For people who don't like the way we treat prisoners, this is how they treat ours!
 

Taliban says it killed 'captured' U.S. commando
Sat Jul 9, 2005 4:03 AM ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban guerrillas said on Saturday they had killed a missing American commando they claimed to have captured in eastern Afghanistan last month. The U.S. military said it had no information to support the claim.

"We killed him at 11 o'clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head," Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said from an undisclosed location. He said that the body had been dumped on a mountain in the eastern province of Kunar.

The U.S. military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar on June 28, has been captured.

Asked about the Taliban claim that the man had been killed, U.S. military spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy Moore said: "I don't have any information on that."

Hakimi, whose information has often proved unreliable in the past, said the body of the soldier had been left on the top of a mountain in Kunar's Shegal district.

"He is wearing red clothes," he said. "We got the information we wanted from him during the interrogation."

Hakimi said earlier on Saturday that the man the guerrillas claimed to be holding was a commando officer and would be killed in two or three days following his interrogation.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency also quoted a guerrilla commander in Kunar, Mohammad Ismail, as saying that the commando had been killed.

AIP quoted Hakimi as saying the killing followed a decision by the Taliban's council of religious leaders.

The U.S. military has said two of its missing commandos were found dead on Monday, having been "killed in action," while another had been rescued and one was missing.

A U.S. helicopter sent to aid the team was shot down the same day the team went missing during a battle with insurgents, with the loss of all 16 troops aboard. These were the U.S. forces' heaviest losses in a single combat operation since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers, backed by Afghan troops and helicopters, have been searching for the missing commando in Kunar for the past 12 days.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsAr...TALIBAN-DC.XML

Thus one distasteful act justifies another?

it's not all that way of course
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...956255,00.html

have the afghan fighters signed up to the geneva conventions? do they have any way of keeping prisoners secure for the duration of the occupation?

this has to be borne in mind before invading a country and whatever the enemy's actions the US cannot relax their own regard for human life in a world where they are claiming the moral high ground. it doesn't matter how badly the enemy act, the criticisms of the conditions in guantanamo and movements of prisoners to foreign countries for torture are still valid. necessary even.

No the Taliban has not signed the Geneva accords. That is the point people don't seem to understand. The Geneva conventions only is for people fighting in UNIFORM. This war does not fall under Geneva. But the LEFT in this country wants us to fight it under those rules, even though the terrorists don't.
I think maybe it is time we started treating terrorists like they treat us, this situation would get over alot quicker. Fight fire with fire, it is the only thing these people underdstand. Forget the Political correctness that the left wants us live. Shoot first and ask questions later.

So you want us to start targeting civilians as a terror tactic to get the terrorists to stop doing what they do?

If we start doing that, we'll be just as low as the terrorist.

/nods

There's no prize for winning the race to the bottom. The point is not to fight by Marquis Of Queensbury Rules just because. The point is retain the rule of law, to not lose ourselves.

Could not have said it better myself.

So we should ignore human rights and exploit every loophole in the Geneva accords. Great idea. That will REALLY help our position in the Middle East.

/sarcasm

Seriously though, we have a moral obligation as Americans to be an example to the rest of the world (white man's burden and all that). Ignoring human rights is not setting a positive example, and if we do so, it makes us look like hypocrites in the end. I already disagree with the disregard the current administration has for human rights in the United States (both at Guantanamo and in various political issues such as gay marriage). Lowering ourselves to their level in treatment of prisoners undermines our authority, and if it is our goal to establish ourselves in a position of authority in the Middle East, treating others how we want to be treated is the first step.

Golden Rule and all that, you know :)

It seems to me that the last time we were the clear cut winner in a war was WW2. What did we do in that war? We bombed the crap out of the enemy, made parking lots out of thier cities. Yes, a lot of innocent people were killed or hurt, but whoever said war was nice. But, we won the war. After the war, we rebuilt the 2 countries, and they seem to have survived. If the politically correct left would allow us to do it now, maybe we wouldnt have terrorists killing innocent people, just to kill people.
These people hate you, and would kill you in a second, no matter how much compassion you have them. You can't practice diplomacy with them, for they will just laugh at you and kill you. They did fire the first shot.

War is Hell.

And for the record, how many have died at Guantanimo Bay?

Yeah you're right. Just bomb them all. Kill every single towelhead, that way there would be no more terrorists ever. While you're at it, bomb the french, the stuck up bastards. Then go after the germans, once a nazi always a nazi right?

I really don't much care what happens to terrorists. Beat the crap out of them.

However, I don't agree with holding prisoners without trial or due process and the government - any government - saying "just trust us, they're all bad guys".

Yet that's where you will be racing, the bottom. What is the point of fighting to defend one law when if one is bending laws, agreements and moral codes to achieve one's aim? We may not lose the war, but we will lose ourseves.

There are very few if any parallels between millitary warfare and counter terrorism. For starters terrorist are not all united. They are not all part of an "axis". If one destroys a cell or captures their leaders terrorism wont stop. On can whipe out every terrorist in the world and more will be spawned the next day. There are no borders when it comes to terrorism. Terrorist can and will spawn anywhere. They can be of any nationality or religion.

Then there is counter insurgency, which is a whole other ballgame that is once again very differnt from a standard engagement between two armies.

This statement shows that you really should educate yourself and give this mater a little more thought.

If you are a concervative, you should be looking for the most effective way to achieve your aims. The fastest, cheapest and most effective way is though politics and economics. Look at the the success of the Orange of Rose revolutions in Eastern Europe. These are projects that took less then a half a decade to complete and cost a faraction of what a war would. War is the most expencive solution possible. Even if one does resort to war, politics and economics are required to stabalize the situation otherwise one will need to go to war again and again as the same threat re-emerges.

There is also a fine line between political corectness and moral principles. Are you stating that republicans are amoral or as barbaric as religious fundamentalists?

Only from our perspective.

I am trying so damn hard to see what thw point of this is......I am failing


If indeed the point is to explain the extent of the tactics terrorism takes.....damn....well done.

somehow....I dont think that is what this is about.


Lets try to keep it civil

just for the record, Mantus, martinguerre didn't post what you attribute to him. Post #10 was jcookc6.

Some type of editing snafu, undoubtably.


edit: now i see how it happened! He did say the first thing you quote, but all the others were from #10. So a copy/paste issue :D

Thanks boatin :D, yep I cut and paste the code tags.

This is almost funny, I don't mean to be rude, but I'd suggest that fighting fire with fire is the only thing you understand.

You really would have to kill a lot of people in order to achieve your aims, and it would be difficult to maintain a workable coalition that went along with your ideas. It wouldn't take long before an opposing force mobilised itself and started making life a whole lot harder. The interactions between people that we call politics are not complicated as part of a leftist, PC plot, rather, politics are complicated, because the world is complicated. A "kill them all" strategy has never worked in the past, and I don't see it working in the future. Especially since you don't actually know who "they" are...

the only good thing i could see with fighting fire with fire is the libs in this country might say "hey, why's America acting like this...what's motivating they're behavior. We need to make sure the world has the sense to not treat all american's based on the actions of an irrational few in their government."

That being the case, it's just not a good enough reason

On the flipside, i guess that means that all the conservatives who support fighting fire with fire would have to hunt down and kill themselves in an effort to rid the world of terrorism.

you talk about nuking entire cities killing thousands of civilians, followed by "we wouldn't have terrorists killing innocent people". we're using the word "terrorists" to describe all the wrong groups/individuals these days, no? nuking any middle eastern country would be global suicide, and besides, whom would you prefer to bomb? the big bad "terrorists" are all over the map, from the americas, africa, asia to european nations, they don't all gather in specific spot waiting to be dealt with. you may nuke anything you wish, but this will not end their mission but rather fuel them further to obliterate your western ways, all while crushing your own hope of strong international relations. whether the leaders are around or destroyed is irrelevant.

quite frankly, they had good reason to kill the foreign invader, whether in uniform or otherwise. If America was invaded and constituted of only guerilla fighters, they would surely kill the enemy in uniform as well, as would any country. people never view both perspectives, and not only is this dangerous, but it can make you no different than your “enemy”.

What you may not remember is that even in World Wars I and II we obeyed common conventions with our sworn enemies. Many war weapons both sides devised were felt to be much to brutal, and both sides stopped using them. We had standards then, and we need them now. It might feel morally justified to go into a terrorist camp and start cutting off heads and limbs, but we are (supposedly) the most civilized nation in the world, and we have a more enlightened viewpoint on human suffering than people who have grown up indoctrinated in hatred and guerilla tactics.

It's not like it wouldn't feel great and like the perfect revenge, but it's not what anybody deserves. If that guy deserved it, we wouldn't be as mad, but he didn't, and nobody does.

Here is a follow up to the original post.

http://www.canoe.ca/CanoeClassic/home.html

It comes as no surprise that the Taliban spokes-person was lying, as has been the case in the past.

It also comes as no surprise that certain sections of the US react, just as the Taliban would want them to react, with ill-judged reactionary comments about targeting civilians, Biblical nonensense like "an eye for an eye" and calls that the US should sink to the depths of depravity shown by these pathetic human beings.


Mr Mephisto

We're fighting a war with both hands tied behind our collective backs.

Just being the more enlightened and civilized side in a conflict will not garuntee your victory. Often it is the most brutal side that wins. Should we sacrifice victory to maintain our "enlightened/civilized" status, or should we put enlightened and civilized on the back-burner for a moment and focus on the brutality of our enemy.

What good is enlightenment and civility if you're dead?

