2 and 3 are the worst. 1 is the best since it would show that the elected official has the balls to put his career on the line for his decisions. Better to look evil than incompetent.
Shomet “step outside of the fight and to look at the situation from the other side” Do you think I didn’t step outside with the dog situation? The guy is a drug dealer, his family is financed by US tax dollars since he divorced his wife on paper until the checks started coming. Then he moved back in and is protected by the dog from those who would wish to take his stash or investigate his welfare status. Who was looking out for my family? The same applies to the innocent victims of the people killed in Iraq, the outlaw is protected with rights and the innocent are just made more vulnerable. “founding principles of liberty and justice” So what happened with the liberty and justice for the victims? Had the dog attacked my kids as it did me when I asked it to leave? My recourse would be to litigate with a man of no means on paper. I waste my time and his! The founding principles have been contorted away from the weak and onto the strong and you glorify these rights for the scum while ignoring the innocent victims. ”Conversely, your unquestioning and uncritical support for US troops overseas seems to come from a kind of fanatically zealous patriotism based on a rigid "us" and "them" “ The support for the troops is because I was once one. No soldier declares war, governments do! I do not, repeat do not condone the circus sideshow in the abuse scandal. I do say if the innocent victims rights are not equally defended as the subjects there is no justice! Interrogation should be rigid and unforgiving for those known to possess information, which would protect future victims! Without apology! “Calm reflection - which is what is needed - is entirely absent.” The “few terrorist” are causing the deaths and ability to return the nation to peace. Eliminate the few terrorists and the nation may return to peace. If other citizens agree the terrorism fits their thinking better than peace then leave and blow it into a parking lot. It is not complex! A few people are terrorizing a nation, our nation also and most of the free world. You cannot send flowers and love notes and expect them to change. They understand it is either they or you. You should too! “it proves that we are better than them” I said no abuse. But saying we are no better than them is to say my kids should stay in the 95-degree house since I can’t afford to run the AC and the scum can tell me to fuck off. Was I acting as if I were better than him? I see no difference in the rights of the weak in Iraq. “I hope you don't mind these personally-directed comments, but you started it!” You could never say anything to hurt my feelings! Locals have a few but most nicknamed me Carsito Loco! But NO ONE bothers my family or me! Changeyourlatitude
This is exaggerated scaremongering nonsense. If you think that telling prison guards not to torture their captives is synonymous with giving outlaws more rights than victims, then you have a serious blindspot. This is a typical tactic of right-wing hyperbole: the claim that humane treatment and protecting proper judicial process means caring about the accused and not the victim. This singularly fails to take account of a rather important factor. That the prisoner is being detained and subjected to investigation and due process means that the rights of the victim are being respected - the suspect is being dealt with. The freedom of the suspected perpetrator has been removed. At the same time, we are protecting against the possibility of our being wrong and compounding injustice by punishing someone not responsible for the crime - on both counts our primary concern is with protecting the innocent. In light of this, please tell me how humane treatment in any way gives a detainee more rights than a victim. We're talking about obeying basic rules in order to protect innocent people. Many of those detained in Iraq are innocent people. Those who are guilty deserve proper punishment. It won't help matters to act hastily and make mistakes. What you're suggesting is a recipe for that - a sure way to cause more innocent suffering, not less. It will cause mistakes and abuses which compound the suffering of the innocent. Arguably these kinds of abuses will also increase the anger of the average Iraqi, possibly even encouraging more people to join the fight against the occupying forces, who will be seen as brutal and irresponsible if every soldier behaves as you would. In all ways, all your attitude would cause is more suffering of innocent people.
