Released Guantanamo Detainees Killed Americans, Officials Believe

Of course, if it's bad it's automatically Obama's fault. #ThanksObama

PO2 Robert Aitchison - Of course it's Obama's fault... if he were conducting more drone missions, they would all be dead and if he were conducting less drone missions, they would all just get on with their lives. #ThanksObama

I seriously doubt anybody in there would have qualified as legitimate prisoners of war. The Geneva Conventions govern how POWs are to be treated and how they are defined.

Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.
Part I. General Provisions
Art 4. A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Terrorists do none of that. The United States is under no obligation to grant the rights of POWs people who do not qualify.

SSgt Christopher Brose - Staff; The US is, however, under an obligation to determine if people detained were actually "combatants" in the first place and to release those people who were detained as "combatants" who were NOT "combatants". Simply incarcerating people on the basis of "Well, someone said that they might possibly have been suspected of being associated with people who might have been terrorists (but we don't know if they were actually terrorists or not)." DOES NOT live up to that obligation.

COL Ted Mc Fair point. My previous post presumed the Gitmo detainees were "enemy combatants" as stated by SGT Eliyahu Rooff, and the point of my post is that not all enemy combatants are deserving of the protections for POWs spelled out in the Geneva Conventions. Terrorists clearly do not qualify.

SSgt Christopher Brose - Staff; I will agree that it "would be nice" if ALL the Gitmo detainees were 'enemy combatants'.

Unfortunately that isn't the case and even the Bush administration admitted as much.

Equally unfortunately, the Bush administration didn't see fit to release those people whom it had determined were NOT "enemy combatants" and the rationale for not releasing them was that "They now held an animus towards the United States of America because they felt that they had been unfairly and illegally torn from their families and communities and jailed on spurious charges which even their jailers admitted were spurious but were continuing to be deprived of their families and communities because their jailers that that they now held an animus towards (repeat several times) and therefore it wouldn't be safe to release them until they realized that they had not been unfairly and illegally torn from their families and communities and jailed on spurious charges which even their jailers admitted were spurious and were then still deprived of their families and communities because their jailers that that they now held an animus towards the United States of America - or died, whichever came first".