>>   The Taliban and Al Queda prisoners being held in Cuba are receiving
three
>>nutritious meals a day, are provided with personal toiletry items, are
>>provided with the opportunity to bath regularly, are provided with a a
towel
>>solely to be used as a prayer mat, provided with individual copies of the
>>Q'ran, are allowed visits from an Islamic clergyman,  are provided with
>>medical treatment whenever needed, have been visited by the Red Cross, and
>>are being held in their wire enclosures only until completion of a
permanent
>>facility.

 > Their conditions remain appalling.

Please explain which of these conditions are appalling.

>>These are not soldiers of some nation-state that upon discharge from
>>service will peacefully return to "tending their farms" while perhaps every
>>10 years or so getting together for a reunion at which they will swap old
>>Jihad stories.

>This is untrue.  Many people were drafted into the Taliban at gunpoint,
>which was, for better or worse, the governing body of
>Afghanistan.  Therefore, the draftees, one would think, have a very high
>chance of returning to their farms.

 The main body of Taliban have been left in Afganistan. The Taliban who were
removed are the ones who continue to represent a danger or who possibly have
useful information that would prevent another attack on the US.

>>The Al Queda prisoners are voluntary members of an
>>organization whose goal is the killing of Americans -- indeed even fellow
>>Arab Muslims who are not religiously 'pure' enough.

>Why is an American life worth more than an Afghan life?  Or an Iraqi
l>ife?  The soldiers of the US armed forces are voluntary members of an
>organisation with the goal of killing Iraqis, whether for or against
>Hussein.  And who assisted Hussein into power?

  No one made such a claim. You wish to persent the "moral equivalency"
argument. It is a false argument.

>>If released, there is no
>>reason to think that they will not regroup and continue their Jihad.

>If treated as actual PoWs, then release isn't immediately required, but
>humanity is.

 Which is what they are receiving.


>>The Taliban prisoners picked the wrong crowd to hang out with.

>Guilt by association, and never mind the conditions under which their
>decision to "hang out" with the "wrong crowd" were made.

  Feel free to analyize their motives. In the meantime, they will be kept
where they will be unable to act on them.

>>  I assume that
>>if it is decided that they are no longer a threat or of intelligence value,
>>they will be shipped back to the sewer they came from.

>That'd be the rubble your country left of their country?  You'll bomb them
>until they no longer hate you, I presume?

  No. That would be the sewer of their theocratic culture. And the
destruction of their country was accomplished by them long before they
decided to harbor Al Queda. Try to relax. Al Qaeda will probably be able to
strike us again before it is all over.

>>However, the members
>>of Al Queda voluntarilly chose their path of Jihad against Americans and
>>should now expect to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

>But they're not going to spend their life in prison, are they?  They're
>going to face secret military trials - in defiance of all known
>international and domestic law - and they're going to be shot.  We won't
>ever know how many are shot, because your President won't allow you to know.

There has already been enough opposition to this (at the height of the fever)
so that what was called for has been changed. There will be no secret
executions. But there is a caveat. If a nuclear device is detonated in an
American city or a biological agent is introduced into the food or water
supply, then all bets are off.

>>   You mean future American POWs should no longer expect the kind of
>>"civilized" treatment they received in Japanese POW camps?

>Pre Geneva Convention.  And the US locked up Japanese-born US citizens in
>concentration camps during WWII.

Another attempt at moral equivelency.  Beheading American prisoners, beating,
torturing, and conducting medical experiments on them versus putting Japanese
Americans in camps for the duration of the war, is not a valid analogy.

>>North Korean POW
>>camps? North Vietnamese POW camps?

>How did US armed forces treat Vietnamese civilians?  Hint - My Lai.  The
>point the original poster made was that if you treat your enemies humanely,
>then there's more chance they'll treat you the same way.  I'd argue
>differently - you should treat your enemies humanely because they're human.

   As, indeed, we are. Paradoxically, your argument is that inhumane
treatment of American POWs was justified because of atrocities against
civilians. Based on this, we would be right in mistreating the Taliban and Al
Queda prisoners in Cuba. I disagree with your reasoning.

>>A rather specious argument, at best
>>(Somehow I suspect that the treatment of an American POW is not very high
on
>>your list of concerns).

>I have exactly the same amount of concern for a US PoW as I do for an
>Afghan PoW.
Yours,
Issodhos