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The Real Reason for Obama's Threat to Veto the Indefinite Detention Bill (Hint: It's Not to Protect Liberty)

George Washington's picture




 
OBAMA WANTS TO VETO THE INDEFINITE DETENTION BILL BECAUSE IT WOULD HOLD THE U.S. TO THE GENEVA CONVENTION

 

I - like everyone else - am horrified by the Senate's passage of legislation that would allow for indefinite detention of Americans.

And at first, I - like many others - assumed that Obama's threat to veto the bill might be a good thing. But the truth is much more disturbing.

As former Wall Street Street editor and columnist Paul Craig Roberts correctly notes:

The Obama regime’s objection to military detention is not rooted in concern for the constitutional rights of American citizens. The regime objects to military detention because the implication of military detention is that detainees are prisoners of war. As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin put it: Should somebody determined “to be a member of an enemy force who has come to this nation or is in this nation to attack us as a member of a foreign enemy, should that person be treated according to the laws of war? The answer is yes.”

 

Detainees treated according to the laws of war have the protections of the Geneva Conventions. They cannot be tortured. The Obama regime opposes military detention, because detainees would have some rights. These rights would interfere with the regime’s ability to send detainees to CIA torture prisons overseas. [Yes, Obama is still apparently allowing "extraordinary renditions" to torture people abroad.] This is what the Obama regime means when it says that the requirement of military detention denies the regime “flexibility.”

 

The Bush/Obama regimes have evaded the Geneva Conventions by declaring that detainees are not POWs, but “enemy combatants,” “terrorists,” or some other designation that removes all accountability from the US government for their treatment.

 

By requiring military detention of the captured, Congress is undoing all the maneuvering that two regimes have accomplished in removing POW status from detainees.

 

A careful reading of the Obama regime’s objections to military detention supports this conclusion. (See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf)

 

The November 17 letter to the Senate from the Executive Office of the President says that the Obama regime does not want the authority it has under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), Public Law 107-40, to be codified. Codification is risky, the regime says. “After a decade of settled jurisprudence on detention authority, Congress must be careful not to open a whole new series of legal questions that will distract from our efforts to protect the country.”

 

In other words, the regime is saying that under AUMF the executive branch has total discretion as to who it detains and how it treats detainees. Moreover, as the executive branch has total discretion, no one can find out what the executive branch is doing, who detainees are, or what is being done to them. Codification brings accountability, and the executive branch does not want accountability.

 

Those who see hope in Obama’s threatened veto have jumped to conclusions if they think the veto is based on constitutional scruples.

POLICE STATE STARTED YEARS AGO

 

Even if Obama's threatened veto was for more noble purposes, the fact is that it would not change anything, because the U.S. government claimed the power to indefinitely detain and assassinate American citizens years ago.

For example, law school professor and National Lawyers Guild president Marjorie Cohn pointed out in 2006:

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

 

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

 

***

 

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

Glenn Greenwald and Fire Dog Lake's Emptywheel have also documented that the White House has believed for many years that it possessed the power to indefinitely detain Americans. See this, this, this, and this.

I noted Friday:

The police state started in 2001.

 

Specifically, on 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.)

 

On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today.

The Obama administration has also said for more than a year and a half it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.

In 2005, Chris Floyd pointed out that the ability of the government to assassinate U.S. citizens started the very week of 9/11:

On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.

 

The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it's no secret.  The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001 .... The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.

 

The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.

 

But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."

 

The dangers of this policy are obvious, as a UN report on "extrajudicial killings" noted in December 2004: " Empowering governments to identify and kill 'known terrorists' places no verifiable obligation upon them to demonstrate in any way that those against whom lethal force is used are indeed terrorists… While it is portrayed as a limited 'exception' to international norms, it actually creates the potential for an endless expansion of the relevant category to include any enemies of the State, social misfits, political opponents, or others."

