Talk:Unlawful combatant/Archive 5

message: Here's a point of view from 2 former Justice Department lawyers:
:the Supreme Court has not required that the Geneva Conventions be applied in the war on terror; neither members of al Qaeda nor their allies, including members of the Taliban, must be granted POW status because of the Hamdan decision. 
Rivkin and Casey suggest that Bush opponents are misreading Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. I'd like to see their POV included in the article, to balance out the anti-Bush POV. --Wing Nut 13:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not relevant since this ruling says nothing about POW/unlawful combatant status. What exactly is it you want to mention?Nomen NescioGnothi seauton 14:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: POW, civilian, or what?

message: Does the new anti-terrorism law in the USA grant the Bush administration the right to label anyone they want as an unlawful combatant, without having to explain it or supply any proof? That's what I've heard from criticism. JIP | Talk 17:35, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it looks like "an unlawful combatant is a person who [...] has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant" basically means "an unlawful combatant is whoever we say is one". JIP | Talk 05:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New anti-terrorism law 

message: The first paragraph tears right into the Bush admininstration's definition of "unlawful combatant", as though that's the only time such term has ever been used.  I then goes on to talk about the Geneva Conventions, and 1942 court cases; if the only source for "unlawful combatant" is the Bush administration, then why are those in the article?  The introduction needs to be very clear on the distinctions of a person captured in a war.  They can be:
:1. a noncombatant; these are afforded certain rights by the Fourth Geneva Convention
:2. prisoners of war; these are afforded certain rights by the Third Geneva Convention article 4 POW rules.  These consist of:
:*regular troops
:*irregular troops with ALL of the following: 
:**fixed distinctive sign identifying them as combatants
:**a responsible chain of command
:**open carrying of arms
:**following the rules of war
:3. occupants of a non-occupied territory who spontaneously take up arms, given the meet the following:
:*open carrying of arms
:*following the rules of war
:4. any other combatant
Any captured person in category 4--which describes many of those fighting occupation in Iraq--are not covered by the protections in the Geneva Conventions, and is generally considered an "unlawful combatant".  The breakdown into "lawful" and "unlawful" combatants has been in place since the 19040s, when the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions were ratified.  The Third Geneva Convention also explicity recognizes that there are combatants who are NOT subject to the protections afforded POWs, as it states "when there is any doubt as to whether a combatant belongs to the categories in article 4, they should be treated as such until their status has been determined by a competent tribunal." 
The 1977 Protocol I extends protection to some combatants of alien occupation or racist powers, which does expand the POW defintion and should be mentioned (but neither the US nor Iraq have accepted Protocol I, so it's not applicable in that conflict).  It has some serious flaws in that it lacks definitions for what constitues an "alien occupation" or "racist regime", and does not require the combatants to be following the rules of war.  One restriction Protocol I adds is that it explicity states that  mercenaries are NOT covered by the POW rights in the Third Geneva Convention.  This may well cover a number of the US detainees from Iraq, as there are reports of non-parties to the conflict offering large rewards to the families of "martyrs" killed in Iraq.
As for the US and prisoners taking in Afghanistan and Iraq; the status of "unlawful combatants" is vauge; should the be subject to US territorial law when they are not US citizens, residents, or even present in the US?  If so, then you're implying that US law should apply globally, and I'm sure that opinion won't fly over at the UN.  The only rules covering those prisoners would then be US laws and military regulations specifically covering non-POW prisoners.  These may choose to extend more rights to prisoners, but they are under no obligation to.  Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which did this by declaring the tribunals held to determine the prisoner status invalid, seems to me to also be suspect, as the Supreme Court ruled that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over these cases, and that seems to be a clear conflict of interest...  scot 19:43, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Poor, POV definition

message: An unlawful combatant is accorded neither the rights a soldier would normally have under the laws of war, nor the civil rights a common criminal would normally have.
To what aspect is citation required?  The claims in this sentence are explained in the remainder of the article.  --ANONYMOUS COWARD0xC0DE 05:40, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification of Citation Request 

message: The language of Military Commissions Act of 2006 seems to allow the label "unlawful enemy combatant" to be applied to persons who are in no recognizable sense "enemy combatants" of any sort.
From pages 3 and 4 of HR 6166, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (emphasis added):
------
‘‘(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.—
‘‘§948a. Definitions 
‘‘In this chapter: 
‘‘(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.—(A) The 
term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ means—
‘‘(i) a person who has engaged in hos-
tilities or who has purposefully and materially
supported hostilities against the United States 
or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy 
combatant (including a person who is part of 
the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
‘‘(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the 
date of the enactment of the Military Commis-
sions Act of 2006, has been determined to be 
an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant 
Status Review Tribunal or another competent
tribunal established under the authority of the
 
