Yeah somebody else might have been the president of yugoslavia, ya never know

"This is what the Mercenaries were doing. They said you go rebeling, not doing politics and economics, and getting a peaceful takeover of lands, and you will be destroyed. IE if you do force we will fight you with force, and we will kill you. We will not debate, we will not wait, you can wave a white flag later, but we will hang you for your crimes, you will have nothing if you do these actions."

Hanging the people resonsible, is that what happened to Osama Bin Laden then?

America is trying the suspected terroists?
So these reports of people being held for years without charge are false?
It sounds to me like America is doing the bare minimum in the hope that one day we will al get bored and stop watching so that it can simply shoot their prisoners.

You know, Russia may be a rotting mess of corruption but at least they have the decency to be honest about these things:

BANG!
"Hi, I'm from the UN. Why did you shoot him?"
"He's a terrorist!"
"Really?"
"Well he's from Chechnya, he's Muslim, and he didn't vote for Putin, that's good enough for me."
"You sound like an American."
BANG!

Mercs are a bad thing. they get the job done, agreed, but their methods are highly questionable. Plus they do nothing to stabilise the country, it is even in their interest to keep the keep the chaos going, since this provides them with long term profits. As you pointed out yourself: the problem is that when they go away, they leave behind a power vacuum that gets exploited very soon.
And  btw, i used the term non-existant for EU troops because of the comparison with other armed nations. I don't think for a second our troops would b able to stave off the vast and powerfull warmachine like the US army. And i also acknowledge that we do have soldiers running operations and risking their life, but mostly this is done as a last resort. Usually this is also not done with own interest in mind. It seems that many of our peace-keeping is done in lands that have really no power or natural resources. Does nobody ever wonder why the US only bullies, invade or subvert countries that have precious resources like oil at hand ? All of course under the flag of "world stability". Irak and Afghanistan were a perfect example of this usurping behaviour, and Israel is another nice example of how countries are virutally annexed in a very underhanded way.

So, excuse us if the EU tries to do things the other way...

"How many Luftwaffe pilots shot down during the Blitz got a trial before being locked up?"

They were obviously guilty, having being caught in the act, however the same cannot be said for some of the people staying at GWB's pleasure, can it? Like the 15 year old kid who was in the news recently... I bet you my single functioning kidney that after the investigation we will discover that there was never any evidence to hold that poor bastard.

For all we know he's a transvestite from transsexual transylvania... exactly how long does a suspected terrorist have to wait before facing an actual trial?

I have to wonder why they have enough evidence to arrest him but not enough evidence to put him on trial, I have to wonder what the evidence used to arrest him was, I have to wonder if they don't just grab any old towelhead for the sake of keeping the numbers up where the bible-thumpers like them.
I have to wonder because Americans won't.

Well, there are these thing called CIVILLIANS, perhaps you've heard of them?
_____

I repeat: exactly how long does a suspected terrorist have to wait before facing an actual trial?

However long it takes.   I'm not happy with it either, there's no reason international law could not have been followed and have some Afghan tribunal take 1 month to give them forty years imprisonment for insurrection.  Not a damn thing you could say against that.

I'd point out we were set to start trying these guys four years ago but their lawyers fought to the Supreme Court and won, and said Congress must draft the courts that try them, President Bush can't set them up with executive orders.  Ok, so they passed the Military Commissions Act.  And detainee lawyers sued to the Supreme Court and got that thrown out.  OK, so Congress passed another law.  Now that got a hit because all the detainees are supposed to get the rights of US citizens and can sue to protest their detention.  And probably then they'll all be released because they weren't read their rights to an attorney when they were ordered out fo their bunkers.

BTW how many years do you get for stoning a 3 year old in your civilized country? I forget, is it five or six?

>However long it takes.   I'm not happy with it either, there's no reason international law could not have been followed and have some Afghan tribunal take 1 month to give them forty years imprisonment for insurrection.  Not a damn thing you could say against that.<

Now that is more like it!

>I'd point out we were set to start trying these guys four years ago but their lawyers fought to the Supreme Court and won, and said Congress must draft the courts that try them, President Bush can't set them up with executive orders.  Ok, so they passed the Military Commissions Act.  And detainee lawyers sued to the Supreme Court and got that thrown out.  OK, so Congress passed another law.  Now that got a hit because all the detainees are supposed to get the rights of US citizens and can sue to protest their detention.  And probably then they'll all be released because they weren't read their rights to an attorney when they were ordered out fo their bunkers.<

Wow, and I thought our system was screwy...

>BTW how many years do you get for stoning a 3 year old in your civilized country? I forget, is it five or six?<

I'm with Wouter on this one: How is this relevant? But anyway:

MINIMUM MURDER SENTENCES
Confessing at earliest opportunity - 10 years
Pleading guilty at trial - 11 years and three months
Changing plea to guilty - 13 years and six months
Maintaining innocence - 15 years
__________

In the case of child murders, anything between the fifteen year minimum and life (as in your whole life, not just 25 years), and then there are the concurrent sentences if abuse is involved (Which unfortunately it frequently is).

Well, that depends on how old the kids are...

life imprisonment would have been fine.