Dubious UN ‘Expert’ Misrepresents Guantánamo — Again
As KSM himself points out, his argument for the release of these detainees is, in effect, a matter of “definition” — and a very subtle definition it is, worthy of an experienced trial lawyer. But from the perspective of the American army against which they were fighting and according to all rational criteria these people were quite obviously just what the Bush administration designated them to be — namely, “enemy combatants.”
It should be noted, moreover, that the very conditions that inspired them to fight in Afghanistan in the first place continue to exist today. American and other foreign troops are still there. By releasing them now to ostensibly “friendly” countries, the American army will clearly risk seeing them return to the battlefield — either in Afghanistan or on other fronts in the global jihad like Iraq. Even if this should not come to pass, were the American government to back down from its earlier determination and endorse Nowak’s claim that the detainees had never been combatants, this would be to court the risk that released detainees will sue the American government for illegal imprisonment. Although the AP did not see fit to include this detail in its report, Nowak also touched upon this point in his ORF interview. “I assume that most of these detainees will in the future be awarded damages by American courts for the many years that they were illegally held [in Guantánamo],” he said.
In order to underscore the allegedly “illegal” circumstances of their detention, Nowak threw out an obvious red herring: he insisted that the “great majority” of the detainees “certainly had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks.” But whoever said that they did have “something to do” with the attacks? The legitimacy of the war in Afghanistan as such is clearly connected to the attacks, but the American government has obviously not claimed that every combatant captured in the war zone was also a member of the 9/11 plot.
That a supposed expert in international law like Nowak would so egregiously misrepresent the legal arguments for the holding of the Guantánamo detainees raises serious questions about his motivations. This is not the first time that there has been reason to wonder about them. In a highly-publicized UN report that was released in February 2006, Nowak accused the U.S. of practicing torture at Guantánamo. As I have shown in my essay “The Road to Condemning Guantánamo”, Nowak employed an absurdly inflated concept of “torture” in order to arrive at this conclusion.
At the time, Nowak cited his former professor, the late Austrian jurist Felix Ermacora, as the “inspiration” for his finding. Ermacora was a leading member of post-WWII revisionist circles in Austria and Germany. Among other things, Ermacora tacitly condoned the German subjugation of Czechoslovakia following the 1938 Munich Accords, expressed admiration for the work of the British revisionist historian and Holocaust denier David Irving, and accused the Allied powers of crimes equivalent to those committed by Nazi Germany. He even went so far as to affirm that “ethnic Germans” had been the victims of “genocide.” (For the precise details, see “The Road to Condemning Guantánamo”.)
One of Ermacora’s closest intellectual collaborators was the former Nazi legal theorist Theodor Veiter. In his 1938 volume on “National Autonomy” [Nationale Autonomie], Veiter called for the exclusion of Jews from the lives of “other nations.” Veiter was only a “former” Nazi legal theorist, incidentally, in the sense that after the war his party membership, needless to say, became obsolete and he henceforth refrained from indulging in anti-Semitic outbursts in his publications. Ermacora, however, had no compunction about citing even Veiter’s openly anti-Semitic Nazi-era output in his own “scholarly” writings. A 1988 Festschrift for Felix Ermacora contains a contribution from Veiter on “Ethnic Group Rights.” One of the co-editors of the volume: Manfred Nowak.
GWB, WATERBOARDING, AND AMERICA’S FUTURE
And so the end is near for George W. Bush’s two terms as President of the United States, after eight years of uneasy peace and bloody war, of unprecedented economic success and financial meltdown, of consolations and controversies, of applause and derision.
All in all, and regardless of distorted and biased reports from the liberal mass media, Bush 2 hasn’t had all that bad a run.
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard listed Bush’s ten greatest achievements, citing as his first accomplishment his refusal to buy into the Kyoto Accords on the man-made global warming fraud, a policy which our new president will no doubt reverse to the great detriment of the United States. That Bush decision must be considered a very notable if only temporary accomplishment because of that anticipated reversal.
However, Bush’s second great success, according to Barnes’ estimation, should be at the top of any list of GWB’s great deeds.
As Barnes writes of Bush’s second great achievement, ”Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We’ll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, ‘Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack.’ ” (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/986rockt.asp).
One of the few who were subjected to waterboarding was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “mastermind” of 9/11, . . .
(Read the rest of this article at http://genelalor.com/.)
Our enemies a laughing at us while we debate the status of foreign fighters who do not adhere to the rules of the Geneva Covention.