This is true, but in this instance there is only one side following conventions. There is no unified front to make any kind of agreements (even if the opposition was willing to do so, which they're probably not)

This is one of the reasons that the Geneva conventions are made to apply only to uniformed and/or easily identifiable armies. It helps ensure that BOTH sides adhere to established rules of war.

It's unfortunate, but in war the side who sinks the lowest is usually the most efficient and/or effective. This doesn't mean that you should sink as low as possilbe, but to be effective you should at least remain in the same ballpark. And anyone who doesn't see the terrorists as vastly lower in their actions and tactics honestly isn't living in the real world.

Are you seriously so worried about these "terrorists" that you think they pose a direct threat to you, and the world in general? I might have misunderstood something about the level of fear some of you guys are experiencing - it would make many of your knee-jerk reactions make a lot more sense.

On a personal note, the actions of the "terrorists" don't make me afraid for my life, or my family, or anything - I see them as a very small, fringe group, no different from the very small fringe groups that have existed for as long as large-centrist groups have existed.

You are still more likely to be hurt by a drunk driver, or trip on a paving stone than you are to experience a terrorist attack. I am not about to suggest we decpitate drunk-drivers, or amputate the limbs of those who lay uneven paving stones, but it would probably have more effect improving people's lives, than some of the suggestions being offered against the "terrorists"

Do people *really* think we are at war?? I know that word was used by George Bush, but he is also at *war* on drugs, and as soon as anything else crops up, no doubt he will be at *war* with that too.

Yes, he has sent soldiers into combat missions, but weren't those missions primarily one of keeping the peace? The actual warfare part in both Afganistan and Iraq was pretty swift - now it's a matter of maintaining order. It isn't warefare, it is police work.

[edit] I've added a poll here, that I'd be interested to have other TFP Politics people vote on describing the level of threat they feel from the terrorists.

Yes we're at war. War was declared on the United States and her allies by OBL himself, read: Jihad. That war brought attacks on American soil. We have troops fighting in Iraq and Afganistan. There is a group of people determined to see us die. Yes we are at war.

So you bear the might of the American millitary machine on any crackpot who wants to declare Jihad and has access to explosives? Good luck! There are a lot of them out there. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22I+...e+jihad%22+USA

Like I said, this is a job for police officers, not machine guns. I know the events of the last few years have been unpleasant, but I honestly wish some people would stop being so melodramatic about it.

In balance, far more upset and hurt has been perpetrated by the US on foreign civillians than OBL and all the other "terrorists" put together. Can someone look at the numbers?

Please don't make the mistake of grouping the seperate conflicts together. There is very little common ground between the various parties we are fighting.

I don't see it that way. Many people don't see it that way. There's not really much of a need to get into it right here, I've said why before, there are many posts on this board why the fighting in iraq is related to the war on terror, why its part of the 'big picture'.

Could you point me in the direction of one of those posts please stevo?

I'd like to learn how they are linked.
Thanks in advance,
Tom

I did a quick look over the last couple hundred posts I made. I know I overlooked some, and didn't have time to keep going, but here are two that hopefully sum up my thoughts/feelings about iraq.

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...01#post1824301

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...69#post1638369

Let's see, Bush has been in office 4 1/2 years, the Republican Party controls both houses of congress, and 7 of 9 Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans.

So how exactly can you blame the "politically correct left" for anything?
And when exactly will the politically incorrect right take responsibility for the results of their actions?

I just want to echo mr. mephisto's point that, though conservatives often accuse lefties of being in cahoots with the terrorists, it was conservatives, who were their tool in this thread.

I think that if there is any war the terrorists have a chance of winning, it will be the one that ends with america becoming a repressive, freedomless state. Part of that process will be our abandonment of any sort of self restraint in the ways we wage war. Aid and comfort indeed.

As a former soldier (5th Special Forces), I would have to say that I could not serve with a band of murderers. We have killed to protect our nation, our allies, and ourselves. We should not commit murder. Non-combatants should not be targeted.

It is an unfortunate fact of war that non-combatants do get killed. I don't see how that can be avoided.

We do not, nor should we, target civilians. Military targets are fair game: terrrorist ecampments, ammo dumps, airfields, etc.

It is my opinion that if we are to succeed, we must stand united against these terrorists. It is also my opinion that the strategy most likely to be successful is to find a way to cut off the money, supplies, and training terrorists get from the wealthy fanatics and fanatical regimes that support them.

If we want to fight terrorists, we have to also be prepared to take on those countries and individuals that provide them with aid and comfort.

And if our unwillingness to do what is necessary to win leads to our defeat and death, what then?

Have you heard why some muslims are condemning the attacks in London? They say that London shouldn't have been attacked, because the number of muslims there is growing without violence.

