cia detaining prisoners in secret locations - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 11-03-2005, 07:36 PM

i dont know, folks--while i think it important that the investigation of rove et al continue and that chages be filed where appropriate, i can't help but think that this scandal is a bit of a diversion, keeping attention away from real ones like this:

Quote:

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; A01

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.

Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.

"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?' "

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.

The contours of the CIA's detention program have emerged in bits and pieces over the past two years. Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency's prisons.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

Most of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on the program's generalities.

The Eastern European countries that the CIA has persuaded to hide al Qaeda captives are democracies that have embraced the rule of law and individual rights after decades of Soviet domination. Each has been trying to cleanse its intelligence services of operatives who have worked on behalf of others -- mainly Russia and organized crime.
Origins of the Black Sites

The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.

"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."

On the day of the attacks, the CIA already had a list of what it called High-Value Targets from the al Qaeda structure, and as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack plots were unraveled, more names were added to the list. The question of what to do with these people surfaced quickly.

The CTC's chief of operations argued for creating hit teams of case officers and CIA paramilitaries that would covertly infiltrate countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe to assassinate people on the list, one by one.

But many CIA officers believed that the al Qaeda leaders would be worth keeping alive to interrogate about their network and other plots. Some officers worried that the CIA would not be very adept at assassination.

"We'd probably shoot ourselves," another former senior CIA official said.

The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.

Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.

It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.

Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black-site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.
Deals With 2 Countries

Among the first steps was to figure out where the CIA could secretly hold the captives. One early idea was to keep them on ships in international waters, but that was discarded for security and logistics reasons.

CIA officers also searched for a setting like Alcatraz Island. They considered the virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia, which were edged with craggy cliffs and covered in woods. But poor sanitary conditions could easily lead to fatal diseases, they decided, and besides, they wondered, could the Zambians be trusted with such a secret?

Still without a long-term solution, the CIA began sending suspects it captured in the first month or so after Sept. 11 to its longtime partners, the intelligence services of Egypt and Jordan.

A month later, the CIA found itself with hundreds of prisoners who were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan. A short-term solution was improvised. The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing. Most prisoners were left in the hands of the Northern Alliance, U.S.-supported opposition forces who were fighting the Taliban.

"I remember asking: What are we going to do with these people?" said a senior CIA officer. "I kept saying, where's the help? We've got to bring in some help. We can't be jailers -- our job is to find Osama."

Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.

The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.

The Salt Pit was protected by surveillance cameras and tough Afghan guards, but the road leading to it was not safe to travel and the jail was eventually moved inside Bagram Air Base. It has since been relocated off the base.

By mid-2002, the CIA had worked out secret black-site deals with two countries, including Thailand and one Eastern European nation, current and former officials said. An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.

Then the CIA captured its first big detainee, in March 28, 2002. Pakistani forces took Abu Zubaida, al Qaeda's operations chief, into custody and the CIA whisked him to the new black site in Thailand, which included underground interrogation cells, said several former and current intelligence officials. Six months later, Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh was also captured in Pakistan and flown to Thailand.

But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down, and the two terrorists were moved elsewhere, according to former government officials involved in the matter. Work between the two countries on counterterrorism has been lukewarm ever since.

In late 2002 or early 2003, the CIA brokered deals with other countries to establish black-site prisons. One of these sites -- which sources said they believed to be the CIA's biggest facility now -- became particularly important when the agency realized it would have a growing number of prisoners and a shrinking number of prisons.

Thailand was closed, and sometime in 2004 the CIA decided it had to give up its small site at Guantanamo Bay. The CIA had planned to convert that into a state-of-the-art facility, operated independently of the military. The CIA pulled out when U.S. courts began to exercise greater control over the military detainees, and agency officials feared judges would soon extend the same type of supervision over their detainees.

In hindsight, say some former and current intelligence officials, the CIA's problems were exacerbated by another decision made within the Counterterrorist Center at Langley.

The CIA program's original scope was to hide and interrogate the two dozen or so al Qaeda leaders believed to be directly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, or who posed an imminent threat, or had knowledge of the larger al Qaeda network. But as the volume of leads pouring into the CTC from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.

The original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored, they said. "They've got many, many more who don't reach any threshold," one intelligence official said.

Several former and current intelligence officials, as well as several other U.S. government officials with knowledge of the program, express frustration that the White House and the leaders of the intelligence community have not made it a priority to decide whether the secret internment program should continue in its current form, or be replaced by some other approach.

Meanwhile, the debate over the wisdom of the program continues among CIA officers, some of whom also argue that the secrecy surrounding the program is not sustainable.

"It's just a horrible burden," said the intelligence official.

source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hcmodule

the fallout so far:

Quote:

U.S. Faces Scrutiny Over Secret Prisons
Officials in Eastern Europe Deny Role

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 4, 2005; A20

THE HAGUE, Nov. 3 The International Committee of the Red Cross, the European Union and human rights groups said Thursday they would press the U.S. and European governments for information about the reported existence of secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where the CIA has detained top al Qaeda captives.

Government officials across that region issued denials Thursday that their countries hosted the prisons, which some European officials contend would violate local human rights laws. But the revelation, reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, captured headlines across the continent and led human-rights organizations to call for official investigations.

The Post reported that the CIA had been interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda prisoners at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. The classified site is part of a global network of covert prisons the CIA established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with locations in eight countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and several East European democracies.

In Brussels, a spokesman for the European Union, Friso Roscam Abbing, said that the E.U. would query its 25 member states to find out more about the prisons. Their existence, he said, could violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the international Convention Against Torture, treaties that all E.U. nations are bound to follow.

"We have to find out what is exactly happening," Roscam Abbing told reporters. "We have all heard about this."

Later Thursday, senior E.U. officials appeared to put a damper on any kind of official inquiry. Justice commissioner Franco Frattini said in a statement that the E.U. had no information on the Post report and it was therefore "not appropriate" for him to comment. Noting that the 25 E.U. countries are bound by human rights and anti-torture conventions, he said he would "encourage member states to look into this matter."

It is illegal for the U.S. government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. officials. American legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries.

The Post has not identified the East European countries involved in the secret program at the request of senior U.S. officials who argued that the disclosure could disrupt counterterrorism efforts. But the report has prompted a concerted effort by European news organizations and other groups to try to pinpoint the locations.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, said it had obtained flight logs showing that a CIA-chartered aircraft had used airstrips in Poland and Romania in 2003, around the same time that the United States was transporting top al Qaeda prisoners from Afghanistan to other locations, including the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Romanian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying it "was not aware that such a detention center existed" at the air base identified by Human Rights Watch. Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu was more direct: "We do not have CIA bases in Romania," he said on state television.

In Poland, undergoing a change in government after recent elections, current and former officials denied that the country was involved in the prison system.

In Russia, a number of news organizations reported on the Post story on their Web sites. Some headlines compared the CIA prisons to the Soviet gulag, the infamous network of prison camps. "Secret network of jails -- heritage of Gulag?" read the headline on the news site www.regions.ru. The headline on www.utro.ru read: "The Washington Post: CIA has created a new GULAG." Russian officials denied there were CIA prisons in their country.

In Geneva, the Red Cross said Thursday it has repeated a request to the U.S. government to allow the humanitarian organization to visit terrorism suspects held in isolation at secret locations. The Red Cross is allowed to visit prisoners held by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay but has previously expressed concern that U.S. officials were keeping some detainees hidden from its monitors.

"We are concerned at the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held at undisclosed places of detention," Antonella Notari, chief ICRC spokeswoman, told the Reuters news service.

Europe's leading human-rights organization, the Council of Europe, said it would open an investigation into the East European prisons.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee and the U.N. special rapporteur on torture said they have already been pressing the U.S. government to disclose the existence of any secret detention centers and would renew their efforts in response to the reports of the CIA prisons.

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110300422.html

from a couple hours ago, the administration's defense of itself:

Quote:

US Defends Foreign Detentions
By REUTERS

Filed at 8:17 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has sought to justify the detention of thousands of foreign terror suspects in a report to a U.N. panel as questions mount over possible secret CIA prisons for al Qaeda captives.

In a report sent late last month to the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva, the State Department gave its rationale for the holding ``enemy combatants'' in Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The report did not cover detainees held elsewhere.

``There is no question that under the law of armed conflict, the United States has the authority to detain persons who have engaged in unlawful belligerence until the cessation of hostilities,'' said the October 21 report, which was recently published on the State Department's Web site (http://www.state.gov).

``Like other wars, when they start we do not know when they will end. Still, we may detain combatants until the end of the war,'' the report said.

Washington's human rights image has taken a battering abroad over a string of scandals involving the sexual and physical abuse of detainees held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and in Guantanamo Bay.

The report listed well-documented instances of abuse at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan, where two detainees died in the Bagram defense facility in December 2002.

While admitting abuses in U.S.-run detention facilities, the report said it took allegations of abuse seriously and acted on them.

The State Department also stressed to the U.N. panel that none of the U.S. government's investigations had found any U.S. government policy which ``directed, encouraged or condoned these abuses.''

SECRET PRISONS

The report, which follows an earlier one submitted in May, did not refer to any of the secret prisons revealed in a Washington Post report on Wednesday.

The newspaper said the CIA had been hiding and interrogating inmates at ``black sites'' in eight countries under a global network set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The Bush administration has refused to confirm whether the report on the secret prison system is true, but State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the issue of how to deal with detainees was a difficult one.

``How do you deal with individuals and groups of people that abide by no laws, they abide by no regulations, they don't respect any treaties, their sole purpose and sole intent is to try to kill innocent civilians?'' he asked.

Following the newspaper report, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it wanted access to all U.S. detainees worldwide.

But McCormack refused to give such a blanket commitment.

Instead, he said the United States has cooperated with the humanitarian organization over detainees.

``We work very closely with the ICRC as we fulfill our treaty obligations, as we treat enemy combatants, consistent with our international treaty obligations,'' he said.

The Bush administration has said the Geneva Convention, which governs how nations treat captured enemies, does not strictly apply to fighters in the war on terrorism.

The European Union urged all its members to take the necessary steps to look into reports of the secret prisons, reminding members to uphold the rule of law, human rights and protection of minorities.

Several European countries, including Hungary and Poland, have strongly denied being the site of secret prisons.

``Hungary was not approached by the U.S. or any other state, and even if it had been approached, Hungary would have refused it,'' Hungarian government spokesman Andras Batiz said.

sooner or later, this administration is going to be held to account for this.
i expect the defense from administration supporters that repeat the terms with which the bush squad had framed their war on phantoms since 2001--but i also imagine that defending this kind of activity is a stretch for all but the most ideologically driven conservatives. it seems to fly against absolutely everything that this "war on terror" was about.....

Locobot · 11-03-2005, 08:19 PM

I think Republicans would be wise to start listening a little more to John McCain. This business puts us on equal moral footing with terrorists and ultimately causes much more terrorism than it could ever prevent.

Not to mention that our economy would be fucked if the EU decides to take sanctions against us.

host · 11-03-2005, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i dont know, folks--while i think it important that the investigation of rove et al continue and that chages be filed where appropriate, i can't help but think that this scandal is a bit of a diversion, keeping attention away from real ones like this:

source:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?nav=hcmodule

the fallout so far:

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110300422.html

from a couple hours ago, the administration's defense of itself:

sooner or later, this administration is going to be held to account for this.
i expect the defense from administration supporters that repeat the terms with which the bush squad had framed their war on phantoms since 2001--but i also imagine that defending this kind of activity is a stretch for all but the most ideologically driven conservatives. it seems to fly against absolutely everything that this "war on terror" was about.....

rb, yer opener was too "effing" long. Haven't you learned by observing the "feedback" that I've received, here, to just keep it brief, and k.i.s.s,

Just a word to the wise.....don't let this happen to you:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=95107

Anyway, NS advisor, Stephen Hadley, held court yesterday, and provided these reassuring words. I can only react by wondering out loud if he thinks that all of us are as moronic as his boss is. I have digestive problems, and my doctor warned me against a steady diet of this bush shit. Who the f__k does Hadley expect will report about unacceptable treatment of detainees in locations that Hadley will neither confirm nor deny the existence of ? Who will these "incidents" be reported to? How will we know if an investigation takes place, whether anyone is held accountable, whether remedial action to fix this phantom, secret penal system actually takes place?