Their stated goal is using our own assets to defeat us. After finding and utilizing “useful idiots” in the media to twist the truth and make us doubt ourselves, their next goal will be to use our own legal system against us in the prosecution of war.
Weak-willed politicians will let them invade our court system, encouraged by the army of lawyers’ lobbyists who stand to make a great deal of money defending foreign fighters who just happened to be in “the wrong place at the wrong time”, on the battlefield, shooting at our troops.
“UN Expert”?
Isn’t that like: Jumbo Shrimp, Only Choice, Deafening Silence & Boneless Ribs?
The U.N. is full of secular humanists Globalist who hate these United States. They should be moved to Europe where their agenda of Global government, lack of morality, and their New Age Lucis Trust religion belongs.
The building could be turned into apartments for the poor.
The U.N. calls for Americans to be disarmed. I say come and get them.
THIS IS SPARTA!
63 OUT OF 512 HAVE BEEN KILLED IN COMBAT THAT HAVE RETURNED TO IRAQ AND AFGHANISTIAN ….. MORE COULD BE KILLING OUR MEN BUT WE DON’T KNOW WHO THEY ARE SINCE THEY HAVE NOT BEEN KILLED OR CAPTURED (AGAIN ) …
Every soldier who served and engaged enemy combatants will tell you, whoever is holding a weapon and is in a battlefield area is an enemy combatant. There are no site seeing tours. Anyone wanting to play war and then puts their weapon down is considered an enemy combatant. There are no I just want to go home when an enemy combatant is captured on the battlefield. Nor are there anyone just walking around out to get a breath of fresh air. No innocent civilians remain in areas where they know there’s going to be an engagement with American troops. Our troops know who the fleeing civilians are and who remains to engage our troops. Without giving it away, we are there before they hear us coming. Like my TI told me, get in and get out without them knowing you were there. Believe me if they’re in Gitmo, they deserve to be there. Once on the move, our troops don’t have time to pick up innocent civilians.
Hey pretty boy ReconUSMC, and Maverick!
Thanks for your service to our country!
If Obama closes Gitmo, I think he should take the terrorist criminals presently confined there to Chicago. They would feel at home there with the terrorists, criminals, and miscreants he surrounds himself with.
Re #8. Nice thought, Kathy. Alternately, Hawaii
Paul & Kathy L. I vote San Francisco.
Maverick:
Believe me if they’re in Gitmo, they deserve to be there.
So why has the Bush Administration released 500 of them ???
I’ll say it again that the military base at Guantanamo should be closed and moved to the United States Airforce Base in Greenland. Problem solved!
Why is the option not being explored that they be tried by a military court for their crimes and then punished accordingly…possibly put to death? That way the burden of their “care” is no longer an necessity and no other country has to worry about having to “welcome” them.
They are not American citizens, why are we so worried about giving them all the advantages that come with that status? Why don’t the people that are so worried about these terrorists be forced to welcome them into their own homes and we’d see how quickly they would change their minds!
I find it ridiculous that the American people have become so squeamish in the name of political correctness – the most effective message we could send to the rest of the people that think blowing up the U.S. is a good idea would be to just start killing the ones we capture – who cares if they think it will get them 70 virgins in Shangri la or wherever, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about them trying to kill Americans anymore. Or maybe we should just widely publicize the idea that those who are captured will be treated in the same way that our P.O.W.’s are treated, I’m sure that would make a few them think twice.
You don’t offer someone tea and cake bent on murdering you in your home, you kill them first – seems pretty cut and dry to me.
Close Gitmo and stop “torturing terrorists by water boardings?” Hmmmm………..
Well here are some of the tactics of those who are being sooo… mistreated in geitmo.
http://barenakedislam.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/beheadings-r-us/
Maverick:
Believe me if they’re in Gitmo, they deserve to be there.
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So why are some of them not charged with anything?
Pat J….It will be obvious the crimes that the detainees committed when Obama opens the gates and gives them their freedom to do it AGAIN to the US and other victims around the planet. Shouldn’t take long I’d think. Once they hit the ole sands of home, hand ‘em a gun and see how long they stay “innocent” once again.
On second thought I think the bums should be incarcerated closer to home. Turn them loose on an island in the West Aleutians and let them compete with the local wildlife. I’m sure that Allah will help them.
It seems Nowak just today urged the U.S. to pursue former President Bush and former Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld on charges they authorized torture and harsh interrogation techniques. Wow.