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Mid · 13-01-2013, 05:37 PM

How the U.S. Brings 'Security' to the Planet
01/08/2013
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

In late December 2001, not long after Washington's second Afghan War began, there was that wedding celebration in eastern Afghanistan in which 110 of 112 villagers were reportedly killed by American B-52 and B-1B bombers using precision guided weapons. Then there were the more than 40 Iraqi wedding celebrants (27 from one extended family, including 14 children) who died when U.S. planes struck their party at a village near the Syrian border back in May 2004, and the Afghan bridal party of 70 to 90 who were taken out by a U.S. airstrike on a road near the Pakistani border in July 2008. (The bride and 46 of those accompanying her died, according to an Afghan inquiry, including 39 women and children.) Added to this list should be the 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women, and children, ranging in age from 3 to 76, murdered by U.S. Marines in November 2005 in the long-forgotten Haditha massacre. And the 14-year-old girl whom American soldiers gang-raped and murdered along with her family in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, the next year. And then there was the headline-grabbing case of those 16 civilians, nine of them children, 11 from one family, reportedly slaughtered (and some of their corpses burned) by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales in two southern Afghan villages in the course of a single night in March 2012.

Let's not forget either the 12 Iraqis, including two Reuters employees, shot dead (and two children badly wounded) on a Baghdad street in July 2007 by the laughing crew of an Apache helicopter, as revealed in an infamous video released by WikiLeaks. There were also the 60 children (and up to 30 adults) who died in the Afghan village of Azizabad on an August night in 2008 while attending a memorial service for a tribal leader who had been, villagers reported, anti-Taliban. That, too, was thanks to air strikes. There were also those three (or more) Afghan civilians hunted down "for sport" in the summer of 2010 by a self-appointed U.S. "kill team" who were collecting trophy body parts. And there were the 10 boys, including two sets of brothers, collecting wood for their families in Afghanistan's Kunar Province early in 2011, who were attacked by U.S. helicopters. Only one wounded boy survived. Or most recently, the 11 Yemeni civilians, including women and children, in a Toyota truck killed by a U.S. airstrike and initially labeled "al-Qaeda militants."

Such a list, of course, only scratches the surface of a reality that we in the United States have hardly noticed and so have to expend no effort whatsoever to ignore. Unlike for the victims of 9/11 or more recently of Newtown, there will be no memorials, no teddy bears, no special rites, no solemn ceremonies. Nothing. The distant dead of our wars have largely paid the price in silence and anonymity for what the U.S. intelligence community likes to call the last superpower's duty of being a "global security provider" -- and which elsewhere often looks more like inflicting mayhem on local populations.

In addition, the particular form of "security" we've brought to such areas via the U.S. military continues even after we leave. U.S. troops are gone from Iraq, for example, but the violence our invasion and occupation set loose has never ended. Iraq Body Count has just issued its report on rising deaths from violence in that country in 2012, both among the Iraqi police (922) and civilians (4,471). It concludes: "In sum the latest evidence suggests that the country remains in a state of low-level war little changed since early 2009, with a 'background' level of everyday armed violence punctuated by occasional larger-scale attacks designed to kill many people at once." We bear genuine responsibility for this, but no longer care a whit.

It's good that one American did care and has spent the last decade preparing to help us remember what kind of "security" our wars have long brought to such distant regions. Nick Turse's new book, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, paints a memorable portrait of the war that, unlike Iraq and undoubtedly someday Afghanistan, we can't seem to forget. And from his groundbreaking work on civilian suffering, he suggests in a new piece, "So Many People Died," the one way the "Vietnam analogy" really does apply to Iraq and Afghanistan -- in terms of civilian suffering.

huffingtonpost.com

pseudolus · 13-01-2013, 06:13 PM

America.....fuck yeah!

World police.

Cocks.

Rural Surin · 13-01-2013, 06:15 PM

Real U.S. history [abroad]. It's not pretty. Yet, it is quite sanitized.

If more were to absorb a more subjective and critical perspective...

[Good on ya that you posted this in the lounge]

DrAndy · 13-01-2013, 06:16 PM

yeah, they are great, I always feel safe knowing they are losing battles in a different area of the world

Is that a drone I can hear....

pseudolus · 13-01-2013, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrAndy

yeah, they are great, I always feel safe knowing they are losing battles in a different area of the world

Is that a drone I can hear....

