You are placed in charge of a massive prison in Iraq with approximately 30,000 detainees who have been picked up in sweeps by American and Iraqi forces, and who are suspected of insurgent activity of varying degrees.
Many have been held for many months, none have had any formal hearing or trial. Often, there is little hard evidence of their involvement with the insurgency, other than the judgement of the troops that originally detained them.
Which option for running the prison do you choose, in order to best fight the insurgency in Iraq? Pick the one you feel is the best option, and elaborate about why you do or do not agree with the description.
A. Continue keeping them here for as long as possible. Don't worry about trials or hearings. We might not have solid evidence of what they did, but the judgement of our troops is good enough to keep them all together in one place and this keeps them from getting out and joining the insurgency. Treat them all as the criminals they are.
B. Attempt to give them hearings by a tribunal to review the evidence against them. Release anybody and everybody who doesn't have a solid case against them. Organize vocational and educational classes like carpentry, welding, English, Qu'ranic studies, civics, etc. Once they get out, organize "parole" hearings that offer them "stipends" equivalent to what Al Qaeda might pay them to keep them out of trouble.
C. Some other option. Be sure to spell out in detail the what and why of your choice.
I picked Option 2, but I would add the following details.
1. Hold them for 6 months or so while you figure out whether there is a solid case or not.
2. Treat them humanely. Show them that Americans are not torture-happy maniacs.
3. Ditch the stipends. Probably ditch the re-education part, too.
Thank you for your answer.
I will provide some background to the question in a few days. It is an interesting study in counter-insurgency.
My hope is to educate a little bit here and there. Better information=better policy.
You must have known this article was coming.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/wo.../17detain.html
U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and TIM GOLDEN
Published: May 17, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
...
Where is the "pay them several hundred thousand dollars a month to not kill us" option?
Not really. The basis of this quiz was another report I heard on an Iraqi prison. They interviewed the new commander about what he was doing and going to be doing.
I will give this a few days, and see if anybody else will venture an answer.
I think it is an interesting question, but sadly it doesn't seem to be as interesting as gay marriage. Maybe I should re-do the thread and put "gay marriage" in the le.
no . the reality has to be on the plate.
Where is the "torture them for laughs" option?
That is actually part of "B", in the form of the stipends.
so, you already like all these Bush appeasements?
I have an opinion, but will not express it for a while, in order to give people a chance to weigh in without tipping anything one way or another.
I have noticed that only one guy has really stepped up and offered any explanation, and only three votes have been made.
Perhaps I will send a message to a few people on both sides to ask for specific comments.
I think that the answer to this question has rather important implications for the wider war on terror.
But that's being done without arresting them in the first place.
Option C
If we catch them in the act we should hold them indefinitely. They are truly prisoners of war and should be held until hostilities are over. If you try and kill our guys you deserve to lose your freedom until all of your guys are dead. If we don't have anything to tie them to hostilities how can you keep them indefinitely?
I'm literally on pins and needles...for the life of me, I just don't have a clue which way your opinion would slant...
Please...the suspense is too much.
I don't know what's funnier...the fact that you think everyone else will view you as an unbiased opininion...or the fact that you consider yourself to be one.
The delusion is hilarious
If they wearing any type of identifiable uniform, armband, headgear, insignia, that marks them as an enemy combatant, then of course you treat them as you would a POW according to the terms of the Geneva Convention.
If they aren't wearing any sort of indetifiable marking to mark them as an enemy combatant, they are either a terrorist, or a civillian...so you would hold a tribunal to determine which is which(assuming of course they don't offer up a confession willingly and of their own free will).
If they are found to be an innocent civillian you let them go of course...and if they aren't...if they confess willingly, dare I say proudly...if they are found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt...
Well then they are a spy, and as with all spies and the way they are treated by all governments, they simply don't exist...so it doesn't really matter what happens to them after that.
If they are an individual who has encouraged, drugged, coerced, bribed, or used any other method of persuasion to get someone to strap a bomb to themself and deliberately target, endanger, or intimidate civillians...or used any other form of civillian intimidation/coersion tactic...or deliberately marked or used civillian buildings so as to deliberately put civillians at risk...
Let's just make a long story short and leave out all the fun details of the journey...and let's just say pigfeed. You might let one of them go on occasion just so they can tell of what they've seen...
If they weren't doing any of those things and were engaged in attacks on military targets, albeit without any indentifiable markings...well you exectute them...and since you are going to execute them, you might as well torture them to gain information first.
Basically...if they weren't wearing anything to identify themself as an enemy combatant and were attempting to pass themself off as a civillian so they could engage in warfare against a uniformed and marked military and or civillians populations or targets....they die. And they die badly.
They aren't mere criminals in that case you see, they aren't criminals at all in that case you see, what they are is military, unmarkedm and engaged in warfare mass, death...and they are too dangerous to be returned to the civillian population. They also aren't POWs as I interpret the Geneva Convention's definition, due to the fact that they wear no identifiable markings to identify them as military.
What they are, are creatures that don't belong on this planet as they abide by no known laws of behavior or rules of conduct of any military, yet they have the capcity to deal death at the military level...they need to be gone from this planet.