Showmet “This is a typical tactic of right-wing hyperbole: the claim that humane treatment and protecting proper judicial process means caring about the accused and not the victim.” “please tell me how humane treatment in any way gives a detainee more rights than a victim.” Well let me try to be very clear with the words I choose. The victims in my mind are: the dead, their rights no longer matter to them; those who love the dead, their rights still mater; the living wounded, their rights still matter. And lastly the assured future victims rights in the above categories. The rights of the suspect of committing these acts: Now let me be more clear whom I speak of: persons found in possession in their homes, vehicles or other conveyances unlawful materials which are used to manufacture these devices which create the above victims. I speak not of a guy or girl who happens to be in the vicinity when the act took place. This would be a person with clear connections to the act of killing children, police, civilians and military personnel in an illegal manner. Let me assume you agree these defined persons should be asked to cooperate and if they deny to they would be placed in a cell, fed three healthy meals a day, provide exercise and contact with other detainees, a lawyer and the Red Cross as a humane treatment without further questioning. Please correct me if I assume incorrectly! A situation: Iraqi police shoot at a car loaded with explosives heading for a police station or an elementary school, capture the driver. Army soldiers find a cash of high explosives, timing devices and or remote control activations devices in a house with four men present. These innocent suspected terrorist detainees are placed in detention. So, Miranda rights, “I want a lawyer” and don’t bother me or violate my civil rights! The future victims rights are not protected! Questions need answering: Who do you work for, what is his location? Where did you receive your instructions, from whom? What other places are your comrades planning to attack? How did you obtain the vehicle, munitions and devices? In the case of a suicide bomber I would guess he just wants a lawyer. I guess the guys with bomb IED kits would just want a lawyer. I guess the guy who was caught firing mortar shells into a police station would just want a lawyer. The future victims rights nor the victim’s rights are not protected in such case. Five guys can kill a thousand a day and you can only treat him humanely and kill five if the evidence substantiates the charge. For a soldier that is a losing game. The questions MUST be answered to protect future victims! Like my dog problem with my neighbor the most he can lose is his dog, the most I can lose is my wife, children my life. That is not protecting the innocent! Get the questions answered and give him his rights. Use drugs, tie him to railroad tracks, suspend him from a rope under a helicopter until he talks or you don’t protect those future victims rights. His rights must not be worth more than thousands of innocent lives! I have never suggested general population be subjected to torture or humiliation. The prison scandal I described as a circus sideshow, which made me sick. If getting the questions answered by persons in the category I spoke of above would increase the anger of the average Iraqi they aren’t worth dieing for. So leave them with their terrorist friends and if they export the terror to your country turn them into a parking lot! Which is worse? Violating one bomber’s rights or thousands of innocents? Changeyourlatitude
More unsubtle, black-and-white hyperbolic rhetoric! You of all people should know that war is never that simple. The one or two very well-defined instances in which you are now suggesting that violation of the Geneva convention should be encouraged will rarely occur. Troops will make mistakes. Innocent people will get caught up. It always happens. And these few, level-headed, calmly considered, ideal-world situations you have proposed are not at all the issue we are discussing, which is the apparently systematic abuse of detainees, and an apparent readiness to use illegal and coercive techniques against the general prison population, irrespective of guilt or innocence. The trouble is, if you were in command, and encouraged a private to exercise his discretion in using coercive techniques and torturing only those involved in the few unrealistic black-and-white cases you describe above, the private will in the heat of the moment rarely be able to exercise the level-headed judgement you are making, calmly and rationally. From information emerging, this seems to be a possibility about what actually happened in Iraq. The professional interrogators encourage poorly trained soldiers in their actions, because they've proved useful. What do the poorly trained troops do? They do it some more. And more. They get to the point where it's so normal and natural a thing for them to do that they are happy to pose smiling with the inmates they abuse. They abuse not just the cut-and-dried cases you imagine exist, they abuse systematically and without consideration. Let alone making the fine-line judgements about expediency and justified law-breaking that you are making. So the occasional transgression of the rules which you are proposing is where soldiers are required to exercise the expert judgement of a lawyer in deciding unilaterally and very quickly a person's guilt or innocence, in a way which makes them unaccountable for the choices they make. While it might seem a nice neat "common sense" idea to you, sitting in your comfy chair, it is unrealistic, and it will lead to further abuses of the kind we have seen. It's inevitable. Like I keep saying, the rules are there for a very good reason. Encourage or even overlook their transgression, and you open the door to abuse. The kernel of your simplistic argument comes down to the old philosophical problem: if you could murder Hitler in 1914 and save millions of lives, would you do it? There are good arguments for both sides of that one, but the situation is clear, and there is a very good argument for committing murder. But when it comes down to something closer to: would you murder someone suspected of knowing Hitler's friend, but we're really not sure who he is, other than that it seemed like he might be someone vaguely connected to an organisation with which Hitler might possibly have become aligned, though we're not certain, so we might save some people or get closer to Hitler, but we might just inflame the situation? That's more like the question the troops will be faced with. And if you make a mistake and torture the wrong person, you make another enemy. He will tell his friends, and they'll start shooting at you too. Like I said before, if you step outside of the partisanship, look beyond the fight, you can calmly evaluate the wider repercussions of your actions. This is what the wise men who drafted the Geneva conventions have done. This is what soldiers on the ground, in the battle, are singularly incapable of doing. This torture scandal, while you may dismiss it as a sideshow, is no such thing to the Iraqi people. In the arab world, it is a rallying call which is creating more hostility towards the occupation. It widens the fight from terrorists and the power hungry, and takes it straight to the heart of Islamic and arabic sensibilities. What you may think is unimportant, trivial, a necessary part of war, has exacerbated the problem and made the situation much hotter for troops on the ground. More innocent people will die as a result. Look wider and deeper. The rules are there for a reason.
