The Case Against Bush & Rumsfeld War Crimes - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

host · 05-31-2005, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alansmithee

Many people don't understand that this isn't a "norman" war. Terrorists are playing with a total different rule set than we are, even on our worst day. But the left seems to think that we should focus more on potential wrongdoing in what the US is doing than the blatant evils being committed by terrorists. And I think that much of the reason for this is because the left is more worried about discrediting the Bush administration than it's worried about how people are being treated. And telling about heads are getting chopped and mosques being blown up by terrorists doesn't help them in that effort, but making suspect claims about war crimes does.

I agree that this is not a normal war. The war in Iraq can credibly be described now, with the final reports of the 9/11 Commission, the Duelfer report regarding Iraq's WMD programs and inve3ntories, the admissions of WH press secretary McClellan on Jan. 12, 2005 that no WMD of signifigance were found, or were likely to be found in the future, and that there was no credible evidence that they had been transferred out of Iraq. The 9/11 Commission fouind that there were no ties found that indicated extensive cooperation between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The terrorist training camp and chemical weapons complex described by Colin Powell in his March, 2003 UN presentation is known to be in a Kurdish region in northern Iraq, out of Saddam's influence or control. Questyions were raised by members of congress concerning the lack of U.S. military action against this terrorist training complex, since it was certainly located in an area controlled by U.S. Kurdish allies.

Now we have since May 1, 2005, an undisputed "secret" <a href-"http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/news/politics/11575141.htm">memo</a> from the UK PM's office, minutes of a high level July 23, 2002 meeting where the head of MI6, identified as "C" in that meeting, who was just back from a meeting with counterparts in U.S. Intelligence, reported that, "“There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable,” the MI6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. “Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction).

We also have this addendum, disclosed on May 29:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...632566,00.html
"THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown."

The memo said “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

As I posted evidence of earlier on this thread, there is a strong case to be made that just days after 9/11, a high ranking CIA official and VP Cheney were publicly advocating the beheading of Usama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders. You post primarily your absolutist opinions, or you attempt to reduce well documented arguments of others as "Bush bashing", or "google searching", that somehow disqualifies the search results produced and posted as inferior to your undocumented opinions.

What I think we should focus on is whether the President, Vice President, and top members of the administration conspired to first provoke, and then launch an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign state that was essentially minding it's own business, uninvolved with the terrorists who are accused of attacking the U.S. on 9/11, and not guilty of the charges that it possessed and continued to produce WMD. The result is a weakening of our military capability, diplomatic credibility, the ability of the military to attract the best new recruits in necessary numbers, and a loss of credibility of the U.S. executive branch, and the squandering of $300 billion, the avoidable deaths of and serious injuries to more than 10,000 of our military, and to uncounted numbers of innocent Iraqis. This policy has created new vendettas in Iraq, and in the Arab world, bogging down our relatively small fighting forces, and producing a quaqmire in Iraq for the indefinite future.

This is where the question of treason, war crimes, and "playing into the hands of Al Qaeda", alansmithee. There are strong indications that the leadership and the policies that you decry as "Bush bashing", while offering no rebuttal, other than comparing me to a "printing press or a "paper boy", are the undermining and possibly treasonous influences to the genuine U.S.defense.
The patriots are those who demand answers and accountability from our lying, corrupt, and apparently treasonous elected national leaders, a concept increasing over time on the strength of constant new disclosures!

Elphaba · 06-01-2005, 11:14 AM

Bush has responded to the Amnesty International report:

"In terms of, umm -- you know, the -- the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on, on the word of, uhh -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, uhh, you know -- yes, sir."

host · 06-01-2005, 11:52 AM

Well.... it looks like he's got his instructions down pat, now, hence the ability to hold more "news" conferences. Remember that if you voted for more of this, you have to live with your complicity and culpability regarding the consequences!

