Talk:Bagram Theater Internment Facility

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 Definition A facility, described by the George W. Bush administration as temporary, which has been open for seven years, where the USA holds prisoners in uncertain legal status [d] [e]
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NOTICE, please do not remove from top of page.
No "from wikipedia" disclaimer is necessary because I was the sole contributor of intellectual content to this version. George Swan 18:27, 11 April 2008 (CDT)
Check the history of edits to see who inserted this notice.

reformat

I had my attention drawn to a problem with the formatting of this article. What I found was that the {{quotation}} template's behavior had broken. Fixing that restored the portion of the text that was not supposed to be quoted to normal appearance.

Cheers! George Swan 21:35, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Some expression here comes across as dramatic

For example, putting "prisoner of war" and "enemy combatant" in quotation marks adds no information, although it suggests deprecation. The purpose of quotation marks is to denote a quotation, with a source. If there are questions about the terms themselves, then it is entirely appropriate to create an article on the usage. Prisoner of war, for example, certainly has international definitions. An article on prisoner of war status would be a perfectly appropriate place to discuss Bush 43 administration interpretation, and the many dissents to that position. A discussion of a specific camp, however, is not the place for arguing terminology.

I will work on this more later this evening, with the intention of reducing what I read as overly emotive writing, without losing any factual material. Howard C. Berkowitz 22:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

More formatting. Allegations were made against soldiers in 2004. It is 2008. What is the status? Surely something must have happened in this amount of time. Howard C. Berkowitz 23:23, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Prisoner of war article created

I have created an article, prisoner of war, which cites the basic criteria of the Third Geneva Convention. It does not yet deal with the issues of a levee en masse, of the characteristics of a spy (especially as discussed in the 1907 Hague Convention), or many other factors. Civil war is not yet presented.

It would be entirely reasonable either to create an article on the George W. Bush Administration's interpretation of POW status, or, if as part of a general discussion of POW status for irregulars, that Administration's justification for exempting persons from POW status. If the questioning of POW status is put in the POW article, I believe the neutrality policy requires it not discuss only the actions of one government. Other cases might include Commando Order and Commissar Order of the Third Reich, or treatment of captured aircrew as war criminals (e.g., by North Korea during the Korean War). Howard C. Berkowitz 23:52, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Questions

Why are there three citations for "During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the Soviets built a large military airfield outside Bagram"? Is there any question, requiring multiple confirmations?

First, a technical note concerning the citation at "Like the first facilities built at Guantanamo's..." There is a difference in the software here and WP. At WP, you can use the short-form citation <ref name= xxx /> before the main definition of ref xxx. Here, the full ref must come first.

Next, what is significant about individual and shared cells? How is that different than civilian prisons in the U.S.? Is the point being stressed that they are barbed wire rather than solid walls? I simply don't understand the thrust of the paragraph.

What are you trying to convey with the extended quote from Chris Hogan? No, it is not a pleasant place. As he said, it is much like the living quarters for U.S. soldiers. As a random reference, then-MAJ Rhonda Cornum's autobiography about the Iraq War, where she was captured by Iraqis when her combat search and rescue helicopter was shot down, described the housing for her hospital unit as much like that. The Iraqi prison was far worse. The smell of feces burning in diesel oil is, I am told, an iconic olfactory memory of the Vietnam War.

Has nothing happened as a result of the investigative report from 2004? If not, why not? If it was dismissed, who dismissed it, which would be a matter of record? It would help if the nature of the criminal investigation, in terms of the type of material under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, were described; it is not clear if it was the civilian equivalent of an investigative report, a recommendation to arrest, or an indictmet. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:03, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Extended Griswold quotation

I temporarily removed

But, for all these changes, the growing detainee population still lives in overcrowded cages. Prisoners don't even have the limited access to lawyers available to prisoners in Guantánamo. Nor do they have the right to Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which Guantánamo detainees won in the 2004 Supreme Court ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Instead, if a combat commander chooses, he can convene an Enemy Combatant Review Board (ecrb), at which the detainee has no right to a personal advocate, no chance to speak in his own defense, and no opportunity to review the evidence against him. The detainee isn't even allowed to attend. And, thanks to such limited access to justice, many former detainees say they have no idea why they were either detained or released.

This is a journalist's opinion, using rather flamboyant language. I think the thrust of what she is saying is listed as bullets below, although I am open to factual correction. Indeed, since some of the statements do confuse me, they may confuse others.

