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It looks like it.
It was too early in the morning and I was without my dose of coffee.
Sorry, snake dude.
It looks like it.
It was too early in the morning and I was without my dose of coffee.
Sorry, snake dude.
Who knows? Torture of some kind may be needed. However, part of the reason so many suffered on 9/11 is due to failure of leadership.
I'll settle for both, if thats what it takes. The terrorist did this, and our leadership allowed it to happen. Facts.
WOw,
Finally someone whose reasonable.
Ditto on that!
I'm glad the administration got around to accepting its Cons utional responsibilties and at least tried to codify what it's doing. That they had to do it kicking and screaming after claiming fairly dictatorial powers for itself through a nondeclaration of a war that could arguably never end is troubling to say the least. There are plenty of things still troubling about the legislation, but at least the Imperial Presidency has been reined in a bit by Cons ution Bush took an oath to uphold.
Well, this is a start Chump.
Considering that no other administration in the history of this country has had to fit enemy combatants into our domestic jurisprudence, I think you at least owe it to intellectual honesty to concede that this is the first time any U. S. President has been forced to do so.
Intellectual honesty would also dictate that you admit this President asceded to the rulings of the Supreme Court immediately and not "kicking and screaming." They attempted to defend their position and they lost in the courts. It's that simple. This was an undecided issue until now, you can't argue what he was doing was unconsitutional because well, it's been the practice of previous administrations and no previous Supreme Court had ever ruled on it.
People's opinions aren't the law...even if they are a dozen partisan law professors.
Oh please. This administration was just doing what every previous administration (with the possible exception of Clinton) has done since our founding. Exercising every power within it's purview to secure this country.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
(fixed to make a point)
Yep, especially when they White House was relying on precedent.
This is the first time a President tried to sidestep the Geneva Conventions so blatantly.Considering that no other administration in the history of this country has had to fit enemy combatants into our domestic jurisprudence, I think you at least owe it to intellectual honesty to concede that this is the first time any U. S. President has been forced to do so.No. They and you are the sorest losers ever. Lookk at the AGs latest veiled threat to judges.Intellectual honesty would also dictate that you admit this President asceded to the rulings of the Supreme Court immediately and not "kicking and screaming."Even if they are Attorneys General or Presidents saying they can make the law without oversight.People's opinions aren't the law...even if they are a dozen partisan law professors.That guy wasn't President and he's spinning in his grave at what is being passed off as conservatism these days.Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
This:
Plus this:
Equals: Yoni contradicting himself
Last edited by PixelPusher; 10-01-2006 at 01:33 PM.
How does waterboarding combat the idea that we are evil?
Nobody is above the law including the President of the United States. We all knew that the U.S. had secret prisons and interrogation tactics and they will continue to do so. And no I'm not bashing my own country just stating what I feel are the facts.
Even my progressive thinking ass knows that sometimes boundaries will be crossed to accomplish our goals.
"accomplish our goals"
... that just might be arguable, with extreme difficulty, if the Exec had purely those security goals, but we know that head came into office with the agenda, dating back to his evil, criminal spiritual godfather Tricky Nixon, to greatly increase, ie, unbalance and uncheck, the power of the Exec, totally pre-dating any threat of terror.
And we all know by now that head has been proven to be a untrustworthy, evil, lying sonofa . NEVER trust anything that un-American, anti-Cons utional mother er wants to do.
'The More Subtle Kind of Torment'
By Joseph Margulies
Monday, October 2, 2006; A19
In these uncertain times, it's worth recalling that the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of madmen is not new. Nearly 50 years before Sept. 11, 2001, the American public learned that a group of prisoners in military custody confessed to being part of an elaborate conspiracy to bomb civilian targets with bacteriological weapons.
The first prisoner to crack said the goal was "the mass annihilation of the civilian population." As often happens, his confession led to others, and before long, three dozen prisoners had coughed up page after page of chilling, meticulously detailed admissions.