Nah - that's Boon Mee's computer working over time trying to find the NRA's official response to this kind of thread.

VocalNeal · 13-01-2013, 06:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrAndy

yeah, they are great, I always feel safe knowing they are losing battles in a different area of the world

Is that a drone I can hear....

No just someone droning on.

quimbian corholla · 13-01-2013, 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

No just someone droning on.

So nothing to address the points raised in the OP then?

ChrisM · 13-01-2013, 08:12 PM

USA Drops Out Of Geneva Convention

by Jack Duggan

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently complained that the Iraqis were violating the Geneva Convention when they showed captured U.S. servicemen on Iraqi TV. The worldwide western media immediately took up the complaint, airing his statement repeatedly and globally. They never saw the irony that as soon as that sound-bite was over, next on their news tapes were often segments showing Iraqi POWs surrendering to Coalition forces, regardless of how the POWs’ families in Baghdad would suffer at the hands of the Republican Guard if Iraqi-POW faces were recognized on CNN.

The western media refuse to expose US hypocrisy. Apparently they are so overwhelmed with gratitude for their privilege of traveling with Coalition units on the battlefield that they have become nothing more than lap-dogs.

Somehow, Iraqis are not covered by the Geneva Convention if the US decides that they are not. And the media doesn’t dare go against them – not if it wants to keep filming in Iraq.

Thankfully, the US hasn’t yet succeeded in stopping ‘unpatriotic’ articles on the Internet, so you can read the truth here.

Since Rumsfeld, Bush and Blair are so adamant about the Geneva Convention not being violated by the Iraqis, they had better hope that they are not held to the same standard. Those that sent President Slobodan Milosevic to the World Court for war crimes could soon find themselves there as defendants.

The US government has sent over 600 men from Afghanistan to its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in total defiance of the Geneva Convention. The conduct of the US is so outrageous that at least ten articles are being violated.

Here are some of the Articles of the (Fourth) Geneva Convention that the US government is ignoring:

ARTICLE 27

Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.

The US government broke this resoundingly by parading the Guantanamo Bay prisoners before Western television cameras, just as the Iraqis have done on their television.

ARTICLE 31

No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.

....and....

ARTICLE 32

This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.

Afghani POWs were repeatedly shown to be forced to kneel for long times in chains on the ground, handcuffed behind their backs, suffering sensory deprivation by being forced to wear earphones and black goggles so they could neither see nor hear. The U.S. explained that this was a valuable interrogation method. We treat our food-animals better than that. A chicken has more rights than a POW held by the USA.

ARTICLE 45

Protected persons shall not be transferred to a Power which is not a party to the Convention.

Protected persons may be transferred by the Detaining Power only to a Power which is a party to the present Convention.

....and....

ARTICLE 49

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

The U.S. has forcefully transferred its Afghan POWs to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which is not a party to the Convention, yet paradoxically claims that they have no rights under the Convention because they are not on Convention members’ soil. Such hypocrisy is beyond even the Nazis and Stalinists of WWII.

ARTICLE 87

Canteens shall be installed in every place of internment, except where other suitable facilities are available. Their purpose shall be to enable internees to make purchases, at prices not higher than local market prices, of foodstuffs and articles of everyday use, including soap and tobacco, such as would increase their personal well-being and comfort.

The US government has decided such a facility cannot fit inside the chain-link dog pens prisoners are forced to occupy.

ARTICLE 97

Internees shall be permitted to retain articles of personal use. Monies, cheques, bonds, etc., and valuables in their possession may not be taken from them except in accordance with established procedure. Detailed receipts shall be given therefor.

Yet the "Taliban" POWs have been stripped of all their clothes, papers and possession, even photos of their parents.

ARTICLE 124

Internees shall not in any case be transferred to penitentiary establishments (prisons, penitentiaries, convict prisons, etc.) to undergo disciplinary punishment therein.

All POWs there have been punished by extreme sensory deprivation and long hours of interrogation and separation from their families and each other. The worst punishment of all is the US government denying that they are even covered under the Geneva Convention and thus have no rights whatsoever.

Someday, the US government will invent a new term to call its citizens who are dissenters so as to deny them their Constitutional rights and likewise lock them up without due process to torture them for months to extract information ‘necessary’ for state security. It is then that only the government will decide which of its citizens are ‘worthy’ of any rights at all.

ARTICLE 125

They shall have permission to read and write, likewise to send and receive letters. Parcels and remittances of money, however, may be withheld from them until the completion of their punishment; such consignments shall meanwhile be entrusted to the Internee Committee, who will hand over to the infirmary the perishable goods contained in the parcels.

The POWs’ families have no idea if they are even alive.

Article 127

The transfer of internees shall always be effected humanely. As a general rule, it shall be carried out by rail or other means of transport, and under conditions at least equal to those obtaining for the forces of the Detaining Power in their changes of station. If, as an exceptional measure, such removals have to be effected on foot, they may not take place unless the internees are in a fit state of health, and may not in any case expose them to excessive fatigue.

On their flights to Cuba, POWs were forced wear chains and hoods so they had no idea what was happening to them. That was intentional so they would suffer mental collapse and be more pliable to US interrogators. This goes much farther than exposing them to "excessive fatigue." It is downright torture reminiscent of the Hanoi Hilton.

How does the USA get away with the above outrage? It does so by redefining reality:

The US says that the POWs are not POWs at all; they are now to be called, "unlawful combatants."

Unlawful combatants don’t deserve any human rights whatsoever because the biggest gun on the planet says so. It doesn’t matter that every other nation calls a POW a POW, the USA is above other nations, it is above the law, it is above its own citizens and it is above even reality.

US President Bush loves pointing out that, "America is liberating Iraqis from human rights abuses by Saddam Hussein." However America abuses the rights of anyone it so chooses by just by giving them a different label.

March 29, 2003
USA Drops Out Of Geneva Convention by Jack Duggan

Storekeeper · 14-01-2013, 12:54 AM

What the hell prompted you to dig up a 10 year old article? Didn't Rumsfeld resign a number of years ago?

wasabi · 14-01-2013, 12:55 AM

The whole western world has been brainwashed to have no senses to these atrosities. We have been desensetised.
Now play the same story and take out the descriptions of the victims,and replace it with Jew or Negro.

snakeeyes · 14-01-2013, 01:01 AM

Great joke , did you hear the one about the Irishman , Englishman and scotsman ,

ShrewedPunter · 14-01-2013, 02:33 AM

The whole Afghanistan thing makes me chuckle.

Remember the 80s when the "Mujahideen" were the good guys?

Think Rambo III..

Even James Bond got in on the act helping the good guys

sabang · 14-01-2013, 04:36 AM

The neo-cons were and are deluded dunces, not they they care- it's the non-koshers doing their dirty work and paying the price, because the neo-cons are a right wing zionist cabal- their objective is and was for the US to do Israels bidding, plain and simple. If one could eliminate them from contemporary history with the stroke of a pen, America's international standing (and popularity) would be much higher and it's government debt position much lower.

The along came jones- hopey changey Obama. This career politician showed all the moral backbone of a jellyfish, caving in on the middle east peace process, authorising the deluded surge in Afghanistan, increasing drone strikes and extra territorial incursions. "Oh, but we don't torture any more"- how quaint. I'm not sure a kid maimed at a wedding party appreciates the difference.

We are left asking- who runs America?

ChrisM · 14-01-2013, 05:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

What the hell prompted you to dig up a 10 year old article? Didn't Rumsfeld resign a number of years ago?

We still chase alleged nazi POW camp guards from the 2nd World War from nearly 70 years ago - what's your problem with 10 years? Does it make the atrocities go away? The people responsible are still living and prospering. The fact that over the last 10 years nobody has taken this seriously is a cause to be genuinely concerned about our 'democracies'.

Boon Mee · 14-01-2013, 05:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrAndy

yeah, they are great, I always feel safe knowing they are losing battles in a different area of the world

Is that a drone I can hear....

Nah - that's Boon Mee's computer working over time trying to find the NRA's official response to this kind of thread.