No Showmet, you remember our first discussion on the UK forum on the same matter. I thought the Abu Ghraib were the type prisoners I described. When I learned they weren’t I apologized to you. And furthermore I even accepted they had gone too far even if these prisoners were in that category. You are correct in saying if you indiscriminately torture innocent people it is aiding the enemy. I thought the prison was for detention of the prisoners described above, high value with information to save lives. If such a facility exist strong measures should be taken to extract information to save lives. This is the only way a victory against terror may be won. You can’t try and execute five terrorists for every one thousand innocent victims and win. In America a single man and boy terrorized the Middle East coast with a rifle. Imagine hundreds of them with larger, more lethal weapons in your streets being directed by a headquarters. And you read them their rights and protect each one’s civil rights. That is not protecting the innocent! Changeyourlatitude
Like the one in Guantanamo Bay? From which many are being released without charge after being held for two years? The British citizens that were sent back to the UK were deemed to be no threat whatsoever and are back living at home. Mistakes are made. So that's the way to win against terrorism? To act like terrorists? Guantanamo fuels anti-Western anger, it makes terrorism more likely, not less. Abu Ghraib is doing the same. Tales of torture and abuse at the hands of the Americans wherever it happens will always do so. If you refuse to act by civilised standards, you cannot complain about the methods used by your enemy. You are to blame for increasing tension and hostility. You are to blame for inciting even more people to join a popular uprising against you. All it takes is a single proven case of abuse and you will reap a whirlwind. That's what's happening. That's what your methods achieve. You must adhere to the Geneva conventions or all claim of moral or legal justifications for the war become lies. It's hellishly difficult to make these kinds of choices on the ground. That's why there are rules. The rules are there for a reason. If you were serving in Iraq and were taken prisoner, do you think it would be reasonable behaviour for your captors to torture you in order to find out what you know? What you tell them might save their friends or children from dying in a helicopter gunship attack. You have no right to complain about that if you are doing exactly the same. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin You are either exaggerating for the purpose of rhetoric or you genuinely don't understand the balance of power in Iraq. American casualties are counted in hundreds, Iraqi fighters killed are numbered in tens of thousands. Americans have tanks and helicopter gunships - and use them in populated areas - Iraqi fighters have RPGs and makeshift bombs, and do the same. I have no idea how many civilians have been killed by Iraqi fighters. But I do know that by far the majority of innocent people killed in Iraq are killed by American forces. Your "five terrorists per one thousand victims" has no basis in reality, it's simple-minded rhetoric. Iraqi fighters are being killed every day by US action, and more spring up to take their place. Perhaps the technique isn't working? Let's just condone the use of torture, get a little bit of information about where to target our bombs, and make it all a little worse, shall we? You claim that torturing people for information saves lives - in the long run, it almost certainly doesn't. If you condone torture - even just in the impossibly unrealistic cases you previously proposed, you know that you will be making mistakes which lead to the torture and abuse of innocent people. You've agreed that such abuses - which are a direct result of your attitudes being put into practice - give fuel to the enemy, and make the situation worse. Given that you accept this, why do still feel it's a good idea for US forces to flout the Geneva conventions? It's ridiculous to say that this will do anything other than make the situation hotter.
