Faxon says:

Phydeau, You are obviously a complete left wing a**hole such as permeates the Bay Area. I know your type so well. How often do you take a shower?Why don’t you have some of the Gitmo creeps move in with YOU, and share the soap with Mohammed??

Phydeau says:

#30 The evidence is out there, wingnut. I’m not going to spoon feed you. Torture gets people to tell you what you want to hear. All the nastiest regimes used it. We haven’t, until now. We prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding, it was and is a war crime. You wingnuts don’t understand anything but violence and threats. You don’t understand diplomacy, you don’t understand “befriending” a suspect to get intelligence out of them. And thanks to Dubya’s ham-handed wingnut philosophy, Iraq is a festering hotbed of terrorist activity, and Iran is stronger than ever. That is Bush’s fault, and Obama’s stuck with cleaning it up.

Most wingnuts are Keyboard Commandos and Chairborne Rangers, talkin’ tough and not much else. Some claim to be veterans. Who knows without real names?

#31 I think terrorists from amorphous groups like al-qaeda should be treated as criminals, not soldiers. So I’d say a terrorist is a civilian.

But Gitmo is full of guys with no discernible connection to terrorism… they were accused by people who got paid for every “terrorist” they turned in.

I agree it is a problem what to do with people captured during a battle who are not soldiers of any country.

LibertyLover says:

#35, I think terrorists from amorphous groups like al-qaeda should be treated as criminals, not soldiers. So I’d say a terrorist is a civilian.

Then Obama is carrying on an illegal war. He is sending men and women over to murder civilians.

chris says:

I go a away for a few hours and y’all just leave the topic in the dust.

Bush’s main failure in creating gitmo was to attempt to legally justify something that can’t be justified… legally. Practicality, though, is a different beast.

I must posit that the US does a really terrible job of rounding up the right people. We go into strange lands with money, anger and cultural ignorance. It doesn’t materially effect my argument, but it ought to be noted.

So if the gitmo people were the right people then how should we define them? Spies. Most similar to Jedburghs in WWII. Sent to blow stuff up, basically.

People like this, if caught, know that torture and execution await. Part of the job description. No spilled milk.

What Bush and his people didn’t realize was that this is an unspoken part of international relations. When you even attempt to legitimize it you get into serious trouble. When (seeming)legitimacy leads you to disappear thousands of people it is very disturbing.

If you catch an actual big cheese of a terrorist group nobody will care if you separate them at the joints. When you say to all: “We can do this as policy, and the lawyers back us up.” That’s something else entirely.

tcc3 says:

How convenient that we can define humanity for ourselves and brutality for everyone else.

How fucking noble.

Mr. Fusion says:

#34, Mr. Bong,

Who’s got more folks in solitary confinement than the USA. China? Russia? Mianmar? N. Korea? Iran?

Answer, None of the above. It would take a few of the above to equal the total held in solitary confinement in US Prisons. That isn’t to say their solitary confinement is any more luxurious than America’s.

And yes, it would be cheaper to give most of these prisoners psychiatric help instead of the long term solitary confinement.

BUT, we are not the Russians, Chinese, Iranians or what have you. We are a nation of laws that respect the other person.

Guyver says:

35, Phydeau, Like I said before you consider water-boarding morally equivalent to mutilation, maiming, and decapitation. Got it. It’s not even in the same league. BTW, U.S. military interrogation methods have been around for decades. Methods that have proven to be unreliable have been phased out long ago. No matter how much logic or common sense you think you’re applying, the fact remains that the methods that our military and government agencies employ are effective.

Case in point. The CIA admitted to using psychics for intelligence gathering in the past. Why? Because the KGB was doing it so the U.S. figured they might as well do that too since they didn’t want to be blind-sided with something that could potentially give the Soviets an edge. 14 years later, the CIA dumped the project. Why? The method was unreliable.

