It's called "torture" Mr. Bush
POSTED BY: Ghoulman
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 15:55
VIEWED: 24944
PAGE 8 of 14
Quote:No, posts telling people what they can or can't talk about are spam. If you don't like a thread don't read it, but don't impose your censorship on others.
Originally posted by Skydance:
Political discussions are just spam.
"...we're still flyin'."
"That's not much."
"It's enough." Malcolm Reynolds and Simon Tam - Serenity
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Ghoulman,
For what it's worth, I have alot of work to do and cannot read the entire thread...yet. I should be joining y'all directly. But I promised NXTBrowncoat--the guy who authored the "enough of this political crap" thread--that I would do this.
(On Soapbox)
I respectfully request that you post any and all future political threads in Talk Story. Thank you.
Most humbly and respectfully,
Jon
(Off Soapbox)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by FlyinFree:
High and mighty ideals are all fine and good to aspire to but as Mal and the crew demonstrate on a daily basis you do what you need to survive and when you have the luxury of a choice you try to do what's right.
Your fallacy here is that the US doesn't have the luxury of choice. They are the ones that have billions to invest in this with hundreds of thousands of troops. So, yes, they do have the responsibility of standing on high moral ground. Did they do that lately, No. Well, at least a few of them didn't.
If anything I wouldn't be surprised if the militants did these things, as to say that they are the underdog here is an understatement. But, wait a minute... They didn't. Well, not yet. With this happening to Iraqis what'll happen to the kidnapped now?
Quote:
Originally posted by FlyinFree:
Sitting back and saying we are better than this while our people are being slaughtered and whole nations live in starvation, ignorance and oppression, just so we can say we didn't do anything wrong is actually saying we didn't do anything and that is wrong.
Wrong. If anything the US is slaughtering the Iraqis. How many civilian casualties again? Anyone? But right now we don't want to talk about that do we. Too much poor Iraqis for you, eh? Of course, it's all in the name of freedom and that justifies anything, right?
I'll reference the time when a crowd was throwing rocks at a US post, someone in the crowd fired and the US opened up into the crowd and the US defended this act. For those that are interested in a live interview that references this event see CBC Sunday's Deadline Iraq.
And this wasn't an isolated incident. These soldiers are so stressed out there trigger fingers will pull that trigger at anything. Perhaps the US should be humane to those troops and start rotating them out. Oh wait, they don't have enough to do that without the possibility of a draft.
And why would you reference other countries, we are talking about Iraq here. That is unless you are talking about how the US liberated Iraq of there water, electricity, oil, etc. By the way, that is from the mouths of Iraqis, again see Deadline Iraq.
Quote:
Originally posted by FlyinFree:
In a perfect world you can afford to say things are black and white, but we live in a world of greys.
Never said it was black and white. I'm just saying that when someone has definitively the upper hand then they have the moral, ethical responsibility to behave properly. Otherwise you become what you fight against.
Quote:
Originally posted by FlyinFree:
I should also point out what the soldiers did was just sick pranks and needless torture.
...
Oh, and BTW, if Bush knew about what the soldiers were doing and did nothing about it (which he probably did since he knew there were no WMDs and still invaded) then he's a scumbag and deserves to be impeached (although it will never happen, you get as much justice as you can afford and he can afford plenty).
At least we agree on something
Quote:
Originally posted by FlyinFree:
The CIA were there to find information and were not just randomly torturing and humiliating prisoners for their amusement. They do a horrible job that nobody wants and nobody thanks them for so we can be safe, yes it means people get hurt, but hey war is hell and life isn't fair.
War's over. And no life isn't fair, that's evident by the way the Iraqis are being treated.
----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You're missing my point, I don't support the invasion of Iraq so Bush could make daddy and the oil barons happy. When I said there wasn't a luxury of choice and that we are at war I wasn't referring to the Iraq invasion I was referring to the war on terrorism, which is far from over. The invasion of Iraq was Bush being a militant dick. The CIA interrogating prisoners (in any country) is what they do, year in, year out, non-stop because they have to. I don't think Bush was in the right ordering the attack on Iraq. Yes, the US, in this case, had the luxury of choice and Bush made the wrong one. My arguments about lack of choice, and the need to fight dirty, outside the rules, was for the CIA only, not the military occupation.
Yes, those soldiers that tortured the prisoners for fun are sick bastards.
Yes, Bush is a dick.
Yes, the Iraq invasion was wrong.
No, what the CIA did was not wrong and their war is a dark horrible one that never ends. Their job is the toughest and they should never be lumped in with Bush (they told him not to invade) or the sick bastards in those pictures (they do what they have to to fight terrorism and espionage).
The idea that if the CIA played nice the rest of the world would do the same or go easy on them is naive.
"...we're still flyin'."
"That's not much."
"It's enough." Malcolm Reynolds and Simon Tam - Serenity
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
"Perhaps you were too busy slurping up all of Bush's lies"
Not convinced there were lies. The only slurping I do is on pistachio ice cream.
The fact is, I'm not convinced that Al Qaida hasn't always been in Iraq. Hey we found some of the WMD Bush said were there. Al Qaida is fighting us in Iraq.. and it's only a matter of time until I believe Bush will be vindicated about other things too..