Heh...no, but we're sure you'll have the answer from the bottom of a Grey Goose bottle!

withnallstoke · 14-01-2013, 07:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sabang

extra territorial incursions

Come on, be fair.
Can't really blame America for the aliens coming to earth.

pseudolus · 14-01-2013, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Quote:

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrAndy

yeah, they are great, I always feel safe knowing they are losing battles in a different area of the world

Is that a drone I can hear....

Nah - that's Boon Mee's computer working over time trying to find the NRA's official response to this kind of thread.

Heh...no, but we're sure you'll have the answer from the bottom of a Grey Goose bottle!

You're so funny boontard.

Lorenzo · 14-01-2013, 08:11 AM

The US is really too kind. They should take a few lessons from the Japs and Russians

Should have nuked Afganastan and moved on.

Norton · 14-01-2013, 08:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mid

How the U.S. Brings 'Security' to the Planet

The current in a long line of world powers bringing peace and security to the world though superior economic and military power. Since the dawn of mankind, same as it ever was. Like it's predecessors it will be replaced by another. Finally ending in an academic subject future generations analyze and study.

Storekeeper · 14-01-2013, 11:01 AM

Your point is taken Chris. Time shouldn't be an issue. However, I really don't think the Geneva Convention carries any weight with terrorist fellas.

pseudolus · 14-01-2013, 11:46 AM

The nationals of Afghanistan and Iraq are not terrorists. In fact, the only reason you would assume that about the nationals of Iraq is that they have oil. Well, had oil.

Storekeeper · 14-01-2013, 12:40 PM

I feel as bad for them as I do the dumb ass Americans who routinely seem to stray into Iran and North Korea.

The world is full of terrorist ... Brits and Americans included.

Neo · 14-01-2013, 03:44 PM

It's all relevant. Reminded me of this story from a few years back.
How many bullets does it take to kill an insurgent?
A quarter of a million apparently.

Quote:

US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.

A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine.

"The Department of Defense's increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements, dictated by the army's transformation to a more self-sustaining and lethal force - which was accelerated after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 - and by the deployment of forces to conduct recent US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq," said the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).

Estimating how many bullets US forces have expended for every insurgent killed is not a simple or precisely scientific matter. The former head of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, famously claimed that his forces "don't do body counts".

But senior officers have recently claimed "great successes" in Iraq, based on counting the bodies of insurgents killed. Maj-Gen Rick Lynch, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, said 1,534 insurgents had been seized or killed in a recent operation in the west of Baghdad. Other estimates from military officials suggest that at least 20,000 insurgents have been killed in President George Bush's "war on terror".

John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO's figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.

"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per insurgent. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."

Pointing out that officials say many of these bullets have been used for training purposes, he said: "What are you training for? To kill insurgents."

Rural Surin · 14-01-2013, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

I really don't think the Geneva Convention carries any weight with terrorist fellas.

As they were never invited to an exclusive club.

Geneva Convention, my arse.

Worthless and illusional.

Mid · 14-01-2013, 06:56 PM

Rules of Warfare ,

now there is an oxymoron .