Care to take a stab why water-boarding has been around so long? You say it’s unreliable or that people will admit to anything…. but in the big picture, you’re not even close. We still have to extract verifiable information that is of use to us. Case in point, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed spilled his guts due to water-boarding. It was verifiable info that saved U.S. lives: http://tinyurl.com/yl3lvjz

The problems with Iraq & Iran have been going on long before Bush. Saying otherwise shows you’re a partisan hack. On the matter of your “violence and threats” comment, what on Earth do you suppose the military is used for? The military’s primary purpose is to kill and destroy. So let me guess…. you also probably think it’s Bush’s fault that the war didn’t end prior to the 2008 elections. Care to take a stab who has the power to fund wars? Congress does. Since 2006, Congress has been controlled by Democrats. Many Democrats who got in 2006 campaigned to end the Iraq War. Strange how you beat that drum that everything is Bush’s fault. Will this be Democrat’s 2010 campaign slogan? LOL.

You do make a valid point that there’s no way to confirm with 100% certainty whether someone is or isn’t a veteran. However veterans have a knack for being able to figure out who is or isn’t a veteran within these forums. It’s the way that comments are conveyed and what are clear misunderstandings on the part of someone pretending to be a veteran. Veterans have experiences that are consistent and very similar. We understand the mindset as well as policies and procedures. In the case with me, I still keep in contact with my military buddies after I got out.

If the experiences of veterans are different it’s usually due to differing “corporate cultures” of the DOD branches. But people usually say which branch they’ve been a part of beforehand. That all being said, you have no way of knowing whether most people who claim to be a veteran are a keyboard commando. Your generalization is absurd, let alone you don’t know what you’re talking about. So if I get this straight, you’ve accused me of racism on a previous forum (even though I’ve defended Tiger Woods on his “racist” choice in women) and it seems you’re implying I’m not a veteran. One wonders what else I’ll be conveniently labeled as to help you somehow make a point. 🙂

Terrorists should be treated as civilians?!?!?!?! LOL. You’re kidding right? And you think think getting into Gitmo is simply the military accepting someone’s offer of another person for a bounty? LOL. BTW, how would you know whether most of the people at Gitmo have any connection with terrorism / terrorist organizations. You’re assuming you have all the facts. The one thing the military is consistent about is not being transparent.

BTW, how do you boldface / italicize text on this forum?

37, Liberty Lover, I see no one has responded to your astute comment. 🙂

38, Brian T, No establishment was set up so as to not have a Church of the United States much like there was a Church of England. Separation of church and state was ORIGINALLY a one-way street where by the government could not influence religions, but religion could affect government. In the past 50 or so years, the separation of church and state has been reinterpreted as a two-way street.

41, The U.S. Constitution’s “values” are guaranteed by our government to those in the U.S. The values are not exclusive to the United States, but our government is under NO OBLIGATION to provide nor guarantee that outside of our borders or to non-citizens abroad. No one is saying others cannot have these rights. Our government just has no obligation to protect those rights for others outside of our country. So what’s your point about nobility? A one-world government?

43, Fusion, what you say is probably due to the fact that killing off someone in confinement is not uncommon in those countries. Especially in North Korea. In the case of North Korea, if someone escapes to South Korea, the surviving family members are either killed or put in a prison camp for the rest of their life (if they’re lucky). Given North Korea’s food shortages, the former is probably more common.

44, Fusion, The thing you’re assuming is we are taking all these people in blindly without confirmation. Is any system perfect? I’m not saying that either, but I doubt most of the people there are “innocent” because they were forced into joining.

Phydeau says:

Guyver, all the experts I’ve read say that torture is just not an effective way of intelligence gathering. As tcc3 says, it’s not in the field manual. The people advocating torture are wingnuts like yourself.

This whole torture thing reminds me of the old wingnut obsession with “git tuff on crime”. Remember? Whatever the infraction was, the wingnut response was to “git tuff”, lock ’em up and throw away the key. All this got us was a record high percentage of our population incarcerated, one of the highest in the world. Now, we’re doing “community policing” and treatment instead of incarceration, decriminalizing petty crimes like pot possession, all ideas us liberals came up with that were condemned by the “git tuff” wingnuts, and what do you know, they’re working.