Hadley is asking us to just "trust", unquestioningly, Bush, Cheney, Goss, Rumsfeld, to do the "right thing" when "no one is looking". These war criminals have shown no inclination to do the "right thing" when everyone was looking, and I'm supposed to read what Hadley spews and accept it, trustingly?

The report that these criminals use former Soviet system prisons as secret detention facilities, is consistant with their Abu Ghraib "model".

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...051102-10.html
Press Briefing with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

Fact sheetIn Focus: 2005 Summit of the Americas

3:00 P.M. EST

.........Q Can I ask you a quick one on another subject? Why does the administration feel it's necessary to maintain a network of secret detention centers around the world, out of sight of the Congress and the American people, and out of reach of American law and values?

MR. HADLEY: There have been some press reports this morning that have touched on that subject. And as you can appreciate, they raise some issues about possible intelligence operations. And as you know, we don't talk about intelligence operations from this podium.

Q Don't they also raise issue of our values and our reputation in the world?

MR. HADLEY: Right, and I think the President has been pretty clear on that, that while we have to do what we -- do what is necessary to defend the country against terrorists attacks and to win the war on terror, the President has been very clear that we're going to do that in a way that is consistent with our values. And that is why he's been very clear that the United States will not torture. The United States will conduct its activities in compliance with law and international obligations.

And in some of the issues involving detainees and the like, as you know, where there have been allegations that people have not met the standard the President has set, there have been investigations, and they have been of two forms. There are over a dozen investigations that have been done in the Department of Defense to find out what has been going on. Two things have happened as a result. There have been revisions of procedures and practices to ensure that the standard the President set is met; and then there have been investigations, prosecutions, and people punished for the failure to meet those standards. So we think that, consistent with the President's guidance, we are both protecting the country against the terrorists and doing it in a way that is consistent with our values and principles.

Q If I could just press you on that, how do those self-correcting mechanisms that affirm our values and our laws, how do they work if the sites are secret to begin with?

MR. HADLEY: Well, the fact that they are secret, assuming there are such sites, does not mean that simply because something is -- and some people say that the test of your principles are what you do when no one is looking. And the President has insisted that whether it is in the public, or is in the private, the same principles will apply, and the same principles will be respected. And to the extent people do not meet up, measure up to those principles, there will be accountability and responsibility. ...........

Here is how the "trust us to do the right thing", even though we have a track record of waging illegal war of aggression, and a policy of torturing prisoners and protecting those who gave the orders to do so, plan to meet the "standard" accountability and responsibility that Hadley describes above. We plan not to hold CIA employees accountable, but to insure that they are exempt from accountability:

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...102500059.html
WHouse seeks to shield CIA from detainee rules: report

Reuters
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; 1:34 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has proposed that CIA employees be exempted from a measure barring cruel and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The proposal states that the legislation approved by the U.S. Senate shall not apply to counterterrorism operations abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department, the newspaper reported, citing two unidentified sources.

The report said Vice President Dick Cheney, with CIA Director Porter Goss present, handed the proposal to Sen. John McCain last Thursday.

McCain rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, the newspaper said, citing a government source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

McCain, an Arizona Republican who was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, led an effort in the Senate to establish the Army field manual as the standard for interrogations and bar cruel and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. military custody.

Bucking a White House veto threat, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan amendment to establish rules for detainee interrogation and treatment.

A number of lawmakers who supported the amendment have said abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and other U.S. military prisons have damaged the United States' international standing and risked retribution against U.S. soldiers who may be captured in the future.

The Bush administration said the measure would tie its hands as it fights terrorism and threatened to veto a $440 billion bill to fund the Pentagon if it contained the restrictions.

One more time....if you vote for or support or apologize for these Bush/Cheney administration thugs, who deliberaely undermine the reputation and reliability of the USA, thus putting our troops in avoidable, addtional danger if they are ever held captive, and constantly strive to act in even more secret and unaccountable ways, at home and abroad, you yourself are complicit and culpable in crimes against humanity and against the United States and it's people.

florida0214 · 11-04-2005, 06:18 AM

I have a question. Do any of you feel safer Knowing that somebody has the Balls to stoop to the level of the terrorist and maybe create some terror or our own?
They preach to the military about LOAC (law of Armed Conflict) and the rules of war. They military is strictly limited on what they can and cannot do during war. No shooting unles you are being shot at. Help injured enemy no longer abel to fight. Stuff like that. And I agree that these rules are very very necessary. It jsut sucks that the other side does not have the same passion for playing by the rules. LIke simply wearing a uniform so we know who were fighting. or simply being ethical. I mean they have this religion that is so right, but yet they use small children to do their dirty work. If dying for Allah is so Great why hasn't Osama Stepped up. Anyway I am ranting now and not really contributing to the thread. As far as I know we send our POW's who we think may posses signifigant Intelligance to Pakistan for Interrigation becuase in their country and under their laws it is not illegal to interrogate in what the USA would consider unethical Ways. Why put the CIA under investigation when there are people who are more than willing to interrogate/torture without fear of reprisal.
If An American soldier were caught and believed to be important that person woudl be tortured and most likely killed in a horrible way. How is that fair?

roachboy · 11-04-2005, 11:46 AM

Quote:

I have a question. Do any of you feel safer Knowing that somebody has the Balls to stoop to the level of the terrorist and maybe create some terror or our own?

no.

the only ideological position that this or any other american administration could possibly use to fight "terrorism" in any meaningful way is as a defense of the rule of law.
the bush people seem to see themselves as above the law.
so what you have is a conflict between two types of the same thing, one state, one not.

the authorization of this type of tactics originated with cheney's office.
the request that cia ops be exempted from a law that would require respect for the geneva convention originated with his office.
dick cheney should be understood as authorizing criminal acts.
he should be worrying about war crimes.
he should be facing prosecution.
at that point, we'll see how much this administration really cares about the rule of law.

but at the moment, the americans are in this respect are deploying a form of state terrorism. all this does is undermine the ability of this administration (and possibly others to follow) to make claims about any higher motive for conflict or even political action. you should perhaps think about what this would mean. the picture is not good.

fill me in on how exactly crimes against humanity advance the cause of anti-terrorism?

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-04-2005, 12:36 PM

How does this constitute crimes against humanity? Call me a "lumpenconservative" brainwashed by "teh" "Bushwar" and "Bushco" lies, but this is some seriously ignorant shit. I know you don't like Shrub, hell as of late I'm not that fond of the man either, really starting to piss me off to be honest. That however does not make the man wrong in all situations. THe executive is granted certain wartime powers, as the commander-in-chief of the military, the man is allowed to establish military tribunals, he is allowed to detain people deemed illegal combatants outside of common/criminal jurisdiction, anybody captured in Afghanistan who is figured to be Al Qaeda is not legally entitled to any provisions of military protection whether it be Geneva or Hague accords, they are illegally fighting a war and they forfeit it by the way they fight.

Furthermore I think people like you are a cancer on America, again I know Bush isn't always right, by and large the dude is a moron, but we are fighting a war and it is shit like this that makes it clear that certain people don't have the balls to do what is necessary to win a war against a quasi-corporeal REAL enemy, all this shit does is hamstring America.

What were those one documents called, the Manchester memos or something? You know those documents that were seized at a raid from a group of terrorists where they were told to lie in all cases and allege mistreatment in torture, which by the way I know it happens, I just A) don't care when it comes to illegal combatants who want to kill me for 40 virgins from Allah and B) I think America's national security trumps a foreign persons rights, especially somebody who is a fucking terrorist. It's always funny how you Roach and Host, taking any attempt to get at the administration, will take any side against them. Osama had a term for American civilians, he called us the paper tiger, who knows he just has to put the heat on and people like you will start screaming and yelping and Running, that's how he knows he can beat us, and to honest I agree with him.

Finally Any talk about war crimes is perposterous, yes let's send our men, leaders and those who follow orders to an extra-judicial group, that doesn't rule by our accords such as double jeopardy, right to counsel, and right to not stand as witness against themselves; let's send them to a group of foreign nationals, who have a political agenda, who don't so much care about the truth or justice, but who just want to strike at America because they don't agree with out policy, bright fucking idea.

roachboy · 11-04-2005, 12:42 PM

so if i understand the point of the above correctly, you are ruling out any possibility that bushco could be held accountable for this kind of foul policy by a non-american body? your argument to support this claim--if i understand it--seems to me weak.
why should the eu not investigate?
why should there not be consequences?
what domestic body is capable of holding someone like dick cheney to account for this kind of action, this policy?
this is not a technical question of jurisidictions--that would be another matter--but in principle, what possible process would you have in mind that could stop such policies on the part of a standing administration from within the united states?

edit: it seems to me that your argument, mojo, would imply that no matter what the united states does, no matter how far it goes in duplicating the characteristics of the enemy it is supposed to fight, all is fair, all is ok, nothing to be done.
this sounds like little more than a rationalization of a politics of impunity, which is suicide in the long run both internationally and domestically.

even if you take this bush-notion of a "war on terrorism" seriously--which i do not--i think it a joke--more incomprehensiably if you accept it on the administrations terms--you still have to admit that the transformation of the american position into a duplicate of what it is trying to fight is not good.

it also seem top me that the real basis of your argument is some kind of quaint nationalism. an assumption of the ultimate status of nation-states as over against the international community---something you would share with the bush people then. this administration is on its way to providing a strong demonstration that the american political system cannot be trusted to privde itself with responsible governance and perhaps should be subject to some oversight. for myself, i would not object to that.

last point: as for source material--if this were an isolated revelation, perhaps i would take your claims about evidence seriously-but it is not.

stevo · 11-04-2005, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

How does this constitute crimes against humanity? Call me a "lumpenconservative" brainwashed by "teh" "Bushwar" and "Bushco" lies, but this is some seriously ignorant shit. I know you don't like Shrub, hell as of late I'm not that fond of the man either, really starting to piss me off to be honest. That however does not make the man wrong in all situations. THe executive is granted certain wartime powers, as the commander-in-chief of the military, the man is allowed to establish military tribunals, he is allowed to detain people deemed illegal combatants outside of common/criminal jurisdiction, anybody captured in Afghanistan who is figured to be Al Qaeda is not legally entitled to any provisions of military protection whether it be Geneva or Hague accords, they are illegally fighting a war and they forfeit it by the way they fight.

Furthermore I think people like you are a cancer on America, again I know Bush isn't always right, by and large the dude is a moron, but we are fighting a war and it is shit like this that makes it clear that certain people don't have the balls to do what is necessary to win a war against a quasi-corporeal REAL enemy, all this shit does is hamstring America.

What were those one documents called, the Manchester memos or something? You know those documents that were seized at a raid from a group of terrorists where they were told to lie in all cases and allege mistreatment in torture, which by the way I know it happens, I just A) don't care when it comes to illegal combatants who want to kill me for 40 virgins from Allah and B) I think America's national security trumps a foreign persons rights, especially somebody who is a fucking terrorist. It's always funny how you Roach and Host, taking any attempt to get at the administration, will take any side against them. Osama had a term for American civilians, he called us the paper tiger, who knows he just has to put the heat on and people like you will start screaming and yelping and Running, that's how he knows he can beat us, and to honest I agree with him.

Finally Any talk about war crimes is perposterous, yes let's send our men, leaders and those who follow orders to an extra-judicial group, that doesn't rule by our accords such as double jeopardy, right to counsel, and right to not stand as witness against themselves; let's send them to a group of foreign nationals, who have a political agenda, who don't so much care about the truth or justice, but who just want to strike at America because they don't agree with out policy, bright fucking idea.