 

It's hard to believe that any genuine democracy would accept a claim by its leader that he could have anyone killed simply by labeling them an "enemy." It's hard to believe that any adult with even the slightest knowledge of history or human nature could countenance such unlimited, arbitrary power, knowing the evil it is bound to produce. Yet this is what the great and good in America have done. Like the boyars of old, they not only countenance but celebrate their enslavement to the ruler.

 

[Note from Washington's Blog: 9/11 allowed those who glorify war to implement plans they had lusted after for many years (and see this), even though 9/11 happened because Dick Cheney was - at best - totally incompetent, and the government is now doing things which increase the risk of terrorism, instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer.]

 

***

 

This was vividly demonstrated in ... Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq. Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide – "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem."

 

In other words, the suspects – and even Bush acknowledged they were only suspects – had been murdered. Lynched. Killed by agents operating unsupervised in that shadow world where intelligence, terrorism, politics, finance and organized crime meld together in one amorphous, impenetrable mass. Killed on the word of a dubious informer, perhaps: a tortured captive willing to say anything to end his torment, a business rival, a personal foe, a bureaucrat looking to impress his superiors, a paid snitch in need of cash, a zealous crank pursuing ethnic, tribal or religious hatreds – or any other purveyor of the garbage data that is coin of the realm in the shadow world.

 

Bush proudly held up this hideous system as an example of what he called "the meaning of American justice." And the assembled legislators…applauded. Oh, how they applauded!

This is, of course, the real meaning of the famous Star Wars scene:

 

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Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:19 | 1947966 Sophist Economicus
Sophist Economicus's picture

1031 and 1032 have been making alot of press in the internet space.   There has been alot of mis-information about what it says/does -- some says it allows the military to arrest Americans, etc   - I'm just not sure why this is making the rounds now.    Some group, somewhere, is trying to whip up fellow travellers like George here -- but why?   I'm sure we'll soon find out....

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:21 | 1948942 pods
pods's picture

Not sure why all the junks, you bring up a valid point.  Amerika has been doing this forever.  Long before 911.  Since about the turn of the 20th century from my account.  We (as a people) have never really cared about this before.  Why now?  Because the monster we allowed to be created has turned around and we realize that we are as defenseless as the ones we have pointed the monster at.

This is what boils my blood.  That we can at this moment in time throw some deserving disdain at this administration, but we cannot see that is the MO of our nation.  

From our travails in S. America for the United Fruit Company, to Iran, to Asia.  We have had our dirty hands in the entire world's business for the last 120 years in earnest.  

Yet all we hear is elect some new bunch of sociopaths that can somehow disarm this monster.  

Withdraw consent.  

Avoid credit.

Cash only where at all possible.

That is the only bullet free way this can be done.  

pods

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 05:51 | 1950227 StychoKiller
StychoKiller's picture

[quote]

Yet all we hear is elect some new bunch of sociopaths that can somehow disarm this monster.  

Withdraw consent.  

Avoid credit.

Cash only where at all possible.

That is the only bullet free way this can be done. [/quote]

You're more optimistic than I am.

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 09:51 | 1950525 pods
pods's picture

Oh I am not optimistic.  Just stating that there are two ways, and one of them is NOT the ballot box.

I am giving the first way a shot though, no credit, no flying, cash, no open source intelligence admissions (facebook et all).

Then when the bullets fly, I can say I tried.

pods

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:29 | 1948015 blunderdog
blunderdog's picture

It's coming up for vote again.  They have to re-authorize the bill every year, so every year around this time, there's news about it.

Current events do occasionally affect what news is presented.  Even in the US.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:13 | 1947924 ThisIsBob
ThisIsBob's picture

Screw the Geneva Coinvention.  Its just a Godamn piece of paper.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 17:36 | 1948342 Money 4 Nothing
Money 4 Nothing's picture

So is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, over their dead body. The Constitution is the default law of the land, everything written after it is Un Constitutional.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 18:49 | 1948658 Grinder74
Grinder74's picture

Try reading the actual Constitution:

"The Congress shall have power... To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof." Article I Section 8.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:05 | 1947882 NotApplicable
NotApplicable's picture

Don't worry, the election's coming up. That'll fix everything!

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 02:31 | 1949995 The Heart
The Heart's picture

Sorry, due to world war conditions, the election has been canceled. Now get in line and shut up!

sarc off\

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:15 | 1947933 A Lunatic
A Lunatic's picture

I bet Joe Biden will put an end to this nonsense........

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:56 | 1947857 Milestones
Milestones's picture

The implications for my daughter, son and grandchildren make my blood run cold. It is way past time.      Milestones

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 17:43 | 1948370 bigkahuna
bigkahuna's picture

We are going to have to have the courage to stand against this kind of stuff or else we will be nothing but a bunch of animals in the future.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 19:00 | 1948706 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

Who is this "WE" you are discussing, big guy.  All kindz o' folk doing their thing according to the rules.

Not sure what outrage GW is expressing, (GW expresses rage at all kinds of non-sensical things...) since US is signatory to Genevaz, Haguez, etc.  Law of Land Warfare is pounded into the 11z and the Oh-Threez and all handz.  U can look back at Murtha (I know he was a pig-fucker) and others who have already made GW's claim.

US is signatory to Geneva, Hague, has legislation wrt all kinds of handling of all kinds of folk:

We are all really awaiting GW's "outrage" (such as it isn't/hasn't been/never been expressed) vs. the US policy that HAS ALREADY ALLOWED the current administration to authorize strikes vs. AMCITS in foreign lands (that is, assasinations of AMCITS have occured on GW's watch, narry a comment).

And, finally, a greenie on ya, 'cuz we b animalz in future w/o the Constitution and rule of law.

Come back, big guy---

- Ned

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:09 | 1948895 hardcleareye
hardcleareye's picture

Huh????

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:48 | 1947815 Paul Bogdanich
Paul Bogdanich's picture

I should have guessed.  Sounded peculiar when I heard about the veto.  Now I know.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:40 | 1947777 Shizzmoney
Shizzmoney's picture

Also helps dude is running or re-election.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:39 | 1947773 Greenlight
Greenlight's picture

I wish I could give this article a 10.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 18:48 | 1948652 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

but you couldn't.  Why? - Ned

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 19:33 | 1948807 Money 4 Nothing
Money 4 Nothing's picture

Because it dosen't go into enough detail?

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/16/tQExMBvJB2M

There, fixed.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:32 | 1947739 markar
markar's picture

The age of the desaparecidos is upon us!

http://www.yendor.com/vanished/

Coming to a neighborhood near you...

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:02 | 1947872 DeltaDawn
DeltaDawn's picture

I encourage all of you to click on this link.  The playbook is the same throughout history.  We must face the fact that our society/government is rapidly deteriorating although many do not see the severity. Our livelihoods, securities and freedoms are at stake.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:23 | 1947680 whoisjohngalt11
whoisjohngalt11's picture

Excellent Article Thanx...

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:20 | 1947666 tony bonn
tony bonn's picture

i have reaffirm my previous statements about the unlawful indonesian citizen being a blood thirsty war mongering murdering whore brother of george bush and buttboy for the rockefeller-mic-yale-cia cabal of terrorists....

and none of the critics of the 2006 law or current unconstiutional whoredom is doing squat to repeal the laws...like sheep they comment and like pussies they lay there to quiver...

it is time to occupy the white house

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 02:34 | 1950004 The Heart
The Heart's picture

It's time to OCCUPY the house of Rothschild!

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:18 | 1947654 11b40
11b40's picture

I'll tell you who does like the Geneva Conventions....members of the combat arms, that's who.  Soldiers who put themselves in harms way are very much in favor of these rules of warfare.  The enemy may not heed them, but sometime they do, and even if they don't, there is some comfort knowing that even if you perish, your torturers may be hunted down and punished.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:08 | 1947764 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture

 

Ike's death camps along the Rhine

Ain't no fucking crime when the ameriKlans do it !