Wingnuts want to “git tuff” on terrorists. And if most of the people being tortured are hapless bystanders picked up by bounty hunters, eh, no big deal.

Mr. Fusion says:

#45, Buyver,

The thing you’re assuming is we are taking all these people in blindly without confirmation. Is any system perfect? I’m not saying that either, but I doubt most of the people there are “innocent” because they were forced into joining.

We did. There have been over 500 prisoners released from Guantanamo. Only a couple actually were charged and pled guilty. The rest spent at least two years without access to a lawyer or communication to or from their families.

The Pentagon won’t tell us how many but many of those still incarcerated don’t have a country that will take them or just awaiting release.

Guyver says:

49, Fusion, And how many of those 500 were simply serving time for lesser acts? Please don’t try implying that all or most of those 500 were “innocent” or choir boys. Keep in mind that many of those people were also released early due to political pressures given the lesser nature of what they were apprehended for.

On the matter of communication, the last thing you want going on is people getting their “facts straight”. You segregate people and cut off their lines of communications.

What you can’t do (but are) is assume you know all the details for each of the 500 people released. And what do you suppose each of those 500 people released are going to claim (whether guilty or innocent)?

Mr. Fusion says:

Guyver,

You are wrong about waterboarding being torture.

During the Spanish-American War, a U.S. soldier, Major Edwin Glenn, was suspended from command for one month and fined $50 for using “the water cure.” In his review, the Army judge advocate said the charges constituted “resort to torture with a view to extort a confession.” He recommended disapproval because “the United States cannot afford to sanction the addition of torture.”

…

In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan’s defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

…

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post ran a front-page photo of a U.S. soldier supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier. The caption said the technique induced “a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk.” The picture led to an Army investigation and, two months later, the court martial of the soldier.

Cases of waterboarding have occurred on U.S. soil, as well. In 1983, Texas Sheriff James Parker was charged, along with three of his deputies, for handcuffing prisoners to chairs, placing towels over their faces, and pouring water on the cloth until they gave what the officers considered to be confessions. The sheriff and his deputies were all convicted and sentenced to four years in prison.

…

“Almost every time this comes along, people say, ‘This is a new enemy, a new kind of war, and it requires new techniques,'” he says. “And there are always assurances that it is carefully regulated

Guyver says:

Also, please tell me how you do the “vertical bar” quoting as well as bold-facing words you quote. An online dummy’s guide link would be appreciated. 🙂

Mr. Fusion says:

#55, Guyver,

NPR only has a slant when you disagree with them. Can you point out any factual errors in the piece?

*

To format your text,

use the “greater than and less than” brackets. “”.

I will use a square bracket because if I use the correct bracket it will format the example.

For italics, [i] body of text[/i]

eg. body of text

Note the first set formats the italics. The second set, along with the slash, closes the formatting. If you don’t close it the rest of your post is in italics.

Italics are mostly used for quotations. For example, I will highlight a sentence of your post, right click, and choose “copy”. I go to the submission box, type in [i] then I hold down the “CTRL” key and hit the letter “V”. This is a shortcut to “paste”. (I could also just use the mouse and right click and choose paste, but if I’m typing I like to just keep my fingers on the keyboard). Then I type [/i]

To underline the code is [u], I seldom use this as it is too easy to confuse it with a link.

to strike out a word it is [strike], not too common, it is mainly used for sarcasm. In professional work it is used in editing to show what has been changed without removing it from the body of the text.

eg. you’re an effen liar a little off on the truth

bold is [b]. bold I prefer this to underlining to emphasize a word.

These may be combined as needed. [i][b]body[/b] of text[/i]
body of text

When I quote something from outside the thread I use the block quote. As I recall from my schooling, italics are ok if the quotation is only a couple of lines. Longer than that and it should be a block quote.

Since blogs are informal I use block quotes for all imports and italics for thread quotes. This is my practice though and not a rule.

