re: #422 keithgabryelski

> Were or were not guantanamo and abu garib used as recruitment calls against the U.S.?

Sure, they were most effectively used when Newsweek made up stories about Korans being flushed down the toilet, and when Ted Kennedy said that we had reopened Saddam’s torture chambers under new American management, and when Michael Moore said 9/11 was an excuse to invade Iraq. Without such hysteria and enemy propaganda from our own ‘loyal opposition,’ these would not have such appeal as recruitment tool. Not on their own mostly undramatic merits. And hand-wringing like that you demonstrate here only serves to reinforce such exaggerated claims of abuse. Also, thanks for proving my point about the left’s swiftness to compare Abu Graib and Guantanamo.

What kind of recruitment tool would it have given the enemy to broadcast the truth about what really happened at Guantanamo instead of the lies? ‘Three top Al Qaeda leaders were subjected to some rough treatment after killing thousands of Americans!’ or ‘Khaled Sheik Mohammed put in a box with a caterpillar!” aren’t battle cries that get Rage Boy’s juices flowing.

> The abuses were pretty serious. No one said concentration camps.

Actually, I believe many did. Our own beloved Dick Durban even, I think, compared it to the Gulag and Pol Pot. Don’t say “no one” if you don’t know for sure.

>Well. we should follow the law no matter what we do.

Uh-huh. But the question is ‘what is the law.’ Many people freey misquote the prisoner of war treatment rules of Geneva Convention as applying to everybody, including illegal combatants. I think Bush and the CIA went to great lengths to stay within the law, which was very squishy on such new experiences as wbat to do with terrorists captured on foreign battlefields. I think they came to some very restrained conclusions, and a policy that kept the nation safe while adhering to our principles. It’s a tough balancing act. This wasn’t some third-world junta torturing people for fun. If the Supreme Court had not helped the Dems in rewriting the Constitution on the fly, the military detainment and tribunals Bush and the Pentagon set up would still be as legal as they were then.

> If that causes us to be seen as pathetic then there is a remedy: change the law.

That would be nice, but try that with a Congress half of which had only one goal: sabotage the war to cause a disastrous retreat and send Bush down in flames. We did not see a lot of bipartisan potential.

But they did change the law, mind you, by fiat. Now we have more rights for illegal enemy combatants, and even Obama is very uncertain what to do with them, aside from sending a few of the “safe” ones to Bermuda. He knows most of them are going to be held and tried just as Bush planned. See, it’s complicated, something the anti-Bush people refused to acknowledge, and now it’s on their plate.

> I don’t think we are seen as weak or easy when we follow our principles.

But we are seen as weak when we announce that we will never, ever make a terrorist uncomfortable or humiliated, and we introduce Miranda rights for non-American citizens in foreign venues, and our leaders travel the world apologizing for how terrible a nation America is. Principles is a big word. I sadly feel this administration does not have any actual core principles in the war on terror (which you can’t call it any more). I think foreign policy for them is seen as an inconvenience they woud rather not deal with at all. It’s just keeping them from concentrating on their very “ambitious” domestic agenda.