liver cancer in January 2005 but doctors denied him a transplant because they feared...

RAMALLAH, West Bank - A top PLO body gave its approval Thursday for President Mahmoud Abbas to hold new presidential and legislative elections, a high-stakes gamble meant to sideline Hamas militants but also bound to set off more confrontations between Palestinian rivals Fatah and Hamas. Hamas, which won parliament elections last year, immediately threatened to derail a new vote. On Friday, Israel started releasing more than 250 Palestinian prisoners in an attempt to bolster Abbas in his power struggle with Hamas. A first batch of about 120 prisoners were put aboard buses at the Ketziot prison camp in southern Israel's...

Director-general of PA’s Ministry of Detainees says Palestinians ‘disappointed’ that prominent Palestinian figures, including members of parliament, are not on list of prisoners slated for release this Friday. ‘We hoped Israel would act to restore the Palestinian public’s faith in the peace process,’ Ziad Abu Ein says Ali Waked Published: 07.18.07, 00:17 / Israel News “We are pleased with the release of every prisoner, but we regret the fact that the Israeli side continues to insists on not including us in the process of determining the criteria for the release of prisoners,” a senior Fatah official told Ynet on Tuesday....

OKLAHOMA TOURISM CENTER, 2007 (honoring the murderer, outraging the memory of the victims) : "From Clinton, continue on to Cheyenne, Oklahoma in the heart of Cheyenne country. Here you’ll find the Black Kettle Museum (580-497-3929) displaying and interpreting the HISTORY OF THE CHEYENNE TRIBE in Oklahoma. (...) Also in Cheyenne, on the road between the BLACK KETTLE MUSEUM and the Historic Site, visit the Clara Blinn House, a tea room, antique store and Native American art gallery Also in Cheyenne, on the road between the Black Kettle Museum and the Historic Site, visit the CLARA BLINN HOUSE, a TEA ROOM,...

Ida Nudel, former prisoner of Zion, Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, petition High Court of Justice to order Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter to withhold Hamas, Hizbullah prisoners' visitation rights until sign of life of captive IDF soldiers given Aviram Zino Published: 06.26.07, 12:20 / Israel News Former prisoner of Zion, Ida Nudel filed a petition to the High Court of Justice demanding it order Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter to withhold visitation rights of Hamas and Hizbullah prisoners in Israel. The petition argued that the prisoners should not be allowed visitation as long as the Red Cross was prevented...

Proposals to treat detainees as criminal defendants make a mockery of international humanitarian law. Was it wishful thinking? On Thursday the Associated Press reported that, according to sources it did not name, "the Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere." The White House quickly denied the rumor, and, for good measure, on Friday the Pentagon announced that Guantanamo had admitted its first new detainee in months: Haroon al-Afghani, a commander from the al Qaeda-affiliated terror group Hezb-i-Islami.

The bodies are coming, and with them some questions that will not go away.    "Bodies ... The Exhibition,' featuring 15 full-body human corpses from China that have been preserved by a process called "plastination," is scheduled to open at The Carnegie Science Center in October for a seven-month run. The cadavers are peeled of their skin and arranged in poses -- kicking a soccer ball, setting up a tennis serve -- alongside 200 other body parts and specimens, including embryos and fetuses from 9 to 32 weeks gestation, all plasticized. It is one of three major traveling exhibits that...

WHILE waiting to see if the Iraq surge strategy pays off, President Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have shown Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the door and brought in Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute as the new White House “war czar.” Well, they can shift senior leadership all they want, but unless they give our troops patrolling the streets the tools they need, our leaders are going to see this strategy fizzle. Part of the problem was that when the military surge was announced, it became commonplace for officials to assert that political compromise, not...

On May 4, The Yangtze Evening News reported that China's most famous kidney expert, Dr. Li Baochun, had committed suicide by jumping from the twelfth floor of the Shanghai No. 2 Military Medical University Shanghai Hospital Building. Dr. Li had served as Deputy Director of the hospital and as Professor and Chief Physician for kidney disease. The report said Dr. Li's suicide was caused by depression. On May 24, The Yangtze Evening News report was reproduced on several major websites including the website of China's most important official media, www.xinhua.net. Further analysis revealed that the cause of Dr. Li's depression...

Organ Transplants in China: Just Like Picking Lobsters in Restaurant By Lee Yuhan Sound of Hope Radio Network May 31, 2007 The Human Rights and Medicine Forum drew an interested crowd to the University of Chicago on May 24. Canadian Independent Investigator David Matas, coauthor of "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China," Dr. Kirk C. Allison, Director of the Program in Human Rights and Health, University of Minnesota, and Falun Gong Spokesperson Zhang Erping attended the Forum. Two of the University of Chicago Student clubs, Falun Gong and Amnesty International, sponsored the Forum. The...

Women at a prison outside Gothenburg have decided to fight for their right to a decent sun tan. Sweden's Justice Ombudsman has received a letter from the Prisoners' Council at Sagsjön jail in which the women bemoan the fact that they are not permitted to wear bikinis. "It's a human right," wrote the chairwoman of the council.

NOTE: why can't prisoners pick our lettuce? Let them earn money. They can use that money to pay for their prison cell and food. They can save some of it for when they get out. Some might worry that they could escape. Okay, put on an ankle bracelet with GPS tracking capability, and have it sound an alarm when it gets a certain distance away from the guards watching them. This could be a win-win. Illegals sent home so that they are not continuing to destroy our schools and infrastructure would be great. Add to it that prisoners would...

Foreign patients who travel to China for transplants are likely receiving organs culled from political prisoners who are alive when their corneas, kidneys and livers are harvested, then left to die, an international group of doctors armed with a chilling Canadian report is warning.In a new twist on an old practice of using organs from executed criminals, China has since 2000 turned to living donors and outlawed Falun Gong members to supply a growing trade in medical transplants, Doctors Against Organ Harvesting said yesterday during a public forum held at the University of Toronto. With increasing numbers of Canadians on...

American socialist organizer and philosopher Angela Davis talks in front of the Stafford Creek Corrections Center Wednesday. Davis spoke at the prison, and then at Grays Harbor College. Called upon to introduce famed radical activist Angela Davis to offenders at Stafford Creek Correctional Facility Wednesday, Gary Murrell paraphrased Eugene V. Debs, the legendary labor leader who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1918 for giving an anti-war speech. “ ‘So long as there are prisoners in the U.S., I am among them,’ ” the Grays Harbor College history instructor recalled Debs saying. “If anyone exemplifies that kind of...

Israeli prime minister stated Wednesday that the list of prisoners Palestinians want released in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier "creates expectations we cannot meet." The list has not been made public, but media reports have put the number of names between 350 and 1,450, including activists convicted in killing Israelis. Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not said how many Palestinians Israel would be willing to free in exchange for Shalit. He has hinted he would free a large number but not as many as 1,400. Speaking before parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Israeli leader said the...

Release 500 prisoners for soldier, Israel told Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem Monday April 9, 2007 The Guardian (UK) Hamas has sent Israel a list of Palestinian prisoners it wants released in return for the freedom of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held since last June, officials said yesterday. The Israeli government has insisted that Corporal Shalit's release is a prerequisite to progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The Palestinian list is believed to include Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader who was jailed by Israel for his role in the murder of four Israelis and a Greek monk -...

The U.S. military handed over a group of suspected Taliban rebels to the custody of the Afghan government on Tuesday, the start of a program to transfer all Afghan prisoners it holds both in Afghanistan and at Guantanomo. The 12 prisoners, captured at various times by the military since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, will be kept in a newly refurbished bloc of Pul-i-Charkhi prison on the eastern outskirts of Kabul, Afghan officials said. Taliban prisoners captured by the Afghan government have staged at least two revolts in the past in Pul-i-Charkhi and several have managed to escape from the...

The detained sailors and Marines are likely to be kept in good physical conditions but will find their detention by Iranian forces a frightening experience, experts say. The 15 are most probably being held in the military barracks at Jamshidiyeh in the foothills of the Alborz mountains which shelter Tehran. Although the seven Royal Marines are drilled in techniques to cope with capture, the eight sailors have little relevant training. The number of vehicles entering the barracks has increased significantly since the British were caught, according to Alire-za Nourizadeh, a senior researcher at the Centre for Arab--Iranian Studies in London....

US accused on 'missing' prisoners The CIA allegedly flew secret detainees in unmarked jets Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also details allegations of torture by a terror suspect who was held in secret custody for more than two years. The group has asked US President George W Bush to reveal the location of these detainees and close all US black sites. Last year Mr Bush said the prisons had all...

Court Restores Inmates' Voting Rights Thursday, December 28, 2006 A state appeals court is restoring the voting rights of about 100,000 local jail inmates across the state who are serving a year or less for felony convictions. The state said it would not appeal the decision from the 1st District Court of Appeal. The affected inmates were eligible to vote until last year, when the state disenfranchised them. For three decades, California's secretary of state had interpreted that the state Constitution barred voting by those in state prisons and those on parole. The appeals court said in it's decision last...

Defense establishment announces concessions for Eid al Adha holiday on Saturday. Israeli Arabs allowed entrance to Gaza, 4,000 Palestinians allowed entrance to Israel to visit relatives. Hope in PA for release of prisoners Ali Waked Published: 12.28.06, 23:09 The defense establishment will apparently allow the entrance of Israeli Arabs into the 'A' territories of the West Bank and the exit of some 4,000 Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel in order to visit family members for the coming Muslim holiday Eid al Adha which is this weekend. Arab Israelis will also be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip for...

