🚀 go-pugleaf

bat <bat@bats.com> writes:

: Obviously, the armed forces and the CIA aren't going to
: waste time, effort, money and resources on the capture
: and incarceration of people who are innocent and harmless.
: If they did, they'd have nothing to gain and everything to
: lose, credibility-wise.

> I think you kinda turn things upside down. Primary here is
> the fact that armed forces, CIA, and anything within 100
> miles radius from security topic have gained immensely since
> 9/11, in terms of budgets and powers, because they are sup-
> posed to fight war on terror. Secondary is the fact that 
> they obviously have to demonstrate some result, and, given
> the absence of anything real, they don't have any other 
> choice than to lock up taxi drivers.

That strikes me as paranoia and conspiracy mongering.  The
results of incarceration are demonstrated by the amount of 
useful intelligence that's obtained through interrogation,
not simply by the number of people who are under lock and key.

Obviously, if the ratio of the volume of useful intel to the
number of detainees is unfavorable, the CIA and the armed
forces aren't going to look good.  Those who provide money
tend to want results in return for it.


> It's even hard to blame them. In USSR during Stalin regime,
> people were demonstrating absolutely the same behavior, and
> gulags were full with "enemies of the nation".

In Stalin's time it was due to the ruthlessness of Stalin and
his regime and the oppressive nature of the Communist system
generally, not because of a need to demonstrate results by
meeting Gulag quotas.  Anybody who so much as thought about
criticizing the System got a ticket to Siberia, as a way of 
maintaining a climate of fear among the populace.


> If you think that CIA & Co. are spending resources on real
> terrorists, then, again, where are they?

In Guantanamo and in those secret prisons that the Left is so
exercised about, of course.  (Why would there be any need for
those secret prisons and offshore interrogations if most of 
the detainees were mere taxi drivers and the equivalent?)


> where are trials? evidence? convictions? where are those who 
> we are to thank for the liquid-related limitations - I guess
> they were planning to blow something up? were they tried? no?
> why no?

You're taking it as a given that such people would or should be
tried.  What many fail to grasp is that these guys are neither
fish nor fowl: they're not criminals, and not being uniformed
members of the armed forces of a recognized nation-state that's
a signatory to the Geneva Convention, they're not POWs.  Hence
the use of vague terms like "detainees" and "enemy combatants" 
to describe them.

That means two things: that there's no generally accepted 
mechanism in place for dealing with such people, and that 
Bush, Rummy-poo et al. got to (indeed, _had_ to) improvise
and make their own rules.  In short, if someone's stashed at
Gitmo, then his butt belongs to Dubya...and he'll remain there
at Dubya's pleasure. 

Realistically, though, prisoners of war have always been 
incarcerated until the end of hostilities.  Why should this
case be any different, particularly in light of the fact
that so many criticize the Bush administration for _not_
treating the Gitmo detainess as POWs?  If these guys want
to wage perpetual jihad, then it logically follows that 
those of them we capture will have to endure perpetual 
incarceration.  They made their own collective bed.  Let
them lie in it.

After all, if we were to let them go, they'd just rejoin the 
fight.  And it isn't *our* fault that they elected to fight as
irregulars, and by so doing, to forego any right to treatment 
as legitimate, conventional POWs.  They can all stay in there
until they rot, as far as I'm concerned.  When they leave Gitmo
or wherever, it'll be feet-first in a cheap pine box.  And you
know something?  That's suits me just fine.

Of course, the international Left thinks this is terrible.  Poor
terrorists; poor, poor terrorists.

Then again, since these are the same waterheads who make heroes
out of bipedal vermin like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, 
and who hold candlelight vigils outside the gates of San Quentin
anytime some waste of skin like Stanley "Tookie" Williams gets
drop-kicked into the Great Beyond, I'm not inclined to take their
objections very seriously. 


> don't you think that if CIA & Co. can keep those "terrorists"
> locked up only on condition of no trial, not seeing the evidence,
> etc., then the most likely explanation is that there's no evidence
> indeed? or maybe you have another? 

Indeed I do: national security.  One of the fundamental tenets of
intelligence collection is not to let the other side know what you
know or how you came to know it.  If these guys went to trial, not
just intel, but sources and methods would be compromised.


> or perhaps the media that is so happy to feed us all those 
> laughable hoaxes like Osama's video tapes, wouldn't report
> those real trials if any took place? 

If they would, that's all the more reason not to hold any -- for
the reason given above.

("...media that _are_ so happy...")



Geoff

--
"Your head is as empty as a eunuch's underpants." -- E. Blackadder