Claeyt wrote:naosnule wrote:What a country considers illegal or not, means absolutely nothing for whether or not it is right or not. You seem to dislike torture, but do you realize that depriving people of their freedom is one of the worst things you can do against any human being?
Censoring is another one.
A group of soldiers can very well lie and state "hurrr durrr that guy shot at us". That fact and the opinion that censoring and removing the freedom of an individual is among the worst things one can possibly do to it, accentuates the need of a quick but fair trial.
Edit: Of course using the term "prisoner of war" is an extremely convenient way to handle what would otherwise be a messy situation. It is the easy-mode out so it is no wonder why countries use it to reduce their own headache.
The Judicial Process is what determines what is illegal or not. It is an interpretation by the Independent Judiciary that determines what is law. That is what it means to live in a constitutional democracy. Yes, depriving people of their freedom is bad but it is sometimes necessary in a fair and just manner.
Censorship is bad. We have almost no censorship in the United States. The only censorship really is child porn and TV/movie ratings for parents to control what their kids watch. Government legal actions like with Snowden reporting sometimes cross the line but overall that is very minor. Russia is very, very censored and the press is routinely killed over there for disagreeing with Putin and the State or reporting on the Oligarchs.
We use the term prisoner of war because we are at War. All prisoners captured in Afghanistan are now given rights under U.S. military law and Afghan law. They can't be legally removed from the country without the permission of the Afghan government. This was not the case before there was an Afghan government and under the Bush administration.
All prisoners at Guantanamo have lawyers now. The Supreme Court over-ruled Bush and Cheney. Most are held and will be tried in a court under Military Law (They attacked military targets or civilian targets in Afghanistan). Some are being held under U.S. Civilian Law (They Planned attacks on the U.S. or Europe) and will be tried in a civilian court. All of them have the right to appeal the decision.
Again, you need to separate the fact that they are prisoners (legal) from the fact of what happened to them (illegal). In the cases of innocent prisoners who were taken from their countries, The U.S. Supreme Court has already heard the appeals of all of them that had been illegally rendered from a foreign country and either freed them or continued to hold them. Those that were freed are currently suing Cheney and Bush officials in Germany and other countries. I hope they win.
The War in Afghanistan and Iraq (an illegal war in my opinion) and the Bush administration (and yes the Obama administration to a much, much lesser degree) have led to some dark, dark times following 9/11.
Putin's actions in Ukraine are like Iraq. He is illegally occupying a foreign country. The difference is that Bush wanted to remove a corrupt dictator that was robbing his country and Putin wants to put one back in.
You have a fixation about what is illegal and legal, when you could focus more on what is right and isn't right. Laws are ideally formed based on what a society thinks is right and isn't right, not the other way around.
Edit: Which is why I return to the question: how long time do those people have to wait for a fair trial, and do they get compensation if their freedom is taken for more than a week without a fair trial?