Here Here

host · 11-04-2005, 12:50 PM

Mojo, you have supported and enabled an administration that has broken the cardinal rule that my avatar-sake, SCOTUS and Nuremberg nazi war crimes/crimes against humanity chief prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, outlined in his closing arguments at the Nuremberg trials as the core crime.

Just as the leaders of nazi Germany did, the Bush administration has, through duplicitous, propagandist means, ordered U.S. troops into an illegal war of aggression, and associated crimes against humanity, against an internationally recognized sovereign nation that posed no threat to it's geographical neighbors national security, much less to ours.

We point this out, we express our objections to it, we document our objections via reports from multiple credible sources. You respond by telling us that, by doing this, we're pissing you off!!

I've posted a reminder that you, via your support of these political leaders and their policies, are complicit and culpable in their crimes against humanity.
Why don't you calm down and contmeplate, that....if there is even a shred of truth in what I'm accusing you of, you might want to run (don't walk) in the opposite direction of these thugs and their immoral and corrupting policies.

Consider that you are "feeling" your support for the Bush administation. There is an old thread that popped up again last night. A recent question solicits positive examples of what Bush & co. have done to advance important policy areas of potenital benefit to this country. I suggest that you look over the list, and try to seperate your own feelings from the reality of the direction that Bush & Co. are talking our country in.....and the rest of the world.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-04-2005, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

so if i understand the point of the above correctly, you are ruling out any possibility that bushco could be held accountable for this kind of foul policy by a non-american body? your argument to support this claim--if i understand it--seems to me weak.
why should the eu not investigate?
why should there not be consequences?
what domestic body is capable of holding someone like dick cheney to account for this kind of action, this policy?
this is not a technical question of jurisidictions--that would be another matter--but in principle, what possible process would you have in mind that could stop such policies on the part of a standing administration from within the united states?

No I'm not ruling out the possibility or that Bush should not be held accountable in the instance of wrong doing, I just don't think he did anything wrong whether legally or morally.

The EU is entitled to investigate, hell go to town for all I care, they are not American, they have no say in our sovereign affairs, and I would go totally ape shit if they did.

If Dick Cheney did something wrong, then he will get checked by our legal system, he will be held accountable. But since the line of action towed by the administration has been both historically and recently upheld by the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, found to be in tune with the spirit of our constitution, then obviously nothing will happen to him, the man did nothing wrong.

host · 11-04-2005, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

so if i understand the point of the above correctly, you are ruling out any possibility that bushco could be held accountable for this kind of foul policy by a non-american body? your argument to support this claim--if i understand it--seems to me weak.
why should the eu not investigate?
why should there not be consequences?
what domestic body is capable of holding someone like dick cheney to account for this kind of action, this policy?
this is not a technical question of jurisidictions--that would be another matter--but in principle, what possible process would you have in mind that could stop such policies on the part of a standing administration from within the united states?

roachboy, in his press conference of Nov. 2, NSC's Stephen Hadley assured all of us that the Bush & Co. if it is sanctioning secret CIA detention centers, will bring any abusive CIA personnel to account if they do indeed abuse or torture detainees.......just a week after Cheney demanded that CIA personnel be given advance immunity by Congress for any abuses that they might commit.

We're going back and forth here with an opposition that "feels" it's political opinions. They demonstrate that their opinions are immune to the influences of fact. I post to an assumed larger audience that is influenced by rational, documented argument.

Willravel · 11-04-2005, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

How does this constitute crimes against humanity? Call me a "lumpenconservative" brainwashed by "teh" "Bushwar" and "Bushco" lies, but this is some seriously ignorant shit. I know you don't like Shrub, hell as of late I'm not that fond of the man either, really starting to piss me off to be honest. That however does not make the man wrong in all situations. THe executive is granted certain wartime powers, as the commander-in-chief of the military, the man is allowed to establish military tribunals, he is allowed to detain people deemed illegal combatants outside of common/criminal jurisdiction, anybody captured in Afghanistan who is figured to be Al Qaeda is not legally entitled to any provisions of military protection whether it be Geneva or Hague accords, they are illegally fighting a war and they forfeit it by the way they fight.

Even if he started the war by falsifying or misrepresenting the truth? That's not the way wartime justice works. That's not the way any kind of justice works. awrtime powers are granted so that those in power can take the necessary steps to defend the American people. As it turns out, we were never in danger. Therefore, all this whoohaa is moot, because the foundation of the war has crumbled time and time again. IF we were attacked or in serious danger, I would want to know that those in power would work to keep us safe and defend us, as that is a part of their job. This is not that case.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

Furthermore I think people like you are a cancer on America, again I know Bush isn't always right, by and large the dude is a moron, but we are fighting a war and it is shit like this that makes it clear that certain people don't have the balls to do what is necessary to win a war against a quasi-corporeal REAL enemy, all this shit does is hamstring America.

You think it takes balls to win a war? Have you ever taken any classes or studied game theory? I must be clear about this...bravery and fortitude do not win battles or wars. They are wonderful virtues that people should admire, but their place on the battlefield lays far behind intelligence. As you said, Bush has shown time and again that he is a moron. Brave morons usually lose.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

What were those one documents called, the Manchester memos or something? You know those documents that were seized at a raid from a group of terrorists where they were told to lie in all cases and allege mistreatment in torture, which by the way I know it happens, I just A) don't care when it comes to illegal combatants who want to kill me for 40 virgins from Allah and B) I think America's national security trumps a foreign persons rights, especially somebody who is a fucking terrorist. It's always funny how you Roach and Host, taking any attempt to get at the administration, will take any side against them. Osama had a term for American civilians, he called us the paper tiger, who knows he just has to put the heat on and people like you will start screaming and yelping and Running, that's how he knows he can beat us, and to honest I agree with him.

They were called the Downing Street Memos. You might want to look into who the memos were really siezed from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

Finally Any talk about war crimes is perposterous, yes let's send our men, leaders and those who follow orders to an extra-judicial group, that doesn't rule by our accords such as double jeopardy, right to counsel, and right to not stand as witness against themselves; let's send them to a group of foreign nationals, who have a political agenda, who don't so much care about the truth or justice, but who just want to strike at America because they don't agree with out policy, bright fucking idea.

How do you know what they do or don't care for? Many of those fighting American soldiers in Iraq now consider themselves to be freedom fighters. We invaded their land and they want us out now. From their perspective, and from the perspective of many others, they have the moral high ground. They are looking for justice.

I think it would be benificial for you to meet people living in Iraq right now. Their perspectives are frightening and will change your perception of reality in that place very much.

stevo · 11-04-2005, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

We're going back and forth here with an opposition that "feels" it's political opinions. They demonstrate that their opinions are immune to the influences of fact.

I should end all of my arguements with this. It fits so perfectly. You think you argue with fact. I think I argue with fact. You think I think my opinions are immune to the influences of fact, while I think you think your opinions are immune to the influences of fact. hmmm. One of us is a complete idiot. just not sure who.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-04-2005, 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Mojo, you have supported and enabled an administration that has broken the cardinal rule that my avatar-sake, SCOTUS and Nuremberg nazi war crimes/crimes against humanity chief prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, outlined in his closing arguments at the Nuremberg trials as the core crime.

Just as the leaders of nazi Germany did, the Bush administration has, through duplicitous, propagandist means, ordered U.S. troops into an illegal war of aggression, and associated crimes against humanity, against an internationally recognized sovereign nation that posed no threat to it's geographical neighbors national security, much less to ours.

That's your perogative. This war is not illegal on any terms, Bush in tune with the constitution acting in good faith, right or wrong (appears to be wrong), got congressional approval to go to war with Iraq. The executive is the commander-in-chief of the military, he has sworn to defend the constitution and America from it's enemies, Iraq was deemed to be a threat by both Republicans and Democrats, and don't go saying the dems were dupped they knew what they were doing and to say otherwise is really pathetic.

Quote:

We point this out, we express our objections to it, we document our objections via reports from multiple credible sources. You respond by telling us that, by doing this, we're pissing you off!!

Yeah you are pissing me off, people like you piss me off because some of the shit you say, namely the shit in this post, piss me off. I don't care if your sources are credible, they are wrong, I am right, I am the godhead of my universe.

Quote:

I've posted a reminder that you, via your support of these political leaders and their policies, are complicit and culpable in their crimes against humanity.
Why don't you calm down and contmeplate, that....if there is even a shred of truth in what I'm accusing you of, you might want to run (don't walk) in the opposite direction of these thugs and their immoral and corrupting policies.

What crimes against humanity?!?!? Show me them, please, just stop saying they are committing these crimes and tell me what they are actually doing. Tell me how our Supreme Court and Federal district courts are wrong compared to an Oped piece or a news article or possibly a world body that has no authority or sovereignity.

Furthermore let me tell you I'm a thug. I think people of the world I am not at the helm of this government, if I had Bush's power I would lay anybody caught in the cross hairs of this war on terror, which is MORAL and us justified, they would be caught in my wake. Chances are I would bomb the shit out of the Kaba, and construct a toilet from the wreckage and shit in it, and I wouldn't care if I pissed off Muslims world wide or in America, because guess what, although not all Muslims are terrorists, the terrorists we are engaged against are fucking muslim enemies.

Quote:

Consider that you are "feeling" your support for the Bush administation. There is an old thread that popped up again last night. A recent question solicits positive examples of what Bush & co. have done to advance important policy areas of potenital benefit to this country. I suggest that you look over the list, and try to seperate your own feelings from the reality of the direction that Bush & Co. are talking our country in.....and the rest of the world.

I support Shrub in so much that I could not bring myself to vote for Kerry, Bush reasons for the Iraq war were not mine, as I've always said all evil needs to survive and thrive is for good men to do nothing, karma finally caught up with Saddam and the world will be a better place for it.

In this case though the issue seems more to be Afghanistan, and not Iraq. I fully support any and all action taken by this administration in the wake of 9/11 and in regards to going after OBL and Al Qaeda. The Afghanistan war is completely legimate morally legally what have you, pardon my bluntness and rudeness but in my opinion if you say otherwise you are a complete fucking moron devide of a pratical sense of reality, you would also be a coward. This only applies if you are against our action in being there though, I'm not going to hate on you guys for disagreeing on the policies used in the after fact, I just think you are wrong.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-04-2005, 01:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

Even if he started the war by falsifying or misrepresenting the truth? That's not the way wartime justice works. That's not the way any kind of justice works. awrtime powers are granted so that those in power can take the necessary steps to defend the American people. As it turns out, we were never in danger. Therefore, all this whoohaa is moot, because the foundation of the war has crumbled time and time again. IF we were attacked or in serious danger, I would want to know that those in power would work to keep us safe and defend us, as that is a part of their job. This is not that case.

Read above you can't proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Bush knowingly falsified information. Being the President he is allowed to act in good and to execute any laws passed by congress.

Quote:

You think it takes balls to win a war? Have you ever taken any classes or studied game theory? I must be clear about this...bravery and fortitude do not win battles or wars. They are wonderful virtues that people should admire, but their place on the battlefield lays far behind intelligence. As you said, Bush has shown time and again that he is a moron. Brave morons usually lose.

It does take balls to win a war. You need fortitude, you need to believe you are fighting for the greater good, I happen to think we are. I also think you need to be more ruthless then your enemies, like stated I think anybody standing against us is getting off easy.

Quote:

They were called the Downing Street Memos. You might want to look into who the memos were really siezed from.

Aer they the downing street memos? I thought those were the ones accusing Blair of the same shit as Shrub. Thanks for clarifying, but the point remains the smae in light of the name of the fucking papers.

Quote:

How do you know what they do or don't care for? Many of those fighting American soldiers in Iraq now consider themselves to be freedom fighters. We invaded their land and they want us out now. From their perspective, and from the perspective of many others, they have the moral high ground. They are looking for justice.