Quote:

Highlighted version: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache...&hl=en&start=1 non-highlighted link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0050524-3.html

President Participates in Social Security Conversation in New York May 24
<h4>...................See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.</h4>

Quote:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines
.....Speaking at a news conference in the Rose Garden, the president used the word "absurd" four times in the course of a 10-sentence response when asked his reaction to a highly critical report by Amnesty International that challenged the administration's respect for the human rights of detainees in the campaign against terrorism.

"It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," he said, adding: "We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of — and the allegations by — people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report."......

Elphaba · 06-01-2005, 12:12 PM

Thanks, Host. Looks like the LA Times cleaned up the president's statement.

stevo · 06-03-2005, 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elphaba

Bush has responded to the Amnesty International report:

"In terms of, umm -- you know, the -- the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on, on the word of, uhh -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, uhh, you know -- yes, sir."

and I agree 100% with bush's response. It is most definately an absurd report. Maybe you've read this article today - it was front page on google news - probably several of you's homepage.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/060305B.html

Quote:

The torture and abuse of terrorist suspects is very much in the news these days, so it's interesting to note the advice on the topic found in an Al Qaeda training manual seized some time ago in the U.K. The manual says that when captured or facing trial, "brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security." Noting the utility of the open U.S. media, the manual also calls "spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy" one of the top-five missions of the terrorist organization.

This is not to say that torture and abuse at the hands of American troops is always a figment of Al Qaeda propaganda: The Abu Ghraib prison scandal proves otherwise. But the manual sure puts Amnesty International's newest annual report, as well as recent claims of torture, Koran desecration, and other abuse, in perspective.

Al Qaeda knows better than any organization that its success depends on peeling both Muslim-world support and U.S. public support away from the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Consider the quasi-reasoned tone Osama bin Laden adopted in a recording he allegedly made last November, calling on the "people of America" to drop their support for the president. The recording was full of contemporary and historical allusions, as is the training manual. If Al Qaeda's savvy enough for that, it's savvy enough to know that civil liberties - even the civil liberties of accused bad guys - are a hot-button issue in the U.S.

In the U.S. alone, there are 65-plus lawsuits claiming abuse of detainees at American hands. There are still more legal demarches overseas. We've seen inaccurate Koran-desecration stories send Muslim crowds raging in protest. We have regular accounts of arrested terrorism suspects being sent to third countries where they face torture-driven interrogation. And, as if on cue, we have Amnesty International calling the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our time."

Naturally, the Bush administration is berating the organization for such a ridiculous comparison. After all, Guantanamo Bay's guards are under the microscope of human-rights lawyers all the time. The inmates are fairly treated. The guard-throws-Koran-in-toilet story was false. And claims that the inmates' detention oversteps the boundaries of international law have been responded to at the highest levels. Besides, the 500-600 Guantanamo detainees wouldn't be there if Al Qaeda hadn't killed 2,948 Americans and others on Sept 11, 2001.

Yet the civil-liberties argument continues. Combine its force with regular bad news out of Iraq, and an unnecessarily large amount of bungling by the Pentagon - such as failing to punish high-level officers for Abu Ghraib, or inadequately vetting the Newsweek report on the Koran when the reporters offered it - and it's quite difficult for the Bush administration to keep hearts and minds on its side.

Which is why it's partly up to the U.S. public to keep some perspective on the torture and abuse issue.

First and foremost, torture, abuse, killing, good guys running amok, these are all standard features of war. They occurred in the past and will again in the future. "War is cruelty," Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said, and its cruelty is part of the reason the U.S. tries to avoid going to war in the first place. But of course, we are at war.

Second, human-rights watchdogs and lawyers are a veritable cottage industry these days. Whatever the international conflict, there is always a group of them around, wringing their hands, making their names known to newspapers, and pointing out, as if for the first time, that war is hell (another Sherman quotation). They're often well-meaning. But they may be getting wagged by the Al Qaeda training handbook without even knowing - or refusing to believe - it could be so.