 After 1945 about ten thousand top Nazi war criminals and mass murderers are being safely spirited out of Europe by Heinz "Henry" Kissinger, Allen Dulles and their co-conspirators to be incorporated into various U.S. government agencies and U.S. puppet dictatorships around the world, ordinary German soldiers, mainly conscripts, are being herded into concentration camps and subjected to starvation and mistreatment by the U.S.S.A..

 

A month before the end of the war, General Dwight Eisenhower issues special orders regarding the treatment of German prisoners and specifies that "prison enclosures are to provide no shelter or other comforts."


Eisenhower or, more likely, his tame shysters, also come up with the bright idea of designating German prisoners as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" or DEFs, instead of prisoners of war.

This sleazy little deception, the predecessor to the "Enemy Combatant" ploy of the George "I'm A Lyin' Guy" Bush regime, is intended to provide a mask of legitmacy to Eisenhower's gross mistreatment of millions of German prisoners of war. It is based, appropriately enough, on the position adopted by Adolf Hitler after the Nazi defeats of Poland and Yugoslavia: that the defeated nation no longer existed and therefore their troops were not covered by the Geneva Convention.

 

When Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley release German prisoners of war so they can find their way home through the ruins of Germany, Eisenhower countermands their orders to ensure that are held as "Disarmed Enemy Forces" in his concentration camps.

 

Eisenhower prevented the International Red Cross from providing aid to the German prisoners held by the U.S. or inspecting the camps. When Eisenhower finally allows the Red Cross to enter one of the camps with small quantities of food in February 1946, Red Cross personnel discover that the German prisoners of war are being kept in appalling conditions in gross violation of the Geneva Convention.

 

Estimates of the numbers of German prisoners who died of exposure, disease and starvation in the concentration camps range from tens of thousands to over a million.

 Given the suppression of the truth about the camps for the past half century, the truth will probably never be known.

In 1989, Canadian author James Bacque, published Other Losses which details the treatment of German prisoners of war by the U.S. and estimates that almost a million died of disease, malnutrition and exposure while in American custody. Although, his estimate of the number killed has been challenged, his revelations of the brutal mistreatment of German POWs by the U.S. are not.

Even apologists for Eisenhower, while disputing Bacque's figure of almost a million dead, admit that mortality in American-run camps was four times as high as in British camps. The German Red Cross still lists 1,300,000 German prisoners of the Allies as "missing".

 

"When they caught me throwing C-Rations over the fence, they threatened me with imprisonment. One Captain told me that he would shoot me if he saw me again tossing food to the Germans. Some of the men were really only boys thirteen years of age. Some of the prisoners were old men drafted by Hitler in his last ditch stand. I understand that the average weight of the prisoners at Andernach was ninety pounds. I may now be heard when I relate the horrible atrocity I witnessed as a prison guard for one of Ike's death camps along the Rhine."

 Martin Brech PFC,

Guard at the U.S. Army's Andernach Concentration Camp

The German prisoners were properly designated as prisoners of war in 1946, but many were illegally kept as forced labor for years afterwards in violation of the Hague Conventions.

http://mk.christogenea.org/content/last-dirty-secret-world-war-two

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 19:27 | 1948789 taxpayer102
taxpayer102's picture

@DavidPierre

Was General Patton taken out by the forerunner of the CIA because he was going to expose Eisenhower and Nazi war criminals and murderers being moved to the U.S. ?   Didn't know Kissinger was involved selling out America this far back. Thanks GW and David Pierre.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:14 | 1948896 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture

 

Deeply involved in Operation Paperclip is one Heinz Kissinger, who had entered the U.S. from Germany in 1938, presenting as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution.

As a private named Henry Kissinger in the U.S. Army, his peculiar talents are quickly spotted by an expatriate Prussian lurking in the U.S. Army, Fritz Kraemer, who will become the shadowy figure behind U.S. militarism for decades to come.

After a stint as virtual dictator of several occupied German towns, a remarkable role for a private, Kissinger becomes principal assistant to General Alexander Bollings, the “godfather” of Project Paperclip.