I think it would be benificial for you to meet people living in Iraq right now. Their perspectives are frightening and will change your perception of reality in that place very much.

By and large, I don't hate on these insurgents. I think they are fucking morons, making their case way worse, but if I were in the same situation I would probably fight too. They would be smart to work in the system, that would get us out of Iraq faster, something both of us want. Like I said to win you must be committed and have fortitude, these cats have it, dissenters here ruin and impede our effort and thats why we will lose this fight. I do not side with the terrorists, with people like Zarqawi, he is not a Freedom fighter, he is a sociopath and should be impaled on a fucking stick.

Willravel · 11-04-2005, 01:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

Read above you can't proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Bush knowingly falsified information. Being the President he is allowed to act in good and to execute any laws passed by congress.

But...it was clear more than a year ago that the WMDs and Al Qaeda links to Iraq were totally wrong. Since then we have continued to defend our position that we are right. We were wrong. We have continued to act in Iraq as we did when we thought there were WMDs and Al Qaeda links. I can't prove the information was falsified, but it seems to be seaping out as we speak. We know that Bush wanted a war with Iraq before 9/11, and then suddenly false ties came forward in the intelligence community after orders from the White House came to look for those connections. In other words, the war was forced. That is a fact. There is simply no disputing that. Even if Bushco was grossly incompetant instead of dishonest, that is still wrong. We were looking for a fight. By doing so he has obviously put us in more danger today than before the war on Iraq, as global terrorism is up many times what it was before the war. He has failed to protect the American people from threats both foreign and domestic, which is a big part of his job.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

It does take balls to win a war. You need fortitude, you need to believe you are fighting for the greater good, I happen to think we are. I also think you need to be more ruthless then your enemies, like stated I think anybody standing against us is getting off easy.

We do not live in the Wonderful World of Disney. In this world believing that you are right and being brave does not win wars. I am sorry, but you are very much wrong in saying that you need bravery, espically ruthless bravery, to win.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

Aer they the downing street memos? I thought those were the ones accusing Blair of the same shit as Shrub. Thanks for clarifying, but the point remains the smae in light of the name of the fucking papers.

They implicate Bush and Blair. That's pretty detrimental to your argument.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

By and large, I don't hate on these insurgents. I think they are fucking morons, making their case way worse, but if I were in the same situation I would probably fight too. They would be smart to work in the system, that would get us out of Iraq faster, something both of us want. Like I said to win you must be committed and have fortitude, these cats have it, dissenters here ruin and impede our effort and thats why we will lose this fight. I do not side with the terrorists, with people like Zarqawi, he is not a Freedom fighter, he is a sociopath and should be impaled on a fucking stick.

I didn't accuse you of hating the Iraqi rebels, I implied that you don't understand them. You suggested that they have no interest in truth or justice. That is wholely incorrect. Their intention is to remove an outside military force from their land. Again, from their persopective they are on the side of right and the side of justice. How many million Iraqi's did we kill through sanctions? We are not savoirs.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-04-2005, 01:55 PM

A) There is a difference between balls and bravery. You need to be a big game shooter to win wars, besides obvious points of strategery, you do need to be ruthless and you have to be committed.

B) I think you are misreading or representing what I wrote about the justice thing. I wasn't talking about the Iraqi's and Justice. My initial reply was in regards to the fact that people like Shrub or Cheney should stand for war crimes, that would have to be at the UN court in Hague probably, that's what i was talking about.

Willravel · 11-04-2005, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

A) There is a difference between balls and bravery. You need to be a big game shooter to win wars, besides obvious points of strategery, you do need to be ruthless and you have to be committed.

The difference between balls and bravery depends on who you ask. In reality 'Balls' usually refers to wrekless courage. If you're suggesting this administration has balls, I agree. The problem is that in any situation not involving rollerblades and a handrail, balls probalby isn't appropriate because of the wreklass part. Do you really want to be run by a government that can be classified as wrekless? Do you want that government to act in a wrekless manner, espically when engaged in or starting a war? Courage is a fine virtue to have, and can be benificial in war, but wreklessness hinders us, it doesn't help us. As for commitment, everyone assumes that we have to stay the course with Iraq and stay committed. If you enact a plan base don information, and you find out that information is wrong (for whatever reason), what will committing to your actions really do but further your mistake? Yes, what I am suggesting is the removal of all US troops from Iraq starting now and ending in a few months. I realize that it *could* start a civil war, but there is a civil war already and many of those fighting in that civil war are fighting because we are there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

B) I think you are misreading or representing what I wrote about the justice thing. I wasn't talking about the Iraqi's and Justice. My initial reply was in regards to the fact that people like Shrub or Cheney should stand for war crimes, that would have to be at the UN court in Hague probably, that's what i was talking about.

I did misunderstand you. I believe that justice would be served if those responsible for the misinformation are charged and found guilty of their crimes.

Rekna · 11-04-2005, 03:50 PM

for some reason i see yellow text coming soon....

powerclown · 11-04-2005, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

We were looking for a fight. By doing so he has obviously put us in more danger today than before the war on Iraq, as global terrorism is up many times what it was before the war.

"He" put us in more danger?
Who is this "He" you are referring to? Teddy Kennedy?

I think this bears repeating.

Below are a collection of comments gleaned from Democratic Leaders, circa pre-2004 presidential election.
I believe it is important to note these comments in light of the current political climate.

--

Quote:

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
--President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
--President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998.

Quote:

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
--Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998.

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies ."
--Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.

Quote:

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
--Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

Quote:

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
--Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998

Quote:

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
--Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.

Quote:

"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
--Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001.

Quote:

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
--Sen. Carl Levin (d, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.

Quote:

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
--Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.

Quote:

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
--Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.

Quote:

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
--Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.

Quote:

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years . We also should remember we have alway s underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
--Sen. Jay Rockerfeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

Quote:

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do."
--Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

Quote:

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
--Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

Quote:

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction. "[W]ithout question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he has continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ...
Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

Pre-Election Gore

Quote:

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
--Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
--Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

Post-Election Gore

Quote:

Gore Attacks Bush Over Iraq War

Gore accused Bush of a fabrication over Iraq

Former US Vice-President Al Gore has accused the Bush administration of deliberately misleading the people about its reasons for invading Iraq.
He said Mr Bush tried to link Saddam Hussein with the 11 September attacks.

The BBC's Jannat Jalil in Washington says it was Mr Gore's most scathing attack on the Bush administration yet.

'Untold damage'

Mr Gore accused President Bush of "intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert the linkage between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein".

Speaking at Georgetown University in Washington, Mr Gore said that if the administration had not lied about there being a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then it must have been very gullible to believe what he called the flimsy scraps of evidence that had been used to justify invading Iraq.

"Right from the start, beginning very soon after the attacks of 9/11, President Bush made a decision to start mentioning Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath, in a cynical mantra designed to fuse them together as one in the public's mind," he said.

Our correspondent says President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have continued to insist that there is a link, despite the fact that the respected independent commission investigating 9/11 reported this month that it found no evidence of a relationship.

Mr Gore also said the war in Iraq had caused untold damage, not just in terms of lives lost or financial or military terms, but to democracy itself.

--

Why are you so quick to blame it all on Bush, knowing - as a matter of Public Record - what the Democrats in Congress had to say about Iraq? If it weren't for the Democratic Congressional approval from those quoted above and other Dems, Bush couldn't have put one fighter jet into Iraqi airspace.

Rekna · 11-04-2005, 08:11 PM

maybe it is safe to blame bush because bush had more info than the rest of congress. he was the one who made the case to go to war. He was the person with the most knoweldge of the situation and he made assertions that people believed because he is our president and shouldn't attempt to misslead us in any way.

I'm sorry but if a CEO of a company pitches and idea and says here is what we are going to do and he convinces the board to go along with it. Then the idea fails miserably and costs the company a tun of money and it's reputation who do you think takes the blame for it? The CEO or the Board? I'm betting the stockholders hold the CEO's feet to the flame long before they do the bored.

The fact is Bush is the person in charge, he made the case to go to war based on many claims, all of these claimes turned out wrong, he is the one to blame. You can't avoid the fact that he was the one person who had the power to push this or stop this and he chose to spear head it himself. He put his credibilty on the line and now he has to answer for that.

powerclown · 11-04-2005, 08:16 PM

The CEO answers to the Board of Directors. Not vice-versa.
A CEO can do nothing that isn't approved of by at least 51% of The Board.

Mojo_PeiPei · 11-04-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

maybe it is safe to blame bush because bush had more info than the rest of congress. he was the one who made the case to go to war. He was the person with the most knoweldge of the situation and he made assertions that people believed because he is our president and shouldn't attempt to misslead us in any way.

They looked at the same intelligence. Said intelligence went through committee's, intelligence committee's are usually chaired by the higher ranking party officials.

Quote:

I'm sorry but if a CEO of a company pitches and idea and says here is what we are going to do and he convinces the board to go along with it. Then the idea fails miserably and costs the company a tun of money and it's reputation who do you think takes the blame for it? The CEO or the Board? I'm betting the stockholders hold the CEO's feet to the flame long before they do the bored.

The fact is Bush is the person in charge, he made the case to go to war based on many claims, all of these claimes turned out wrong, he is the one to blame. You can't avoid the fact that he was the one person who had the power to push this or stop this and he chose to spear head it himself. He put his credibilty on the line and now he has to answer for that.

Being the President he is in charge of the military, if the intelligence said something it's his duty to act.

host · 11-05-2005, 12:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

.......If Dick Cheney did something wrong, then he will get checked by our legal system, he will be held accountable. But since the line of action towed by the administration has been both historically and recently upheld by the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, found to be in tune with the spirit of our constitution, then obviously nothing will happen to him, the man did nothing wrong.

Quote:

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1001434514
More Fodder for Press: Wilkerson Charges Cheney Responsible for Prisoner Abuse

By E&P Staff

Published: November 04, 2005 2:30 PM ET

NEW YORK His initial blast, on Oct. 19, at a luncheon in Washington, D.C. drew wide press attention. Now Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, is at it again. In an interview for National Public Radio he charged that Vice President Cheney's office--and new chief aide David Addingtoon--was responsible for directives which led to U.S soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wilkerson said he had some hard evidence: a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office directly to Cheney's staff. The directives, he said, contradicted a 2002 order by President Bush for the military to abide by the Geneva Convention rules against torture.

The former Powell aide, in his October statements, declared that Cheney and Rumsfeld operated a "cabal" that had hijacked U.S. foreign and military policy.

Now, talking to NPR, he said, "There was a visible audit trail from the Vice President's office through the Secretary of Defense, down to the commanders in the field," authorizing practices that led to the abuse of detainees.”

He said that Powell had assigned him to investigate this after stories emerged about U.S troops abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he was “privy to the paperwork, both classified and unclassified, that the secretary of State asked me to assemble on how this all got started.”

Wilkerson called Addington "a staunch advocate of allowing the president in his capacity as commander-in-chief to deviate from the Geneva Conventions."

The former Powell aide is 31-year military veteran and former director of the Marine Corps War College. Some have noted that he often expresses what Colin Powell believes, but can't or won't say.

Wilkerson has become a loud and persistent critic of Cheney and Rumsfeld who will likely prove difficult for them to discredit, especially if he has the evidence that he claims to have, and if he can provoke enough of a response from these thugs that they react by attacking Colin Powell.

In my earlier post, concerning Stephen Hadley's Nov. 2 press briefing; it appeared from the "trust us to hold abusers of detainees in secret CIA prisons, if they do exist, accountable, when no one is looking", it seemed as if Hadley had not been reading the newspapers. The following report indicates that Cheney probably isn't reading them, either.

Are these thugs for real? Who won the world series in the parallel universe where the folks who attempt posts here that try to "explain it all away", live?

Quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110401451.html
Cheney Seeks CIA Exemption to Torture Ban

By DAVID ESPO and LIZ SIDOTI
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 5, 2005; 1:11 AM

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to allow CIA exemptions to a proposed ban on the torture of terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in a closed-door session.

Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants added, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided one was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.

The vice president made his comments at a regular weekly private meeting of Senate Republican senators, according to several lawmakers who attended. Cheney often attends the meetings, a chance for the rank-and-file to discuss legislative strategy, but he rarely speaks.

In this case, the room was cleared of aides before the vice president began his remarks, said by one senator to include a reference to classified material. The officials who disclosed the events spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the discussion......

.......Arizona Sen. John McCain dissented, officials said.

McCain, who was tortured while held as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is the chief Senate sponsor of an anti-torture provision that has twice cleared the Senate and triggered veto threats from the White House.

Quote:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...top_world_news
McCain Vows to Add Abuse Wording to All Senate Bills (Update1)

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg)

.......... McCain said his intent is to prevent abuses such as those at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He vowed today that his measure would be ``on every vehicle that goes through this body'' until it's enacted into law. ``It's not going away,'' he said on the Senate floor. ``This issue is incredibly harmful to the United States of America and our image throughout the world.''

President George W. Bush threatened to veto the entire defense spending bill over McCain's amendment. More recently, the White House offered to go along if Central Intelligence Agency agents working overseas were exempt from any restrictions. The CIA is holding accused terrorists at secret prisons in Eastern Europe, The Washington Post reported Nov. 2.

McCain, who himself was tortured as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, said he had ``no idea'' why the White House was pushing the CIA exemption. That loophole ``would be totally unacceptable,'' McCain said earlier this week, adding he's communicated that view to Vice President Dick Cheney..........

This is going to progress similarly to the Cheney WMD lies that were unquestioningly embraced and repeated, ad infinitum, by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and by folks here who display a curious and remarkable ability to ignore all reports that point to the conclusion that these "leaders" are war criminals.

We'll explore.....and post what we find out.....you'll ignore.....you'll gradually stop challenging what we post, as you eventually stopped challenging our opinions concerning the non-existence of WMD in Iraq....or in fantasy re-location sites.

Consider that there would be no "secret" CIA prisons, no torture, and no Bush or Cheney still holding high office, if you stopped supporting them last year when their WMD "fact fixing" was exposed for what it actually was....

trickyy · 11-05-2005, 01:25 AM

here is a link to give you some more context for the previous post. there is a brief transcript of the wilkerson interview, including some of what was summarized in the e&p article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041100879.html

Quote:

"Mr. WILKERSON: What happened was that the secretary of Defense, under the cover of the vice president's office, began to create an environment -- and this started from the very beginning when David Addington, the vice president's lawyer, was a staunch advocate of allowing the president in his capacity as commander in chief to deviate from the Geneva Conventions. Regardless of the president having put out this memo, they began to authorize procedures within the armed forces that led to, in my view, what we've seen.

"INSKEEP: We have to get more detail about that because the military will say, the Pentagon will say they've investigated this repeatedly and that all the investigations have found that the abuses were committed by a relatively small number of people at relatively low levels. What hard evidence takes those abuses up the chain of command and lands them in the vice president's office, which is where you're placing it?

"Mr. WILKERSON: I'm privy to the paperwork, both classified and unclassified, that the secretary of State asked me to assemble on how this all got started, what the audit trail was, and when I began to assemble this paperwork, which I no longer have access to, it was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president's office through the secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field that in carefully couched terms -- I'll give you that -- that to a soldier in the field meant two things: We're not getting enough good intelligence and you need to get that evidence, and, oh, by the way, here's some ways you probably can get it. And even some of the ways that they detailed were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war.

it's been a rough week or so.

Seaver · 11-05-2005, 02:10 AM

Quote:

Mojo, you have supported and enabled an administration that has broken the cardinal rule that my avatar-sake, SCOTUS and Nuremberg nazi war crimes/crimes against humanity chief prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, outlined in his closing arguments at the Nuremberg trials as the core crime.

I know I'm coming late to this conversation... but this is just flat out wrong. The laws pertaining to this make these terrorists (freedom fighters as you so describe them as) the same legal standing as the Werewolves in post-WW2 Germany.

Now holding them, feeding them, and "reasonable" treatment is a hell of a lot better IMO than simply shooting them as the US/French/Brit/Russians legally did postwar.

host · 11-05-2005, 02:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

I know I'm coming late to this conversation... but this is just flat out wrong. The laws pertaining to this make these terrorists (freedom fighters as you so describe them as) the same legal standing as the Werewolves in post-WW2 Germany.

Now holding them, feeding them, and "reasonable" treatment is a hell of a lot better IMO than simply shooting them as the US/French/Brit/Russians legally did postwar.

Perhaps I was not clear enough. My point is that, at Nuremberg, Justice Jackson believed that the core crime was waging aggressive war...or...war of aggression, and that other lawbreaking against humanity (such as secret prisions operated by covert agencies, abuse or torture of detainees, etc.) followed the initial, enabling act.

There is not much evidence to indicate that the "Werewolves" were signifigant beyond the Bush administration's effort to weave them into their post Iraq invasion propaganda........

Quote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/3661134.stm
Thursday, 16 September, 2004, 09:21 GMT 10:21 UK

Iraq war illegal, says Annan
............When pressed on whether he viewed the invasion of Iraq as illegal, he said: "Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

Mr Annan's comments provoked angry suggestions from a former Bush administration aide that they were timed to influence the US November election........

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200310021...ves_2003.shtml

Historians: Germany's resistance unlike Iraq's

White House has drawn on comparison

By MAURA REYNOLDS
Los Angeles Times
Friday, August 29, 2003
Iraq

WASHINGTON - As violence continues in Iraq, Bush administration officials have increasingly compared the postwar situation there with that of Germany after World War II. In particular, they have likened the guerrilla-type attacks on U.S. forces to actions by the die-hard Nazis known as "werewolves."

"SS officers - called 'werewolves' - engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them, much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a speech Monday.

But historians and military analysts take issue with that comparison.

"The werewolves existed more in the idea or the fantasy stage than ever as a real phenomenon," said Lt. Col. Kevin Farrell, a historian at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The werewolves were founded in September 1944 by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who saw them as a special force that would work behind U.S. lines to sabotage equipment and kill U.S. troops. About 5,000 SS officers were trained as werewolves.

But according to Perry Biddiscombe, a historian of postwar Germany who wrote a 1998 book on the werewolves, the force was designed only to assist the German army in winning the war. It was not created to be an underground movement after a German defeat.

As a result, Biddiscombe said, Rice is correct that the SS's werewolves did attack U.S. troops - but the only documented attacks took place before the Nazis capitulated on May 7, 1945.

"After the end of the war there's a lot more ambiguity," said Biddiscombe, who teaches European history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

One reason for that ambiguity is that a few days before the Nazi surrender, the SS officially disbanded the werewolves. But in the last month of the war, as Germany collapsed, Nazi radio propaganda called on German citizens to take up arms to resist the occupying forces. Members of the Hitler Youth vowed to join the werewolves in attacking Allied troops, and some individual Germans who resisted after the surrender adopted the term "werewolf'" to describe themselves. ..............

...... "There was a lot of talk before the end of the war, especially within the Army, about underground units, fanatical Nazis who would hold out and commit sabotage and snipe at U.S. soldiers. But when it actually came to the point, there was some resistance - but it was not werewolf resistance," Berghahn said.

The most notorious documented werewolf attack was the assassination of the mayor of the town of Aachen on March 25, 1945, before the end of the war. The perpetrators were tried by U.S. authorities for the crime, Biddiscombe said. .......

........ Tom Schlesinger, a retired Army major and professor at Plymouth State University who served in Army intelligence in occupied Germany, described the werewolves as "almost a deliberate urban myth."

"I was in Germany all through the surrender and, although at lower rank, had access to all classified intelligence distribution as part of the occupation security force," Schlesinger said. "The werewolf story turned out to be mostly a hoax, perhaps some wishful thinking of a few SS officers, though it caused us a few inconveniences due to the phony alerts."

It's possible, Biddiscombe said, that some isolated werewolf cells or officers may have continued to operate for a few months after the war. Guerrilla-style attacks did take place against U.S. soldiers - stringing wires across roads to decapitate soldiers or pouring sand in gas tanks were two examples - and there were several suspicious deaths of U.S.-appointed mayors. In some towns, leaflets and posters threatened Germans who cooperated with the U.S. occupiers. But none of that activity can be directly attributed to the werewolves, historians say.

"The Army put bars on jeeps to prevent decapitation by wires, but that was the only action taken by the Army," said Farrell of Fort Leavenworth. "There's very little evidence of the werewolves offering effective resistance." ...........

........For the first month or two after the Nazis' surrender, there were about the same number of sabotage and sniper attacks in Germany as have taken place in postwar Iraq. But in Germany, such attacks dropped off after June 1945, a month after the surrender, and for the rest of that year deaths of U.S. troops subsided to "tens."...........

roachboy · 11-05-2005, 08:31 AM

interesting---powerclown's claim above, to the extent that it makes any sense in this context, is that the same "intelligence" information lead both factions within the american oligarchy to conclude that something was afoot in iraq--all of which points not to the validity of the bushcase for war, but to the importance of the doctored intel itself and to the central importance of a legal process that would result in charges being filed and trials held for those who engaged in the manipulation of that information--which was the premise for all arguments for war.
if an administration is willing to doctor information that congress assumes to be acurate/comprehensive, then there is a problem.
even someone as committed to justifying each and every act of this administration as you are powerclown can see that, surely.
if you have trouble with this scenario, just imagine this same thing having been done by a democrat and i am sure that you will be able to imagine a response.

=====
what is bewildering in the responses above that tend toward a support for the administration's policies is that what you are defending is the use of torture.
you are defending the creation of an elaborate system of concealing torture.
you are defending "disappearing" in a mode practiced by fascist military regimes in chile and argentina during the 1970s.
that is what you are defending.

it would perhaps make some sense to seperate the administration itself from its actions, that is to seperate the psychological need you seem to have that would drive you to see their actions as a priori elgitimate because they are a republican administration from what these actions are.

this is not about whether you like the bush administration.
this is not even about whether you found the claims to go to war to be compelling.
this is about whether you support the american use of torture.
and many of the responses that defend the administration above amount to a rationalization of this practice----i do not see how you can possibly defend it.

the other main tack in the responses above is a debate about the application of the term "war crimes" to these action.
1. surely if there is an action that would fall under that definition, it is the use of torture.
it is not clear whether the problem that irks folk about saying this perfectly obvious statement is that it implies something on the order of an international war crimes tribunal or assumes the existence of international legal standards that would be binding on nation-states.
so the argument from mojo above, for example, would lead toward the dissolving of the notion of war crimes on the basis of a refusal to accept any international legal standards/norms that would override domestic law.
following mojo's argument, then, it would follow that, for him, any adminsitration that persuades the legislature that war is rational in a particular situation acquires absolute impunity from that decision and cannot and should not be held to account for any action committed within that context.

the curious thing is that this position, aimed at a rejection of the notion of international law, comes to the same thing--it amounts to a defense of the administration's use of torture.

but there is a paradox in this as well: this same argument points to the centrality of the debate about the legitimacy of the intel that the administration used to fob off its case for war: it would follow that if this intel is demonstrated as false, then the case for war collapses; if the case for war collapses, then what of the declaration of this bizarre war on ghosts itself?
if the declaration is illegitimate because the premises that shaped it turned out to be false, would it not follow that the impunity mojo defends as part and parcel of war powers granted a president collapses as well?
and if that is true, what types of law might be invoked to hold an administration to account for torture in a normal legal context?
that is what is at stake in the seemingless endless debates about the intel.

Rekna · 11-05-2005, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

The CEO answers to the Board of Directors. Not vice-versa.
A CEO can do nothing that isn't approved of by at least 51% of The Board.