Third, it's essential to know the messenger. In this case, Amnesty, the hand-wringer of the week, is no friend of American foreign policy. The group, whose roots lie with early 20th century leftists both here and in Britain, has always bent over backwards to make the capitalist U.S. look bad. Consider that the "Americas Regional Overview" in this 2005 annual report goes on at length about the U.S. and its detention camp, the U.S. and its horrible friend the government of Colombia, the U.S. and its evil counter-narcotics efforts in the region, yet makes not one mention of communist Fidel Castro's abominations in Cuba. Also, the report bends over backwards to blame the human-rights abuses of the quasi-communist Venezuelan government on those trying to unseat President Hugo Chavez.

The report's tone is reminiscent of its Cold War work, when Amnesty rather perversely thought it important to be even-handed in its assessment of Soviet human-rights abuses and our own. Considering Amnesty's fellow-traveler pedigree, perhaps it intended its Stalinist "gulag" comparison as a compliment.

The war against Al Qaeda has led U.S. troops and intelligence personnel to engage in some fairly despicable behavior, sometimes sanctioned, sometimes not. And this latest wave of complaints about the behavior won't be the last. Some of the behavior can be punished and stopped. But the war against terrorism is a real and necessary one, and immunization against its cruelties is necessary if the U.S. is to win.

Mantus · 06-03-2005, 07:41 AM

Stevo,

The Red Cross was the first to sound warning bells about torture at camp X-ray years ago. This certainly isn't something that sprung up out of the blue.

Amenesty International's latest report on US and torture focuses primarilly on how the govenment created an enviroment in which torture was acceptable and infact required and encuraged. It documents various steps the government took to either legalize or atleast muddy the laws and rules sorounding torture by US agents.

The accusations of torture in camp X-ray, Afghanistan and Iraq are not new. The AI report primarilly used existing evidence for it's report. Guantanimo Bay continues to be off limits and any practices within the walls of that compound are circumstantial. Yet the pile of evidence is rather comprehencive. From tweaks within the legal frame work to allow abuse of prisoners to apointment of Major General Geoffrey Miller in 2002 who was transfered in 2004 to Iraq and Guantanomized it's prisons.

As for the other abuse scandals. The Fay report among others confired existing evidence of torture in Aghani detainment camps since 2002. We all know what evidence came out of Iraq.

Thus it's a not just an accusation based on testimony of detainees. Further more, AI asks for further investigation into the mater and proper procecution of those responcible. Hense it asks for sanity and accountability of the US govenment.

Now people claim that the article which started this thread is bias but atleast it held some evidence (however questionable) to back up it's claims. The 11 pragraphs you posted are full of nothing but opinion, slander and lies.

Quote:

After all, Guantanamo Bay's guards are under the microscope of human-rights lawyers all the time.

Are they serious?! This is the exact oposite of the fact. Everyone wants the facts but the govenment is being very clandestine about the activities within camp X-ray.

Quote:

Besides, the 500-600 Guantanamo detainees wouldn't be there if Al Qaeda hadn't killed 2,948 Americans and others on Sept 11, 2001.

It's generalized statement such as this that seal the deal for the average joe. They are terrorists, thus they deserve nothing. The fact reamins that most of the people held in Guantanimo never had a proper trial or even a hearing. Neither they, nor we know exactly what some of those individuals are being held for. We can only asume they are all terrorists. But if they were all terrorist why have we released some 250+ of them?

Quote:

unnecessarily large amount of bungling by the Pentagon

I love how the pentagon has become the stooge of this administration. Oh that silly old pentagon fumbled it again, har-har-har. Shall we all forget that the administration has the power to punish the defence secritary who holds responcibility for the fumbles within that five cornered building and also hold the power to open investigations on any foul business comited by its agents?

Just some of the bull shit within that piece.

06-01-2005, 11:14 AM	#42 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Bush has responded to the Amnesty International report: "In terms of, umm -- you know, the -- the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on, on the word of, uhh -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, uhh, you know -- yes, sir."

06-01-2005, 12:12 PM	#44 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Thanks, Host. Looks like the LA Times cleaned up the president's statement.