He then works for U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence at the European Command Intelligence School in Oberammergau, Germany. There, Herr Kissinger trains agents to hunt down Nazi war criminals and mass murderers, not to be tried for their war crimes, but to recruit them in order to to employ their well-honed skills directly on behalf of the United States of America. 

ameriKlans would hear much more from Herr Kissinger for the next 60+ years.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 16:30 | 1948024 LeBalance
LeBalance's picture

James Bacque: Other Losses:

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Losses-James-Bacque/dp/1551681919

(accounting fraud coverup: millions of Germans starved after WWII).

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 17:17 | 1948246 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture

 

Holocaust vs Holocaust

 9+ million Germans died, a result of deliberate Allied starvation and expulsion policies, one quarter of the country was annexed, 15 million people expelled, in the largest act of ethnic cleansing the world has ever known. 2+ million, including countless children, died on the road or in concentration camps in Poland and elsewhere.

That these deaths occurred at all is still being denied by Western governments.

James Bacque

Crimes and Mercies:

 The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 18:47 | 1948649 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

A fine example of the Powell "Pottery Barn" idiom: "You Break it, You Bought It."

Comme d'habitude, no research nor link to provide inquiring minds with information for independent evaluation among inquiring minds.

- Ned

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 19:24 | 1948779 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

c'mon DP, at least cite your sources.  After all, we know that you have a) no knowledge, nor b) no original thoughts while c) surfing on your boat up North.  Froze in yet?

- Ned

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 19:57 | 1948863 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture

Do your own homework Piggy.

LeBalance  gives you a link.

ZH ain't a Special Class for the hockey-helmeted, short bus riders.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:12 | 1948905 nmewn
nmewn's picture

I wonder why they moved heaven & earth to run toward us instead of toward the Russians? Knowing what great humanitarians the Russians were, they would have treated them much better.

Dontcha think? ;-)

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:34 | 1948986 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture

Ain't the point!

Which you damn well know.

Depended where they were geographically.

Stop with your anal fumes.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 22:05 | 1949082 nmewn
nmewn's picture

They ran like jack rabbits to get away from the Russians...and we both know why.

//////////////////////////////

Edit: Tell them DP.

Tell them the whole story. Tell them what happened to German males who fell into the hands of the Russians...what did they to them DP? Tell them what the Russians did to the German women they encountered when they rolled through.

//////////////////////////////

Edit redux...that sound you hear is servers churning. People wanting to know it all. Not just what is laid before them on a platter. Which is a good thing.

Adieu ;-)

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 22:16 | 1949314 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture
      Oculum pro oculo!
Dentem pro dente!
    The ameriKlans excuse was...?
Mon, 12/05/2011 - 22:58 | 1949490 nmewn
nmewn's picture

Eye for an eye my ass...who started it? Who attacked who?

The entire continent was in fucking shambles. We were there with a damned logistics supply line to feed our army not the entire continent...the soldiers who carried out or turned their backs to what they saw or did it came last in the pecking order...in my view.

Once supplies caught up with demand, then the German people (the citizens). Then, lastly, your beloved Wehrmacht and the SS sprinkled in amongst them (after the SS guy no doubt murdered a common soldier for his uniform before we got to the bastard).

The Russians fought total war...with everything I alluded to before and will not go into here.

Its all very fine & clean to sit back and judge with the benefit of modern norms what transpired in the past. You and I can't transpose that to the here and now when speaking of history.

The human race doesn't conquer cities and throw the babies up in the air and catch them on the tips of our swords anymore either...just for sport.

But that was common at one point in time wasn't it?

Besides...I'm with you guys on US civilians being targeted by the US government. However, nations have the perogative (for good or bad) to target foreign nationals. Uday & Qusay certainly didn't object to it and got their reward for it.

A tooth for a tooth ;-)

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:20 | 1947662 George Washington
George Washington's picture

Exactly ... Dictators all over the world are already saying LET'S PLAY DIRTY ... AMERICA DOES!