But it was all a lie. Thirty-six American airmen, shot from the sky during the Korean War, falsely confessed to a vast plot to bomb civilian targets. How did this happen? With Congress having approved a "compromise" that gives the president authority to determine the meaning of the Geneva Conventions and redefines the War Crimes Act to protect CIA interrogators, we should revisit this all-but-forgotten moment in U.S. history.
During the Korean War, thousands of American POWs were forced to endure grotesque and sadistic physical torture. But the downed airmen were treated differently. The senior officer among them was Col. Frank Schwable, the highest-ranking Marine captured in the conflict. "I want to emphasize," Schwable said later, "that I did not undergo physical torture. Perhaps I would have been more fortunate if I had, because people nowadays seem to understand that better. Mine was the more subtle kind of torment."
The airmen were subjected to something new: touchless torture. They were kept isolated from all human contact, apart from their interrogators. One prisoner spent 10 months in solitary confinement, another 13. Schwable did not learn of the armistice until after he confessed.
They were made to stand or sit in awkward and painful positions for hours at a time. One prisoner had to sit at attention on the edge of a stool for 15 hours per day for 33 days. Another time he had to stand for 30 consecutive hours, until he collapsed. Schwable was required to sit at attention every day for almost 10 weeks.
They were demeaned, taunted and treated like animals. Schwable said the guards "growled" or "barked" at him, slopped food at him, and made him defecate in public. "Every effort was made to degrade and humiliate me," he said.
And of course they were interrogated. Grueling interrogations that lasted hours and hours, repeating the same material they had gone over the day before, and the day before that, until the past became a confusing whirl of fact and fantasy suggested to them by their relentless interlocutors. At last, exhausted and demoralized, their resistance overcome, they confessed. They all confessed in the end. And they all lied.
Maj. William Harris later tried to explain to an incredulous public how he could falsely accuse his country of something so barbaric as a conspiracy to bomb civilians, especially if he wasn't "tortured." "They don't have to lay a hand on you to make you the most miserable person in the world," he said. "I would rather take a beating any day than be subjected to their type of questioning and treatment."
After the war North Korean atrocities were roundly condemned by the United States, which complained to the United Nations that the Koreans had not complied with the Geneva Conventions. One ins ution, however, was not repelled but intrigued. The experience led the CIA to accelerate its research into the theory and science of coercive interrogation.
Between 1950 and 1962, the CIA poured millions of dollars into studies that tested different interrogation techniques, hoping to learn from and refine the lessons of Korea. The research culminated in the top-secret KUBARK manual, a 1963 primer on how to conduct coercive counterintelligence interrogations. The manual was finally disclosed in 1997 and is now available online.
KUBARK operates on the premise that a prisoner will divulge what he knows once he realizes that resistance is pointless. The prisoner must believe his captors are "all-powerful." Confusion, fear and isolation are the interrogator's stock in trade, since they "create and amplify an effect of omniscience."
Interrogators must create a menacing and ominous environment that destroys the prisoner's capacity to function as a "civilized man." Prisoners should be kept disoriented because "the capacity for resistance is diminished by disorientation."
The prisoner's environment must be manipulated to produce a "regression of the personality to whatever earlier and weaker level is required for the dissolution of resistance." This usually doesn't take much. "Relatively small degrees of homeostatic derangement, fatigue, pain, sleep loss, or anxiety" are generally sufficient.
When in doubt, the interrogator should always keep in mind this useful advice: In order to achieve " the maximum amount of mental discomfort ," (emphasis in original), your prisoner must be instilled with a sense of "debility, dependence, and dread." "When this aim is achieved, resistance is seriously impaired." The prisoner enters "a kind of psychological shock or paralysis." At that moment, "the source is far more open to suggestion [and] far likelier to comply."
Will mild "homeostatic derangement" be deemed acceptable under the legislation just passed by Congress -- a little sleep deprivation here, some extended standing there, perhaps a few more hours in the cold room, a wee drop of solitary confinement now and again, extended isolation from the outside world? Nothing like "real" torture, since everyone knows that's unreliable.