Last edited by whottt; 05-19-2008 at 03:43 PM.
I never said I was unbiased here. I have a definite opinion and favor a definite choice in the poll. I can even tell you what the real commander of said prison camp is doing, and if it is effective or not.I'm literally on pins and needles...for the life of me, I just don't have a clue which way your opinion would slant...
Please...the suspense is too much.
I don't know what's funnier...the fact that you think everyone else will view you as an unbiased opininion...or the fact that you consider yourself to be one.
The delusion is hilarious
BUT
I can set that aside and fairly represent different viewpoints for an original post to kick off a worthwhile discussion.
This is important because the answer to this has wider implications for the "war" on terror.
Why do liberals assume all terrorist caught in battlefields are harmless?
Nut up and take your pick then. A, B, or C. I think this qualifies as "C", but leave that to you.
Except they're not soldiers nor do they pertain to any govt. Do you know what the geneva convention is? it's an agreement between govt's to be fair, and somewhat civil.
You need the other side to fullfill their end of the contract.
Would you enter a contract where only you are the one holding up the agreement?
No!
And that's why liberals are full of .
Then cast your vote, and take a pick. Less talk, more action.
You're right theres nothing to talk about. You're full of , and you've been exposed. Go pull the lever for your messiah, instead of facing reality.
s or gtfo
Present a solution, pick an option. It's not hard...
i guess these captured are the ones we haven't paid yet.
if we stop appeas...uh paying them, they'll be easier to find.
Why do conservatives assume that all people caught on battlefields are terrorists?
Link
All Things Considered, January 31, 2008 · The U.S. military is trying to improve conditions for the nearly 20,000 inmates it's holding at Camp Bucca, a prison camp in the desert of far-southern Iraq.
U.S. commanders see the effort as part of the counterinsurgency — an opportunity to win over the most disaffected Iraqis and the people closest to them. One aspect they are trying to improve is the family visitation program.
The surroundings in the family waiting room at Camp Bucca aren't fancy, but they are at least as good as anything the Americans there have for themselves. The room is crowded, mostly with women and children. The women's flowing garments drape the wooden benches in black.
Col. James Brown, Camp Bucca's outgoing commander, is proud of the waiting area, and he wants to make it even better.
"We want to bring them here, treat them like royalty, make them know how welcome they are. And that's one of the comments that families will make is to say, 'I don't get treated this well anywhere else, but I get treated this well here,'" he says.
Brown says he wants Camp Bucca to reflect the American values of fairness and generosity. Zack, the Iraqi cultural adviser at the waiting area, introduces one example — the wife of a detainee.
She is holding her son, an 18-month-old boy with a hole in his heart.
"You see the face is blue, completely. And before 24 months, if he gets the surgery, he had opportunity to live. After that, it will be too late," the cultural adviser says.
Brown explains that one of the doctors who came to assess prisoner health at the camp happened to be a pediatric cardiologist.
"And she said, 'Well, this is easy. I've already got six babies that I've gotten medical care for already, and we can do this again,'" he says.
Brown says his team has arranged to get the family to Jordan, where the surgery will be performed.
As much as Brown strives to improve the family experience at the camp, there are external factors that he can't do much about.
Zahra Mahdi has visited Camp Bucca twice to see her husband.
"We suffered a lot on our trip down to Basra," she says. "My mother-in-law is an old woman. She's sick, and she suffered a lot just to see her son."
Mahdi lives in the Baghdad slum called Sadr City with her five children. She and her mother-in-law took the 10-hour bus ride down to Camp Bucca in the stifling heat of summer, only to find that she was not on the list of those authorized to see her husband.
"On my first visit, I took all my children with me, but they did not allow me to see him," she says. "They only let the kids inside... I started to scream, cry and beat my head because I had gone through so much to get there."
Mahdi didn't know that the Red Cross pays the expenses of families who visit the detainees, so she paid the costs of bus fare, food and three days in a cheap hotel out of her own pocket.
Another problem is that security measures the U.S. military regards as normal and necessary are frightening and humiliating for Muslim women.
"They stripped me of my scarf and searched my hair," says Mahdi's mother-in-law, Ameen. "I didn't know how to stand in the screening machine. I was sick, but they forced me to stand inside that machine."
The place where visitors get to meet their loved ones is a white-walled room with a par ion, through which inmates and their families can talk.
"We allow [the] children to cross the line, and dads can hold their kids. We do allow them, you know, contact hugs," Brown says.
Zahra Mahdi did get to see her husband on her last visit, just three months ago. She doesn't remember the pleasant amenities so much as the shortness of the visit.
"We had to go through all this, just to see him for two hours. Time passed so quickly, and afterwards they ordered us out," she says.
Brown wants the visits to transform the families' view of Americans, but that's not what Mahdi remembers.
"We were trembling all the time, so afraid of the Americans," she says. "The Americans just yelled at us, and we could not understand what they were saying."
Brig. Gen. Robert Hipwell, who is taking over as commander of Camp Bucca, says he's just as committed to making the visitation program as successful as it can be. But like Brown, he will face the difficulties of running a volatile detention camp and the cultural barriers between Iraqis and Americans.
It may be that no amount of good will and hard work can make the experience a happy one.
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