they want to die anyway.... look at this crap. -- Al Qaeda Captives Turn on Pakistan Guards, 14 Dead By Abdullah Jan PESHAWAR (Reuters) - Fourteen people were killed on Wednesday when captured fighters of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda seized Pakistani army guards' weapons while being moved to jail by bus and opened fire, government officials said. The gunbattle in the Kurram tribal agency near the Afghan frontier region of Tora Bora sparked a huge manhunt, the army sealing off the rugged area while helicopters swept overhead seeking escaped prisoners, a senior local official said. Eight suspected al Qaeda Arabs, five Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary troops and a bus driver were killed in the clash, which broke out as 156 prisoners were being taken to a jail in Kohat by bus from a detention center in Parachinar. Six Pakistanis were wounded, officials said. Many of the prisoners tried to escape, said government spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi. Some had been rounded up and the rest had been surrounded. A senior official of the North West Frontier Province government said 40 prisoners had escaped and 17 were believed to be still at large. ``The entire area has been cordoned off. We are after them,'' he added. The prisoners, mainly Arabs who had escaped from eastern Afghanistan in recent weeks, were aboard three buses, one of which overturned during the revolt, Secretary of Information Sayed Anwar Mehmood said. They had not been handcuffed. The Arabs, many of them Yemenis, had fled a blistering U.S. aerial bombardment of the Tora Bora mountains where Osama bin Laden had been believed to be hiding and were captured by Pakistani border patrols. The revolt resembled a similar uprising by al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners in Qala-i-Janghi fort in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan last month in which hundreds of the captives were killed after trying to overcome their guards. click for entire story --
Why does this sound familiar? Keep the commanders alive long enough for a throrough interrogation, and kill the rest. These people can't be trusted to surrender peacefully. They aren't exactly normal people - they're just itching to martyr themselves...
I'm not a liberal, but the counterpoint needs to be made: There has been some suspicion of these "uprisings". Amnesty Intl. wants them looked into under the theory that some of them are staged so that the prisoners can be killed.
Gutter Snipe: I'd say, OK - investigate all you want. This time it happened in Pakistan. The Pakistanis have traditionally been their allies. Doesn't make too much sense that the Pakistanis would stage a revolt against somewhat-allies, and then not kill them all... These guys are just flat crazy. And just a bit evil, too.
Right. So why give them what they want? We'd only be feeding their fanaticism. Throw them in jail and see how long it takes for their bravado to change when the adrenaline wears off.
Maybe instead of killing them straight up, they should try handcuffing their prisoners first? Murdering people, even terrible people, when they do surrender is wrong. What is to stop them from just killing everyone they want to, even innocent people? We shouldn't bend our morals to fit the moment.
In jail they always have the chance to "revolt" again - especially in a Pakistani jail. These guys weren't even handcuffed... I say we oblige their sick desire to die for Allah. Dead men don't revolt.
I agree. In fact, just take the fricken politics out of this. After all, an act of war was committed by Afghanistan on September 11. Unconditional surrender....any hint of resistance should get them killed.
When you see a rabid dog walking down the street, do you: A) try to capture it and take it to the vet, or B) shoot it? If you've got half a brain in your head, then you shoot it. These guys are like rabid dogs - their single goal in life is to die for Allah and take as many infidels with them as possible. They will not stop until they have achieved that goal. Don't you think it's a little suspicious that of the two surrender situations we've seen from Al Qaeda, both have ended in a deadly "revolt"? These people have no intention of peacefully surrendering. They're rabid dogs, and you shoot a rabid dog if you don't want to get bit - you don't "listen to your heart" and try to save the dog...
No, but the people who see them as martyrs do. Obviously the Pakistani's are having some problems containing them, which is a problem, but killing them only gives them what they want. If they become martyrs they will become larger than life characters that inspire followers. If they are prisoners in jail, gone through a trial and had to answer for, or at least face what they've done, I think their power to inspire followers will be greatly reduced.
Remember how that sick b*stard bin Laden cackled: ~"We killed more of the <b>enemy</b> than we expected..." The guy eating donuts at his desk at the WTC is the enemy. The gal checking in on her sick mom from her WTC carrell is the enemy. You and I are the enemy, too. Let's build them a prison and serve them McDonalds every day three meals a day. Somewhere between age 37 and age 62 they will all drop ignominiously dead of heart attacks. Is that a qualifying death for martyrdom?
