Originally posted by Nygdan
How many guards have been raped or detained without trial?

What are you trying to say? No really can you elaborate?

Originally posted by loam
I think this whole story is a non-issue. Like I said, show me how these detainees behave any differently than every prisoner in the US penal system.

Is that suppose to make this a non story? And more importantly does that excuse their actions?

Its not that its a non- story, its just that given the opportunity, any person encarcerated anywhere will try something if given the chance. Why is this special or incredible?
You would do it yourself if you were trapped like an animal...I know i would under those circumstances.
Those people in Guantanamo are still human beings, you know...feelings and all.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Why is this special or incredible?

I find it incredible that it was not reported in the news until now, their behavior in and of itself is not surprising to me, I didn’t expect otherwise.

I'm only going to respond to what I know is going on without question, so I won't say anything about guards abusing prisoners or about prisoners peeing on guards.

What we have here, as a fact, unquestioned by any evidence, is people being held without charges, without legal counsel, without recourse, without due process of law, and without the rights that protect either those under indictment for crimes, or prisoners of war.

The non-U.S.-citizen status of the detainess is completely irrelevant; any non-citizen charged with a crime in the United States has the same rights under the law as a citizen does. And an "enemy combatant" should, properly speaking, be a prisoner of war, protected under the terms of the Geneva Convention. One or the other.

The Bush administration, however, is using a loophole in the law -- which ought to be closed, quickly -- to treat people the way that the Nazis treated political dissidents: lock them up permanently with no legal rights whatsoever and no trial.

Whether he is legally entitled to do that or not, the fact that he would WANT to do it shows a contempt for liberty and human rights that is simply staggering in a man sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution.

Any alleged torture or mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo is in addition to the basic violation of human rights that holding them there in the first place, without trial and without charges, represents. All of the allegations of torture and mistreatment could be categorically proven false, and what's happening at Gitmo would STILL be wrong.

This thread doesn't even come close to justifying the vile abomination that Gitmo detention is, even if everything it alleges as a fact is true.

Originally posted by Two Steps Forward
The non-U.S.-citizen status of the detainess is completely irrelevant; any non-citizen charged with a crime in the United States has the same rights under the law as a citizen does. And an "enemy combatant" should, properly speaking, be a prisoner of war, protected under the terms of the Geneva Convention. One or the other.

Nope.

In December 2005 an illegal immigrant from a city near us kidnapped a small girl and ran with her. He brought her to within a mile of my house and killed her in a stone quarry, leaving her body to be covered by the falling snow. He didn't bury her or anything.

The police do their investigating and track this guy down and he confesses to the kidnapping and murder.

My rights after killing someone and his rights after killing someone appear just a wee bit different.

JDub

His embassy steps in and says the state can't charge him with the crime because he is an illegal immigrant and not subject to our state's laws.

He is going to get a free plane trip home as soon as the paperwork is finished.

Originally posted by BlueTileSpookHis embassy steps in and says the state can't charge him with the crime because he is an illegal immigrant and not subject to our state's laws.

He is going to get a free plane trip home as soon as the paperwork is finished.

Illegal immigrants are a special case. It may be that the U.S. can do nothing in such cases except deport, since the perpetrator is not a resident of the U.S. That strikes me as unjust, but as a legal technicality it may be true.

This doesn't address what I was saying, though. If a legal resident non-citizen -- someone who CAN be charged with a crime -- is, they have the same rights under the law as citizens do.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
What are you trying to say? No really can you elaborate?

That I don't care if people that've been sent to the detention camps on the other side of the world because of allegations from unamed witnesses are abusive to their guards.

Originally posted by loam
And more importantly does that excuse their actions?

Those guards are lucky they they're not being murdered and facing an uprising, in all honesty. I am sure that lots of people in gitmo are guilty, guilty as hell. But I don't beleive for a moment that every single one of them is. An innocent man held as a captive by foreign soldiers, he's not required to play nice.