Provided by CBS

Hundreds of Pagans serving prison sentences are to be given the day off work for Halloween out of respect for their religious beliefs.Prison Service bosses have instructed staff to grant the convicts, who include Devil worshippers and Satanists, special privileges on Tuesday.While fellow prisoners sew mail bags and undertake other jail work, the Pagans will be allowed to celebrate their 'holiday'.They can use certain artefacts, including rune stones, flexible twigs and hoodless robes, provided they are kept in their cells or worn during communal worship. Robes with hoods are banned for 'security reasons', however.The move is revealed in Home Office...

GAZA, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- The chief political strategist for the Palestinian Hamas party said an abducted Israeli soldier won't be released until Israel frees 1,000 prisoners. In an interview with London's al-Hayat newspaper, Khaled Mashaal said he had not ordered the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a June 25 Hamas border raid and suggested it had been an impromptu act, which he praised. First it wasn't me who took the decision to kidnap the soldier and I had no previous knowledge. Second, I don't think that those who carried out this heroic operation, which I am proud...

The state plans to house up to 1,200 prisoners from California in unused portions of the New Castle Correctional Facility, a move that Gov. Mitch Daniels said Thursday would create up to 200 jobs. The announcement came a day after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in that state's critically crowded prisons, a step that allows him to use his executive powers to ship inmates elsewhere. Daniels said the arrangement will benefit both states. Under a contract between California and Florida-based GEO Group Inc., the company Indiana hired to operate the New Castle prison will be paid...

The national argument has turned to guidelines for interrogating terrorist prisoners and instead of reaching a consensus that provides some legal specificity, our leaders are lunging for ambiguity in the name of international law. Their true political agendas I’ll leave for others to decide, but their salient misapplication of global jurisprudence is laughingly self-evident. Myopia’s cruelty now wears the garb of righteousness and its favorite haberdashery is Capitol Hill.

JUST WHAT WAR do Sens. John McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins think the United States is fighting? Last week these four Republicans joined Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee in voting to prevent CIA officers who interrogate terror suspects from being any rougher on said suspects than Mary Poppins would be. The four argued that allowing U.S. operatives to be rough with terrorists during questioning would put our own forces in danger of being subjected to the same treatment. They were joined by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who wrote in an open letter that...

My father was a machine gunner with the Army's 28th Infantry Division, which was among the first units to march down the Champs-Elysées after the Allied liberation of Paris . In December 1944, having landed at Normandy and fought across France and Belgium, he was captured in the Battle of the Bulge, and sent hundreds of miles through northern Germany in an unheated boxcar in the dead of winter to a prison camp at Muhlberg in the east. My father survived the war not because of the generosity of the Nazis to Jewish soldiers. The Germans must have been tempted...

Palestinian sources reported that a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Palestinian organizations will start to be carried out secretly in Amman, Jordan within the next day. This was reported by Saudi newspaper, Okaz. As of now, there is no authorization of this report from any other body. According to the report, Israel will release the Hamas minister and parliament members detained in Israel within the next day. Simultaneously, the release of kidnapped soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit will be announced Sunday. In the next stage, according to the report, Israel is expected to release 740 Palestinian prisoners in two...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2006 – U.S. soldiers in Iraq seized several large weapons caches and detained eight terrorist suspects in operations yesterday. Multinational Division Baghdad soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team seized a large weapons cache during a cordon-and-search operation in northern Baghdad shortly before 1 p.m. The weapons cache included 21 AK-47 assault rifles, 55 magazines of 7.62 mm ammunition, 2 PKC machine guns, a Russian sniper rifle, tens of thousands of rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition, a fragmentary grenade, four jihadist propaganda magazines, and a martyrdom recruitment poster. Earlier yesterday, soldiers from 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry...

Italian prisoners freed in amnesty go on the rampage Nick Pisa in Rome (Filed: 06/08/2006) An amnesty that freed more than 5,000 inmates from Italian jails backfired when dozens of the former prisoners reoffended - and were back behind bars within hours. The early release scheme, which cuts sentences by three years, was introduced to reduce overcrowding of the prison system which has more than 62,000 inmates - 20,000 more than it can handle. Although convictions for Mafia-related crimes, terrorism, rape, paedophilia and people-smuggling are exempt, more than 12,000 prisoners will be released in the next few weeks. But within...

LEBANESE Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh said today that the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah were "in good health" and called on the UN or any other third party to help start negotiations for a prisoner exchange. "The Israeli soldiers are in good health and in a safe place," Mr Sallukh, who is close to the Lebanese Shiite militant Hezbollah, said. Sallukh called on "the United Nations or any third friendly party to engage in discussions for a prisoners' exchange." Hezbollah has demanded the release of Arab prisoners held in Israeli jails in return for the two servicemen whose capture...