Islam is a religion which has as one of it's five pillars "Jihad"...holy war to exterminate all who do not believe in Islam. If Christianity had as one of it's tenets the idea that Christians have to slaughter all non-Christians, the World would be both having kittens and calling for hte UN to invade the Vatican.

I'm not even remotely Christian. But I believe that a religion that promotes as a core principle the idea that people like me must be exterminated because we don't believe in a God, ANY God, is not a religion, it's a criminal organization.

Would you prefer we just summarily executed them instead of capturing them?

You're either lying, misinformed or quoting some off-the-wall whacko.

The vast majority of Muslims in London are condeming the attacks because they are wrong.

I'm so happy that the people of Great Britain are so much above the hatred and bile you are spewing in your post above.


Mr Mephisto

I also neglected to call you out on this blatant lie.

The five pillars of Islam are:

Shahadataan (declaration of faith)
Salaah (formal prayer)
Zakaah (charity)
Sawm (fasting in the month of Ramadaan)
Hajj (pilgrimage to the Ka'bah)

Or, in easier to understand terms,

- Faith or belief in the Oneness of God
- Establishment of the daily prayers;
- Concern for and almsgiving to the needy;
- Self-purification through fasting; and
- The pilgrimage to Makkah for those who are able.


Get your facts right before posting your bigotry.


Mr Mephisto

Seems like there is some disagreement about which pillar it is...try this link:
http://www.islamset.com/encyclo/five_pillars.html

"The Profession of Faith
1. The Five Daily Prayers
2. Almsgiving
3. Fasting
4. Pilgrimage to Mecca
5. Jihad"

Down at the bottom, they call Jihad "the sixth pillar", and say that "jihad" means striving to please God.

To quote the link:
bolded parts added by me.

That's a far cry from what you said:
Just saying.

seem's I read somewhere that the Russians who took out the terrorists in that theater awhile back wrapped thier bodies in pig skin before planting them. Maybe one of you more computer savy types could tell me if it's true or not. Sounds like a good way to get radical fundamentalist guys to stop killing people to get to heaven.

While we're at it, let's address the other widely held myth that martyrdom grants the fundamentalist access to given number of virgins in heaven.

The actual truth is that rather than heavenly access to a host of virgins, Islam actually proscribes access to 70 raisins. Go figure.

The way I see it, if someone is willing to blow themselves up, they are not going to be deterred by pigskin, leftist/rightist criticism or anything else we might have up our sleeves. We should be looking at the roots of the problem that make people feel this way in the first place because deterrants are not going to have a great deal of effect after the fact.

moose, there are christian groups who have been equally murderous based on grounds of faith. Islam certainly doesn't have a monopoly on fundamentalist crazies.

So Islam is NOT a religion that shows very little respect to the concept of religious diversity? Muslims don't generally view athiests as deviants who must be converted, by force if necessary, to "save their souls"?

Everybody says "we must be tolerant of the poor muslims", but nobody ever says "the muslims must be tolerant of other religions or people who believe differently than muslims do". Why is that? Minority status? Well, there are over a billion muslims, so considering the plurality among the religions, they're one of the biggest religions out there. Well, that, and the habit of people who say things that offends certain muslim clerics ending up with Fatwas issued on them... Rushdie wrote a work of FICTION back in '89 that some felt was derogatory of Islam, and they're STILL trying to kill him....even the guy who wrote the "Peace Train" song. Theo Van Gogh criticized Islam, and where is he now? Wait...maybe I better shut up, lest I end up with MY throat cut. Eh, on second thought, screw it. I'm PROUD to be an Infidel. If they want to kill me, let'em try. ;)

That's weird, moose, I responded to your post, yet my response appeared before yours. - here it is again, in case it's hard to follow:

There are christian groups who have been equally murderous based on grounds of faith. Islam certainly doesn't have a monopoly on fundamentalist crazies.

Let's just use the top 10 searches returned by Google, shall we?

http://www.islam101.com/dawah/pillars.html
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/pillars.shtml
http://www.viewislam.com/pillars/
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/re/fivepillars.htm
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/I_Tr...vePillars.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Pillars_of_Islam
http://www.islam-guide.com/ch3-16.htm
http://www.carm.org/islam/faith_five_pillars.htm
http://www.iad.org/Pillars/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/pe..._pillars.shtml

I could go on and on.

In other words, "jihad" is NOT one of the five pillars of Islam, as you stated. Squirm as much as you want, but your bigotry has been proven.

I'm no fan or apologist for terrorists, but I can't stand sweeping generalizations that help promulgate untruths (and hatreds) about whole religions.


Mr Mephisto

That is not necessarily true. I know of at least one company that provides "provisions" to various governments, and uses a porkfat-based product as a bullet-lube. It seems to work. If it's because of the pork product or the thing it's lubing, I don't know, but somebody might do a study of it someday...