“Like the one in Guantanamo Bay? From which many are being released without charge after being held for two years? The British citizens that were sent back to the UK were deemed to be no threat whatsoever and are back living at home. Mistakes are made. So that's the way to win against terrorism? To act like terrorists?” The British citizens were released to Great Britain with evidence of reason for their detention. Like many murder cases the guilty will not always be found that way in a court of law for lack of evidence and the law forces their release. That doesn’t mean they are innocent, it merely means the evidence didn’t make the bar to find them guilty. These guys were not hostages! They traveled to a war environment and you can pound sand up someone else’s ass that they were giving humanitarian aid on the front line. This is too stupid to debate! The mistake made was not killing them instead of capturing them! “Guantanamo fuels anti-Western anger, it makes terrorism more likely, not less.” If the enemy were civilized they would have a similar facility for our prisoners for the Red Cross to visit. “If you refuse to act by civilised standards, you cannot complain about the methods used by your enemy.” So, Miranda rights, three hots’ and a cot, fitness center, AC, lawyer, court and release or execution or imprisonment. This would please the Islamic world and they would stop recruiting terrorist? They don’t need a fucking excuse! How stupid of an argument to say we can show them how to act and everything will be just fine. They came to us and in the case of Iraq the Iraqi army was defeated and now we fight the same terrorist that came to us. Non-uniformed terrorist using brute force to terrorize a nation just as used on 9-11. The terrorist are following the lead of successful terrorist not the rule of law carried out on the battlefield. They use every weakness of freedom to capitalize on the enemy of their eyes. “You are to blame for increasing tension and hostility.” It just doesn’t matter; they don’t have a problem recruiting. It will be the passive “rule of law” crowd, which will have a recruiting problem with rules set up to protect terrorist while making soldiers and innocents vulnerable. If the majority of the Islamic public agrees their terrorist should be protected while their families and security infrastructures are killed and destroyed by them they deserve the terrorist to rule them. I guess we agree with your opinion on Cuba and Iraq detention facilities. They should both be empty! If they serve no purpose they should be empty. It will only cause you to look bad. So, when you enter a house and find IED device components just kill all the people on the spot. Call in the cameraman and show dead terrorist lying beside the bombs, which kill the police, innocent civilians and school children. That should not anger the Islamic masses. And, if a car bomber is stopped before he blows up his car at a police station walk up and shoot him between the eyes and call the cameraman. These actions would not play good for recruiting more terrorists. Nor would sorrow fill the hearts of the Islamic masses. Just fucking kill them on the spot with the evidence right with them for reason. The hell with trying to find out whom else, just do a recruiting poster on the press accounts every day, this could happen to you if you do this! There would be no proven case to cause an uprising against you. Just kill them! If a hostile force is in a city give the citizens 72 hours to exit, publicize it on radio, TV and News Papers. Then go into the hostile environment and kill anything that moves. Not cool to support a terrorist! In Viet Nam the Korean Iron Horse Marine Division used these tactics and had almost no casualties. When they set up camp at night they didn’t put out perimeter security. They went out and caught one enemy, cut his stuff off, sewed it in his mouth and then stuck a rifle cleaning bore rod through his head by way of his ears while he was still alive and hung him by it at the entrance of the camp. "The rules are there for a reason." Only when both sides follow them! “Iraqi fighters have RPGs and makeshift bombs, and do the same.” You make it sound like an unfair football game. These guys want to rule Iraq or are imported terrorist. Rabid dogs, nothing more, they are between the US, Iraqi people and Iraqi peace. They are not, I repeat NOT freedom fighters for the rights of Iraqis! America is very careful not to kill innocent people and you should be ashamed to claim the civilian deaths be attributed to the Americans. Your statement sickens me. I give up on debating interrogating prisoners. I’m with you the prisons in Cuba and Iraq should be empty. The recruiting poster would certainly look a lot different! And, what if they did the same to your soldiers? They do! Changeyourlatitude
"Viet Nam," "The nam". The thing is America lost that war. I fear the US hasn’t leant anything about why.
I agree with you 100%! America lost Viet Nam War, the nam, because the American “will to win” wasn’t there! I learned not to vote for either party after being drafted for that war because I saw best friends legs blown off and comrades die for nothing when the mood of congressmen changed to fit the voters who would keep them in power. Like the way every Democrat thought Al and Jo won the election, the mood changed with the breeze and now Al and Jo can’t get a following of 10% of their party. Soldiers in Viet Nam and now in Iraq will feel like Al and Jo, deserted! Changeyourlatitude
Yo, Showmet and Balbus The silence is deafening! Have I hurt your feelings using graphic depictions of the cruelty of war? It was reported to me in a more graphic eye to eye detail, you could see the unexplainable helplessness and hopelessness in the cold tearless eyes depicting a no win situation. I have thousands of stories of what happened before the Mi Lei investigation silenced the warriors turned barbarians. Or, have you realized you and others who spout this clinical method of enemy prisoner detention non-interrogation are co-conspirators in the murder of would be detainees as I so clearly spelled out the logic in my former post. The abuse victims of Viet Nam were caused by lack of support of the government that sent them there. The lack of government support was because people like you who spit on soldiers at airports going off to war for their country. Other like thinking citizens you convinced cause the government to believe they made the wrong decision to go to war and they will lose power if they support the soldiers. Have you realized the complicity of your actions will cause more harm than good? Is this the reason for your silence? Soldiers did and soldiers will find another route to less harm as a result of illogic, which leaves the innocent defenseless, and you will have been responsible in aiding their choice! Changeyourlatitude
Woo there, Changebeforeyouhaveabreakdown, settle down, you’re beginning to gibber a bit. Let me get this right, you believe that the US lost the Vietnam war purely because of the people protesting the war. The thing is even if the US had won would it have been a moral victory? The US lied to the Vietnamese telling them that in return for their help in fighting the Japanese they would support their liberation from the hated French. Then after the war they supported the French. In the war of liberation that followed the country was split, with the promise of a vote, the US realising that in a fair vote the Vietnamese would vote for Ho, they called off the elections. They then supported the unpopular governments of the south. From the start they never won the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people, so they were doomed to fail. Even Kissinger thought it a lost cause. Also strategically and tactically the US military were also show to be not that competent. Also military operations do not take part in a vacuum politics will always be there.
