DGDevin wrote:

Only LAWFUL enemy combatants are afforded POW status

Aha, and since the govt. of Afghanistan didn't bother to buy uniforms
for its troops, we get to say they aren't really soldiers and do what
we please with them. How cunning. Let's just hope nobody brings up
the Minutemen....

Yes. In general, if the government doesn't follow the rules (i.e.,
uniforms), the participants will suffer the consequences. Do a smattering of
research. The Hauge Convention makes exceptions for hastily organized
militias and the like.

In the absence of any one of the above, the person is designated, by
extension, as an UNLAWFUL enemy combatant and is outside the
protections of the Hauge and Geneva conventions.

And if he was just in the wrong place at the wrong times, like the
poor *******s various Afghan warlords grabbed and turned over to the
U.S. as Taliban/Al Qaeda in order collect reward money, well tough
**** for him. A few years at Gitmo, was it really so bad?

Yep. Them's the breaks.

Common sub-catagories of unlawful enemy combatants include spies,
saboteurs, guerrillas, fifth-columnists, and the like. The warring
party coming into contact with these folks may follow its own rules,
unhindered by international treaties, regarding these people.

Oh ho, like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, that kind of rules?
And what does that little book say about the treatment of prisoners,
counselor? Where in there are things like beatings, cold, hunger,
water-boarding and so on listed as allowable? Think the "Cruelty and
maltreatment" section might apply to such matters?



The UCMJ is silent on the subject of unlawful enemy combatants. Further, the
folks to which you refer were not prisoners of the military - they were the
guests of the CIA.



Correct. Article II of the Constitution designates the President as
Commander in CHIEF of the armed forces. The Supreme Court, in the
Prize Cases, declared that the President, in this case Abe Lincoln,
can run a war any way he damn well pleases and cannot be gainsaid by
the courts, the Congress, or anyone else.

Which war are you speaking of? According to you we're fighting a
band of outlaws, not a uniformed army of a nation. How can you have
a war with such an ill-defined body? Who did we serve our
declaration of war upon? Where is their capital city? And how come
both before and after all this "they're neither fish nor fowl"
business we were able to catch, prosecute and imprison terrorists
using the laws and courts we apply to other criminals? Was there some
rare alignment of the planets that made that especially difficult
while Bush 43 was in office?

The President is CinC of the military. He can wage war on anybody he
pleases. Remember, Clinton waged war on more countries than anyone since FDR
(Albania, Croatia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Iraq).

Well, they're not POWs.

Then why did you use POWs as an example of people locked up without
trial?


It was an EXAMPLE, just like mental health defectives, juveniles, contagion
spreaders, and more. You must have missed that I was giving examples of
people that could be locked up completely outside the criminal justice
system. POWs can be locked up without trial, so can unlawful enemy
combatants; they have a few other characteristics in common, but they are
not the same.


But leaving that aside, in what court would you try them? Remember,
the 6th Amendment says they must be tried in the State and district
where the crime occurred. I've haven't checked so far today, but as
of yesterday Afghanistan had not been granted statehood.

You simply cannot enforce American criminal law outside U.S.
territory.

Oh, so the 21 indictments handed down by U.S. courts against those
involved in the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, those were, what,
clerical errors? And the four men convicted so far and serving life
without parole, how exactly did that come about?



Jeeze, I would think even a middling-quick CHILD would know that an American
Embassy is American soil.


They are not criminals, nor are they POWs. They are "unlawful enemy
combatants," at least according to the Supreme Court (1944).

And around the world America's claim to being a nation of laws takes
another black eye--do as we say, not as we do. And of course we
don't use torture, except when we do, and then it's not torture. Lovely.

Exactly. I think you're beginning to wrap your mind around the issue.