Friday March 20, 2009
The Nobodies Known as Former Enemy Combatants
Andy Worthington
The Future of Freedom Foundation
Changing the names of things was a ploy that was used by the Bush administration in an attempt to justify some of its least palatable activities. In response to the 9/11 attacks, for instance, the nation was not involved in a limited pursuit of a group of criminals responsible for the attacks, but instead embarked on an open-ended “war on terror.”
In keeping with this “new paradigm,” prisoners seized in this “war” were referred to as “detainees” and held neither as criminal suspects nor as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as illegal “enemy combatants,” without any rights whatsoever.
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Posted in: by bubblejam at 05:57 AM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry