Posted on 06/25/2006 8:32:56 PM PDT by neverdem
WITH the recent suicides, reports that detainees have been abused, mounting foreign pressure to close the detention center, and its Gulag-like symbolic resonance, the continued political viability of the Guantánamo Bay camp is increasingly in doubt. President Bush has himself said that he would like to close Guantánamo. But is he putting politics before American security? If Guantánamo is shut down, what will be done with the detainees?
Critics argue that if the United States cannot prove before a court of law that detainees at Guantánamo Bay have committed a crime, then they should be released. This argument rests on the principle that people should be punished only for committing a crime.
The emotional appeal of this notion is undeniable, and the Bush administration has met critics partway by creating military commissions that will try some detainees for war crimes while denying them the full protections of due process available to criminal defendants. But the critics' argument rests on a half-truth, and as we rethink the wisdom of Guantánamo Bay, we should be sure to understand the complicated reality it conceals.
Detention sounds like a punishment, but it is not always considered one by the law. The courts distinguish between civil detention on the one hand and criminal incarceration on the other. A person who commits a crime may be incarcerated after a criminal trial in which he receives the full package of due process protections: a lawyer, a jury, an independent judge and so forth. A person who is merely dangerous cannot be criminally punished for being dangerous; however, he can be detained, and he is not always entitled to the expansive procedural protections granted to the accused criminal.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bush administration should NEVER have even begun to allow for the possibility of these guys being dealt with by the US criminal justice system which has no jurisdiction in
nation(s) these monkeys were captured from. Doing so has provided our foreign and domestic enemies endless talking points.
Catch and release sounds like fun.
I would pay for a fully chartered boat that uses Gitmo prisioners for bait.
We leave port early in the morning with a full load of bait and return with only paying customers.
"Hang on to this hook muhamad and swimm like a b****."
I reject this statement totally, because it is a typical legal assertion, unsupported, by a lawyer, and it is probably unsupportable by those who have the final word.
it is more a "you dumb people ought to feel this way sort of staement.
Neither the legal profession, nor the "government" have the final word. the people do.
My sense of the general mood is that no, nothing has really changed, due to the change in the nature of the enemy. We either kill them as we catch them, or detain them indefinitely.
What is this BS about their country of origin not taking them back? For me, that is an automatic execution.
We sure as hell shouldn't want them either, nor be "forced" by lawyers to accept them.
Clearly, we shouldn't even be having this discussion. I think that the Gitmo "prisoners" should not be there in the first place. They should be dead! That said however, it is good news that the NYT (gag, spit) would pring an OpEd even discussing the concept that there is a clear difference between a criminal and a (illegal) combatant captured in battle. Were it not for the value presumably derived through interrogation, they should never survive the trip to Gitmo. The detention center is not on US territory, therefore, the jurisdiction of the US courts is debatable. Unfortunately, we've let lawyers tell us what is right and wrong. The American people could solve this problem if we would stop buying products advertized in the NYT (and other media of their ilk), immediately impeach any politian who failded to carry out our will and elected honest representatives who actually represented WE THE PEOPLE!
He did it with the ports deal, he's doing it with the illegal immigrants and the pourous borders, so why not do it with Guantanamo too? Bush's idea of 'national security' is to let the whole damn world come here illegally then use the FBI to monitor the ones they think may be terrorists or dangerous.
In order to have real national security, you've got to have a leader who views his country as a soveriegn nation with borders, a national identity and a common language. Bush thinks of America as just a small part of the bigger whole of globalism, and that's why he can allow 20 million illegal aliens from parts unkown to wander into our country without any concern for our safety and cultural identity; the man is a globalist, period.
"I think that the Gitmo "prisoners" should not be there in the first place. They should be dead!"
I agree with a "take no prisoner" mentality in the WOT.
I have issues with the effect on our warriors mentality with this attitude.
The rules of engagement are there for multiple reasons.
These are issues that I am still not clear on 40 years later.
However I have my opinion - and I agree with you.
B - RVN 66-70
Bless you - I was support - HQMACV - civilian - ran my butt all over SEA.
FYI - the lengths we go to now ...
Jun 25, 12:21 PM EDT
New War Demands New Training for Troops
By CHASE SQUIRES
Associated Press Writer
PINON CANYON MANEUVER SITE, Colo. (AP) -- The car slid to a stop on a sun-baked road, drawing the attention of wary soldiers squinting through sand blown by a hot wind. Nearby, someone started running and soldiers started shooting.
In seconds, a woman in a dark-colored shawl was screaming her boy had been shot and crowd of villagers surged forward as troops tried to clear an area for their medic to work. A soldier in camouflage shoved a woman with his M4 carbine. More shots. Another civilian went down. Local police began arguing with American troops.
Things had gotten very bad, very fast - just the way the Army wanted it.
Thousands of soldiers just spent 16 days on the dusty plains of southeastern Colorado, thrust into situations their commanders designed to resemble what they will face in Iraq, complete with mock villages, mock villagers and real, itchy-trigger-finger tension. The hope is that the troops at the Pinon Canyon training site learn how to make the right decisions and not end up dead or defending themselves against accusations like those surrounding the Marines stationed in Haditha last fall.
