We already know that if you are a member of the Taliban picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan, you are going to rot in a shit hole prison in Kandahar. Nobody is going to read you your rights. Nobody is going to give you a trial. Even if you are just a foot soldier conscripted by the Taliban and fighting as a legitimate combatant, your ass is going to be locked down as a POW. Get used to sitting within four walls with a pile of stinking humanity, you ain’t going nowhere.

If, on the other hand, you are the mastermind of the worst terror attack on America in history, who also personally and on camera, sawed the head off an American citizen, you will be sent to Club Gitmo. There you will breathe the sea air, spend time in the sun conversing with others of your same worldviews, you will be served culturally sensitive meals and religious worship services will be made available to you. You will have access to books and DVD movies and other recreational activities.

Then, after a while, you will be transported to New York and given an pulpit and megaphone with which to curse America. Your defenders will put the Americans who captured you and approved your interrogation on trial. If you are very lucky, you will be found innocent. Either way, you will be treated much better than the sorry ass POWs in Kandahar.

If it so happens that you are responsible for the capture of American citizens in Iraq, you murder them, burn their bodies, drag them through the streets in front of cameras. Subject their remains to every manner of disgusting disrespect and finally hang their corpses from a bridge so that masses of screaming animals can dance and cheer their deaths and you can expect similar treatment if captured.

In this case you can file a complaint against the Navy Seals who bring you because you have a bloody lip. The Seals whom you claim bloodied your lip will then be subjected to career ending discipline under the UCMJ. Had you been a lawful combatant, your captors could have broken every bone in your body and the result would have been that you would have been shipped off to a prison with every bone in your body broken. Hard stop. But, since you are a high value criminal terrorist who terrorizes the world with acts of warfare prohibited by ever law of warfare and every human sense of decency, you will be treated much better than those saps. You can ruin the men who brought you in.

American policy seems to be that lawful combatants rot in prison and unlawful war criminals be given exceptional treatment and the opportunity to defend themselves in the same courts as American citizens. There is, however, a method for soldiers in the field to correct this problem.

Just make sure no one is looking.

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