I guess it depends on what your search terms were. I used "Pillar" and "Jihad", and came up with this as the first link:

www.doroquez.com/arts/documents/rsoc01.pdf

Along with 51,299 other hits.

What do you mean "it seems to work"?

Are you seriously suggesting that anyone is going to care whether the bullet that kills them has been exposed to bacon?

Well, it's either that, or the idea of getting shot doesn't appeal to them. Hence the need for a study on it.

I was just saying that you were being disingenuous.

Perhaps you should step back, take a deep breath, and try and wrap your head around the idea that the majority of muslims aren't trying to kill you.

That's true. But I've been thinking about it....can you name another terrorist group that has used suicide bombers within the past, say, 20 years, that was NOT, at least according to them, fighting for Islam as part of a Jihad? And which Christian groups have been out mass-murdering people in the past 20 years? I can think of fewer than a dozen bombings by supposedly "Christian" groups (which, BTW, also targeted Christians almost exclusively) in the past 20 years, and none of them killed or injured more than a handful of people or involved a suicide bomber.

You're right, the majority of muslims are not trying to kill me. But, oddly enough, almost everybody who IS trying to kill me without knowing me personally (ie because I'm an American) is muslim. Coincidence? I dunno...but it's certainly suspicious.

We get it.

You don't like Muslims.

Give it a rest.



Mr Mephisto

I believe the IRA is a bunch of nice Catholic boys.

Mr. M...you ably responded to moose. i won't add anything there.

i think stevo asked :What good is enlightenment and civility if you're dead?

I think the question back is what good is being alive for if you're not civilized?

Burke has the great lines on the subject, which i hardly need quote. Much as i quarrel with the reactionary, i admire his belief in the value of being civilized.

So what is it you're trying to say, exactly?

i think that moosenose is saying that he is a racist.
just a guess.

Sme scholars (?) have taken it upon themselves to add something to the fundamental and dogmatic "Five Pillars of Islam". This is akin to me spouting nonesense about an eleventh Commandment.

And ALL of the searches on the first Google page mention jihad and the "SIXTH pillar".

quad erat demonstrandum



Anyway, my interest in arguing semantics and blatant falsehoods with a professed bigot has waned.


Mr Mephisto

Because if you are alive and uncivilized, you can hope in the future to become civilized. But if you are dead and civilized, no amount of hope will bring you back to life.

i should hardly agree with that. i think my signature line will say more about that than i can.

There is a problem with this whole thing about being "civilized" in my opinion. War is NOT civilized. No war EVER is civilized. It wasn't civilized when Europeans were fighting hand-to-hand for land grabs. It wasn't civilized when African tribes were attacking each other for the purpose of capturing slaves to sell to the Arabs and Europeans. It wasn't civilized when men marched across open fields into a hail of bullets and artillary. It wasn't civilized when nations firebombed whole cities and used nuclear weapons on civilian populations. And it won't be civilized until we are using our robots to destroy another side's robots, which is probably a way's off.

Not to make any point about what we should or should not be doing here, but all this talk involving war and being "civilized" isn't worth anything in my mind.

My personal opinion is that if they are killing our troops in this manner, they should have the same done to them when captured. Also I should repeat my earlier question about how many have died at Guantanimo Bay?

An eye for an eye eh djtestudo?

How do you imagine they will respond then? Have you ever heard of a thing called escalation?

You do something bad, they do something worse. You do something worse, they do something even worse. You do something evil, they do something even more evil.

See the pattern?

You must offer the enemy the kindness and humanity that you would hope to receive from them, otherwise you can expect none whatsoever.

There is always a chance to rescue the civillisation that gets lost in war, and everyone on each side has a chance to do it, with every action they take. Whether it's laying down their weapons and going home, or extending some kindness in a detention centre, we're all people, and even under the worst circumstances, there are some of us who have the strength not to act like animals.

I have no idea how many people died at Guantanimo bay, but there are people who have been locked up there for far too long considering many haven't been charged with any crime, and the US had no jurisdiction in the country where they were captured.

We are not at war. In the dictionary, war is described as:

a state of open and declared armed hostile conflict between political units such as states or nations; may be limited or general in nature.

Well there are no states or nations that we are at war with, they don't exist. We should be conducting a Police Operation. But the "Police Operation Against Terror" doesn't have as catchy a ring to it as a full blown war.

Police Operations are civillised, normally. There are rules. Justice must be seen to be served, fairly and blindly.

To call this thing a war, and believe it is the saddest thing, as you, djtestudo (and others here on this board and elsewhere) have just proven when you suggest we descend to the level of depravity of the criminals we seek to bring to justice.

That's why this talk is worthwhile, because we are not at war, and we really should be displaying all the civillisation we can right now.

This sounds nice in theory, but this type of thinking will be what gets people killed. Hugs and rainbows won't deter terrorists. Because they will hug back, only they will have not a rainbow but a bomb taped to them.

