Melanie Phillips at The Spectator ("don't think alike") brings disturbing word from Iraq, that you won't get from the "news" media.
Money quote(s):
"(W)e must not overlook the massacre that took place earlier this month of members of the Iranian opposition group, the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), at their base in Ashraf in Iraq.
Despite the fact that the PMOI are ‘protected persons’ under the 4th Geneva Convention, on April 8 they were the victims of an unprovoked attack which was apparently carried out on the orders of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki. The unarmed civilian residents of Ashraf were fired at with machine-gun rounds, as a result of which 35 of them were killed and some 350 injured.
According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iraqi Army used 2,500 troops equipped with armoured vehicles to attack Ashraf in tandem with the feared al Qods force of Iran." Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA.
The PMOI (a.k.a., MEK) are the military wing of the NCRI. Or perhaps the NCRI is the political wing of the PMOI/MEK. Experts disagree.
But the bottom line is that the PMOI members interned at Camp Ashraf are protected persons, declared to be by our own military commanders in Iraq, under the Geneva Protocols.
"(T)here are strong fears that the Iraqis are preparing to inflict further violence on the residents of Ashraf -- and no less disturbing, claims that both the Iraqis and the Americans have been either actively preventing or doing nothing to provide medical aid for those injured in the attack." Embedded link added. - CAA.
&
"(T)he last thing the British and Americans want to acknowledge is that the Iraqi government of Nuri al Maliki – the country in which so much British and American blood and treasure has been so painfully spent in the cause of making it safe for the west -- has merely become (as has been suggested on this blog many times) a puppet of the Iranians, the west’s most lethal foe"
Does no one else recall the shame of Operation Keelhaul? I fear we will see even worse this time around.
Showing posts with label Geneva Convention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geneva Convention. Show all posts
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
re: "Guantanamo"
David Warren of DavidWarrenOnline ("ESSAYS ON OUR TIMES ") explains why we intern terrorists.
Money quote(s):
"(I)n principle, some inmates may have been captured by mistake, and in practice military tribunals were proceeding, in which guilt had yet to be formally established. Such trials have been suspended for 120 days"
"Guantanamo was selected, by the Bush administration, to intern terrorists, because no better solution could be found. The military commissions were created, ditto. Under actual international and American law, the inmates have no certain rights whatever: they were not proper soldiers, and therefore not legitimate prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. They may thank their stars they were not shot upon capture."
There's still time. After all, they're still war criminals.
"As people understood, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, and as they still understand in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are dealing with monstrous enemies -- with people who not only kill our allied soldiers, but kill defenceless non-combatants gratuitously; who employ terror, to impose tyranny. The insistence on fine points of juridical etiquette in the heat of battle would be insane. But insisting on it later in the calm of a prison camp betrays only a failure of perspective.
It is right of the law to prohibit torture. It is right in almost every circumstance to obey the law (and accept the consequences in any other). There will, however, always be tight corners where "the law is a ass," and to pretend this were never the case is to assume a disingenuous posture. Moreover, as when Guantanamo opened, there are circumstances in which no existing law has been written or can be applied, and yet the principle of retribution remains: that the innocent will be vindicated, that the guilty will be punished."
&
"To set any of the Guantanamo inmates free, on some jurisprudential technicality, is to smear one's hands with the blood of their victims when they return to their trade. This is not a hypothetical proposition: for while the numbers are disputed, a proportion of "low risk" inmates already freed from Guantanamo have returned to action."
That proportion is already known to be at least ten percent. Which would be a pretty darn low "recidivism" rate for ordinary criminals but is unacceptable for terrorists bent on mass murder.
Money quote(s):
"(I)n principle, some inmates may have been captured by mistake, and in practice military tribunals were proceeding, in which guilt had yet to be formally established. Such trials have been suspended for 120 days"
"Guantanamo was selected, by the Bush administration, to intern terrorists, because no better solution could be found. The military commissions were created, ditto. Under actual international and American law, the inmates have no certain rights whatever: they were not proper soldiers, and therefore not legitimate prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. They may thank their stars they were not shot upon capture."
There's still time. After all, they're still war criminals.
"As people understood, in the shadow of the World Trade Center, and as they still understand in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are dealing with monstrous enemies -- with people who not only kill our allied soldiers, but kill defenceless non-combatants gratuitously; who employ terror, to impose tyranny. The insistence on fine points of juridical etiquette in the heat of battle would be insane. But insisting on it later in the calm of a prison camp betrays only a failure of perspective.
It is right of the law to prohibit torture. It is right in almost every circumstance to obey the law (and accept the consequences in any other). There will, however, always be tight corners where "the law is a ass," and to pretend this were never the case is to assume a disingenuous posture. Moreover, as when Guantanamo opened, there are circumstances in which no existing law has been written or can be applied, and yet the principle of retribution remains: that the innocent will be vindicated, that the guilty will be punished."
&
"To set any of the Guantanamo inmates free, on some jurisprudential technicality, is to smear one's hands with the blood of their victims when they return to their trade. This is not a hypothetical proposition: for while the numbers are disputed, a proportion of "low risk" inmates already freed from Guantanamo have returned to action."
That proportion is already known to be at least ten percent. Which would be a pretty darn low "recidivism" rate for ordinary criminals but is unacceptable for terrorists bent on mass murder.
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