Samir Qantar was 17 when Israel Police arrested him after he burst into a flat in Israel's northern city of Nahariya, killed a policeman and another man and his four-year-old daughter. Now the sister of longest-held Lebanese detainee says she hopes capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah guerrillas would finally secure his release The sister of the longest-held Lebanese detainee in Israel said on Wednesday she hoped the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah guerrillas would finally secure his release. "This is the news we have been waiting for all this time," said Lamise Qantar, 29, who was...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A farmer claiming to have witnessed an attack on a U.S. military checkpoint said Sunday that insurgents swarmed the scene, killing the driver of a Humvee before taking two of his comrades captive. The U.S. military has only said the soldiers are missing. U.S. troops, backed by helicopters and warplanes, fanned out across the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad searching for the missing servicemen. At least four raids had been carried out, but the captives were not found, the military said. Another local resident said the soldiers searched houses on Sunday and promised a $100,000 reward...

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, June 15, 2006 – The Iraqi deputy prime minister called on about 450 Iraqis being freed from the Abu Ghraib detention facility today to work for peace in Iraq, the Middle East and the world. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salim al-Zawbai speaks with detainees released from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison June 15. The Iraqi government plan aims at getting "low-risk" detainees back into the workforce and working toward a new Iraq. Photo by Jim Garamone  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Salim al-Zawbai spoke to the men before they were released from the facility. It is...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 594 prisoners were released in Iraq on Wednesday, state television reported, a day after new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said a total of 2,500 would be freed to help foster national reconciliation. More than 100 of them were freed in the capital, a Reuters reporter said. About 110 detainees had been gathered at the capital’s main bus station, where prisoners are taken before they are set free, he said from the scene. They were later released.

Norway's foreign minister continues to claim that none of the US flights allegedly used by the CIA that entered Norwegian air space or landed in Norway, had any prisoners on board.The denial comes in a second round of correspondence with European officials concerned about the allegations.Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre wrote in a letter to Terry Davies, secretary general of the Council of Europe, that Norway "has no reason to believe" that Norwegian territory was used in connection with any detentions that violated Norwegian commitments to human rights.He said the foreign ministry also had no evidence that any Norwegian officials...

WASHINGTON - Hearing arguments in a Pennsylvania case yesterday, the Supreme Court struggled with whether states can keep troublesome inmates from reading secular newspapers and magazines. Pennsylvania prison officials urged the high court to allow them to use access to newspapers and magazines as an incentive to get inmates to behave. The "bottom line" in the case, as Justice Stephen G. Breyer put it, is whether the court should interfere and tell the state how to manage its inmates, or whether prison officials have gone too far and infringed on prisoners' free-speech rights. The case, Beard v. Banks, could wind...

A Chinese cosmetics company has been using skin taken from the bodies of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, a London newspaper reported. An agent for the company informed customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they had been shot. The agent said some of the company‘s products have been exported to Britain, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts was “traditional" and nothing to “make such a big fuss about,“ the Guardian reported In addition to ethical concerns, there is the potential risk of...

Exposing Shocking Horrors Inside Sujiatun Concentration Camp By Ji Da Epoch Times Staff Mar 11, 2006 A reporter from China who worked for a Japanese television news agency and specialized in Chinese news recently escaped to the United States after being wanted in China for reporting on controversial issues. (The Epoch Times) High-res image (1200 x 900 px, 72 dpi) [ Warning: graphic photos below ] Falun Gong Practitioners a Cheap Source of Black Market Organs In recent years, international organ buying and selling markets have had extreme shortages. As the world's most populous country with the death penalty, China...

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, an Atlanta-based advocacy group for homosexual, bisexual and transgender people, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee on behalf of four male inmates seeking state-paid "gender reassignment therapy" after a new Wisconsin law barring the use of state tax money for prisoner sex changes went into effect. The ACLU claims that failure to fund the therapy would be cruel and unusual punishment and would violate their right to equal protection under law. "The legislature is substituting its judgment for medical judgment, which is causing serious harm to our clients," said Manfred...

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The U.S. military released five Iraqi women detainees today, a move demanded by the kidnappers of an American reporter to spare her life, but an official said the release was coincidental. The women were freed from U.S. custody and delivered to the home of a senior Sunni Arab politician in Baghdad, where they were returned to their families, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene. They were later driven away in taxis. Armed men who abducted Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 in Baghdad have threatened to kill the freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor...

Dear Americans... This wasn't easy to write (I'm alternately sad and furious), but it's crucial to our soldiers today to know. When is it too late to keep asking??? Are There Still American POWs In SE Asia?We should never let ourselves get past the point of caring. Or worse...forgetting. "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the Veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation." - George Washington