And I'm sure any of the many people who's heads were chopped of would have LOVED to be indefinately detained in a place like guantanemo, as opposed to what they got. So to think that we are even in the same league is ridiculous.

This sounds nice in theory, but this type of thinking will be what gets people killed. Guns and bullets won't deter terrorists. Because they will shoot back, only they will have not a gun but a bomb taped to them.

I almost spit my morning coffee all over my monitor when I read that. Wasn't there a thread last week that the resident libs here got all incensed about because Karl Rove said that libs thought this exact thing?

Yes, let's hug the enemy into submission, then kiss and tease 'em and tickle 'em until we're all just giggling like little pigtailed schoolgirls! It's a beautiful thought, but in reality, nothing works on the minimizing the threat of an enemy like killing them does.

edit: tag

I don't give a fuck what 'libs' are supposed to or not supposed to think, nor do I know nor care who Karl Rove is.

However, there is a difference between acting like a human being, and holding yourself up to a standard of civility (by not torturing, or chopping off people's heads for example) and tickling a pigtailed schoolgirl. If you are unable to tell the difference, then I suggest you go away and think about it for a while, and practice drinking your coffee without spilling it.

Once again you miss the point about "the enemy"

I bet Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao Zedong just needed hugs too.

Ustwo, grow up - where did I mention hugs?

Would you like me to reiterate for those who are finding it difficult to understand?

I'd offer the same advice to you, grow up and face reality. There is a time to offer your enemy comfort. We did it quite often in the Pacific vrs the Japanese, trying to get them to surrender rather then kill themselves.

There are also times when you use any means necessary, such as when you have a cold blooded terrorist in your hands who has vital information which you need NOW.

You never know. The german parent-child relationship is usually extremely harsh. Even today. Maybe if Hitler was hugged a little more he *would have* turned out a little less evil. Same goes for the rest.

How much vital information is the "cold blooded terrorist" going to offer up if he's had his head removed as suggested above by djtestudo, or killed by a pig-lubed bullet as Elegant Holes reccomends?

I respond to calls for cruel and unusual punishment and I get told I'm advocating hugs.

The urgency implied by both the usage of capitals in the word NOW and the description of the "cold blooded terrorist" suggests you think that these people are planning daily and deadly strikes against us. In this storybook world, what vital information does our terrorist have that needs to be extracted with such urgency?

I think you over estimate both the danger, the capability and the menace that these enemies of the West pose. I certainly don't think we are so threatened by them that we need to compromise what is right in order to stay effective. We are so much stronger than they, we simply don't need to resort to tactics of desparation - which is what they are.

Once again I say, this is only a war in name - We are in actuality conducting a Police Investigation, rooting out members of a criminal group who have committed horrendous crimes against innocents. We need information - and if we weren't so heavy handed, we'd have our people on the inside telling us all the vital details.

I could be wrong.

Can we all at least agree that it's probably not sensible to advocate decapitation of captives as part of a simple tit-for-tat policy?

and so you see what happens when the notion of the Enemy or Adversary gets detached from the possibility that the enemy might also be a human being---and that the cause of being an enemy is a function of concrete actions, concrete policies, undertaken by the state--which folk who operate and think entirely within the ideological bubble that is the "american way of life" do not tend to see (think about the relation of cheap consumer products to patterns of exploitation exported under teh aegis of globalizing capitalism--at walmart, you have no idea of what goes into making the cheap products--so you can not consider the conditions that obtain in production when buying it--so for too many folk, these patterns do not exist. same model can be mapped into any number of areas)....

once the category of the enemy becomes an abstraction, then the type of brutality that can be justified as being visited upon them is limitless. given the size and power of the american military, this type of thinking as an ideology is of extraordinary potential danger--the implications of which are being visited upon lots of people today.

the reverse argument is typically that if you try to understand the political preconditions for "terrorism" you are de facto condoning the tactics--which is an argument that is thoroughly absurd, but many conservatives seem to like it for reasons that i will frankly never understand--mostly because i have not seen a single coherent argument for it.
it seems that folk will speak as though this exlcusion of politics from thinking "terror" is a given, and they move from there.
i sometimes wonder if there is something powerful for folk who argue in this way about the fantasies of unlimited violence visited upon others, particularly these days upon folk who happen to have the bad form to be muslim. given the level of ignorance about islam (witness the appalling posts from moosenose), you cannot expect fine distinctions like coherence to get in the way.

between april and june 1994, the hutu power movement in rwanda portrayed the tutsis as being less than human. on the basis of this, unlimited violence appeared to be justified. it continued to operate as a justification for nearly unlimited violence until it suddenly didnt. then the war crimes trials started.
i do not see much different AT THE LEVEL OF ARGUMENT in the right's vision of "terrorism"--except that folk who make these kinds of arguments seem to feel themselves justified because they are american--which then tips into a level of chauvinism that you would have thought the dark history of the 20th century---two world wars, a cold war, and various colonial adventures in between---would have ground to powder. but it is obviously possible to learn nothing from history.

