The US & Interrogation (catch all)

[zenpundit]

I have to point out that treating illegal combatants -those whose actions preclude being given POW status - humanely in accord with Geneva and the Torture conventions in no way preclude us for trying and executing them for the commission of war crimes.

The USG is fully within it's sovereign rights to try terrorists simply for being members of al Qaida, proscribing it as an outlaw organization as we once did with the SS, Gestapo, SD and other Nazi affiliates. Especially, trials for fighting out of uniform, for deliberately targeting civilians, for the wanton murder of injured American soldiers on the battlefield, streamlined military trials are justified under international law, the laws of war ( as saboteurs) and Ex Parte Quirin. The recent SCOTUS decision pointed, in fact, to Ex Parte Quirin as the appropriate model and not the vague, shifting, arguments offered by the Bush administration..

In the latter examples, the death penalty is both reasonable and an appropriate outcome upon conviction, barring any mitigating circumstances in terms of cooperation on intelligence matters. As this option could not be, legally and historically speaking, more clear, I can only conclude that the Bush administration, as an act of policy, seeks to avoid any kind of trials indefinitely or at least until they can drop the issue in the next administration's lap.

[slapout9]

These two posts have said it all. In my humble or not so humble opinion. Terrorism is a man made concept (problem) and it's counter is a man made solution (Rule of Law). The more we stray from this the more our country will loose the moral high ground. Zen especially points out that there are laws to handle this situation that we have not even begun to use!! Why we haven't done this I don't know, but we need to get at it!!!

As for line drawing that is exactly what the enemy wants, for us to have a half baked policy of you do this and I will drop the big one. If we follow this policy what do we think the enemy will do?? exactly that which will provoke us into killing huge numbers of civilians. Just like they do !!!

One area that we can exploit is non-lethal and less lethal weapons development. Weapons of mass protection!!! I have never seen a detailed study of the Russian experience where they used knock out agents to paralyze the bombers in Moscow. The bad side effects were that there were not enough medical personnel on site ready to deploy the anti-dote which resulted in about 1/3 of the hostages being killed. But this could be overcome I am sure.

The other is the seizure of terrorist financial assets and give them to the victims family!!! They may kill a family member but the family as a whole will become stronger. I believe this would have a dramatic effect on the terrorist. If we can ever figure out a way that terrorism can be turned into a benefit to this country instead of a financial drain, I suspect it will help change their method of operation and push it more toward a political dialog in order to achieve a long term solution.