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 18:41 | 1948623 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

GW, u didn't see the comment b4 u extended the Grunt perspective to the Dictators.

U can't differentiate; that's where I think your passion ought to lead.

But, after all, don't matta' hill o' beanz: "Merica DOES, so WE <enter your group, dictator, etc. here> CAN DO IT TOO!"

- Ned

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 19:28 | 1948796 nmewn
nmewn's picture

I don't get it Ned.

Terrorists & guerrillas have never been afforded the same respect & treatment as uniformed soldiers. Mainly because they do not give it to their enemies...or the civilians they attack on purpose. How can we expect them to honor the rules of war or any other international law when by their very nature and conduct in "battle" preclude it?

And I'm talking foreign nationals here, not US civilian KKK-Black Panther types.

I've chased this rabbit before on a GW thread...make me see the light my brutha ;-)

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 08:02 | 1950305 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

nmewn,

"Terrorists & guerrillas have never been afforded the same respect & treatment as uniformed soldiers."

Well, yes, until we (U.S.) relaxed the rules.  Used to be: no identifying marks, (even an arm-band), caught doing the nasty, BANG! and problem solved.  These days, ROE prevent your local snuffie from sneezing without permission.

I'm talking little-warriors in your face, where there is no time to establish nationality.  In a firefight, no time to establish a cordon-sanitaire, to read Miranda, to do anything but put the gleep on the other guy.

But, when there is time to establish nationality, then different rules for different folk.  If foreigners (and not aligned) then summary execution is allowed under Geneva and Hague (but not under U.S. Law of Land Warfare)  If AMCIT, then the U.S. rules apply, Constitutional rights.  U.S. has intentionally restrained its force from the Geneva/Hague possibilities.  "War is politics executed through other means." [or somethin']

Current situation blurs this both ways: offering (or pretending to offer) citizenship rights to non-citz, and denying due process to well-known citizens (like acing the dude in Yemen)

I postulate that this is intentionally blurring the distinction of being AMCIT; that it is on purpose; and that GW, while obviously smart, is a "useful idiot" in this matter.

Normal GW rabbit hole: overstated/overblown headline, not recognizing actual law, BDS/CDS, treating political symptoms vs. anything close to  root cause ...

Good day on ya'

- Ned

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 19:38 | 1953037 nmewn
nmewn's picture

Thanks for the reply.

"But, when there is time to establish nationality, then different rules for different folk.  If foreigners (and not aligned) then summary execution is allowed under Geneva and Hague (but not under U.S. Law of Land Warfare)  If AMCIT, then the U.S. rules apply, Constitutional rights."

Exactly. 

"U.S. has intentionally restrained its force from the Geneva/Hague possibilities.  "War is politics executed through other means." [or somethin']"

Which is my understanding as well.

"Current situation blurs this both ways: offering (or pretending to offer) citizenship rights to non-citz, and denying due process to well-known citizens (like acing the dude in Yemen)"

That is it...right there..."offering (or pretending to offer) citizenship rights to non-citz..." In my book, on foreign soil, any foreign national engaged in terrorist activities and captured by our military for doing so, does not get the rights of a US citizen. No Miranda. They get a military tribunal...which is more than they deserve. No trial by a jury of their peers. Who would be their peers...other terrorists?...lol.

"I postulate that this is intentionally blurring the distinction of being AMCIT; that it is on purpose; and that GW, while obviously smart, is a "useful idiot" in this matter."

Just like many other matters. I do believe he tries to be balanced at times. But he continues to blow it with me with crap like OWS.

Here we had an obvious, completely contrived, leftwing fringe group asking everyone else to respect their rights...,while looking the other way as rapes, robbery and assault happens withn their group, people being murdered (human rights), in some cases trespassing on private property (property rights), unsanitary conditions, lice & TB breaking out making it a public health hazard...and he doesn't say a word about any of that.

He sits around waiting for the inevitable confrontation and thats what he runs with?

