waste a few million more people trying to take away my right to freedom of expression.

When the US really decided to pursue a war on terror under the Bush administration, they realized a very serious problem: Terrorists do not fall under either prisoner of war or criminal categories. They're not simply prisoners of war as they don't represent a nation. They're not simply criminals as many (most) are captured by the military on the battlefield. They are simply unlawful enemy combatants. Neiher international nor domestic law covers unlawful enemy combatants.

Sure, those terrorists who have been caught using traditional police work are tried in civilian courts, but that's not because they are criminals but because in certain unique circumstances, terrorists are captured in a way consistent with the methods police would use to capture criminals. They can therefore be tried by the system that handles criminals. However, those terrorists captured on the battlefield can't simply be granted civilian trials as the methods leading to their capture are inconsistent with the methods used to capture simple criminals.

As stated above, the geneva convention applies to those individuals fighting on behalf of a nation. Terrorists don't fight for nations, they fight against nations as individuals and as organizations. International organized crime does not fight nations, it harms individuals, but it doesn't really seek (in most cases) to destabilize and destroy nations. On this note, the drug cartels in Mexico could arguably be called terrorist organizations (let's save that for a different, academic, thread). It might actually be easier for the US to call the terrorists "prisoners of war" as the war on terror will never end and thus the US could hold these people indefinately.

You say "problem", you think "awesome, justification for torture!"

Angel1, you are mixing concepts, namely fighting terrorism with unlawful combatants in a war.

There is a long list of treaties regarding terrorism, and it is nothing really new: http://www.un.org/terrorism/instruments.shtml

Basically, they go to trial.

Unlawful combatants is Geneva Convention fluff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

They still do get a trial so that an individual detainee can be found (or not, and this happened tons of times in the war on terror) to be an unlawful combatant. Also, if they are found to be an unlawful combatant, they still should be treated humanely, and if tried sentences must be pronounced by a regularly constituted court.

What doesn`t exist is a legal black hole called unlawful combatant that gives blanch card for people to do whatever the fluff they want to do to those combatants...

What a waste of time and taxpayer's money. Kangaroo court ftl. Sometimes I hate this country when local politicians can steal billions (including the prime minister) and yet they waste time trying Bush when they KNOW nothing will come of it. -.-'

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/economy/French+judges+probe+Malaysian+prime+minister+role+submarine+purchase/6575480/story.html

Don't you just love the catch 22 that the regularly constituted courts would have to toss the vast majority of those cases out. Sorry, that argument simply flies in the face of intelligence. Not very intelligent to try people who want to kill your citizens in courts that by the laws they operate under are incapable of trying most terrorists. Since the regularly constituted courts don't allow for prosecutions of this nature, then for all intents and purposes, there are no regularly constituted courts where it concerns terrorists. Pragmatism says that you have to find another way.

Have we tried terrorists in regularly constituted courts? Yes, but only when they could be treated as regular criminals, only when the evidence against them has been collected in a manner consistent with typical police investigations and when the trial would not reveal damaging information about ongoing operations. To argue for all terrorists to be treated as regular criminals flies in the face of reality. They are closer to prisoners of wara...and the conditions at Guantanamo Bay are consistent with the Geneva Convention for Prisoners of War.

Honestly, I suspect the president decided to abandon plans to close Guantanamo Bay when a few governors threatened to have the terrorists shot dead on sight if he brought them into their states; I know if I were a governor, that's exactly what I would have told President Obama.

I believe Eric answered 1) and in regard to 2), Spain has been trying to do something similar. I read about it back in November. There is a lot of pressure in most countries not to put Bush & Co. on trial. The United States is a huge trading partner with most nations around the world. I think that if you are patient that you will see more of these condemnations appearing. At that point Malaysia being first will be of much less significance.

Angel1: Do you really believe that a commercial airplane was able to violate the airspace of the Pentagon? If you do not, and I most certainly do not, then maybe you should reconsider the entire 'war on terror'. Also, war by definition has a beginning and an end. A war on terror is indefinite and indefinite wars bankrupt nations. Would you voice some opinions on what I have just written?

aponic, yeah I do. Do you realize how damn expensive it is to keep warplanes in the air? Way too expensive to keep them in the air around the Pentagon and D.C. when the nearest possibly entity that would have been thought to have a shot at doing something would have been a billion times more likely to shoot down a threat themselves for us then to actually attack us.

