Actually, according to the Geneva Convention the Gitmo Guys are POW’s.

Here is Article 2 out of the ‘Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Part 1’:
In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.

The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.

Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

So according to the Convention, Afghanistan is a war, and (if you look at the rest of the treaty, it’s fairly easy reading for a piece of diplomacy) by definition the Gitmo Guys are POW’s. As a matter of fact, i don’t see a reason why the US can’t accept them as POW’s since the convention does give enough ground to try them individually for terrorism and such. The only thing gained by denying them the status of POW is that no third party (which would be the Red Cross) can visit the detainees, but that’s basically it. I’m afraid the non-POW status has more to do with demonising the enemy than anything else, really.

But just imagine, in a few years… that annoying POW/MIA organisation can set up an office in Kabul as well. And maybe we’ll see Chuck Norris move out and liberate a few forgotten Gitmo Guys in Missing in Action XVII?

Edit: forgot the link to the Convention: http://193.194.138.190/html/menu3/b/91.htm

Was thinking more along the lines of foxtrot uniform, or otherwise seriously whisky.

No, it’s not OK. But like in most unfree societies, i don’t think that the average Yussuf did a lot to get himself into troubles. Just pretend to be a fine upstanding Saddam-admiring citizen, sing a little praise at the occasional Baath-rallye and chances are you won’t be executed all too often.

If you are used to living a quiet life, like most people do (in a dictatorship it means survival, but i don’t think the average person in a democracy is that much more defiant) you won’t notice it if someone you don’t know gets tortured. You will however notice it that your children no longer have a school to go to, which is just as well since they now can walk fifteen miles back and forth to fetch some water from the nearest functioning tap.

Of course the Iraqis were liberated from a brutal dictator, and the security (on a social level) the Iraqi system offered was of course far, far less and much less predictable than the stability the oppressed people in the German Democratic Republic suffered from. The people who will enjoy freedom mostly will be the ones who actually have an opinion and voice it. Plenty of people didn’t do that under Saddam, and won’t do so in a democracy.

How about the Spanish/Portugese/Italian people here understanding Romanian? When travelling through Romania, my poor knowledge of those Romanic languages helped me quite a bit in understanding the basics and explaining myself somewhat (the usual “A large beer please”, “How much octane is this?” and “I’m innocent, i didn’t know it was illegal!”). I found it easier to read than to listen to though.

By the way, from my experiences, knowing a language not too well does help in understanding another, similar language. With my pretty basic knowledge of Russian i found myself a few times much better able to deal with Belarussian, Bulgarian or Polish than those who are much, much better in Russian than i am. Fuzzy grammar and shady vocabulary works!

Of course Saddam’s reign was terrible. However (and especially prior to 1991), Iraq as a society functioned in one way or the other: people had work, trash was moved, water and power were predictably cut-off. All of those things most people (if not everybody) take for granted yet are extremely important to maintain just a basic quality of life, are now on the ‘shortlist of things which need to be fixed.’

Re: Bit ungrateful

Originally posted by Florida Dude
We offered them our western lifestyle but they refused, well thats fine but don’t say we didn’t we offer.

We offered them our lifestyles? ROTFLMAO!

“Hello Yusuf. Unfortunately we had to incinerate one of your sons a while ago, but now we offer you the Western Lifestyle! Here is a nice car, a boring job in an office cubicle, a huge freezer with icecubes machine, an evangelical church, a lap dog, a miniskirt and lots of makeup for your daughter, an internetconnection and a computer with the pornsites pre-bookmarked, a cowboy hat and silly boots so you can join a group of upstanding christ-loving Iraqi linedancers, and you can get your foreskin back at one of our freshly reconstructed hospitals where currently only plastic surgery is an option.” :rolleyes:

The only ‘western’ thing offered was democracy, but unfortunately most of the local meetings set up to start forming an electoral basis were halted after it appeared that the tribal/ethnical/religious issues were more an issue of debate than political. Apart from that, no ‘life style’ was offered. Only taken away.

http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Meadows/3884/jpegs/golomyanka.jpg

Coelacanths are cool! And the fact that those were found somewhere in the 1970s (until then it was assumed that coelacanths only existed in prehistoric days, matter of fact dino times) gave way to a lot less scepticism of other weird things which might swim in the world’s oceans.

But the coolest fish has got to be the Golomyanka or fat-fish. It only lives in the Baikal lake, and since it has no skin but consists for the largest part of fat tissue it melts if you take it out of the water 😀