President or the Secretary of Defense.
------
In (i), the phrase "purposely and materially supported" seems extremely elastic. Using a credit card to make a donation through a website could, it seems, make one a "combatant" by this criterion.
The language of (ii) appears to say, in effect, that "An 'unlawful enemy combatant' is anyone the President chooses to call an 'unlawful enemy combatant'." This establishes no criteria at all.
Contrary to what is assumed in most of the discussion in the article, the term "unlawful enemy combatant" does not seem to designate a subset of enemy combatants. If this is correct, I invite someone to edit the article appropriately.  67.117.144.176 07:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Read my comments above. As you pointed out, the definition "An unlawful combatant is [...] a person who [...] has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense." in fact simplifies to "An unlawful combatant is anyone we say is one." If Bush decided tomorrow that I am an unlawful combatant, US troops would be obliged to arrest and detain me. JIP | Talk 08:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" need not be combatants? 

message: What on earth is that a picture of?  Needs a better caption.  KristoferM 02:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Carceleros de Guantánamo 

message: In September 1943, around 600.000 Italians were taken prisoners by Germany after Italy signed agreements with the allies. While they were first regarded as POWs, a decree by Hitler in September 1943 coined the term "military internee" for these people, which officially removed their POW status, thus stripping them from the protection by the Geneva convention. There is a short article in the German Wikipedia at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militärinternierter .
Though the terminology is different, I think that there should be a reference to this fact in the article, as the effect of "unlawful combatant" and "military internee" is similar. 
It might also be interesting to point out that the status of "military internee" was declared illegal directly after the war, making the Italian prisoners POWs again and thus excluding them from any "compensations" (pension, reparations etc.) payed by Germany or Italy, as these normally only cover civilian damages. The latest confirmation of this policy was by the German Constitutional Court in 2004 (BVerfG, 2 BvR 1379/01 of 28.6.2004) on the question if the Italian POWs will get compensated by the "Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft" for their work in German companies during the war. --Schoelle 15:58, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italian military internee in Germany 1943 

message: In an article in the Independent 6/6 2007 titled Guantanamo charges dismissed by judges and sourced to Associated Press it was written:
:In back-to-back arraignments for Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, of Yemen, the US military's cases against the alleged al Qaida figures dissolved because, the two judges said, the government had failed to establish jurisdiction. ... Hamdan's military judge, Navy Captain Keith Allred, said the detainee is "not subject to this commission" under legislation passed by Congress and signed by President George Bush last year. ... The judges agreed that there was one problem they could not resolve - the new legislation says only "unlawful enemy combatants" can be tried by the military trials, known as commissions. But Khadr and Hamdan had previously been identified by military panels only as enemy combatants, lacking the critical "unlawful" designation....  The chief of military defence attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Colonel Dwight Sullivan, said the dismissal of the case against Khadr could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system hurriedly set up last year by Congress and Bush after the Supreme Court threw out the previous system. But legal experts said Brownback apparently left open the door for a retrial for Khadr, and that the Defence Department can possibly fix the jurisdictional problem by holding new "combat status review tribunals" for any detainee headed to trial.
The information in this article or similar articles in other papers needs to be added to the article. --Philip Baird Shearer 21:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Monday 4 June 2007 Hamdan Guantanamo charges dismissed by military judge

message: WRT the  removal of the overview heading...  I have no strong opinions, today, as to whether the article needs an overview section.  But I wonder whether there might be value in putting a __TOC__ after  the first paragraph...  Putting the Table of Contents on the first screen gives new readers a good idea of what the article contains.
Cheers!  Geo Swan 17:21, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  TOC 

message: New York Times, last week
:
:"The C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has spoken repeatedly about the training of the interrogators and the relatively few prisoners who have been subjected to the toughest techniques. Intelligence officials have said that of about 100 prisoners held to date in the C.I.A. program, the “enhanced” techniques were used on about 30, and waterboarding used on just three."
Washington Post, last week
:
:"CIA spokesman George Little said yesterday that Hayden has said in speeches that the videotaping of interrogations stopped in 2002 and that about 30 of 100 CIA prisoners had required "special methods of questioning."
New York Sun, last July
:
:"In a message to CIA employees on Friday, Director Michael Hayden tried to stress the importance and narrow scope of the program. He noted that fewer than half of the less than 100 detainees have experienced the agency's "enhanced interrogation measures."
About that  nice round figure of 100 captives.  
Cheers!  Geo Swan (talk) 02:31, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Number waterboarded?  Number subjected to "extended interrogation methods"?