I don't understand why people get so emotive about suicide bombers. They blow people up so do tanks and air to surface missles. Pilots that don't know who they are killing including wiping out wedding parties and tractor trailers loaded with children are seen as chisel jawed, slicked back blonde hair heros whilst suicide bombers are just deranged darkies.
Guantanamo Bay Suicides - a PR Move
by eyeslice 131 Replies latest jw friends
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Double Edge
The Gitmo prisoners are at a country club compared to what the British did to American POWs during the Revolution.
The Wretched Prison Ships
Death, disease and injury were the fate of thousands held at sea by the British
By George DeWan
Staff Writer
More Americans died in British prison ships in New York Harbor than in all the battles of the Revolutionary War.
There were at least 16 of these floating prisons anchored in Wallabout Bay on the East River for most of the war, and they were sinkholes of filth, vermin, infectious disease and despair. The ships were uniformly wretched, but the most notorious was the Jersey.
Following the Battle of Long Island in August, 1776, and the fall of New York City soon after, the British found thousands of prisoners on their hands, and the available prisons in New York filled up quickly. Then, as the British began seizing hundreds of seamen off privateers, they turned a series of aging vessels into maritime prison ships.
There were more than a thousand men at a time packed onto the Jersey. They died with such regularity that when their British jailers opened the hatches in the morning, their first greeting to the men below was: "Rebels, turn out your dead!" Christopher Vail, of Southold, who was on the Jersey in 1781, later wrote:
When a man died he was carried up on the forecastle and laid there until the next morning at 8 o'clock when they were all lowered down the ship sides by a rope round them in the same manner as tho' they were beasts. There was 8 died of a day while I was there. They were carried on shore in heaps and hove out the boat on the wharf, then taken across a hand barrow, carried to the edge of the bank, where a hole was dug 1 or 2 feet deep and all hove in together.
Few aspects of the war were documented as well as life on the prison ships, presumably because the experience, for those who survived, was forever imprinted in their memories. There are occasional reports of attempts by the British to treat prisoners humanely, but these are the exception. In 1778, Robert Sheffield of Stonington, Conn., escaped one of these ships, and told his story to the Connecticut Gazette. He was one of 350 men jammed in a small compartment belowdecks.
"Their sickly countenances and ghastly looks were truly horrible," the newspaper wrote on July 10, without identifying the ship. "Some swearing and blaspheming; some crying, praying, and wringing their hands, and stalking about like ghosts; others delirious, raving, and storming; some groaning and dying -- all panting for breath; some dead and corrupting -- air so foul at times that a lamp could not be kept burning, by reason of which the boys were not missed till they had been dead ten days."
There were 4,435 battle deaths during the Revolutionary War, according to the Department of Defense. One historian estimated that there were between 7,000 and 8,000 prison ship deaths, but other sources claim even more. A letter-writer from Fishkill in 1783 claimed that on the Jersey alone, 11,644 died. Although that figure is unlikely for the one ship, it is reasonable for all the prison ships together, and is cited regularly.
On his first day in captivity on the Jersey, Capt. Thomas Dring found himself surrounded by men suffering from smallpox. He had never had smallpox, and since there was no one there to inoculate him, he decided to inoculate himself.
"On looking about me, I soon found a man in the proper stage of the disease, and desired him to favor me with some of the matter for the purpose," Dring later wrote. "... The only instrument which I could procure, for the purpose of inoculation, was a common pin. With this, having scarified the skin of my hand, between the thumb and forefinger, I applied the matter and bound up my hand. The next morning I found that the wound had begun to fester; a sure symptom that the application had taken effect."
Built in 1735 as a 64-gun ship, the Jersey was was converted to a prison ship in the winter of 1779-1780. Virtually stripped except for a flagstaff and a derrick for taking in supplies, the Jersey was floated, rudderless, in Wallabout Bay, about 100 yards offshore of what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Its portholes were closed and supplanted by a series of small holes, 20 inches square, crossed by two bars of iron.
The best prisoner quarters on the Jersey was a former gunroom, which went to captured officers. American sailors were kept in two compartments below the main deck. French and Spanish prisoners got the worst quarters, in the hold, and probably had the highest mortality.
Gen. George Washington heard many reports of poor treatment on the prison ships, and on Jan. 13, 1777, he wrote an indignant letter to the chief of the British forces, Gen. Lord William Howe. "You may call us rebels, and say that we deserve no better treatment," Washington wrote. "But, remember, my Lord, that supposing us rebels, we still have feelings as keen and sensible as loyalists, and will, if forced to it, most assuredly retaliate upon those upon whom we look as the unjust invaders of our rights, liberties and properties."
There were various ways to get off the prison ships. The British had a standing offer that any prisoner could be released immediately if he joined the British forces, and an unidentified number did so. Prisoners who carried money with them could buy their way off the ship. Others managed to escape. Also, prisoner exchanges were quite common, with officers exchanged for officers, seamen for seamen, soldiers for soldiers. But for vast numbers of prisoners, there were only two possibilities: death or the end of the war, whichever came first.