the feeling that such arguments are justified does not in any way justify them.


here again the question of the effects of right ideology on the folk who subscribe to it raises its head: most of the conservatives i know are prefectly decent folk who have complex views on a range of issues--many of them are christian and they are more often than not quite compassionate in their everyday lives. some have devoted their lives to service to the poor no less---one very conservative friend of mine runs halfway houses and drug treatment programs adn works materially to help folk who are wrecked by the system that, in more abstract arguments, he tends to defend. while we might disagree, we can talk and/or argue more often than not--these folk actually worry in 3-d life about the fate suffered by actual human beings who are poor or ill in the context of american capitalism, and do something to try to help..
in 3-d life, confronted with the possibility of unlimited violence being visited upon others in their name, all of them balk.
but when it comes to this topic of "terrorism", all bets are off.

in a messageboard space, with nothing at stake and no social pressure to control the types or implications of their position, these same folk will morph into a kind of johnwayne cartoon, the implications of which would be--if they had power--massacres on an appalling scale. because once you adopt this way of thinking that the Enemy is an abstraction, an embodiment of evil, there are no limits to the violence. none.

the treatment of prisoners is a border condition: it is a confrontation between types of action in which rules obtain and matter and types of action that ignore the rules and treat human beings as things.
if the americans advance in the world behind their preferred monologue about "freedom" and "responsbility" and maybe--though too rarely from the macho right--human dignity--the mistreatment of prisoners is both an ethical and political disaster.

i frankly find it appalling that anyone would defend it, particularly on such flimsy and ridiculous grounds as "look at what they are doing"

Wrong. Muslims don't like me. Why? Because I'm an Infidel.

Was the IRA known for suicide bombings?

IIRC, part of the PIRA's MO was to call in bomb warnings shortly beforehand so that the people could be evacuated.

No suicide bombings to my knowledge, I believe "knee-capping" was their tactic of choice. They would set up an appointment, shoot up your knee, and leave you as a cripple. They would also go after your family if you didn't show up for your maiming. I believe you are correct that they called in bomb warnings, but they weren't always accurate.

The point is that terrorism isn't strictly a Muslim thing and that Christians are equally capable.

How does it make you feel to know that you would be under a virtual death sentence if you travelled to a country governed by Islamic law because of your sexual orientation?

Fundamentalist Islam is the enemy of virtually ALL of us here. Why? If we are Muslims, because we are not fundamentalist muslims. If we are not muslims, because we are not muslims. And if we are "different" in any way (like if we are atheists or if we are gay), we are Infidels or Heretics who must be killed according to the fundamentalist muslims.

This reminds me of a Jew in Germany in 1936 saying "the Nazis, they're not so bad!"

Firstly I don't see any difference between a suicide bombing and having one dropped out of a plane, they are just two different methods of delivering an explosive device.

Secondly, whether a warning is issued or not (and many times, none was issued) people were murdered. Are you trying to say that Irish Terrorism is ok? No, I know you wouldn't get away with doing that. Perhaps you are saying that Islamic Terrorism is worse?

moosenose, fundamentalist anything is pretty much hard to deal with. I wont give examples. Have you asked yourself what makes such extreme beliefs attractive to someone? What would it take to get you to believe in some kind of fundamentalist dogma? And what would it take to get you to kill and/or die for those beliefs?

I AM a fundamentalist. I believe in the fundamental separation of Church and State. I believe in our fundamentally inherent civil liberties. There are a lot of other things which I believe in that are fundamental bedrock principles of liberty.

When I took the Oath to protect and defend the Constitution, I took it seriously. And people who are talking about overthrowing the US government, or who are adhering to our enemies, be they foreign or domestic, are my enemies. I've never had to die for those beliefs, but I have run the risk of being killed for them.

even in WW2 not every waepon possible, every dirty trick possible was used because of the consequenses and the escalation that would have followed.

what wasn't used?

gas, just for example.
in africa ("war without hate") there were cease fires to rescue injured (something that wasn't possible at the eastern front cause the war there had reached the "next escalation level")

additionally, i mentioned it for them umptenth time now, amerca claims to have the moral high ground therefore you should act accordingly. playing nice may not kill terrorists, but it may prevent people from becoming more aggresive. if america acts like a total asshole it surely will affect the view other (currently peaceful) people have towards the US.

i was illegal here too for a long time. The West has a long history of homophobia, and homophobic violence. No matter where i am, it's still a game of lesser evils.

i'm quite serious about the human rights violations committed in these other nations, including homophobic violence. but that doesn't mean i'm in any way willing to condone human rights violations in the struggle against other evils. note that much of the abuse reported at abu gharib contained homophobic elements-men forced to masturbate in front of other men, or ritualized de-masculinization. I'm hardly willing to lower my standards for US forces holding prisoners in detention to allow that, just that i can live in a nation where i don't have to be closeted.