That sounds just like the president and congress....

and what if the CEO misslead the board into believing it was a good venture.

Rekna · 11-05-2005, 08:43 AM

again to say bush is blameless in all the failures of the iraq war is stupid. He is the commander and cheif he shares responsiblity in everything that happens. It is his duty to have good intelligence, it is his duty to put people into positions of power that will give him good intelligence. Ignorance is never an excuse. And this is all asumeing that congress and bush had the same intellegence which I don't think they did considering Bush knew about the Niger forgeries before his speach and congress didn't.

Rekna · 11-05-2005, 09:16 AM

the more i think about this and how it relates the to torture the more i am disgusted. Why is Bush threatening to veto and anti-torture bill? Why is Cheny saying "we don't use torture but the CIA should be exempt from this bill". I am going to make a bold statement here, if we have been using torture to interrogate prisoners then all the beheadings we decried are justified and it is a total shame.

host · 11-05-2005, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei

That's your perogative. This war is not illegal on any terms, Bush in tune with the constitution acting in good faith, right or wrong (appears to be wrong), got congressional approval to go to war with Iraq. The executive is the commander-in-chief of the military, he has sworn to defend the constitution and America from it's enemies, Iraq was deemed to be a threat by both Republicans and Democrats, and don't go saying the dems were dupped they knew what they were doing and to say otherwise is really pathetic......

.....What crimes against humanity?!?!? Show me them, please, just stop saying they are committing these crimes and tell me what they are actually doing. Tell me how our Supreme Court and Federal district courts are wrong compared to an Oped piece or a news article or possibly a world body that has no authority or sovereignity.....

.......I'm not going to hate on you guys for disagreeing on the policies used in the after fact, I just think you are wrong. http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...3&postcount=14

Mojo, I intended to respond to the above questions earlier, and I've since posted in this thread, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson's new accusations concerning Cheney and his replacement for Scooter Libby....David Addington,
as well as the reports that Cheney made a rare appeal to republican senators on tuesday to exempt the CIA from a new anti-torture legislative provision.
Last week, Bush reacted to a 90 to 9 senate vote that would specifically prohibit torture of detainees, by threatening to veto legislation that contained such a provision.

John McCain responded to Cheney's appeal by threatening to include the anti-torture provision in all future senate bills, until it passes.

You challenged me with "Show me them, please.....just stop saying they are committing these crimes and tell me what they are actually doing."
You ruled out the presentation of news articles of pronouncements of any "world body" as evidence of war crimes or crimes against humanity, on the part of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al.

Your restrictions on what you will "accept" leaves me few choices. I predict that "turning you", will be a gradual process, just as it was with the revelation that there were no Iraqi WMD. I recall that it took a presentation of the Jan. 12, 2005 White House press briefing to influence you to stop posting that WMD had or would be found.

Why would USMC Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former director of the Marine War College, 31 years in the USMC, trusted long time aid to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, lie repeatedly about Cheney and Rumsfeld foreign and war policy "initiatives" and Cheney's and Addington's origination of prisoner abusive directives to the military?
We now have Wilkerson, by the description of his public accusations, calling Cheney a war criminal, at the same time that Cheney repeatedly demands that the senate exempt the CIA from an anti-torture of detainees provision, a day before a WaPo report details discloses the existence of secret CIA prisons in eatern Europe.

As far as attacking Afghanistan...since I trust nothing that the Bush & Co. thugs tell us, I could not support that "campaign". Bush destroyed his own credibility, IMO, before he began his "war on terror":
There was this "statement" by Bush...just five days after 9/11.

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0010916-2.html
...........Never did anybody's thought process about how to protect America did we ever think that the evil-doers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious U.S. targets - never.............

There was this, total BS statement, still, available on the white house .gov :
Near the bottom of the page.

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...011204-17.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 4, 2001

President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting
Remarks by the President in Town Hall Meeting
Orange County Convention Center
Orlando, Florida

......... THE PRESIDENT: You bet. Your mother is relaying the Mike to you, Jordan.

Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."

And, Jordan, I wasn't sure what to think at first. You know, I grew up in a period of time where the idea of America being under attack never entered my mind -- just like your Daddy's and Mother's mind probably. And I started thinking hard in that very brief period of time about what it meant to be under attack. I knew that when I got all of the facts that we were under attack, there would be hell to pay for attacking America..............

Consider the following, Mojo....

Quote:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/t...estingday.html
..........There was no film footage of the first attack until at least the following day, and Bush didn't have access to a television until 15 or so minutes later. [Washington Times, 10/7/02] The Boston Herald later noted, "Think about that. Bush's remark implies he saw the first plane hit the tower. But we all know that video of the first plane hitting did not surface until the next day. Could Bush have meant he saw the second plane hit - which many Americans witnessed? No, because he said that he was in the classroom when Card whispered in his ear that a second plane hit." [Boston Herald, 10/22/02] Bush's recollection has many precise details. Is he simply confused? It's doubly strange why his advisors didn't correct him or - at the very least - stop him from repeating the same story only four weeks later. [White House, 1/5/02, CBS, 9/11/02] On January 5, 2002, Bush stated: "Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida ... and my Chief of Staff – well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane..." [White House, 1/5/02]

Unfortunately, Bush has never been asked - not even once - to explain these statements. His memory not only contradicts every single media report, it also contradicts what he said that evening. In his speech to the nation that evening, Bush said: "Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans." [White House, 9/11/01] It's not known what these emergency plans were, because neither Bush nor anyone in his administration mentioned this immediate response again. Implementing "emergency response plans" seems to completely contradict Bush's "by the way" recollection of a small airplane accident...........

And again...the same BS...one month later.......
Near the bottom of the page.

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0020105-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 5, 2002

President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California

......Q What was the first thing that went through your head when you heard that a plane crashed into the first building?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida. I had gone down to tell my little brother what to do, and -- just kidding, Jeb. (Laughter.) And -- it's the mother in me. (Laughter.) Anyway, I was in the midst of learning about a reading program that works. I'm a big believer in basic education, and it starts with making sure every child learns to read. And therefore, we need to focus on the science of reading, not what may feel good or sound good when it comes to teaching children to read. (Applause.) I'm just getting a plug in for my reading initiative.

Anyway, I was sitting there, and my Chief of Staff -- well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane, or -- anyway, I'm sitting there, listening to the briefing, and Andy Card came and said, "America is under attack."

And in the meantime, this teacher was going on about the curriculum, and I was thinking about what it meant for America to be under attack. It was an amazing thought. But I made up my mind that if America was under attack, we'd get them. (Applause.) I wasn't interested in lawyers, I wasn't interested in a bunch of debate. I was interested in finding out who did it and bringing them to justice. I also knew that they would try to hide, and anybody who provided haven, help, food, would be held accountable by the United States of America. (Applause.)

Anyway, it was an interesting day..........

I posted the following, back on July 5th:
Yeah, Mueller, Bush, et al, have said quite a lot of things that are conflicting, misleading, and inaccurate that I didn't include. In view of their astoundingly inept and inaccurate track record, coupled with their avoidance of accountability and unprecedented obsession for secrecy, I'm urging everyone to keep an open mind accept nothing that they have said, at face value. They have to earn that trust, and they obviously haven't. Have you noticed that the DHS has not changed the "terror color code" warning since shortly before the election last November? With Bush's new "mandate", there was no longer any need to pump the apparatus of fear up a notch to alarm or to distract the sheeple......

Quote:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/t.../update13.html
April 19, 2002: FBI Director Mueller states: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper—either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere—that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot." He also claims that the attackers used "extraordinary secrecy" and "investigators have found no computers, laptops, hard drives or other storage media that may have been used by the hijackers, who hid their communications by using hundreds of pay phones and cell phones, coupled with hard-to-trace prepaid calling cards." [FBI speech transcript, 4/19/02, Los Angeles Times, 4/22/02, he repeats the quote the next month, Senate Judiciary Statement, 5/8/02] However, before 9/11, CIA Director Tenet told the Senate that al-Qaeda is "embracing the opportunities offered by recent leaps in information technology," [CIA, 03/21/00], the FBI broke the al-Qaeda computer encryption before February 2001 (see February 13, 2001) [UPI, 2/13/01], witnesses report seeing the hijackers use computers for e-mail at public libraries in Florida and Maine [Sun-Sentinel, 9/16/01, Boston Herald, 10/5/01], in October 2001 there were many reports that hundreds of e-mails discussing the 9/11 plot had been found (see October 2001 (B)), Moussaoui's laptop was found to contain important information, etc... Look also at an MSNBC article about al-Qaeda using computers. [MSNBC, 4/19/02]

May 20-24, 2002: The Bush administration issues a remarkable series of terror warnings that many believe are politically motivated. Vice President Cheney warns it is "not a matter of if, but when" al-Qaeda will next attack the US. [CNN, 5/20/02] Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge says the same thing. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says terrorists will "inevitably" obtain weapons of mass destruction. FBI Director Mueller says more suicide bombings are "inevitable." [Washington Post, 5/22/02] Authorities also issue separate warnings that al-Qaeda terrorists might target apartment buildings nationwide, banks, rail and transit systems, the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge. USA Today titles an article, "Some Question Motives Behind Series of Alerts." [USA Today, 5/24/02] David Martin, CBS's national security correspondent, says, "Right now they're putting out all these warnings to change the subject from what was known prior to September 11 to what is known now." [Washington Post, 5/27/02] Remarkably, even White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says the alerts were issued "as a result of all the controversy that took place last week" (see May 15, 2002 and May 21, 2002). [Washington Times, 5/22/02] Time notes, "Though uncorroborated and vague, the terror alerts were a political godsend for an Administration trying to fend off a bruising bipartisan inquiry into its handling of the terrorist chatter last summer. After the wave of warnings, the Democratic clamor for an investigation into the government's mistakes subsided." [Time, 5/27/02]

June 18, 2002: FBI Director Mueller testifies before the Congressional 9/11 inquiry; his testimony is made public in September 2002. [AP, 9/26/02] He claims that with the possible exception of Zacarias Moussaoui, "To this day we have found no one in the United States except the actual hijackers who knew of the plot and we have found nothing they did while in the United States that triggered a specific response about them." [Congressional Intelligence Committee, 9/26/02] The Congressional 9/11 inquiry will later conclude near the end of 2002 that some hijackers had contact inside the US with individuals known to the FBI, and the hijackers "were not as isolated during their time in the United States as has been previously suggested." [Los Angeles Times, 12/12/02] Mueller also claims, "There were no slip-ups. Discipline never broke down. They gave no hint to those around them what they were about." [Congressional Intelligence Committee, 9/26/02] This statement overlooks some facts, such as the FAA's investigation into Hani Hanjour (see January 2001), Atta's strange visit to the Department of Agriculture (see Late April-Mid-May 2000), or what should have been an FAA investigation into Atta (see December 26, 2000).

Mueller appears to contradict quite a few news reports that appeared before
his April, 19, 2002 speech.

Quote:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/t.../update13.html
October 2001 (B): Reports this month indicate that many hijacker e-mails have been recovered. USA Today reports many unencrypted e-mails coordinating the 9/11 plans written by the hijackers in internet cafes have been recovered by investigators. [USA Today, 10/1/01] FBI sources say "hundreds of e-mails linked to the hijackers in English, Arabic and Urdu" have been recovered, with some messages including "operational details" of the attack. [Washington Post, 10/4/01] "A senior FBI official says investigators have obtained hundreds of e-mails in English and Arabic, reflecting discussions of the planned Sept. 11 hijackings." [Wall Street Journal, 10/16/01] However, in April 2002, FBI Director Mueller says no documentation of the 9/11 plot has been found (see April 19, 2002). By September 2002, the Chicago Tribune reports, "Of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of e-mails sent and received by the hijackers from public Internet terminals, none is known to have been recovered." [Chicago Tribune, 9/5/02]

July 11, 2002: It is reported that the FBI believes there are approximately 5,000 al-Qaeda agents inside the US. In early 2003, FBI Director Mueller reduces the estimate to "several hundred." The New York Times then says that even suggesting over 100 is probably an exaggeration made for political reasons. [New York Times, 2/16/03]

The following, in Rice's words, now describes the Bush admin., itself

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030123-1.html
"Why We Know Iraq is Lying" A Column by Dr. Condoleezza Rice
By Condoleezza Rice
Originally appeared in the New York Times on January 23, 2003

.....Many questions remain about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and arsenal and it is Iraq's obligation to provide answers. It is failing in spectacular fashion. By both its actions and its inactions, Iraq is proving not that it is a nation bent on disarmament, but that it is a nation with something to hide. Iraq is still treating inspections as a game. It should know that time is running out........

There is too much on the record, spewed by these thugs, that contradicts what we know to be true. In the face of this information, your stance appears unreasonable, and with the shift in Bush's poll numbers, on the fringe.
They seem to lie, even about things that don't seem to require lying.

You seem to support and appologize for them, even in instances where it would not erode your core beliefs to act in your own best interest by questioning what they are telling you.

I have no idea if it was legal or legitimate to attack Afghanistan after 9/11. Just like Fitzgerald's analogy of Libby "throwing sand in the umpire's face", so he could not "see the play", these thugs have not allowed you or I to see "the play" either. How can we know what is actually justified, they are not being "up front" with us....from at least the morning of 9/11 through today!

Seaver · 11-05-2005, 12:54 PM

Quote:

There is not much evidence to indicate that the "Werewolves" were signifigant beyond the Bush administration's effort to weave them into their post Iraq invasion propaganda........

I was unaware that bush was attempting to weave them into the "propoganda". It must not be that effective. I took it from my own research into WWII history.

And I believe it does equate fairly effectively. While the werewolves did not fight much against US forces, they used the same tactics of attacking those who helped the Americans as the insurgents are doing now.

powerclown · 11-05-2005, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

...what is bewildering in the responses above that tend toward a support for the administration's policies is that what you are defending is the use of torture.

Since I am not a politician bound to the laws of democracy and popular approval, I tend to differ (publicly, anyway) from say, John McCain, in my beliefs about how a major world power should operate in a hostile world. McCain says that what separates them from us is our superior moral qualities. I disagree with this.

I say that what separates us from them fall more along the lines of such concepts as intelligence, cunning, adaptability, flexibility, industry, creativity and ability, rather than any divinely attributed quality of superiority. And while there are established tenets of conventional warfare, there are also established tenets of unconventional warfare equally relevant. This is not to say that qualities such as empathy, benevolence and kindness are entirely irrelevant either.

So my opinion in regards to this hypocritical discussion of selective outrage is amusement. Surely, you and yours would condone with the greatest amount of merriment and moral approval, the drawing and quartering of every single member of the Bush Administration starting with Bush himself - after which you would have the boulevards lined with carbonfibre spears, upon which sit the severed heads of the entire Administration. It is pointless (intended) to try to convince me otherwise.

host · 11-05-2005, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

.......
So my opinion in regards to this hypocritical discussion of selective outrage is amusement. Surely, you and yours would condone with the greatest amount of merriment and moral approval, the drawing and quartering of every single member of the Bush Administration starting with Bush himself - after which you would have the boulevards lined with carbonfibre spears, upon which sit the severed heads of the entire Administration. It is pointless (intended) to try to convince me otherwise......

I already informed you, here http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...es#post1798132
that the war criminals who you have chosen to support and defend, are the ones obsessed with severed and mounted heads. What is it with you folks? Don't attempt to transfer your perversions onto us. We are peaceful folk who believe...if we act with the bankrupt character of the Bush cabal, we will become indistinguishable from them, as they have become, when they are compared to those who they have demonized, because of the way they choose to wage illegal war and commit crimes against humanity......

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7761272/
NBC News MEET THE PRESS

Sunday, May 8, 2005

Guests: Gary Schroen, former senior CIA agent, Author of “First In: How seven CIA officers opened the war on terrorism in Afghanistan;”

James Carville, political strategist;

Mary Matalin, political strategist

Moderator: Tim Russert, NBC News

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: This man, the third ranking al-Qaeda leader, Abu Faraj Al-Libbi, is captured. Why is this man, Osama bin Laden, still on the loose?

And will this man, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, sell nuclear weapons to al-Qaeda or use them to blackmail the world?

With us, Gary Schroen, a CIA officer for 32 years and author of "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan."...........

...........MR. RUSSERT: On September 1, 2001, you began a 90-day phaseout retiring from the CIA. Then came the horrific day of 8:46 AM, September 11, 2001. All our lives changed. You were asked to stay on at the CIA. On September 13th, you were summoned to the office of Cofer Black, the head of counterterrorism for the CIA. What did he tell you? What was your mission?

MR. SCHROEN: The mission was to--the first part of it was to go in and link up with the Northern Alliance, formerly headed by Ahmed Al-Massoud, and to win their confidence and their agreement to cooperate militarily with us. They were the only armed force on the ground in Afghanistan opposing the Taliban. The second part of it was, once the Taliban were broken, to attack the al-Qaeda organization, find bin Laden and his senior lieutenants and kill them.

MR. RUSSERT: Kill them?

MR. SCHROEN: Kill them.

MR. RUSSERT: Wasn't it illegal for us to kill foreign leaders?

MR. SCHROEN: I don't think at that point that the--I think the administration had gotten to the point where bin Laden and his guys were fair game.

MR. RUSSERT: As part of war?

MR. SCHROEN: As part of war.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Black gave you specific instructions on what he wanted you to bring home.

MR. SCHROEN: That's true. He did ask that once we got bin Laden and killed him, that we send his head back in a cardboard box on dry ice so that he could take it down and show the president.

MR. RUSSERT: Where would you find the dry ice in Afghanistan?

MR. SCHROEN: That's what I mentioned to him. I said, "Cofer, I think that I can come up with pikes to put the heads of the lieutenants on," which is the second part of what he wanted done. "Dry ice, we'll have to improvise.".......

Quote:

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai.../14/wbin14.xml
Bin Laden alive and threatening attack on Britain in terror tape
By Toby Harnden in Washington
(Filed: 14/11/2002)

..............Six days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mr Bush declared that bin Laden was wanted "dead or alive". The previous day, his Vice President Dick Cheney had said that he would willingly accept bin Laden's "head on a platter".

Some senior Bush administration officials were dismayed at the comments, believing they personalised the war against terrorism and opened Mr Bush to criticism should bin Laden prove more elusive than hoped..................

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20010916.html

............MR. RUSSERT: You wouldn't mind having his head on a platter.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I would take it today. ................

host · 11-05-2005, 03:04 PM

powerclown, WTF is with you guys? The former asst. to the POTUS/COS and NS advisor to the VPOTUS, indicted suspect Sccoter Libby wrote this, and attributed his own name to it:

Quote:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/conten...a_talk_collins
SCOOTER’S SEX SHOCKER
Issue of 2005-11-07
Posted 2005-10-31

.....Other sex scenes are less conventional. Where his Republican predecessors can seem embarrassingly awkward—the written equivalent of trying to cop a feel while pinning on a corsage—Libby is unabashed:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

And, finally:

He asked if they should fuck the deer.

The answer, reader, is yes.......

Check out the reader reviews -
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...f=cm_rev_next/

The severed mounted heads, the child porn and the bestiality references indicate to me that it is reasonable to consider that these are some sick MOFOs that you've aligned yourself with. Just more for you to deny consideration of as you devote your attention to shifting the source of the disgrace of our country by it's leadership, onto the very people who call atttention to it and who vigorously oppose it.

roachboy · 11-05-2005, 04:33 PM

everyone is entitled to their fantasy lives, powerclown, and if it floats your boat to imagine those who oppose the bush administration as threatening some kind of reign of terror, then have at it.
just dont pretend that this is relevant to anything, beyond maybe a glimpse into a curious psychological space you occupied for the length of time it took you to write the last paragraph in your last post at least.

i also do not see where you get a sense of glee on my or anyone else's part at ths shambles this administration has made: like you, i have to live here and, like you, i will have to live through the consequences of what these people are doing.
one of the central space being damaged is political.
one of the central aspects of that damage comes in the simultaneous draining of any meaning behind the discourses of morality and democracy.
if the american talk about democracy on the one had and practice (but hide, that is practice but in secret) the worst forms of arbitrary state violence--but that is what torture is, powerclown--it is not cunning, it is not wiliness, it is not an attribute you would attribute to a fantasy hunter in some cartoon (tarzan maybe)--it is the worst form of arbitrary state violence.

there is only suspicion--then there is disappearance and torture and because that torture is clandestine, suspicion would seem to be effectively a death sentence. what leads you to think that suspicion is an adequate ground for death? for torture? unless you really believe that americans are so close to god (who?) that they need not worry about the possibility of--say--being wrong, then i do not see how you can possibly endorse anything like the arbitrary use of state violence--not in this situation---not in any situation.

Rekna · 11-08-2005, 10:44 AM

The majority party just called for investations into who leaked this information. Do you think this would fall under a whistleblower clause or do you think this is another case of jepordizing national security? To me it comes down to the legality of these prisons. If they are legal then maybe leaking it is a crime but if they are illegal then leaking it is definatly not a crime and it should be considered whistle blowing.

stevo · 11-08-2005, 11:04 AM

But if by pointing out the countries where this sites are then those allies may be targeted by alqaeda and /or stop cooperating with the u.s. - thus having a negative impact on national security. The leak is not so much whistleblowing as much as it is another attempt to bring down bush. But by doing so, you leak classified information and put national security at risk, thats a neddy-no-no.

Rekna · 11-08-2005, 11:24 AM

thats possible, were the exact locations of the bases also leaked? who originally reported this story? was it an american reporter or a international one? In addition it may not have been a leak from our government. One can only assume that these countries that have the prisons in them know about them.

11-04-2005, 06:18 AM	#4 (permalink)
florida0214 Crazy Location: South Florida	I have a question. Do any of you feel safer Knowing that somebody has the Balls to stoop to the level of the terrorist and maybe create some terror or our own? They preach to the military about LOAC (law of Armed Conflict) and the rules of war. They military is strictly limited on what they can and cannot do during war. No shooting unles you are being shot at. Help injured enemy no longer abel to fight. Stuff like that. And I agree that these rules are very very necessary. It jsut sucks that the other side does not have the same passion for playing by the rules. LIke simply wearing a uniform so we know who were fighting. or simply being ethical. I mean they have this religion that is so right, but yet they use small children to do their dirty work. If dying for Allah is so Great why hasn't Osama Stepped up. Anyway I am ranting now and not really contributing to the thread. As far as I know we send our POW's who we think may posses signifigant Intelligance to Pakistan for Interrigation becuase in their country and under their laws it is not illegal to interrogate in what the USA would consider unethical Ways. Why put the CIA under investigation when there are people who are more than willing to interrogate/torture without fear of reprisal. If An American soldier were caught and believed to be important that person woudl be tortured and most likely killed in a horrible way. How is that fair? __________________ "Two men: one thinks he can. One thinks he cannot. They are Both Right."