Grizzled: By that logic, it would be a horrible mistake to kill bin Laden, but the right thing to do to give him a trial and let Johnny Cochrane do the talkin'... Larger than life my butt. How large are all the a-holes who have died in the fighting??? They're just a speck on the ass of the giant elephant that is the media. No one cares about them. Those who support them only respect force anyway. They understand violence, and respect it. Anything short of force is seen as weakness. If you don't kill the enemy, then that emboldens those who support these people.
So they are considered martyrs? And......? Perhaps terrorists and their sympathizers need to see swift, painful examples of why they can't stay in business no matter where they hide.
Treeman, If the terrorists surrender, we need to allow them to live and face trial. Ignoring all the moral difficulties I have with executions, it is not pragmatic to kill them because then the terrorists have no way out. If you were a terrorist and knew you'd get killed upon surrendering, wouldn't you fight to the death? The best solution is to have tight security for their prisoners. Damn treeman, you're making me sound like glynch.
I like the idea, except the part about McDonalds. I would feed them all nothing but pork products. Bacon, ham, sausage, etc. Pork is a no-no if you are a Muslim. So therefore...either they refuse to eat and starve themselves to death, or they eat nothing but pork and die of a heart attack between age 20 and 40 rather than between 27 and 62!
goophers: I think you're missing the point. They are fighting to the death - even those who surrender. Most of those we've fought with have refused to surrender, and have died in battle. Those who surrender "revolt" later on and die in battle. When they surrender, it is not in the normal manner, where the prisoner sees his role in the battle as over; they merely see it as an opportunity to "revolt" and kill a few enemy troops. Notice that the "surrender-and-revolt" method has killed more of the enemy (those on our side) than dying in battle has... Two surrender situations. Two "revolts". Not that hard to figure out... All morality aside, it's just common sense that these guys don't intend to really surrender like normal people. Personally, I was shocked when I heard that hundreds of them had surrendered and were being taken to Mazar-I-Sharif, because surrender doesn't fit their profile. Of course, it made more sense when they "revolted" and killed their first American...
Why do you think Bin Laden wants to die? He doesn't want to be in prisoner's docket facing the fact that he has killed thousands of innocent people, even Muslims. Imagine a Muslim prosecutor asking him why he would stoop to killing even his own people. Even if he is so deranged himself that he doesn't care, he knows that there is no power to be gained there. No one here cares about them, but did you notice how many people from various places in the east were going to join him? What was that about? There is a fanatical anti-American sentiment in many places in the world, completely unjust in the extent of the fanaticism, but very real. What do you think should have been done with Timothy McVey (sp?)? Do you think that he should have been shot right away, or do you think the trial exposed him for the pathetic fanatic that he was? If you kill Bin Ladden now, you preserve the myth. If you bring him to trial, you have the opportunity to expose him for what he really is, a fraud, a murderer and a coward.
How many do you think will want to join him when he's dead? Notice how the outcry against the US has died off since we've pretty much won in Afghanistan. These people understand force. Show them we can't be bullied, and they shut the hell up quicker than you can spit. The myth of bin Laden will live on no matter what happens. In case you haven't noticed, the Arab world for the most part refuses to admit that he is a scumbag even with proof (see - recently released OBL video); they'd just see a trial as more persecution of an innocent Islamic hero by the evil US. Kill him, and A) you never have to worry about him orchestrating any terrorist strikes again (and that's the only way to be sure), and b) those who support him will know you mean business. What happened when the jury refused to execute Youssef and the other 1993 WTC bombing convicts? I'll tell you what happened: their/OBL's follewers saw that the Americans were weak, that they wouldn't execute those who tried to execute so many of them. They saw that there was nothing to be afraid of. So they attacked again. Letting bin Laden live - and have the opportunity to defend himself and possibly be freed - would be the biggest possible mistake we could make. Letting these Al Qaeda live is turning out to be a mistake too, wouldn't you say? The body count speaks for itself.
treeman, I understand the situation just fine, thank you. The ones who won't surrender, well, not much to say there. Gotta wipe em out. My problem is with the ones that DO surrender. How do you suggest separating the ones who want to surrender and the ones who want to martyr themselves? Put them in a line and say "crazy terrorist people go to the left, people who REALLY want to surrender go to the right"??? So you think not one member of al-quaeda surrendered? There are no prisoners in Afghanistan now? Many prisoners - two revolts = many prisoners that didn't revolt Not that hard to figure out.....