Again, you've Godwin'd this thing to death. oddly, making a point for me. in 1936, america was not a particularly tolerant nation of the Jewish people. "Judeo-Christian" had not yet been invented. They were still subject to ethnic discrimination..and worse, our nation (along with the rest of the world) refused to take ayslees coming from Germany, because we didn't want more Jews. 1936 was an indictment on a great many peoples and nations. Finding the evil in one does not expurge the evil in others.

We tortured German prisoners in WW2.

I admit that this would be news to me. I don't doubt that a few isolated incidents might have taken place, but you seem to be saying that this was widespread and condoned. What sources did you find this information from?

Whether things like that happened during WWII, the circumstances were different and it fails to justify actions taken right now:
a) It was a far more intense conflict between nation states (i.e. a war) where the opposing sides posed a real threat to one another
b) it was 60 years ago
c) crimes of the past do not justify crimes of today.

So lets commit the crimes today and then in the future we can just say that was in the past and it doesn't justify anything.

Its really not that hard.

Due to the amount of 'noise' on the issue (there are many claims of US/British torture of German POW's that seem very far fetched) I can't give you a link I would trust on this. I am going by memory of past research I did on the subject for a paper I wrote quite a while ago. The torture consisted of mostly sleep deprivation, denial of medical care (the case I recall was a German POW was refused an appendectomy operation until he talked), and other, more vague psychological torture. This was in a facility in the west coast of the US, and was obviously very top secret as Germany was relatively benign to US/British prisoners and we wanted to give no excuse to change this treatment.

Now that is a hell of a thought.

Imagine if Ted Kennedy, George Galloway or CNN were around back then to "commentate" on the war.
It'd be the United States of the Third Reich. :eek:

This is something I don't believe. I've never heard of the US using torture during WWII.

Mr Mephisto

We sure as hell committed war crimes during WWII...Read Keegan's "Six Armies in Normandy". He tells of a US paratrooper who machinegunned a bunch of unarmed germans at the breakfast table. The man in question couldn't be prosecuted, because he died shortly afterwards. Or, you could read up on those Germans who got hung in an elevator shaft in the US (at Leavenworth, IIRC). SCOTUS upheld their executions....well AFTER the fact. Or, you could read up on the US ship full of mustard gas that sank in the harbor of Anzio, IIRC... Or you could read up on the firebombing of Dresden, and the deaths of an estimated 250,000 non-military refugees there. They had an actual body count of something like 100,000 dead refugees, but in the city center, the bodies were literally incinerated in the firestorm that developed, so they could not be counted.

Mean shit happens in war. Trying to fight a war by hugging your enemy is a good way to LOSE the war.

My guess is there are many things you never heard of which are true.

You don't win a war by planting flowers.

Thats exactly the point why you shouldn't go up the "escalation ladder". Would the Nazis have known about the torture it would have been an excuse to put western POWs into KZs.
The terrorists surely dont treat our prisoners fair, but if we do the same we go up one escalation level, giving them an excuse to use even more "dirty tricks". Additionally the conflict becomes more emotional (compare the war agaisnt the western allies and the war again russia) thus making it difficult to come to an peaceful end. I know some of only want to stop when every arab nation is a parking lot, but I'm an optimist. I belive that a peaceful solution, of cource not with Osama, but with the majority of the insurgents, for example, or the "us-haters" in other nations (Saudi Arabia), is possible.

is there nothing between "torture" and "planting flowers"? is your world really that simple?

More Americans are dying of the flu and heart disease than have died from Terrorist attacks... let's get some perspective.

Fighting fire with fire *never* solves the problem. It either a) escalates the conflict or b) puts the conflict off for another day.


The only way terrorism is going to be defeated is if the terrorists have no reason to attack us (in other words there will probably always be terrorism). A war on terrorism is like a war on drugs... it cannot be won because there is noone to fight.

Sure you can stick your finger in the proverbial dyke and increase security at home but that is relatively ineffective. There is always another crack and we only have so many fingers.

What escalation could the terrorists achieve, where could they go? They already cut off our heads and bomb our civillians. They try their hardest to do the most damage they possibly can. What are they holding back on that they could escalate to? If they had a nuke and the means to detonate one, it would happen regardless of how well they are treated in guantanamo. They aren't sitting behind a desk with a nuke button as a last resort just in case the USA gets really mean.

Are you celebrating these shameful events?

Or are you suggesting that it was fine to do it then, and so it is fine to do it now?

intensify.
like i said, if the western nation are using "dirty tactics" it will fuel the hatred, making more musilm willing to give their lives for the fight. more suicider bombers even in our western cities not just in Baghdad. Do you want "a London" every month?