Should we care ?


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Posted by Catch of the day (65.35.186.56) on January 13, 2002 at 20:41:22:

This week 20 Al-Qaeda mainly Afghan Arabs were transported to a prison in Cuba. Their hands and feet were in chains, their head was covered with a hoods, some were drugged. They also had 3 fully armed Marines guarding every single one of them.
They were placed is cages in an isolated area in Cuba, surrounded with barb wire, land mines, Shark invested waters, ....with 10 guards to each prisoner.
This may seem to be too much, since these people are not Supermen rather they are weak small men (half the size of the smallest marine), but still these people are very dangerous, and are welling to die for what they believe in, as they have shown, and frankly it is better for them to be placed in cages, than to be shot at and bombed while in a cage as was the case in the prisoners of Mazari Shareef.
I also think it is a good idea to put them on Cuba, than in a US main land prison.
If they required 10 gauds for every prisoner in an Isolated part of Cuba, they will probably require the whole US army plus the reserve to guard them on the main US land, and probably some Americans will still complain that they can not sleep, and do not feel save with them in America, and who can blame them.
I do not mind their bad treatment, as they will be placed in cages without walls, but with open wire walls, and the prison complex will have powerful lights on , which will turn the night to day all the time, even during sleeping time, they will sleep on concrete floor..., but frankly they deserve this treatment for the crimes they committed.
But what I am not sure if it is right or not is that the US decided to consider them criminal "detainee" which will make them subject to laws of criminal, rather than prisoners of war (POW). This will deprive them from many Geneva rights, and subject them to things not acceptable even in Iraq against POW's. The Americans pilots who were bombing Iraqi cities, shelters, bridges....were considered POW's, and were treated very well. If the American pilots who killed hundred of Iraqis were treated as criminal detainee, they would have been subjected to death sentence, instead of being returned back to the US better looking than most Iraqis.
Bush himself said this was a "WAR", these prisoners were caught in a war zone, during a war in Afghanistan, and they were not involved in the 911 crime, and never been to the US, so why are they not POW's ??
As a matter of fact many of them fought for the US against Russia.
You would expect the democratic American media to raise up these questions, but as you can see below in this program from CNN, that hardly any questions were asked or any criticism raised, other than some funny jokes, and brain storming about how to kill (I am not kidding) Kill these prisoners indirectly on the hand of someone else, as was the case in Mazari Shareef. (this is like Saddam giving the captured US pilots to the families of Al-Ameriah shelter to kill them so he would not be responsible).
This in not the Comedy Channel we are talking about, this is CNN, with its top reporters participating in this grisly discussion.
If liberal Journalist HUNT, and SHIELDS (who usually care about the ants in the Amazon) talk about these poor prisoners in cold blood, and total disregard to human rights, and human life, then what should we expect from the Generals at Mazari-Shareef, or from the dictator Saddam Husain.
Now why should we care ? frankly I hate these fanatic criminals, but what I hate more is this racist, none human attitude from these hypocrite champions of human rights, which is likely to affect innocent people, including us sooner or later.
Many none Zionist Jewish Americans are in the forefront of activism for civil rights, even for some Arabs and Muslim Americans, they do it because they know this is the best way to prevent another Jewish Holocaust, because they know if civil rights are disregarded for anyone, their turn will soon come, at least used to be that way.
As the revised saying goes, "They first came for the Muslim, and I said I am not a Muslim, then they came for the ....."

CNN CAPITAL GANG
Aired January 12, 2002 - 19:00 ET

Twenty shackled and hooded al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners arrived at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first of 2,000 to come.

FLEISCHER: Many of them are being treated as either detainees that are unlawful combatants and they are in custody of the United States military, and appropriately, properly so.

DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: There was one person who was sedated during the course of the trip from Kandahar to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but that's all.

SHIELDS: Margaret Carlson, why bring these prisoners all the way to Cuba?

CARLSON: All the way to Cuba. Because there are no prisons adequate in Afghanistan, and I don't think you're going to build one out of the rubble, and because when the few were detained in Mazar-e- Sharif, there was an uprising and a CIA agent was killed. And these are the meanest, toughest ones, and they're going to be in a place surrounded by barbed wire, on the perimeter, Marines with huge guns, 3,000 to the -- what I think will end up being about 300 prisoners, which is needed.

And people are going to begin to complain, or the human -- Amnesty International, about the conditions. But as unlawful combatants, they're not protected by the Geneva convention, and the conditions will be -- well, not even the Ramada Inn conditions, with buckets and shackles and mats and cement, but I think all they're entitled to.

SHIELDS: Kate O'Beirne, you agree?

O'BEIRNE: Good for you, Margaret. Absolutely. Let Human Rights Watch...

CARLSON: I'm a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) person.

SHIELDS: Yeah, I was going to say, get the humane...

O'BEIRNE: Let Human Rights Watch charter a plane, and they can bring these -- these dangerous characters down to -- down to Cuba. I think the idea of being sedated for a 27-hour flight ought to be an option the airlines might want to start offering, frankly. (LAUGHTER)

O'BEIRNE: I could do without the hood, but it sure would beat the movie and the food to be sedated for the whole trip!

SHIELDS: Kate, Al Hunt usually does that with the liquor cabinet!

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

O'BEIRNE: ... suffering in the Caribbean. They got out of the Afghan winter. They're being treated humanely. Now, what happens ultimately, I don't know. Presumably, there'll be trials for them. But they pose an enormous risk for anyone responsible for them. And this is just, I think, the beginning of the problem for the American military, who's going to have hundreds of these guys on their hands.

SHIELDS: Al Hunt.

HUNT: Yeah, I agree. I'm not bothered by the treatment. I think that's -- that's the only way you can get them there. I'm sure that was one -- probably the best place to take them. The fact we could tweak Castro a little bit probably didn't exactly upset the administration, either. I think the only problem, Mark, is whether there are 300 or whether there are as many as 2,000, what do you do with them eventually?

HUNT: You're not going to put them all in military tribunals. I think what we'd like to do is have some of the countries they come from take them back and probably kill them, but that's going to be the big issue.

CARLSON: ... take them back.

NOVAK: That's the problem. If you give them to the -- to the -- to the -- to the Afghan warlords who are running the country now, they'll probably cut a deal with them! I don't think they'll kill them. I think they'll probably give them a ministry! But the whole idea that they were brought back to Guantanamo to be interrogated is ridiculous. They're not going to say anything. They were brought for safe-keeping.

The interesting thing is it doesn't end with 2,000. If this is, as I believe it is, a global war and we're going after them in Somalia and we're going after them in the Philippines and you can't trust the local people -- I mean, what are we going to -- what are we going to do with all these dudes? SHIELDS: I have a diplomatic question. We don't recognize Cuba, so how do we recognize the prisoners are in Cuba? How does that work, Bob?
....................
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0201/12/cg.00.html





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