Throughout a hot day and cool night, Haditha was never mentioned. But its impact was palpable and the soldiers repeatedly heard the importance of staying calm.
"Don't start lazin' and blazin'," Sgt. Shawn Farnsworth barked to his troops before a night raid. "Know what you're shooting at. Do not be rough with the people in the town!"
Lt. Stuart Smothers, commanding 39 veterans back from Iraq, said his team learned in the real world how civilians in Iraq react to American troops.
Back in the states, Smothers and other veterans become trainers, sharing tips with the next wave of troops.
Treat the locals right, the soldiers get the help they need, he said. Treat them wrong, they can damage the entire U.S. mission.
Smothers said he and other trainers tell the troops that in Iraq, upsetting the acting mayor or cleric can cost the lives of the troops who replace them.
That, Smothers said, is how it is in this new kind of war. Everyone pays for mistakes.
"This is no longer the old Army where you see a bad guy, you automatically shoot them," said Command Sgt. Major Terrance McWilliams, a 30-year veteran.
"You're trying to maintain the calm with the villagers and at the same time weed out the insurgents."
It is training that has had to evolve since U.S. troops arrived in Iraq three years ago. Army warfare is changing from full-on frontal assaults to dodging roadside bombs and finding shadowy insurgents in cramped, confusing Iraqi cities.
"We were prepared for the Cold War and what we thought that was going to be," said Lt. Col. Richard Harms, who helps training bases comply with the new goals of the Army's Combat Training Center Directorate at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "When the Cold War was over, we looked around and said, 'Who are we going to fight next?' It took us a couple of shots to the gut to kind of figure that out."
The training goes on across the country, at places like Fort Irwin, Calif., and here at Pinon Canyon, which is slated for an expansion that has Colorado ranchers and farmers nervous their property will disappear. The Army says the space better simulates battlefield conditions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
For this war, veterans of Iraq say, training includes learning some basics - how to sit low in a Humvee in case of a roadside bomb or how to get inside the warrens of courtyards and tiny apartments in Baghdad's ancient neighborhoods. How to tell when something's just not right.
"If there's kids around, that's probably a good sign," said Smothers, who returned from Iraq this year. He said even insurgents seem to avoid killing their neighbors' children.
Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Mayville said the changes in training are obvious. A 16-year veteran, he has been to Pinon Canyon plenty and he's seen war taught the old way and the new.
"I was here in 1993," he said. "It was all just open battlefield. This is just a completely different kind of warfare. You could look out here, and it was all tanks, lined up far as you could see, tanks coming at each other.
Then they'd get together, and 'boom, boom, boom,' they'd be firing. There was smoke, lights flashing, and a lot of dust.
"All of our Army regulations, all of our training manuals, are completely changed."
Another soldier, Charles Price, chimed in: "We're pretty much fighting ghosts."
Colin Gray, a military expert at the University of Reading in England, contends that it wasn't until the Sept. 11 attacks that the American military's plans for the future got any real attention.
"Can the American way of war adapt?" Gray wrote for the government's Army War College in March. "My answer is 'perhaps, but only with difficulty.'"
Harms said the Americans are learning. He needs fighters, but he also needs soldiers who can learn how to act as negotiator, counselor and project manager, all while keeping a cool head. Soldiers are learning that everything they say or do has the potential to affect the relationship between American and Iraqi governments.
"We are very cognizant of winning the hearts and minds, using that old term," Harms said. "You've got to understand the culture of the locals in order to do that."
When they finish training here, along with hours on the firing range shooting live ammunition back at Fort Carson 150 miles away, troops will head for more training in California before being deployed - probably to Iraq or Afghanistan. Some of the troops at Pinon Canyon were members of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, tabbed just days ago to be among those next up for a tour in Iraq.
Back at the dirt road, McWilliams and his trainers tried to sort out why the sudden appearance of that silver car caused so much chaos.
The "boy" who was shot - a solider playing the role of a mentally retarded child who panicked - had nothing to do with the car. But when he ran, a soldier instinctively fired his rifle, equipped with blanks.
In the investigation by trainers, there were allegations that soldiers planted a weapon next to the boy. Other soldiers complained that trainers had stashed guns in a mock mosque. Tempers flared.
It was only a drill, but in the real world, a mistake like that could be a disaster.
"Something that small can have a devastating effect," McWilliams said. "The troops here understand it. That's why they're all gathered around saying "uh oh" and trying to figure it out: 'Why did you? Why did you engage that mentally challenged child. Just because he took off running, does that automatically mean he's hostile?'"
Nearby, Sgt. Roy Jackson watched the whole thing, from the accidental shooting to, even worse, a scuffle with the local police.
If something like that happened in Iraq, Jackson had two words to describe the fallout: "Bad juju."
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On the Net:
Army's Combined Arms Center: http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/index.asp
Army War College: http://www.carlisle.army.mil
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