(03-17-2009 04:58 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  I'm not for shooting innocent people, but we certainly managed to make a mess of this situation, and haven't made progress at all.

I liked the idea of trying them as spies...should have been done early on.

OTOH, anybody ever read a book entitled "The Charm School"? Maybe we had a bigger plan all along.

http://www.amazon.com/Charm-School-Nelso...0446353205

BTW, sorry your thread was hijacked. I thought we had some interesting commentary on economic future.

Hey, some of the best threads are those that get hijacked.

(03-17-2009 04:53 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-17-2009 01:37 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  You said close down Guantanamo Bay and try them in civilian courts, where most of the evidence would be impermissible.


You won't find that. I said try them. Never specifically in civilian courts. TRY them and put them to death. Locking people away without bringing charges was chicken ****.

We should have killed them in the desert instead of taking them to Gitmo. Try them if you like first, but we are under no obligation under the Geneva Conventions or any other principle of international law to do so.

And, for the record, holding them without charges is the standard international law treatment for captured enemy combatants.

Shooting them as spies in the desert doesn't allow you to collect information though....

I would imagine as history rolls forward that books and scholarly journals will show plenty of evidence of battlefield executions, warrented or not.

I would imagine the same. Dirty things happen during war.

Intelligence is crucial in defeating AQ. We have some source in AQ and we have been eliminating their Operations people for the past 9 months.

It may be a human source, because most of the terrorists killed have had a $1 million + bounty on their heads.... but then again, it may not.

But somehow the intelligence is being developed so we know that Person of Interest X will be in a particular mud hut at a certain time. It has to be a high degree of confidence because more than likely there is a recon ground team in the area watching the target before and after the strike. They don't put those across the border unless its well worth the risk.

(03-18-2009 08:17 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Shooting them as spies in the desert doesn't allow you to collect information though....

Oh, you can get information that way.
Line up about 10 of them. Ask the first one what he knows, he says nothing, you shoot him. Ask the second one what he knows, he says nothing, you shoot him. Third guy talks.

(03-18-2009 09:32 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-18-2009 08:17 AM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Shooting them as spies in the desert doesn't allow you to collect information though....

Oh, you can get information that way.
Line up about 10 of them. Ask the first one what he knows, he says nothing, you shoot him. Ask the second one what he knows, he says nothing, you shoot him. Third guy talks.

It better be CIA or JSOC asking the questions and in private, because if that leaked out it would make the Witchhunt waged against Lt. Col. Chessani over the mythical "Haditha Massacre" look like a walk in the park.

(03-18-2009 09:45 PM)WMD Owl Wrote:  

(03-18-2009 09:32 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Oh, you can get information that way.
Line up about 10 of them. Ask the first one what he knows, he says nothing, you shoot him. Ask the second one what he knows, he says nothing, you shoot him. Third guy talks.

It better be CIA or JSOC asking the questions and in private, because if that leaked out it would make the Witchhunt waged against Lt. Col. Chessani over the mythical "Haditha Massacre" look like a walk in the park.

Agree.

.

Africans had a pretty ingenious method of extracting or rather defining Truth from Lie.

They would line up all the Suspects and put a machete or a knife blade in a fire, when the blade got hot, they would walk up to the line of suspects and begin asking them Truth or Lie questions ...

The suspects would answer and the questioner would then touch the Hot Machete Blade to the suspects tongue - - - if the suspect yelled out in pain, they considered him a Guilty Party - - they discovered long ago that when you lie and deceive, your "Mouth Become Extremely Dry" and it will cause your tongue to burn on contact with the hot knife blade.

I mean since we are discussing alternative forms of questioning suspects and such ....

.