Will Nation That Housed 425,000 Nazis in WWII Find Accommodations for 241 Gitmo Captives?

[babylonsister]

Will Nation That Housed 425,000 Nazis in WWII Find Accommodations for 241 Gitmo Captives?
Submitted by Chip on Fri, 2009-05-08 21:04.

WILL NATION THAT HOUSED 425,000 NAZIS IN WWII FIND ACCOMMODATIONS FOR 241 GITMO CAPTIVES?
By Sherwood Ross


The mean-spirited attitude of Republican politicians over repatriating Guantanamo’s remaining 241 inmates in the U.S. reflects both their irrational fears and loss of moral compass. House GOP leaders have introduced a “Keep Terrorists Out of America Act” that would give governors’ veto power to stop the transfer or release of detainees in their state. The same governors that never question the building of atomic bombs, napalm, biological, and other banned U.S. terror weapons in their jurisdictions can be expected to make hypocritical political hay out of this issue.

“Our constituents don’t want these terrorists in their neighborhoods,” House Minority Leader John Boehner told reporters, according to the May 8th Miami Herald. This echoes author Christopher Orlet who wrote in The American Spectator “the roughly 650 prisoners that have gone through Guantanamo Bay…are terrorists and terrorist allies.” How Orlet knows this when they did not get a true American jury trial, and when men have been tortured into signing confessions, is an intriguing question.

This debate is not helped by a wide disagreement over the facts. Are any of the Guantanamo captives, in fact, terrorists? Lawrence Wilkerson, a Republican who served as chief of staff to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, told the Associated Press, “There are still innocent people there. Some have been there six or seven years.” Apparently, some are and some are not. Attorney General Eric Holder says some captives will be released and others will be held.

By continuing to hold any prisoners year after year without trial, Holder only perpetuates the Bush regime’s injustice. In case after case evidence has emerged that many innocent men condemned to Guantanamo were turned in by bounty hunters to collect $5,000 from Uncle Sam. In the Alice-in-Wonderland world of U.S. “justice,” untried and uncharged prisoners have been subjected to inhuman punishments calculated to break them mentally and physically. Kate Allen, director of UK’s Amnesty International, told BBC Guantanamo is “a travesty of justice” and that 80% of its captives are held in “cruel conditions of isolation,” forced to live in constantly illuminated cells with no natural light or fresh air and not allowed to speak to other prisoners.

Some men have endured this kind of solitary confinement for as long as seven years, and for them the end is not in sight. Now Republican officials are doing their level best not to show the slightest glimmer of mercy to these captives.

How America has grown more fearful and intolerant since World War II, when it took in 425,000 German prisoners of war, many of them dedicated Nazis from General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps that surrendered to Eisenhower’s forces in April, 1943! The treatment the Germans received in the United States then was the precise opposite of what Muslim and Arab captives have suffered under the Bush administration.

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http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/42443

[JDPriestly]

1. That explains why, when I lived in Germany and Austria, I

met a number of older men who told me how much they liked America when they lived here as prisoners of war. The first time it happened, I didn't know what to say. I can't tell you how many strangers walked up to me and said that. I didn't know them, but they knew me because I was the only American in various relatively small towns in which we lived. We made a lot of friends because of our kindness to these prisoners.

[babylonsister]

2. We need to show that same kindness, or at least humanity, now.

It's a win-win solution, as you've witnessed.

[Captain Hilts]

7. In Charleston, the Italian POWs were often visted by locals with food.

Some stayed. That's one of the reasons the Spoletto festival is now held there.

[Thothmes]

3. We complied with the reqirements of the Geneva Convention

concerning prisoners of war.

[solinvictus]

4. Gitmo detainess...

..aren't covered under Geneva or Hague because they're unlawful combatants.

[Captain Hilts]

5. For the first year or so, Axis POWs were fed better than US citizens because the law

required that they be fed just as our troops were fed. Local populations began to rebel, so meat allocations for POWs were cut back.

[druidity33]

11. bullshit

The difference between 'enemy combatant' and 'POW' is semantic.

That is all.

[Thothmes]

12. Read the Geneva Convention.

[druidity33]

13. i have

thank you very much. And you don't read the "Geneva Convention"... there are four, so they would be "Conventions". There are also protocols involved... have you read them?

:eyes:


edited to add Wiki page on the "Geneva Convention"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions

[mopinko]

6. send them here to chicago, please.

http://www.heartlandalliance.org/whatwedo/our-programs/directory/marjorie-kovler-center-1.html
we know what to do. we actually have quite a few victims of torture from all over the world.

[rwheeler31]

8. Holder needs to move on this quickly.

The more this drags the more people forget.

[DCKit]

9. They're afraid because they know what we did to them - and what they authorized.

I imagine they'll cough up a huge load of dough to make sure some other country takes them.

[KamaAina]

10. Nazis are white, pretty much by definition. Gitmo detainees aren't.

So, probably not. :eyes: