Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] what waterboarding looks like [Politics]

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Jonathan King wrote:
> There is evidently some question about whether waterboarding is or is
> not banned by recent legislation addressing how we can interrogate and
> try certain enemy combatants (and what an enemy combatant really is,
> and that's very worrisome, because there are no hard standards).

Let me address just this issue of what constitutes an enemy combatant. 
I am not an expert on the Geneva convention by any means.  Being a US 
citizen incurs certain rights (due process, etc), and also being a POW 
incurs certain rights (Geneva convention, etc).  But these also incur 
certain responsibilities.  For example, with POW's, the combatants 
should be wearing uniforms.  Presumably they should be fighting 
according to the rules of war (e.g. white flag is never used as a 
pretext for a surprise attack).

But here we are fighting a people who care nothing for the rules of war, 
and indeed who are willing to use our inherent decency against us.  Thus 
when one group use a white flag as a means to get a surprise attack on 
us, we still feel compelled to treat the next white flag as genuine. 
And perhaps with good reason, because sometimes the next group of people 
using the white flag really mean it.  But I do think that the US has the 
right to no longer regard the white flag.

Nevertheless, the US still comes under scrutiny.  So for example, they 
have check points which the bad guys frequently try to blow up using 
suicide bombers.  This leads the US to use tactics which can invariably 
lead to innocent people being shot at check points, because the 
civilians inadvertently fail to follow the proper procedures (or in some 
cases they are forced to drive through at speed by the bad guys).  But 
the media always lay the blame on the US soldiers, and not on those who 
have created this environment in which it is much harder to adhere to 
decent rules of warfare.

In WWII, enemy combatants who did not meet the requirements of POW were 
shot.  This happened even after the war was over, during the occupation 
of Germany, and the subsequent de-Nazification.

Stephen

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