PLEASE HELP!!! How did the US government breach the Geneva Convention and Universal Declaration of human rights in Guantanamo bay. please help i have an essay and i have no clue where to start.
The torturing of prisoners was a breach of the Geneva Convention
according to the darling of the RIGHT WING—General Patraeus
Gen. Petraeus joined FOX News and Martha MacCallum today and gave a blockbuster interview, but probably not the one Fox expected. Once again, he called for the responsible closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also said that mistakes were made after 9/11 and that the Army Field Manual is all that we need to use to interrogate prisoners. In addition, he said that we have to have faith in our judicial system and we should try the Khalid Sheikh Muhammads in a court of law.
Martha tried to give him the ticking time bomb scenario to justify torture and he really didn’t bite. He did say maybe an Executive Order could be appropriate, but that it really wasn’t necessary. Petraeus repudiated pretty much most of what Limbaugh Republicans and the Rove/Newt/Cheney Party have been saying.
(rush transcript)
MacCallum: Where do you think those people should go?
Gen. Petraeus: Well, it’s not for a soldier to say. What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.
MacCallum: What about the concern that a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or anybody of that ilk might be tried here in a US court and the possibility that some of the treatments that were used on them that they could go free.
Gen. Petraeus: Well, first of all, I don’t think we should be afraid of our values we’re fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.
MacCallum: So you’re confident that they will never go free.
Gen. Petraeus: I hope that’s the case.
MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)
Gen. Petraeus: ….T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them — those techniques work, that’s our experience in this business.
MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?
Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.
December 12th, 2009 at 9:04 am
The torturing of prisoners was a breach of the Geneva Convention
according to the darling of the RIGHT WING—General Patraeus
Gen. Petraeus joined FOX News and Martha MacCallum today and gave a blockbuster interview, but probably not the one Fox expected. Once again, he called for the responsible closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. He also said that mistakes were made after 9/11 and that the Army Field Manual is all that we need to use to interrogate prisoners. In addition, he said that we have to have faith in our judicial system and we should try the Khalid Sheikh Muhammads in a court of law.
Martha tried to give him the ticking time bomb scenario to justify torture and he really didn’t bite. He did say maybe an Executive Order could be appropriate, but that it really wasn’t necessary. Petraeus repudiated pretty much most of what Limbaugh Republicans and the Rove/Newt/Cheney Party have been saying.
(rush transcript)
MacCallum: Where do you think those people should go?
Gen. Petraeus: Well, it’s not for a soldier to say. What I do support is what has been termed the responsible closure of Gitmo. Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has been used by the enemy against us. We have not been without missteps or mistakes in our activity since 9/11 and again Gitmo is a lingering reminder for the use of some in that regard.
MacCallum: What about the concern that a Khalid Sheikh Muhammad or anybody of that ilk might be tried here in a US court and the possibility that some of the treatments that were used on them that they could go free.
Gen. Petraeus: Well, first of all, I don’t think we should be afraid of our values we’re fighting for, what we stand for. And so indeed we need to embrace them and we need to operationalize them in how we carry out what it is we’re doing on the battlefield and everywhere else. So one has to have some faith, I think, in the legal system. One has to have a degree of confidence that individuals that have conducted such extremist activity would indeed be found guilty in our courts of law.
MacCallum: So you’re confident that they will never go free.
Gen. Petraeus: I hope that’s the case.
MacCallum: (Ticking time bomb scenario)
Gen. Petraeus: ….T here might be an exception and that would require extraordinary but very rapid approval to deal with, but for the vast majority of the cases, our experience downrange if you will, is that the techniques that are in the Army Field Manual that lays out how we treat detainees, how we interrogate them — those techniques work, that’s our experience in this business.
MacCallum: So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?
Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion? When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions, we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.
References :
December 12th, 2009 at 9:11 am
The Geneva convention sets rules for handling prisoners of war. Prisoners of war are combatants fighting as members of the armed forces of an opposing nation.
Terrorists do not represent any army or any nation, they are murdering criminals and therefor have no rights granted them under the Geneva Convention.
If they are not covered under the Geneva convention, it is impossible for the United States to violate the Geneva Convention when dealing with those murderers.
The top leaders who planned the attacks on the USA on 9/11/01 bragged about their accomplishment and requested the death penalty so they could be martyrs.
No civilian court can change that fact. We should grant them their wish. Trying them in a US court will give them years of propaganda publicity any US citizens will pay for it. That can only help to empower more murdering terrorists.
No war prisoners have ever been tried in civil courts. Even after the conclusion of WWII, Nazis and other war criminals were tried by military style tribunal.
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December 12th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Never happened.
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December 12th, 2009 at 9:51 am
It all depends on the definition of inhumane treatment and the definition of torture. I would start there and come to your own conclusion. I would also interject what the enemy did to our civilians that they captured and tortured including beheading some of them, dragging dead bodies through the streets etc.
References :