Quote:
Originally Posted by spudcon
Geneva Convention applies to soldiers representing foreign countries and fighting for them. Which country is Osama bin Laden and company representing? What climate conditions represent the home country of an international band of murderers? Geneva doesn't apply to anarchists who murder and torture their own countrymen as well as everyone else.
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It isn't the POW's home country's climate that must be duplicated, but rather the climate of the place where the POW was captured. Germany is neither subtropical or arid, but some places in the Mediterranean are so the U.S. had POW camps for Germans in subtropical Florida and the arid West.
Chances are the closest classification that someone like Bin Laden could have under the U.S. Constitution is pirate. Congress can make laws to punish piracy as well as laws to both define and punish offences against international law. It can also make laws regulating captures made on land and water. Some of Congress’ power has been delegated to the Geneva Convention by treaty. If our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are considered acts of war under international treaties that the U.S. has signed, then the people we capture in Afghanistan and Iraq are POWs as far as the international community is concerned. But if these people don’t have POW status, then they are under the regulation of Congress because of Congress’ enumerated powers. This status would put them under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts and this would give them U.S. legal due process rights.