"AES/newspost" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Robert Perkins wrote:

This military prison is located in Cuban jurisdiction, and is
therefore outside the reach of American justice. The prisoners are
charged with being "illegal combatants," which is an elegant
equivocation for the total loss of justice. No inmate knows what the
future holds for him. Either they receive no due process and stand to
wait, rotting in prison for years to come, or they'll receive charges
that could mean the death penalty.

68 of these prisoners were released in the last 18 months. Karin
Assman spoke with some of them for SPIEGEL TV, and got a look at
Guantanamo from the inside.

I've never understood the problem here.

Presumably as soon as the war is over -- meaning either the other side
surrenders, or a peace treaty is negotiated and signed between the two
sides -- official representatives of the other side can show up and take
their prisoners home. Until then. they sit.

(Barring the possible use of a procedure sometimes used in earlier wars
-- including our Civil War, I think -- in which prisoners give their
word and bond not to fight again in the conflict, and are released to go
home to their farms and families.)

What's not to like? Did prisoners of war on either side in WW II have
the right to demand trials and due process? (including prisoners from
neutral nations who might have volunteered to fight on either of the
sides)

Sorry dude, they are not POWs. Our government has said that numerous times.

The current war is obviously an unusual war, but equally obviously it's
a war. Does the fact that the other side's mode of fighting it falls
miles outside the Geneva Convention somehow give them the right to
increased, rather than perhaps reduced, protections when taken prisoner?

Maybe you need to factor in the absurdity that we attacked them and now
expect them to fight by our rules. Somehow I don't think that approach is
going to work.