Let me start by saying sorry it took me so long to answer. My banana tree fell over with a bunch of 75 or so bananas I had to recover. The damn water pump sprung a leak and I’m the self-ordained plumber and my kids finished school so I have to cook and referee and one of them invited a friend over to make it more interesting. I was upset at Showmet’s comments that he thinks it’s unfair we don’t give the terrorist some of our modern tanks and equipment so it could be a fair fight for the Iraqi FREEDOM FIGHTERS! ”Let me get this right, you believe that the US lost the Vietnam War purely because of the people protesting the war.” No, we’ve been talking about prisoner abuse and prisoner rights. The troops were turned to animals because the congress took a strong left in support of the troops. The strong left was caused by the peace movement along with the fact the basis for the war was flawed from the beginning. The peace movement just had the opposite effect on the enemy's treatment until we finally decided to give it up. The period in between caused thousands of needless lives on both sides. The point I was making is that soldiers in Vietnam and now in Iraq will react the same when the congress takes the hard left. When congress votes to go to war and that congress is not replaced by the voters they should be 100% in support of the war or 100% in immediate withdraw. Playing the game they played in Vietnam as I was drafted of changing the spirit of the bayonet fighter from KILL---KILL---KILL to INCAPACITATE--- INCAPACITATE--- INCAPACITATE causes soldiers to feel like Al and Joe and they switch into survival mode. Either fight or withdraw, the peace movement merely causes the lawmakers to choose. Slow choices to leave after a swift choice to go to war causes unnecessary deaths on both sides. Either do the dogfight or bring the dogs home immediately, no interim half measures. Either way soldiers are maimed and die for nothing if it isn’t committed to win from the beginning. I have always said a war with Cuba would have gotten more support if someone thought fighting communism was a good reason for America to go to war. Changeyourlatitude
Absolute rubbish, you still don't understand the point being made. You are condoning the use of torture - something which even the military and the Bush administration knows it cannot publicly support. They know this because it undermines one of the primary arguments for invading Iraq in the first place - to bring liberty and justice. They know that if they were seen to be using these kinds of methods as a matter of policy, they would have no right to claim they are any better than Saddam and his little tinpot regime of barbarism. If you commit abuses like those committed by your enemy, you are no better than your enemy. The argument of "he did it first" is utterly beside the point. By condoning illegal and barbaric acts of torture you are trampling over the very idea of liberty and justice. Is winning the fight more important to you than the principles you are supposedly fighting to uphold? That's the way it seems. In which case, you're not really interested in liberty and justice at all, are you? You might as well be cheering on the Iraqi resistance and shouting "any means necessary"; the fact you're cheering for America is irrelevant. You are blinded by your partisanship and can not see the wider issues. You cannot claim right on your side, just superior strength or tactics. You are part of the problem. So, most of the civilian deaths in Iraq that have occurred over the past year are not the result of the American and British hostile action in that country? The more than 10,000 innocent civilians killed have all been killed by makeshift roadside bombs in the few Iraqi attacks which have targeted civilians? What nonsensical gibberish. Dropping bombs from 20,000ft, using cluster munitions in urban areas, trigger-happy troops shooting unarmed people, 2,000 tons of DU used across Iraq ... this is not being careful to avoid civilian death. If the death of innocent people caught up in this war is what concerns you, then you really need to be looking at the policies of the side you have chosen to cheer on.
Showmet You answer my last response to you and then I will answer this cop out that you just posted. Refer to my post, dated 5-15-04, 11:27AM the beginning in quote above for your easy reference. Changeyourlatitude