So that is [blockquote] body of text [/blockquote] This option may not be used with any of the above formatting.

I’ll put links in a second post.

I hope this helps.

chris says:

Nobody chose to take issue with my last post. Here it is again, condensed.

When you’re dealing with small numbers of people that are almost assuredly real intel operatives, state backed or not, many rules don’t apply. If they wind up dead or tortured it isn’t a big deal.

When you start collecting people in numbers great enough to require a regular distribution chain other issues(laws and decency) start to intrude.

Every regime has persecuted enemies. When persecution requires an industrial apparatus things get very hinky.

After 9/11 about 1,500 people were rounded up. How many were later proven to be terrorist operatives? None. That’s a major problem.

When the state is very selective about who it targets then much leeway should be granted. If conversely the state grabs a crowd of people because they have ethnic sounding names then extensive judicial interest should be applied.

The Gitmo people are a similar case. Some are actual operatives, some are guys who got paid $5/day to hold an AK, and some are totally uninvolved.

This is a problem of nuance. Sadly we don’t do nuance.

Guyver says:

57, Fusion,

None. Every person taken to Guantanamo was deemed a terrorist and treated like one.

At best you’re getting what the military has allowed to be declassified. It won’t be the whole picture and sometimes what’s released doesn’t tell the whole picture and can be misleading. People “deemed” a terrorist did something to earn that label. The military doesn’t just grab people. That’s a total waste of time for the military not to mention it does nothing to shorten the war. If we truly didn’t care about innocent people, we would have bombed them back into the stone ages.

You are either guilty of a crime or you are not guilty. Other transgressions are inapplicable. If they are guilty of something CHARGE THEM FOR THAT CRIME.

There are rules of engagement (ROE) and the people they apprehended fit the bill. You’re trying to say rules of engagement don’t apply on the battlefield.

Especially when YOU cry about Obama taking YOUR effen rights away by seeing all Americans have health care.

Look having “free” universal health care for everyone is a nice idea. But the first and foremost thing is this is not a power the Federal government is supposed to have. The moment you start opening up the Pandora’s box of giving the Federal government more power at the expense of the states, where do you then draw the line?

Also, you can have health care for all but the trade offs are:

1. Rationing. And before you say this is not true, I have used government-run health care through the VA as well as my parents. It sucks. You go on wait lists, appointments are done months ahead of time, appoints are also canceled and rescheduled more months ahead of time, it usually takes a month for my Dad to get lab results on his bloodwork.

2. Level of care will go down. You have a fixed number of doctors and now you will increase the number of people who demand that doctor’s attention. What rights do the doctors have? Will they be able to maintain their standard of living?

3. Innovation will come to a crawl. Most of the great medical innovations happen here due to the “greed” factor which motivates companies to risk their own capital. If you take that away then no one is interested.

4. Obama promised televised Health Care debates on CSPAN. Instead everything is behind closed doors.

5. The Health Care bill is completely partisan. Republicans have tried but failed to be part of any meaningful discussions.

IMHO, we need to fix what’s wrong with Medicare for those who are already on it while we should focus on better education for our people. Public schools are a joke and the substandard education kids get from those schools sets them up for failure by not making them competitive enough to get into companies which have outstanding health care benefits.

58, Fusion, Thanks for the help.

62, TCC3, I clearly stated that no system is perfect and that some people can slip through the cracks. I never said nor implied that the military is infallible, but I did state that most of those people who got arrested acted in a hostile way toward troops at the wrong place and time. This is similar to someone who refuses to listen to a cops orders.

What I am saying is try and have a little more trust that our military is doing their best to single out the bad guys.

Nothing sucks worse than to come home from combat and hear someone accuse you of trying to apprehend innocent people. It’s not in our interest or desire. Am I say every military person has impeccable character? I’m not saying that. You’ll get a few bad apples and those bad apples are the ones who get a lot of attention… just like power hungry cops or those who use bad judgment in a heated situation.