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amazon said:
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Crash said:
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JimFlat6 said:
It is unrealistic to expect zero mistakes, zero innocent casualties during a conflict and zero pictures of people suffering from something because of it.

I do understand European sensitivity about this. Look at the appalling widespread destruction, injuries and deaths suffered by civilians during both world wars on all sides
that were inflicted upon them by both the Axis and the Allies both purposely and by error.

As for fighting Al Quaida, it is better to risk a few innocents having their time stolen, some bruises and their lives turned upside down, then to bomb and shell the cities, villages and relatives of their irregular combatants into complete oblivion.

As for detained irregular combatants having lawyers present that is not realistic, practical or warranted.

Irregular combatants have no national flag or sovereign government to turn to or for us to negotiate with.

What legal standard would their lawyers be working with? Local? The military or civilian standards of the forces that captured them? The legal customs of the irregulars?

At what point would lawyers knowingly become or unknowingly become conduits of information for the guilty ones to assist their terrorist comrades and visa versa?

POWs are not accorded lawyers, why should irregular combatants receive superior legal status and treatment?

If you want to wage war as a irregular you are taking on greater risks than if you wore the uniform of a soveriegn state. There are good reasons for that. They are not visible off or near the battlefield, have not agreed to any recognized standard of warfare and have zero accountability.

If it were not for a trans national group of irregular combatants dedicated to a religous cause that has declared war on civilians in the West this discussion would not exist.



Jim, I understand all of that. My point, which obviously hasn't been expressed enough between the lines, is do anything you want with them, torture them, take them bungee jumping into nettle fields, use them for target practice, it doesn't bother me at all. Just don't make those mistakes known and don't make your methods known. Had those dimwits not made a photo album of their prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib, it wouldn't have turned into a scandal. Even most muslims wouldn't just jump the gun without any sort of proof.
Do whatever you deem necessary, but keep it under wraps, away from muslim and human rights groups.








Amazon, if you have a better idea how to get information out of people who can't wait to die and take as many innocent people as they can with them, please make it known. I'm against torture in principle, but people who blow up a busy marketplace, killing and wounding over a hundred people, deserve no better. I am not, however, advocating torture of people whom they're not sure about, whether they're the enemy or not. Clearer now?