Prior to 9/11, the understanding was that terrorism was simply heightened criminal activity, not a quasi-war. Sure we'd bombed a few buildings and pounded the sand with our military, but it wasn't a war.

Prior to 9/11 the expectation was to have time to mobilize around the nations sensitive and critical defense infrastructure. Prior to 9/11, the defense of these places was largely to prevent spying and warn lost or curious civilians off.

Prior to 9/11, various intelligences were not compiled together to create a clearer picture of what was going on; a significant part of this was meant to keep a firewall between criminal investigations and intelligence investigations.

9/11 fits perfectly into the history of the English-speaking peoples since and before 1900. English-speaking peoples rarely win the first battle of a war, but also rarely lose the subsequent war (especially not when united in common cause).

We had the information to point toward 9/11. We just didn't have it put together in a useable form. This is a major problem of not just governments, but of business too. Governments and businesses must make sure that people get the information that they need to know (even if they don't know they need to know it) to create revelations and innovations that save millions (of people or dollars). The problem only becomes worse when government regulations impede the spread of informations (again, this applies to both government and business).

Do I really believe that a commercial airplane was able to violate the Pentagon's airspace on 9/11? YES! They're expecation was to have a conversation like this:

Pentagon: Your violating our airspace, get out!

Plane: What do you mean I'm violating your airspace, I'm 5 miles from your airspace?

Pentagon: No, you're in Pentagon airspace.

Plane: Well this is embarrassing, I'm leaving Pentagon airspace bearing...



They did not expect:

Pentagon: You're violating Penta

*boom*



Even just getting orders out to get planes fueled, armed, and launched takes some time...time that on 9/11 did not exist. Until 9/11 truthers can show me something better than the idea that the reported events don't make sense, I have to believe the very reasonable explanations to their objections.

Admittedly, challenging the idea that a commercial airplance was able to crash into the Pentagon is one of the more reasonable challenges, but I think it's been answered. Hindsight is 20/20; take yourself back to the time before 9/11 and try to picture what the DoD would be seeing in the future from that point before 9/11 going forward. I can believe that they would think it the better use of money to advance other research than to keeping armed warplanes in the air all the time (even if just on the East coast or East & West coasts. Not to mention that if that got out, it would probably have been a little concerning to at least a good part of the American citizenry.

Wow, I think that your view of the Cold War and the technologies we developed during that time are somewhat naive. Washington DC is the most protected city in the world; it even has its own missile defense shield. The Pentagon was hit more than an hour after the first plane hit in New York. The Pentagon was already on alert. Even if your argument holds about the planes, and I certainly do not believe that it does, the plane could have easily been shot down. Then again, it becomes obvious that a plane was not what hit the Pentagon when you look at the damage and what was found. The claim is that the entire plane was vaporized. Anyone with half a brain could tell you that this is not possible.

We are currently in a permanent state of war; The War on Terror. We made over 3000 drone attacks violating the sovereignty of other nations in the last 4 years. We invaded two countries. We destabilized Somalia. We overthrew a democracy in Guatemala and are supporting a military junta. And, this should not be mistaken as a new aggressiveness. We overthrew nearly every country in Central America from the 1950s-1980s, Chile, Bolivia, some others in South America, Iran 2x, Iraq 2x, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc. When the Cold War ended, there was no reason to justify the our exorbitant defense spending and the events of 9/11 served to as a justification for increased 'defense' (really a joke of a word as used) spending to Cold War levels.

We are the world's largest arms supplier. We spend more money annually on defense than the rest of the UN security council combined (China, Russia, England, France).

I'm generally not opposed to the idea of going after Bush and cronies. As anyone who argues with me on GT or FFAT knows, I definitely tend to side with the Democrats. If any country that is significant on the world stage wants to push for an international court to try them (and they are afforded a defense, even if they aren't personally present), then I'm not against that. Maybe I'm being naive and idealistic, but if they are given due process and found to be guilty in an international (or American) court that actually holds jurisdiction, then I'd be totally behind the verdict.