Surely, he and they are not so full of themselves that they think people (generally) cannot see the rest of it. And that they were once again...as you say, played for useful idiots.

Tue, 12/06/2011 - 23:30 | 1953595 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

I'm glad you circled back here--just back from work, too much coffee today, and a wide awake night.

Further to all of above: I really respect folks like GW and what they try to do.  I am well within the Constitutional system, affirmatively aligned with the written words/sense, and among many who have/will put their money on the table to protect the rights of folk like GW to say their piece.  I note that the opposition to this view wishes to shut down the opposing viewpoints.  I'll stand on this side (w/Jefferson, Madison, Adams...)

I've teased GW (probably to the point where he automatically junks me :-O ) when his a) headlines don't match  up to his stories, b) his breathless stories do not coordinate with the situation/facts, c) evident BDS/CDS, d) stupidity as to how things get done vs. his descriptions from here and here and here and ... you get the picture.

Where I believe that GW is vulnerable in "his" postings is in the implications of his proponency.  He (I presume) was a proponent of the self-immolation, then of the "Arab Spring" then of the "democracy outcome" and, now we find out that the MBz are like 40% of the "vote" in Egypt.

Two thoughts: 1) GW is a useful idiot, idealistic, being manipulated by <<someone>> or 2) GW is manipulating toward some end.  I'ma bettin' on 1, because he is evidently consistent and dedicated.  Then again, there might be case 3) or case 4), but it is late at night.  Case 1 is not to say that GW has no integrity, nor that he believes not at all in what he (re)posts.  Just that his near-term proponency has longer term effects that are unseen in his analyses; therefore his recommendations are weak-assed.

Which brings me back to why I tease his posts without mercy, but, I'd hope, without unnecessary malice.

Now to your last comments:

"Surely, he and they are not so full of themselves that they think people (generally) cannot see the rest of it. And that they were once again..."

Yes they are, and we ought to consider what it takes to a) place human beings into such a situation, b) "sustain" them there, c) have them risk (Ok, Ok, Ok) benign arrest (resume enhancement in the late 1960s).  What support organization is being exercised while these cannon-fodder are "engaged"?  We know that there are various support thangs goin' on.

There are exercizezs that have the commernd staph doin' their jobz without people actually doin' theirz,  don't cha' know.

We b watchin' a larger and longa set.

Rock On.

- Ned

Wed, 12/07/2011 - 07:57 | 1954172 nmewn
nmewn's picture

I'm with you regarding the "democracy" of the Arab Spring...now GW is silent on it. Not a word about the theocracies emerging throughout the region.

He was warned. He's useful to be sure, to someone...goin with (a) as well...for now.

And to the fans of GW who enjoyed the junk fest of those who didn't just go along to get along...like docile cattle being led into a slaughter house...

One of your beloved "freedom fighters" detonated again yesterday.

>>>>In a mosque.<<<<

Sixty dead.

Surprisingly enough, again, he wasn't wearing a uniform when he did it.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 21:13 | 1949121 New_Meat
New_Meat's picture

That's my point, but I gotta run

- Ned

Much more lata'

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 21:18 | 1949146 nmewn
nmewn's picture

42

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:31 | 1948958 psychobilly
psychobilly's picture

Terrorist/Guerilla = Someone opposed to US foreign policy 

It's just a propaganda label -- one of many used by governments throughout history -- to manipulate the emotions of useful idiots into supporting the government's war machine.

Besides, it's not like the US military doesn't target civilians and civilian infrastructure on purpose (in violation of international law) as a matter of policy.  There is no meaningful distinction.  The Amerikan way of war results in far more civilian deaths than combatants.  It's no accident.  And nothing is more cowardly or less honorable than dropping bombs on urban areas from thousands of feet up.

Mon, 12/05/2011 - 20:34 | 1948984 nmewn
nmewn's picture

"It's just a propaganda label..."

Actually...no.

There is a distinct difference between someone in street clothes and someone in uniform. But I didn't ask you...I asked a vet for his opinion on it.

Are you a vet?

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