Explain to me again, driving terrorists to desparation suicides in their cells is bad because...

You would prefer them to drive aircraft into our buildings as suicidal acts of desparation instead?

Or perhaps you want us all to chap our lips kissing Islamist ass like you are?

Three people offing themselves at the same time after failing to maintain a hunger strike is a calculated act. That the Guantanamo detainees ran out of other ways to hurt my nation and my culture does not bother me at all.

Is it really a foregone conclusion for you that everyone at gitmo is a terrorist bent on destroying america? The US military never fucks up? You appear to be in the militry, shouldn't you know better?

wow this is a strange way of looking at suicide. never imagined someone could kill themself (and only themself) in the idea of a future political fallout. but their idea of martyrdom is hard to fathom anyway. this act could be similar but they are usually bringing some innocent bystanders with them.

the whole subject in general is touchy and abstract. the people sticking up for the prisoners don't know the truth but pretend they do. the people sticking up for our government think they know the truth as well but they don't either. sort of like blind, partisan politics. ahh so thats the root of this...

the truth is the answer died in cuba. should you be allowed to detain people without a trial and evidence? of course not. should you be allowed to blow up random people under the guise of a higher spirtiual being? hmm... no.

if any of us were victimized by either side we'd probably change our tune.

People jumping off the top of the world trade center when it was burning was an act of desperation... jump or burn... no other options. Terrorists, who would just love to pull another WTC bombing and would gladly kill themselves to make it happen, committing suicide because they think that the world will feel sorry for the ones still alive... thats a plan.

Does anyone get the fact that we are actually at war? Anyone paying attention the last 15 years? Those people hate us and western culture, and are trying their best to destroy it. That means killing Americans... and it wont matter whether you are liberal or conservative. It's time for this country to wake the fuck up... the world is best viewed realistically, not through some rose-colored glasses.

Driving suspects of ANYTHING to suicide is barbaric and uncalled for.

Which I'm sure they'll do frequently from their cells.

When you're done with that glue bottle would you mind passing it over here. It must be crazy seeing the world like you do. Seriously.

Strangely enough this is exactly the attitude that makes situations like abu graib possible - and yet to have it so blatantly and proudly promoted is just astonishing.

Patrick, I would love to see you detained by a foreign power without rights or trial and see how well you do.

These are basic human rights that we should all expect as a matter of course, and *freedom* is apparently what the military is meant to be fighting for.

You should be ashamed.

If I assume that they're all terrorists trying to strike at the US, then I have to tip my hat to them, killing themselves in their cells isn't a terrible way to create political fallout.

If on the other hand I assume that they were decent people detained for the wrong reasons and that they killed themselves out of sheer despondency...well then my hat is off to the guys who thought up this PR spin. Horrifying yet clever.

well put.

It%u2019s been pointed out before, but, one of the basic underpinnings of our justice system, and arguably our entire society, is that you have to default to that second assumption.

Wow. ABC News:

Heroic strawmen, really. They were brave to go down in flames for your pathetic defense of administration actions.

It's funny, in your cute little picture there, you almost look like you might be a human being.

Has Jack Thompson ordered their cells searched for any playstation games? Because.... come on... we all know where the true evil lies.

Anyway... when you start to share the same value of human life with the people who apparently "hate our freedom" and other similar platitiudes and attitudes... what does that mean exactly?

Let me see here:
1) We are not at war. War is a specific legal condition that only Congress has the power to create, and they have not done so.

2) The folks at Guantanamo are only suspected terrorists. And we have only our government's word that even that much is so. The administration has not provided any evidence to support that suspicion, nor have the prisoners been given any sort of trial like one is required to under our law.

3) The actual terrorists, the ones that we mostly haven't caught, well...they probably do hate us. And our culture. But they sure as hell aren't going to destroy it by blowing up a few of us. (And it has only been a very, very few. Even 9/11, which was a terrible tragedy, only killed a tiny, tiny fraction of the people living in those areas, let alone all of America, still less all of the western democracies that they presumably hate.) Getting us so scared of them that we destroy it ourselves in the name of safety...well, now that's a plan.

That is a lovely supposition as long as you keep it far away from the facts. Abu Gharib occured because of a failure of military leadership starting with Col. Karpinski and working its way down through a rotten unit that was out of control.

I am an American serviceman. When in the last sixty years has US service led to decent treatment when captured? I fully expect to have my head cut off on videotape if I get captured by Al Queda. We have released thousands of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hundreds from Guantanamo. No US military prisoner has been released alive.

How is it that the burden of proof is still on the US?

I am ashamed of your ignorance and intellectual frailty. Basic human rights are what the enemy is absolutely opposed to and has abused at every turn. That we have systematicly blocked their attempts to control events at Guantanamo is what drove them to desparation. Suicide was the last way they could screw with your head, and you let them win.

You give these people at Guantanamo every benefit of the doubt and give the most humane (functional) military in history none. Why is it that you cannot concieve of any detainee as vile, despicable, and murderous? How can they all be innocent? How can we all be guilty?

When did you surrender to the Islamists?

Interesting notion. On the evening of December 7th, 1941 Congress had done nothing. Were we at peace then?

You are fixating on a technicality from a bygone age.

Your last statement has been categorically denied by the Supreme Court. The legal rights of unlawful combatants are non-existant because they essentially deny the distinction between civilians and combattants. We are holding the people in Guantanamo on suspicion of being unlawful combattants. Hundreds of them have been released after determining them to be innocent.

No, they are going to destroy us by getting useful idiots to surrender. Victory or defeat is an event that occurs in the mind of your enemy, not on the battlefield. How does it feel to lose? Do you really have to make others around you give up?

Is that your only response to a tiny, tiny fraction of your countrymen getting murdered in broad daylight at their jobs?

You said it better than I implied it.