13-01-2013, 05:37 PM	#1 (permalink)
Mid Nautical Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 41,355	How the U.S. Brings 'Security' to the Planet How the U.S. Brings 'Security' to the Planet 01/08/2013 Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com In late December 2001, not long after Washington's second Afghan War began, there was that wedding celebration in eastern Afghanistan in which 110 of 112 villagers were reportedly killed by American B-52 and B-1B bombers using precision guided weapons. Then there were the more than 40 Iraqi wedding celebrants (27 from one extended family, including 14 children) who died when U.S. planes struck their party at a village near the Syrian border back in May 2004, and the Afghan bridal party of 70 to 90 who were taken out by a U.S. airstrike on a road near the Pakistani border in July 2008. (The bride and 46 of those accompanying her died, according to an Afghan inquiry, including 39 women and children.) Added to this list should be the 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women, and children, ranging in age from 3 to 76, murdered by U.S. Marines in November 2005 in the long-forgotten Haditha massacre. And the 14-year-old girl whom American soldiers gang-raped and murdered along with her family in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, the next year. And then there was the headline-grabbing case of those 16 civilians, nine of them children, 11 from one family, reportedly slaughtered (and some of their corpses burned) by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales in two southern Afghan villages in the course of a single night in March 2012. Let's not forget either the 12 Iraqis, including two Reuters employees, shot dead (and two children badly wounded) on a Baghdad street in July 2007 by the laughing crew of an Apache helicopter, as revealed in an infamous video released by WikiLeaks. There were also the 60 children (and up to 30 adults) who died in the Afghan village of Azizabad on an August night in 2008 while attending a memorial service for a tribal leader who had been, villagers reported, anti-Taliban. That, too, was thanks to air strikes. There were also those three (or more) Afghan civilians hunted down "for sport" in the summer of 2010 by a self-appointed U.S. "kill team" who were collecting trophy body parts. And there were the 10 boys, including two sets of brothers, collecting wood for their families in Afghanistan's Kunar Province early in 2011, who were attacked by U.S. helicopters. Only one wounded boy survived. Or most recently, the 11 Yemeni civilians, including women and children, in a Toyota truck killed by a U.S. airstrike and initially labeled "al-Qaeda militants." Such a list, of course, only scratches the surface of a reality that we in the United States have hardly noticed and so have to expend no effort whatsoever to ignore. Unlike for the victims of 9/11 or more recently of Newtown, there will be no memorials, no teddy bears, no special rites, no solemn ceremonies. Nothing. The distant dead of our wars have largely paid the price in silence and anonymity for what the U.S. intelligence community likes to call the last superpower's duty of being a "global security provider" -- and which elsewhere often looks more like inflicting mayhem on local populations. In addition, the particular form of "security" we've brought to such areas via the U.S. military continues even after we leave. U.S. troops are gone from Iraq, for example, but the violence our invasion and occupation set loose has never ended. Iraq Body Count has just issued its report on rising deaths from violence in that country in 2012, both among the Iraqi police (922) and civilians (4,471). It concludes: "In sum the latest evidence suggests that the country remains in a state of low-level war little changed since early 2009, with a 'background' level of everyday armed violence punctuated by occasional larger-scale attacks designed to kill many people at once." We bear genuine responsibility for this, but no longer care a whit. It's good that one American did care and has spent the last decade preparing to help us remember what kind of "security" our wars have long brought to such distant regions. Nick Turse's new book, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, paints a memorable portrait of the war that, unlike Iraq and undoubtedly someday Afghanistan, we can't seem to forget. And from his groundbreaking work on civilian suffering, he suggests in a new piece, "So Many People Died," the one way the "Vietnam analogy" really does apply to Iraq and Afghanistan -- in terms of civilian suffering. huffingtonpost.com __________________ "Keeping quiet while monks and other peaceful protesters are murdered and jailed is not evidence of constructive engagement." - Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch. "I think...I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check" - M.C. Escher

14-01-2013, 04:36 AM	#13 (permalink)
sabang Thailand Expat Last Online: Today 04:43 AM Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: There Posts: 23,672	The neo-cons were and are deluded dunces, not they they care- it's the non-koshers doing their dirty work and paying the price, because the neo-cons are a right wing zionist cabal- their objective is and was for the US to do Israels bidding, plain and simple. If one could eliminate them from contemporary history with the stroke of a pen, America's international standing (and popularity) would be much higher and it's government debt position much lower. The along came jones- hopey changey Obama. This career politician showed all the moral backbone of a jellyfish, caving in on the middle east peace process, authorising the deluded surge in Afghanistan, increasing drone strikes and extra territorial incursions. "Oh, but we don't torture any more"- how quaint. I'm not sure a kid maimed at a wedding party appreciates the difference. We are left asking- who runs America? __________________ probes Aliens

14-01-2013, 12:40 PM	#22 (permalink)
Storekeeper Junior Member Last Online: Today 08:00 AM Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 5,413	I feel as bad for them as I do the dumb ass Americans who routinely seem to stray into Iran and North Korea. The world is full of terrorist ... Brits and Americans included. Last edited by Storekeeper : 14-01-2013 at 12:51 PM.

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13-01-2013, 06:13 PM	#2 (permalink)
pseudolus Suspended from News & Speakers Corner Last Online: Today 07:58 AM Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 4,489	America.....fuck yeah! World police. Cocks.

13-01-2013, 06:15 PM	#3 (permalink)
Rural Surin morbidly fascinated Last Online: Today 07:48 AM Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: กาฬสินธุ์ Posts: 23,819	Real U.S. history [abroad]. It's not pretty. Yet, it is quite sanitized. If more were to absorb a more subjective and critical perspective... [Good on ya that you posted this in the lounge]

13-01-2013, 06:16 PM	#4 (permalink)
DrAndy Oh Fuk Last Online: 16-06-2013 10:26 PM Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: yes Posts: 31,568	yeah, they are great, I always feel safe knowing they are losing battles in a different area of the world Is that a drone I can hear....

13-01-2013, 08:12 PM	#8 (permalink)
ChrisM I am in Jail Last Online: Today 06:05 AM Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 372	USA Drops Out Of Geneva Convention by Jack Duggan U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently complained that the Iraqis were violating the Geneva Convention when they showed captured U.S. servicemen on Iraqi TV. The worldwide western media immediately took up the complaint, airing his statement repeatedly and globally. They never saw the irony that as soon as that sound-bite was over, next on their news tapes were often segments showing Iraqi POWs surrendering to Coalition forces, regardless of how the POWs’ families in Baghdad would suffer at the hands of the Republican Guard if Iraqi-POW faces were recognized on CNN. The western media refuse to expose US hypocrisy. Apparently they are so overwhelmed with gratitude for their privilege of traveling with Coalition units on the battlefield that they have become nothing more than lap-dogs. Somehow, Iraqis are not covered by the Geneva Convention if the US decides that they are not. And the media doesn’t dare go against them – not if it wants to keep filming in Iraq. Thankfully, the US hasn’t yet succeeded in stopping ‘unpatriotic’ articles on the Internet, so you can read the truth here. Since Rumsfeld, Bush and Blair are so adamant about the Geneva Convention not being violated by the Iraqis, they had better hope that they are not held to the same standard. Those that sent President Slobodan Milosevic to the World Court for war crimes could soon find themselves there as defendants. The US government has sent over 600 men from Afghanistan to its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in total defiance of the Geneva Convention. The conduct of the US is so outrageous that at least ten articles are being violated. Here are some of the Articles of the (Fourth) Geneva Convention that the US government is ignoring: ARTICLE 27 Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity. The US government broke this resoundingly by parading the Guantanamo Bay prisoners before Western television cameras, just as the Iraqis have done on their television. ARTICLE 31 No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties. ....and.... ARTICLE 32 This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents. Afghani POWs were repeatedly shown to be forced to kneel for long times in chains on the ground, handcuffed behind their backs, suffering sensory deprivation by being forced to wear earphones and black goggles so they could neither see nor hear. The U.S. explained that this was a valuable interrogation method. We treat our food-animals better than that. A chicken has more rights than a POW held by the USA. ARTICLE 45 Protected persons shall not be transferred to a Power which is not a party to the Convention. Protected persons may be transferred by the Detaining Power only to a Power which is a party to the present Convention. ....and.... ARTICLE 49 Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. The U.S. has forcefully transferred its Afghan POWs to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which is not a party to the Convention, yet paradoxically claims that they have no rights under the Convention because they are not on Convention members’ soil. Such hypocrisy is beyond even the Nazis and Stalinists of WWII. ARTICLE 87 Canteens shall be installed in every place of internment, except where other suitable facilities are available. Their purpose shall be to enable internees to make purchases, at prices not higher than local market prices, of foodstuffs and articles of everyday use, including soap and tobacco, such as would increase their personal well-being and comfort. The US government has decided such a facility cannot fit inside the chain-link dog pens prisoners are forced to occupy. ARTICLE 97 Internees shall be permitted to retain articles of personal use. Monies, cheques, bonds, etc., and valuables in their possession may not be taken from them except in accordance with established procedure. Detailed receipts shall be given therefor. Yet the "Taliban" POWs have been stripped of all their clothes, papers and possession, even photos of their parents. ARTICLE 124 Internees shall not in any case be transferred to penitentiary establishments (prisons, penitentiaries, convict prisons, etc.) to undergo disciplinary punishment therein. All POWs there have been punished by extreme sensory deprivation and long hours of interrogation and separation from their families and each other. The worst punishment of all is the US government denying that they are even covered under the Geneva Convention and thus have no rights whatsoever. Someday, the US government will invent a new term to call its citizens who are dissenters so as to deny them their Constitutional rights and likewise lock them up without due process to torture them for months to extract information ‘necessary’ for state security. It is then that only the government will decide which of its citizens are ‘worthy’ of any rights at all. ARTICLE 125 They shall have permission to read and write, likewise to send and receive letters. Parcels and remittances of money, however, may be withheld from them until the completion of their punishment; such consignments shall meanwhile be entrusted to the Internee Committee, who will hand over to the infirmary the perishable goods contained in the parcels. The POWs’ families have no idea if they are even alive. Article 127 The transfer of internees shall always be effected humanely. As a general rule, it shall be carried out by rail or other means of transport, and under conditions at least equal to those obtaining for the forces of the Detaining Power in their changes of station. If, as an exceptional measure, such removals have to be effected on foot, they may not take place unless the internees are in a fit state of health, and may not in any case expose them to excessive fatigue. On their flights to Cuba, POWs were forced wear chains and hoods so they had no idea what was happening to them. That was intentional so they would suffer mental collapse and be more pliable to US interrogators. This goes much farther than exposing them to "excessive fatigue." It is downright torture reminiscent of the Hanoi Hilton. How does the USA get away with the above outrage? It does so by redefining reality: The US says that the POWs are not POWs at all; they are now to be called, "unlawful combatants." Unlawful combatants don’t deserve any human rights whatsoever because the biggest gun on the planet says so. It doesn’t matter that every other nation calls a POW a POW, the USA is above other nations, it is above the law, it is above its own citizens and it is above even reality. US President Bush loves pointing out that, "America is liberating Iraqis from human rights abuses by Saddam Hussein." However America abuses the rights of anyone it so chooses by just by giving them a different label. March 29, 2003 USA Drops Out Of Geneva Convention by Jack Duggan