Regrettably, we may not hear the answer in the sad, distant voices of three dozen American airmen. There is a lesson in their cries, if only we'd listen.
The writer is a law professor at Northwestern University and was lead counsel in Rasul v. Bush, which concerned the legality of the detentions at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of "Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
==================
The Repugs are truly REPUGNANT mother ers, corrupt, evil, totally spineless opposite the Truth, worshippers of the lie (Satan's crowning achievement).
Would anybody be surprised to learn that al Qaida training camps gave all trainees repeated waterboardings?
Last edited by boutons_; 10-02-2006 at 08:26 AM.
The precedent of no previous President having to apply Cons utional protections to enemy combatants.
To what contradiction are you referring?
After reading this thread, I have concluded that ChumpDumper is by far and away the biggest on this website.
Defense Department Update
September 14, 2006 - Ten Facts about Guantanamo
1. The detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility include bin Laden’s bodyguards, bomb makers, terrorist trainers and facilitators, and other suspected terrorists.
2. More money is spent on meals for detainees than on the U.S. troops stationed there. Detainees are offered up to 4,200 calories a day. The average weight gain per detainee is 20 pounds.
3. The Muslim call to prayer sounds five times a day. Arrows point detainees toward the holy city of Mecca.
4. Detainees receive medical, dental, psychiatric, and optometric care at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. In 2005, there were 35 teeth cleanings, 91 cavities filled, and 174 pairs of glasses issued.
5. The International Committee of the Red Cross visits detainees at the facility every few months. More than 20,000 messages between detainees and their families have been exchanged.
6. Recreation activities include basketball, volleyball, soccer, pingpong, and board games. High-top sneakers are provided.
7. Departing detainees receive a Koran, a jean jacket, a white T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, high-top sneakers, a gym bag of toiletries, and a pillow and blanket for the flight home.
8. Entertainment includes Arabic language TV shows, including World Cup soccer games. The library has 3,500 volumes available in 13 languages — the most requested book is “Harry Potter.”
9. Guantanamo is the most transparent detention facility in the history of warfare. The Joint Task Force has hosted more than 1,000 journalists from more than 40 countries.
10. In 2005, Amnesty International stated that “the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times.”
From the Department of Defense Office of Public Affairs – OSD Writers’ Group
Sounds like Saddam Hussein's prisons to me. Yep.
Yoni likes to quote Lincoln suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War.
Well, for 50 or 60 years after the Civil War lynching blacks in the South wasn't prosecuted; women couldn't vote; women had essentially no rights and protections in divorce. We've made 150 year of "social progress".
Social/political conservatives, at their core, want to go back to 18th century society and jurisprudence (when cherry picking that state of society suits their agenda).
Again, Yoni, as well as puppet dubya, places torture and unwarranted , no-oversight electronic fishing expeditions as the "sine qua non" of the Repug war on terror. It simply isn't true.
The intelligence community hadplenty of tools to fight terror before 9/11. They just sat on their chair-warming/pension-protected/time-serving asses with not leadership from the WH which didn't wanti to "alarm" the USA about terror, as the terrorists took down the WTC.
Remember the entire schtick of the Repugs was that they were "in control", the "CEO Whitehouse", the "take charge" Executive branch.
With that bull smokescreen, how could the Repugs possibly start pushing red buttons and raising all kinds of alarms to the public? It would have been incongruent with their bull self-promoting propaganda that "America was safe under the Repugs".
Last edited by boutons_; 10-02-2006 at 12:03 PM.
Yonivore wouldn't last 15 minutes in a POW camp.
These dangerous terraists are being let go?Departing detainees
Over a dozen of whom have ended up re-captured or dead on the battlefield.
I wonder where are the rest of the released.
Why are they being released? Because of the efforts of people such as yourself. Thanks alot.
I bet I'd do okay at Gitmo.
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