UN Report: US Is Abusing Captives, page 3

WHOFLUNGGUM,

I stopped replying directly to Souljah's posts a long time ago, because I got sick and tired of being played like a fish. It's mostly background static noise to me at this point. The same recyled rhetoric, the same recycled links, the same tired story.

I will, however, admit that he does invest an impressive amount of time and effort into developing his posts, even though I can no longer stomach their contents or pretent to accept them as unbiased.

Anyways, you would have to look long and hard to find more than a few normal Americans who give a rats patoot about the slimebags in Gitmo right now. They are better off then most of the prisoners in Federal Pens back in the States, and it is generally accepted that we wouldn't have gone through all the time, money, and effort to build a prison and keep them there if there wasn't a good reason. As recent history has shown, we cannot rely on our international neighbors to properly contain and/or deal with these thuggish killers, so we must do it ourselves. And since some of the ones we have previously released have already picked their rifles back up and resumed shooting at our boys, I am perfectly happy to let them rot in Cuba until they are not longer a threat.

I read the UN report. The part I liked best was Annex II, the letter from the US responding to the draft report. IMHO that sez it all. Some of the pertinent quotes from that letter are:

"The Report’s legal analysis rests on the flawed position that the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) applies to Guantanamo detainees because the United States “is not currently engaged in an international armed conflict between two Parties to the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions.” This, of course, leads to a manifestly absurd result; that is, during an ongoing armed conflict, unlawful combatants receive more procedural rights than would lawful combatants under the Geneva Conventions.

Geez, I guess since Al Queda isn't a party to this convention, we have to treat them like civilians, eh?

and....

"The United States is a country of laws with an open system of constitutional government by checks and balances, and an independent judiciary and press. These issues are fully and publicly debated and litigated in the United States. To preserve the objectivity and authority of their own Report, the Special Rapporteurs should review and present objective and comprehensive material on all sides of an issue before stating their own conclusions. Instead, the Special Rapporteurs appear to have reached their own conclusions and then presented an advocate’s brief in support of them. In the process they have relied on international human rights instruments, declarations, tandards, or general comments of treaty bodies without serious analysis of whether the instruments by their terms apply extraterritorially; whether the United States is a State Party -- or has filed reservations or understandings -- to the instrument; whether the instrument, declaration, standard or general comment is legally binding or not; or whether the provisions cited have the meaning ascribed to them in the Unedited Report. This is not the basis on which international human rights mechanisms should act".

Damn right it isn't.