I just think when a country like Malaysia is putting foreigners on trial for something that didn't happen in Malaysia, they're doing it either for political reasons to get attention.

Regarding the conspiracy theory arguments, I'm going to abstain from getting involved in that portion.

As I have stated above, the only legitimate jurisdiction in which to try Bush/Cheney would be US jurisdiction. Any other trial, anywhere else, would be purely academic. Prove Bush/Cheney guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt before a jury of Americans and I'll stand by the verdict, but anything less than that is simply politics. Granted, the drive to get the evidence to convict them in a US court would be political too, but then you at least have a lot of hurdles to overcome to actually convict them.

Twain is wise to stay out of the conspiracy theory portion. As for me, I'm out on Aponic's self-defeating argument.

We tried Noriega Angel. We even extradited him out of Panama despite his crimes there and only this year did he make it back there, 20 years later. Clearly we as Americans do not abide by the same rule that you have yourself just laid forth and why should others? The obvious answer is military dominance.

it's not like we had a head start developing our military. had to send a few million farmers to fight in WWII. everybody was bigger and badder than US. we just got tired of their shiznit.

Funny you should bring this up, Aponic, because I actually addressed this issue on this thread earlier. The United States did not extradite Noriega to face charges for crimes committed in Panama; we extradited Noriega for crimes committed in the United States. This is very different from extraditing someone for crimes committed in a nation where we have no legal standing. We didn't try Noriega for crimes committed in Panama, nor did France try Noriega for crimes committed in Panama because neither of our countries had legal standing to try Noriega for those crimes. However, both the US and France had legal standing to try Noriega for the crimes he committed in our respective countries.

Furthermore, I have already admitted that the US sometimes cooperates with the International Criminal Court for political convenience/expediency. However, that's not a legal backing of universal jurisdiction, that's politics. It's, "Hey we want this SOB out of our way and they want to send him to jail for 20 years where he'll likely die in prison...we'll just ship him off to the ICC and solve our problem."

Bushes and company's crimes were not committed only in America and therefore I contend that you are applying a double standard, which was my point in my previous post. For the most part I agree with what you have said, but I believe at the heart of the matter there is a double standard standard which is enforced through military dominance. The same concept plays out here in earth2025 repeatedly.

Like most conversations not ending in agreement, this discussion has made its way into semantics. Both of us have achieved about the best understanding of the others point of view as we can reasonably expect. I enjoyed the debate :D

even if the usa is not signatory to the icc, we can`t just erase the nuremberg trials from history, and the ICC is out there to fix most of the issues with that type of "justice".

You say that I'm applying a double standard here, but this is a case of Malaysia "trying" American officials for crimes allegedly committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay (Cuba). My point stands that Malaysia has no standing to prosecute anyone for crimes not committed in their country or by their citizens (I might even entertain the notion of crimes committed against their citizens); based on the "charges" that they brought in this case, Malaysia had no standing to "try" this case.

When it comes to Abu Ghraib prison, the Malaysian show argued that Bush was responsible for the actions of those acting under him. Indeed, he is responsible for the actions of those under him...when he knows about them or should have known about those action (in other words, no being willfully ignorant). When the Bush administration became aware of the crimes being committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, they took the appropriate action to see the crimes stopped and prosecuted. The Malaysian show argues that Bush himself should be tried for those crimes, but I must dismiss that notion outright because of the actions that the Bush administration took following the incident. They did not create an environment whereby such actions could be construed as acceptable and therefore have no personal liability (criminal or otherwise) when such actions occurred. In the Abu Ghraib prison issue, the Bush administration took all necessary steps to ensure that the people responsible were prosecuted or otherwise disciplined (where criminal procescution was not going to result in conviction). If you create an environment that tolerates and allows that sort of behavior, then you take on personal responsibility for the behavior; the Bush administration prosecuted that sort of behavior.

The thing about being a country's leader is that you have a duty to ensure your country's security (above all else). The difference between the Bush administration and someone like Pinochet is that where the Bush administration tried to see where the line was drawn more clearly and may have crossed the line, Pinochet pretended that the line did not exist at all.