Even in the summer of 1782, when the the war's end was more a matter of diplomacy than fighting, the British made life hell for those on the prison ships. On the Fourth of July that summer, the prisoners began hanging flags, singing songs, giving speeches and cheering in a day-long celebration of independence. When they refused to stop when ordered, the guards came below on a reign of terror. Henry R. Stiles, in his book, "A History of the City of Brooklyn," described what happened next:
The helpless prisoners, retreating from the hatchways as far as their crowded condition would permit, were followed by the guards, who mercilessly hacked, cut, and wounded every one within their reach; and then ascending again to the upper deck, fastened down the hatches upon the poor victims of their cruel rage, leaving them to languish through the long, sultry, summer night, without water to cool their parched throats ...
At war's end, survivors were released, and the prison ships abandoned. In later years, bleached bones of the dead were constantly exposed to the tides and weather along the Long Island shore. And well into the next century, low tide regularly exposed the rotting timbers of the Jersey, the ship they called Hell.Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
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fleaman uk
Double edge
Your argument seems like grasping at straws.Isnt civillisation about improvement and learning from mistakes of the past?
You are dragging up something that is 2 centuries old!Bring up the Irish potato famine,The Indian mutinies..even the fact that we used to have Slavery(as did America)if it makes you feel better!
To think that in 2006 the most powerful Country in the World flouts international law (not to mention all kinds of moral ethics)for no apparent reason in Guantanemo under the guise of the prisoners being POW,s..well excuse me if part of me hopes the Playground bully gets his come uppance one day...
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Abaddon
Isn't it sad the one of the 'best' defences the pro-Gitmos can come up is justification by someone else also doing bad things at some other point.
They can't provide a rational defence of the policy, as there isn't one.
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Double Edge
Your argument seems like grasping at straws.Isnt civillisation about improvement and learning from mistakes of the past?
Straws? Bottomline: War is h*ll for all involved, whatever century....but for some POWs, it's LESS hellish. In the era of 24/7 cablenews how convenient that murderous crybaby jihadists can sway public opinion to their side. But in the past 10 or 15 years, nothing surprises me anymore in this upside/down world where right is now wrong, and wrong is now right....Frankly, I have given up caring anymore.
Oh, btw, do you know WHY they got away with hanging themselves? It seems that the International Red Cross protested on a visit that the prisioners had no 'privacy' in that they were 'spied' upon constantly by the guards. So the Red Cross insisted that the windows be allowed to be covered up. It's _______________ fault. (fill in the blank) yeah, whatever.
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Robdar
They can't provide a rational defence of the policy, as there isn't one.
That's the truth. These people are fear driven and there is no reasoning or love with fear.
Islam is not the enemy. Fear (on both sides) is.
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kid-A
"Isn't it sad the one of the 'best' defences the pro-Gitmos can come up is justification by someone else also doing bad things at some other point."
Yes, it is pitiful. Even moreso when they dredge up some historical event from hundreds of years ago and attempt to make a logical comparison to present day reality. What the hell does the revolutionary war have to do with bush's fictional "war on terror"? I wonder how the USA is attempting to inspire and "win the hearts and minds" of the muslim world by lowering itself to an equally base level? Regardless, the vast majority of Americans roundly disapprove of bush's bullshit policies. I notice the only pro-gitmo comments seem to be coming from angry, white retirees who consider Fox news and Bill O'Reilly an accurate source of information, or bubble-headed blond cheerleaders.
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Double Edge
These people are fear driven and there is no reasoning or love with fear.
Islam is not the enemy. Fear (on both sides) is.
Islam may not be the enemy...but radical Islam has made it clear that we are their enemy and they want to impose their beliefs on the World... not my opinion, but there's. They are not looking for love and they hardly are fearful, especially wearing a jacket of explosives. What drives them is brownie points from Allah with the promise of Paradise.
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Double Edge
I notice the only pro-gitmo comments seem to be coming from angry, white retirees who consider Fox news and Bill O'Reilly an accurate source of information, or bubble-headed blond cheerleaders.
oh yeah, that's a real intelligent comeback.... attack the person, not the argument.
btw, I'm not pro-gitmo... I wish it wasn't there, I wish there was no war, I wish the twin towers were still standing and people were going about their daily business there, I wish we could all get along, I wish religious fanatics would allow all people to believe whatever they want to and not try to impose their beliefs on others.... oh well, like I said... nobody cares about anything anymore, it's just all blah, blah, blah....
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Double Edge
I notice the only pro-gitmo comments seem to be coming from angry, white retirees .......or bubble-headed blond cheerleaders.
You sure assume alot. Now, shall we start a thread on your racist, gender and age demeaning remarks?