  • Prisoners at Bagram do not have legal access. This may be quite true, but there is almost certainly a U.S. Army, Department of Defense, or White House document that states this policy. Please find and cite it, or, if a FOIA request for it has been denied, that should be stated.
  • Prisoners do not have a right to CSRT. Again, who ruled this? Who ruled Hamdi v. Rumsfeld does not apply? Has this been disputed?
  • ECRBs are at the commander's discretion. What commander? Bagram? Senior U.S. troop commander in Afghanistan? ISAF commander, if an American? United States Central Command commander? Secretary of Defense? Specific documentation, please. If true, a specific reference, the status of which could be tracked, would be far more useful, in an encyclopedic way, than Griswold's indignant prose. There is an article defining CSRT, but not ECRB. Why not? How is a reader to know that an ECRB is different than a CSRT? Is it? Griswold is upset about aspects of an ECRB, but I believe some of these aspects may be true of a CSRT.
  • The last two sentences of the quotation are completely inappropriate for an encyclopedia article, without specific sourcing.

Howard C. Berkowitz 17:06, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Rasul v. Bush is specific to Guantanamo. Need accurate information on legalities here

Moved from mainpage, both because it is not specific to the article subject, and, further, Rasul v. Bush is specific to Guananamo. Note that the text goes on about Guantanamo -- yet this is Bagram. The Griswold article identifies itself as speculation.

<nowiki>==Legal status of detainees==</nowkiki>
Although the Bush administration initially argued that detainees could not access the US legal system, the Supreme Court of the United States's ruling in Rasul v. Bush confirmed that captives in US jurisdiction did indeed have the right to access US courts. Rasul v. Bush determined that the Executive Branch did not have the authority, under the United States Constitution, to suspend the right for detainees to submit writes of habeas corpus.
Another consequence of the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul v. Bush was the authorization of the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants to convene Combatant Status Review Tribunals.
The DoD had to convene Combatant Status Review Tribunals for every captive in Guantanamo Bay. The Summary of Evidence memos prepared for the captives Tribunals all re-iterated that the Tribunals were merely reviewing the information that had lead to the catpive initially being classified as an "enemy combatant" during earlier determinations.
The combatant status of captives taken in other conflicts was determined through Army Regulation 190-8 Tribunals. Army Regulation 190-8 laid out the rules through which officers of the United States Armed Forces complied with the USA's obligations under the Third Geneva Convention to convene a "competent tribunal" to determine the status for every captive whose status was in doubt.
An article by Eliza Griswold, published in the The New Republic, stated that the other captives the USA holds might have an Enemy Combatant Review Board convened:[1]

Pat Palmer (talk) 09:50, 11 March 2023 (CST)

  1. Eliza Griswold. The other Guantánamo. Black Hole, The New Republic, May 2, 2007. Retrieved on May 5.

Proposed deletion

My immediate reaction to finding and reading this "article" was that it is sick. Given that we have an acute shortage of credible subjects that, if written, may encourage new editors to join and more readers to use CZ, it beggars belief that anyone can prioritise a subject like this distasteful, negative, sensationalist, recentist claptrap.

I've been trying to create some order out of chaos among the articles about Afghanistan and Pakistan. I couldn't help noticing earlier today that Hindu Kush, the single most prominent geological and geographical feature of the region, is a redlink. Of course, a vast mountain range has nowhere near the encyclopaedic value of some Taliban who was seen in Quetta fifteen years ago.

I have an American friend whose son was in the USAAF and based at Bagram. I've mailed them to ask for their views on this article and it'll be interesting to see what responses I get.

Working through the history and discussions here has made me think better of HCB because he at least tried to moderate the initial sensationalism by insisting on reliable sources. As he said at one point, a journalist's opinion is not authoritative on such a sensitive subject.

The best thing to do with stuff like this is delete it because it's a potential can of worms. Its veracity is dubious at best. The subject is so politically sensitive that there is a serious risk of defamation. John (talk) 17:56, 13 February 2024 (CST)

I've had replies from my two American friends who both deplore this article as it was originally written. They have actually commended HCB for his efforts to moderate it and make it factual instead of speculative. They have both said we should delete it to remove its history as it is such a sensitive and controversial topic. Both have questioned why a site like CZ would want to publish this sort of article and an interesting comment is that we could be setting ourselves up "as targets". Even if the article was 100% fact and 100% accurate, it would still be the proverbial can of worms and I have to ask if we really do want that sort of complexity and controversy?
My friends agree with me (admittedly I led them on this point) that we need to concentrate on creating articles about the sort of topics people expect to find in an encyclopaedia. The younger chap says he cannot believe we have no article on Tarantino. They had much more to say but I think I've summarised it well enough.
By the way, they both wish CZ well and hope we gain more editors and readers after we have got things onto a sound footing. Neither of them like WP much and they hope we can provide "a credible alternative". John (talk) 08:02, 14 February 2024 (CST)