11-04-2005, 12:36 PM	#6 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	How does this constitute crimes against humanity? Call me a "lumpenconservative" brainwashed by "teh" "Bushwar" and "Bushco" lies, but this is some seriously ignorant shit. I know you don't like Shrub, hell as of late I'm not that fond of the man either, really starting to piss me off to be honest. That however does not make the man wrong in all situations. THe executive is granted certain wartime powers, as the commander-in-chief of the military, the man is allowed to establish military tribunals, he is allowed to detain people deemed illegal combatants outside of common/criminal jurisdiction, anybody captured in Afghanistan who is figured to be Al Qaeda is not legally entitled to any provisions of military protection whether it be Geneva or Hague accords, they are illegally fighting a war and they forfeit it by the way they fight. Furthermore I think people like you are a cancer on America, again I know Bush isn't always right, by and large the dude is a moron, but we are fighting a war and it is shit like this that makes it clear that certain people don't have the balls to do what is necessary to win a war against a quasi-corporeal REAL enemy, all this shit does is hamstring America. What were those one documents called, the Manchester memos or something? You know those documents that were seized at a raid from a group of terrorists where they were told to lie in all cases and allege mistreatment in torture, which by the way I know it happens, I just A) don't care when it comes to illegal combatants who want to kill me for 40 virgins from Allah and B) I think America's national security trumps a foreign persons rights, especially somebody who is a fucking terrorist. It's always funny how you Roach and Host, taking any attempt to get at the administration, will take any side against them. Osama had a term for American civilians, he called us the paper tiger, who knows he just has to put the heat on and people like you will start screaming and yelping and Running, that's how he knows he can beat us, and to honest I agree with him. Finally Any talk about war crimes is perposterous, yes let's send our men, leaders and those who follow orders to an extra-judicial group, that doesn't rule by our accords such as double jeopardy, right to counsel, and right to not stand as witness against themselves; let's send them to a group of foreign nationals, who have a political agenda, who don't so much care about the truth or justice, but who just want to strike at America because they don't agree with out policy, bright fucking idea. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

11-04-2005, 12:42 PM	#7 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so if i understand the point of the above correctly, you are ruling out any possibility that bushco could be held accountable for this kind of foul policy by a non-american body? your argument to support this claim--if i understand it--seems to me weak. why should the eu not investigate? why should there not be consequences? what domestic body is capable of holding someone like dick cheney to account for this kind of action, this policy? this is not a technical question of jurisidictions--that would be another matter--but in principle, what possible process would you have in mind that could stop such policies on the part of a standing administration from within the united states? edit: it seems to me that your argument, mojo, would imply that no matter what the united states does, no matter how far it goes in duplicating the characteristics of the enemy it is supposed to fight, all is fair, all is ok, nothing to be done. this sounds like little more than a rationalization of a politics of impunity, which is suicide in the long run both internationally and domestically. even if you take this bush-notion of a "war on terrorism" seriously--which i do not--i think it a joke--more incomprehensiably if you accept it on the administrations terms--you still have to admit that the transformation of the american position into a duplicate of what it is trying to fight is not good. it also seem top me that the real basis of your argument is some kind of quaint nationalism. an assumption of the ultimate status of nation-states as over against the international community---something you would share with the bush people then. this administration is on its way to providing a strong demonstration that the american political system cannot be trusted to privde itself with responsible governance and perhaps should be subject to some oversight. for myself, i would not object to that. last point: as for source material--if this were an isolated revelation, perhaps i would take your claims about evidence seriously-but it is not. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-04-2005 at 12:53 PM..

11-04-2005, 01:55 PM	#17 (permalink)
Mojo_PeiPei Kiss of Death Location: Perpetual wind and sorrow	A) There is a difference between balls and bravery. You need to be a big game shooter to win wars, besides obvious points of strategery, you do need to be ruthless and you have to be committed. B) I think you are misreading or representing what I wrote about the justice thing. I wasn't talking about the Iraqi's and Justice. My initial reply was in regards to the fact that people like Shrub or Cheney should stand for war crimes, that would have to be at the UN court in Hague probably, that's what i was talking about. __________________ To win a war you must serve no master but your ambition.

11-05-2005, 08:31 AM	#28 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	interesting---powerclown's claim above, to the extent that it makes any sense in this context, is that the same "intelligence" information lead both factions within the american oligarchy to conclude that something was afoot in iraq--all of which points not to the validity of the bushcase for war, but to the importance of the doctored intel itself and to the central importance of a legal process that would result in charges being filed and trials held for those who engaged in the manipulation of that information--which was the premise for all arguments for war. if an administration is willing to doctor information that congress assumes to be acurate/comprehensive, then there is a problem. even someone as committed to justifying each and every act of this administration as you are powerclown can see that, surely. if you have trouble with this scenario, just imagine this same thing having been done by a democrat and i am sure that you will be able to imagine a response. ===== what is bewildering in the responses above that tend toward a support for the administration's policies is that what you are defending is the use of torture. you are defending the creation of an elaborate system of concealing torture. you are defending "disappearing" in a mode practiced by fascist military regimes in chile and argentina during the 1970s. that is what you are defending. it would perhaps make some sense to seperate the administration itself from its actions, that is to seperate the psychological need you seem to have that would drive you to see their actions as a priori elgitimate because they are a republican administration from what these actions are. this is not about whether you like the bush administration. this is not even about whether you found the claims to go to war to be compelling. this is about whether you support the american use of torture. and many of the responses that defend the administration above amount to a rationalization of this practice----i do not see how you can possibly defend it. the other main tack in the responses above is a debate about the application of the term "war crimes" to these action. 1. surely if there is an action that would fall under that definition, it is the use of torture. it is not clear whether the problem that irks folk about saying this perfectly obvious statement is that it implies something on the order of an international war crimes tribunal or assumes the existence of international legal standards that would be binding on nation-states. so the argument from mojo above, for example, would lead toward the dissolving of the notion of war crimes on the basis of a refusal to accept any international legal standards/norms that would override domestic law. following mojo's argument, then, it would follow that, for him, any adminsitration that persuades the legislature that war is rational in a particular situation acquires absolute impunity from that decision and cannot and should not be held to account for any action committed within that context. the curious thing is that this position, aimed at a rejection of the notion of international law, comes to the same thing--it amounts to a defense of the administration's use of torture. but there is a paradox in this as well: this same argument points to the centrality of the debate about the legitimacy of the intel that the administration used to fob off its case for war: it would follow that if this intel is demonstrated as false, then the case for war collapses; if the case for war collapses, then what of the declaration of this bizarre war on ghosts itself? if the declaration is illegitimate because the premises that shaped it turned out to be false, would it not follow that the impunity mojo defends as part and parcel of war powers granted a president collapses as well? and if that is true, what types of law might be invoked to hold an administration to account for torture in a normal legal context? that is what is at stake in the seemingless endless debates about the intel. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 11-05-2005 at 08:35 AM..

11-03-2005, 08:19 PM	#2 (permalink)
Locobot is awesome!	I think Republicans would be wise to start listening a little more to John McCain. This business puts us on equal moral footing with terrorists and ultimately causes much more terrorism than it could ever prevent. Not to mention that our economy would be fucked if the EU decides to take sanctions against us.

11-04-2005, 12:50 PM	#9 (permalink)
host Banned	Mojo, you have supported and enabled an administration that has broken the cardinal rule that my avatar-sake, SCOTUS and Nuremberg nazi war crimes/crimes against humanity chief prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, outlined in his closing arguments at the Nuremberg trials as the core crime. Just as the leaders of nazi Germany did, the Bush administration has, through duplicitous, propagandist means, ordered U.S. troops into an illegal war of aggression, and associated crimes against humanity, against an internationally recognized sovereign nation that posed no threat to it's geographical neighbors national security, much less to ours. We point this out, we express our objections to it, we document our objections via reports from multiple credible sources. You respond by telling us that, by doing this, we're pissing you off!! I've posted a reminder that you, via your support of these political leaders and their policies, are complicit and culpable in their crimes against humanity. Why don't you calm down and contmeplate, that....if there is even a shred of truth in what I'm accusing you of, you might want to run (don't walk) in the opposite direction of these thugs and their immoral and corrupting policies. Consider that you are "feeling" your support for the Bush administation. There is an old thread that popped up again last night. A recent question solicits positive examples of what Bush & co. have done to advance important policy areas of potenital benefit to this country. I suggest that you look over the list, and try to seperate your own feelings from the reality of the direction that Bush & Co. are talking our country in.....and the rest of the world.

11-04-2005, 03:50 PM	#19 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	for some reason i see yellow text coming soon....

11-04-2005, 08:11 PM	#21 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	maybe it is safe to blame bush because bush had more info than the rest of congress. he was the one who made the case to go to war. He was the person with the most knoweldge of the situation and he made assertions that people believed because he is our president and shouldn't attempt to misslead us in any way. I'm sorry but if a CEO of a company pitches and idea and says here is what we are going to do and he convinces the board to go along with it. Then the idea fails miserably and costs the company a tun of money and it's reputation who do you think takes the blame for it? The CEO or the Board? I'm betting the stockholders hold the CEO's feet to the flame long before they do the bored. The fact is Bush is the person in charge, he made the case to go to war based on many claims, all of these claimes turned out wrong, he is the one to blame. You can't avoid the fact that he was the one person who had the power to push this or stop this and he chose to spear head it himself. He put his credibilty on the line and now he has to answer for that.

11-04-2005, 08:16 PM	#22 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	The CEO answers to the Board of Directors. Not vice-versa. A CEO can do nothing that isn't approved of by at least 51% of The Board.

11-05-2005, 08:43 AM	#30 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	again to say bush is blameless in all the failures of the iraq war is stupid. He is the commander and cheif he shares responsiblity in everything that happens. It is his duty to have good intelligence, it is his duty to put people into positions of power that will give him good intelligence. Ignorance is never an excuse. And this is all asumeing that congress and bush had the same intellegence which I don't think they did considering Bush knew about the Niger forgeries before his speach and congress didn't.

11-05-2005, 09:16 AM	#31 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	the more i think about this and how it relates the to torture the more i am disgusted. Why is Bush threatening to veto and anti-torture bill? Why is Cheny saying "we don't use torture but the CIA should be exempt from this bill". I am going to make a bold statement here, if we have been using torture to interrogate prisoners then all the beheadings we decried are justified and it is a total shame.

11-05-2005, 04:33 PM	#37 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	everyone is entitled to their fantasy lives, powerclown, and if it floats your boat to imagine those who oppose the bush administration as threatening some kind of reign of terror, then have at it. just dont pretend that this is relevant to anything, beyond maybe a glimpse into a curious psychological space you occupied for the length of time it took you to write the last paragraph in your last post at least. i also do not see where you get a sense of glee on my or anyone else's part at ths shambles this administration has made: like you, i have to live here and, like you, i will have to live through the consequences of what these people are doing. one of the central space being damaged is political. one of the central aspects of that damage comes in the simultaneous draining of any meaning behind the discourses of morality and democracy. if the american talk about democracy on the one had and practice (but hide, that is practice but in secret) the worst forms of arbitrary state violence--but that is what torture is, powerclown--it is not cunning, it is not wiliness, it is not an attribute you would attribute to a fantasy hunter in some cartoon (tarzan maybe)--it is the worst form of arbitrary state violence. there is only suspicion--then there is disappearance and torture and because that torture is clandestine, suspicion would seem to be effectively a death sentence. what leads you to think that suspicion is an adequate ground for death? for torture? unless you really believe that americans are so close to god (who?) that they need not worry about the possibility of--say--being wrong, then i do not see how you can possibly endorse anything like the arbitrary use of state violence--not in this situation---not in any situation. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

11-08-2005, 10:44 AM	#38 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	The majority party just called for investations into who leaked this information. Do you think this would fall under a whistleblower clause or do you think this is another case of jepordizing national security? To me it comes down to the legality of these prisons. If they are legal then maybe leaking it is a crime but if they are illegal then leaking it is definatly not a crime and it should be considered whistle blowing.

11-08-2005, 11:04 AM	#39 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	But if by pointing out the countries where this sites are then those allies may be targeted by alqaeda and /or stop cooperating with the u.s. - thus having a negative impact on national security. The leak is not so much whistleblowing as much as it is another attempt to bring down bush. But by doing so, you leak classified information and put national security at risk, thats a neddy-no-no. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

11-08-2005, 11:24 AM	#40 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	thats possible, were the exact locations of the bases also leaked? who originally reported this story? was it an american reporter or a international one? In addition it may not have been a leak from our government. One can only assume that these countries that have the prisons in them know about them.