14-01-2013, 12:54 AM	#9 (permalink)
Storekeeper Junior Member Last Online: Today 08:00 AM Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 5,413	What the hell prompted you to dig up a 10 year old article? Didn't Rumsfeld resign a number of years ago?

14-01-2013, 12:55 AM	#10 (permalink)
wasabi Thailand Expat Last Online: Today 05:19 AM Join Date: Dec 2012 Location: England Posts: 1,033	The whole western world has been brainwashed to have no senses to these atrosities. We have been desensetised. Now play the same story and take out the descriptions of the victims,and replace it with Jew or Negro.

14-01-2013, 01:01 AM	#11 (permalink)
snakeeyes Thailand Expat Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: pattaya Posts: 1,931	Great joke , did you hear the one about the Irishman , Englishman and scotsman ,

14-01-2013, 02:33 AM	#12 (permalink)
ShrewedPunter Thailand Expat Last Online: 17-06-2013 09:31 PM Join Date: May 2012 Location: UK Posts: 1,018	The whole Afghanistan thing makes me chuckle. Remember the 80s when the "Mujahideen" were the good guys? Think Rambo III.. Even James Bond got in on the act helping the good guys

14-01-2013, 08:11 AM	#18 (permalink)
Lorenzo I am in Jail Last Online: 17-05-2013 05:44 PM Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1,867	The US is really too kind. They should take a few lessons from the Japs and Russians Should have nuked Afganastan and moved on.

14-01-2013, 11:01 AM	#20 (permalink)
Storekeeper Junior Member Last Online: Today 08:00 AM Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 5,413	Your point is taken Chris. Time shouldn't be an issue. However, I really don't think the Geneva Convention carries any weight with terrorist fellas.

14-01-2013, 11:46 AM	#21 (permalink)
pseudolus Suspended from News & Speakers Corner Last Online: Today 07:58 AM Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 4,489	The nationals of Afghanistan and Iraq are not terrorists. In fact, the only reason you would assume that about the nationals of Iraq is that they have oil. Well, had oil.

14-01-2013, 06:56 PM	#25 (permalink)
Mid Nautical Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 41,355	Rules of Warfare , now there is an oxymoron .

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