It won't make any difference to liberals of course; they blame Bush for anything imagined or real whether it's his fault or not.. in fact, particularly if it's not his fault he gets blamed. I'm waiting for someone to blame Bush for the cancellation of the Friends TV show next.
We'll also hear how Bush attached missiles to the Titanic, to princess Di's car, and was responsible for Martha Stewart's impropriety.
I'm so bored of the "Bush lied" tired rhetoric.. time to get a new talking point from the DNC, the Oil for Food scandaliers, Ross Perot, or who ever liberals hit up for those things.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Sorry but since when were some WMD's that Bush said were there found? Did I miss that memo or news bulletin?
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Additional Protocol I, Article 75 of the Geneva Conventions, “murder; torture of all kinds, whether physical OR MENTAL; CORPORAL PUNISHMENT; and mutilation … are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever, whether committed by CIVILIAN or by military agents.” Article 31 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “NO PHYSICAL OR MORAL COERCION shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.”
Idi Amin once told prisoners he would release them if they did things that met his approval - and they did their very best to guess what it was and fulfill it... (This is not nearly as graphic as it could have been, I'm including it to make this point -) Without laying a finger on them, he tortured them.
The US has an official 'stress and duress' ('torture lite') policy that breaches the Convention. What happened in Iraq is not an aberration - it's policy.
There are thousands more photos reported, including ones of those who died during interrogation, were beaten for hours etc. And the soldiers already memorialized that they were acting at the behest of interrogators.
Once this is public, what will become of the rationalizations? It's not just humiliation and hazing, it's not just a few rogues, and it's not acceptable under international law.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Doran:
"Perhaps you were too busy slurping up all of Bush's lies"
Not convinced there were lies. The only slurping I do is on pistachio ice cream.
The fact is, I'm not convinced that Al Qaida hasn't always been in Iraq. Hey we found some of the WMD Bush said were there. Al Qaida is fighting us in Iraq.. and it's only a matter of time until I believe Bush will be vindicated about other things too..
It won't make any difference to liberals of course; they blame Bush for anything imagined or real whether it's his fault or not.. in fact, particularly if it's not his fault he gets blamed. I'm waiting for someone to blame Bush for the cancellation of the Friends TV show next.
We'll also hear how Bush attached missiles to the Titanic, to princess Di's car, and was responsible for Martha Stewart's impropriety.
I'm so bored of the "Bush lied" tired rhetoric.. time to get a new talking point from the DNC, the Oil for Food scandaliers, Ross Perot, or who ever liberals hit up for those things.
Oh, there were some WMD found, now? Funny, haven't heard about it meself. And here I thought they got al used up by Ali Chemicali on the Kurds...
You wanna know why some people in the US governement were so convinced there were WsMD in Iraq? Because previous administrations had supplied them to Saddam in order to remain a threat to Sovjet-sponsered Iran.
Remember the Cold War? Apart from thousands of dead Kurds decomposing in the streets of their villages there's also an image in my head of then-President Reagan wrapping his arm around a Taliban fighter and saying "This is not a rebel. This is a freedom fighter." See how nice the Taliban were in the eighties? The US governement supplied them weapons of all sorts too. Now they're the bad guys because they force women to dress up in burkas, men to grow beards, hide Osama bin-Laden, and they burn cassette tapes too. Some freedom fighters they turned out to be.
But always better of course than to have Sovjets in Afghanistan, the medival dustbowl of the world. Of course. No consideration on whether the natives in Afghanistan might have prefered the Sovjets over the Taliban... The safety of the US was at stake back there! (that's sarcasm).
I think some people in the US government couldn't believe Saddam would be stupid enough to have used all the WsMD. Or sell them off to as yet undescribed third buyers (for my own safety, I certainly hope they all got used up instead of sold off). And that's why they kept yelling that there where WsMD in Iraq. This whole Afghanistan/Iraq thing is the US past coming back to bite the current administration in the butt.
Also agree with FlyingFree that Bush should have had the intelligence to listen to the CIA. It's what they're there for. A bit stupid to pay people to figure out where the threats to your nation are and then overruling their reports because some of your daddy's old war buddies remembered that the Reagan administration had sold a shitload of cannisters with chemicals to Saddam.
"I realise certain words were exchanged, also certain bullets."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
enough VX to kill 80000 was discovered coming out of Iraq by way of Syria. And that's not all over the year there have been plenty of instances of WMD capture that showed not only the presence but proved the continued will to develop them by Saddam.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
"You wanna know why some people in the US governement were so convinced there were WsMD in Iraq? Because previous administrations had supplied them to Saddam in order to remain a threat to Sovjet-sponsered Iran."
This is a bold faced untruth. There were some weapons given to Saddam but not the chemical weapons in your inferance. Those were devloped by Saddam based on a small medical sample give for medical research only.
The main reason most of us believed the weapons were still there is because UN inspectors documented their existance in the 90's and Saddam refused to show that he'd destroyed them, even in his 1000 page diversion. It was obvious he was still hiding something.
It would have been easy to say, "this is where the chemicals were destroyed". I statement that could be verified after the fact with test equipment.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME