Thread: Interesting Documentary

Originally Posted by JMS

It's obviously completely objective...just like all the other information we have been fed this election season!

This has nothing to do with the election.

This has to do with our having potential war criminals in DC - guilty of doing things that they accuse other leaders of doing and send our military to capture them and bring them to trial.

Just because you have lawyers "skirt the edge" of legality, does not make something right. Cheney and Bush went directly against respected experts in the field of interrogation and HUMINT, as well as military leaders (Powell and others) and military law experts.

While US forces may not always enjoy the protections of the Geneva Convention, that fact was not even used as an excuse in this case. This was simple hubris and revenge.

I wonder if the world would be a better place if we had just given Cheney and Bush some Viagra? Maybe then they would not have to have done everything they could to prove themselves....at the expense of the US's reputation and the lives of our troops.

The Constitution, the Geneva Convention, the UCMJ...is there any legal document that Cheney will not use for toilet paper?

Shameful.

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
- Edward R. Murrow

"The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers"
- Carl Jung

Right or wrong, this has nothing to do with justice. This has to do with revenge, pure and simple! The left has never gotten over the fact that they were beat out in 2000 and 2004 by a"stupid hick redneck christian republican"!

Many of you on the left feel you were cheated, feel the elections were stolen from you and will do anything for your revenge!

Let it rest

IIRC the Geneva convention has never been signed by a whole host of countries.... China, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam.... and I'm sure there are others. However it relates only to the rights of soldiers not "enemy combatants" or terrorists.
like spies these can simply be shot without pretext.

when we try to assign rights to people who are striving to deprive others of the basic right to life, we are no better than they.

let's bring it home... it is nighttime... i break into your occupied dwelling, armed and with the intent to commit various felonies (burglary), say robbery arson and murder... you shoot me causing me to fall and break my leg... you are all for me being able to bring suit against you for the shooting and the broken leg, as well as just compensation fort he the loss of earning i would normally make from these enterprises?

no real difference when you scale it up to the national level.

one other thing... lawyers are paid very well to "skirt the edge of legality" it is one of their more endearing qualities.

Originally Posted by syslight

let's bring it home... it is nighttime... i break into your occupied dwelling, armed and with the intent to commit various felonies (burglary), say robbery arson and murder... you shoot me causing me to fall and break my leg... you are all for me being able to bring suit against you for the shooting and the broken leg, as well as just compensation fort he the loss of earning i would normally make from these enterprises?

Hmm, I think that I would go with that - I think you should have the right to bring a lawsuit if you wish, and I believe that you will loose it (probably at a very early stage, as I'd expect such glaring things to be dismissed very very early on in the process). It seems to me that independent justice is a rather critical component of a civilized society. Otherwise what's the difference with a dictatorship, or totalitarianism?

I'll think more about the granting of rights, to me the problem seems that without having an independent judgement of who is guilty and who is not, everybody can be gulty. Seems like a vicious circle that shouldn't be.

Originally Posted by syslight

[Snip]

when we try to assign rights to people who are striving to deprive others of the basic right to life, we are no better than they.

[Snip]

I've gone through this statement every way I know how, in and out of context, and can't make head nor tail of it. Are you saying that when we adhere to our principles in dealing with criminals, we become just like them? It makes no sense, but I can't read it any other way.

Can you explain?

j

Originally Posted by syslight

let's bring it home... it is nighttime... i break into your occupied dwelling, armed and with the intent to commit various felonies (burglary), say robbery arson and murder... you shoot me causing me to fall and break my leg... you are all for me being able to bring suit against you for the shooting and the broken leg, as well as just compensation fort he the loss of earning i would normally make from these enterprises?

no real difference when you scale it up to the national level.

Huge difference...B&C are not executing these people, they are torturing them.

So, let's say I have been told you intended to break into my house to commit a violent crime...I come and grab you off the street, but I don't shoot you...instead I force you to wear a dog collar and do tricks...I deprive you of sleep, waterboard you, hang you by your wrists, beat you, kick you, force you to wear women's underwear, sodomize you with random objects, force you to stand naked, ridicule you, douse you with ice water.

Oh, and you have not been formally charged...and when I find out that grabbing you off the street was based on bogus info....I let you go.

When questioned by authorities, I'll just say "I had it on reliable authority that he was going to commit a crime against me, but I can't reveal the source." If the authorities ask about others I may have detained, I'll just hide behind "my personal security".

Torture does not produce reliable intelligence....B&C, their lawyers, and the amateurs the put in charge have simply been watching too many spy movies...that or they are in need of serious psychological treatment.

Reliable intelligence is gathered through interrogation, PsyOps, trickery, research, cunning, initmidation, and guile. The best intelligence is gathered from people giving it voluntarily, without their knowing it.

Violence simply gets you information that will make you stop the pain. The KGB used it to extract "confessions" - not becasue they were after the truth, but becasue they needed the confession for propaganda and so they could shoot the prisoner and afterwards wave the confession, saying "Look, he confessed!" The same tactic used by the Gestapo, the Spanish Inquisition, etc. The myth of "Ve haf vays of making you talk" is a myth. If they want real intelligence, you use cunning, guile. Even truth drugs are not always reliable.

The best interrogator I knew was a woman. During NATO exercises, when "enemy" forces were captured and subjected to extensive questioning, random sleep patterns, the nude questioning scenario, the "prisoner" was returned to his cell. She showed up dressed as a nurse, a very attractive woman, and went through the motions of taking vital signs, wiping any sweat from his face, chest, etc., all the while making conversation. Almost without fail she walked out with his name, rank unit, mission, unit location, other members names. She never had to hit him once.

What we have going on now is a violation of all the basics of HUMINT...becasue the effort is being led by politicians and not intelligence specialists.

Originally Posted by JMS

Right or wrong, this has nothing to do with justice. This has to do with revenge, pure and simple! The left has never gotten over the fact that they were beat out in 2000 and 2004 by a"stupid hick redneck christian republican"!

Many of you on the left feel you were cheated, feel the elections were stolen from you and will do anything for your revenge!

Would you care to argument this statement? I just read it as 'This has to do with the Loch Ness monster, pure and simlpe!' and made as much sense as before.

Originally Posted by JMS

Let it rest

Actually this is a rather interesting and in my opinion very serious topic, and I personally prefer to see more viewpoints.

The Loch Ness monster ...aye, there is a story about intrigue and hanging chads...

some folks do seem to believe that the election in 2000 was stolen but those are the same people who register everything that has a pulse in an area... some of them are simply not capable of properly recording a vote, my dog for instance, and therefore should not have there votes counted at all.

Thus the pure spite and envy against the Bush administration which has been battling since early on (he was in office just over 8 months when 9-11 happened), against the sentiment that he was a usurper.

9-11 not Bush's fault
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bush's fault, only because he is the president... a very large contingent of the the public wanted the government to do something big to make us feel better about our decline into third world status.

hurricane Katrina... not bush's fault... the slow response to it not bush's fault. we have laws that say that the state governor must request federal assistance in time of emergencies, the feds and the military cannot simply barge onto the scene.

however, if you listen to or read quite a wide variety of news media you would come up with the impression that Bush/cheney arranged all the problem to further their power grab

Originally Posted by syslight

The Loch Ness monster ...aye, there is a story about intrigue and hanging chads...

some folks do seem to believe that the election in 2000 was stolen but those are the same people who register everything that has a pulse in an area... some of them are simply not capable of properly recording a vote, my dog for instance, and therefore should not have there votes counted at all.

Thus the pure spite and envy against the Bush administration which has been battling since early on (he was in office just over 8 months when 9-11 happened), against the sentiment that he was a usurper.

9-11 not Bush's fault
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bush's fault, only because he is the president... a very large contingent of the the public wanted the government to do something big to make us feel better about our decline into third world status.

hurricane Katrina... not bush's fault... the slow response to it not bush's fault. we have laws that say that the state governor must request federal assistance in time of emergencies, the feds and the military cannot simply barge onto the scene.

however, if you listen to or read quite a wide variety of news media you would come up with the impression that Bush/cheney arranged all the problem to further their power grab

9-11 not Bush's fault? Well, in a way, no. It's Osama bin Laden's fault in the end. But the Bush Leaguers did ignore the very real warnings that were given them by the Clinton administration -- warnings that in retrospect could very easily have blown the cover off the operation before it happened.

On Afghanistan and Iraq, you seem to be saying that Bush didn't want those wars and only engaged in them to raise his poll numbers. On Iraq, at least, he was planning the attack before 9-11. I think Oliver Stone got that one right.

Katrina? I don't think there's any question that the federal response was hampered by the Bush administration's habitual cronyism and incompetence.

I think the right wing has to get over the fact that this administration has been the most incompetent and disastrous in American history.

Let it rest.

j