posted
Oh, one other thing, I don't know where international law stands on the Taliban etc. As an irregular terrorist force at worst, and an un-uniformed irregular army at best, are they subject to international laws regarding enemy combatants?
Back on subject - I'm not sure where Obama will go. He seems to be trying to placate the electorate who disagreed with Bush's policies, but it's too soon to realy come up with a coherent picture, as he's got no previous example.
I don't think he'll ruin the economy, but I question Bush's innocence in the economic myre that the Western world see itself in.
-------------------- I have plenty of experience in biology. I bought a Tamagotchi in 1998... And... it's still alive.
Registered: Apr 2005
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Saltah'na
Chinese Canadian, or 75% Commie Bastard.
Member # 33
posted
Within all of this, where is First of Two? What would he be saying right now of all this?
-------------------- "And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
So...you completely failed to show how Obama is continuing any of the abusive policies of Bush, then you compared him (laughably) to Hitler because some hollywoood flakes support him and said he "will wind up over-regulating the country so much - particularly for left-wing agendas - that our economy and well-being will be devastated" although he's so centrist as to have Republicans on staff and ask their input on policy matters (going so far as to have seperate meetings with the senior republicans for their input without democrats in the room) and you miss the point that so far, there has been NO new regulations implemented untill their potential damage to the already devastated econemy can be assessed.
In a nut shell, you've put yourself in with Rush Limbaugh in hoping the President Of The United States "fails". That means you hope he fails at stopping the two wars that get American servicemen killed every day. That he fails in getting the nation out of the worst recession of our lifetimes. That he fails to restore America's prestige and respectability.
It's saying you hope our country fails, for no other reason than that President Obama is a Democrat and you root for the other team blindly.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
You mentioned a Youtube video of these celebrities. Link please?
You've made a lot of claims and precious few citations.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:As someone who's family came close to being wiped out by a fascist three generations ago, understand that I'm very troubled by the number of Americans willing to march to Der Furher, even if the man they're worshipping doesn't happen to actually be one.
Willing to march, like "Freedom Fries"? I agree, it's astounding how many people can suddenly take up the lingo, "drink the koolaid" because they feel the rush of solidarity and purpose, even when it means polarization.
Are you the same person that just a few pages back insulted and slandered people arbitrarily with blanket statements like "You hate Bush because you're nothing but spineless sheep who's desperate for internet affirmation", using magic conjecture that no one else saw? And you said that you don't need to have any respect for me because I "regurgitate the talking points (Bush is a War Criminal), often using the most vitriolic propogandist rhetoric possible". I suppose it is high praise coming from you, but it's still a lie.
You said that you've been treated badly and unfairly for years when voicing your conservative views, yet you insist on jumping into a thread and starting off with "The legacy of too many Obama supporters is one of hatred and malice (up to and including supporting and advocating terrorism and murder) for their fellow countrymen, and now they want to revel in it".
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
1. Captured terrorists are not war prisoners.
2. I did not say Reid and Pelosi are communists. I don't think it would hurt their image for them to go ahead and take the full plunge, but for the time being they are merely full-fledged American leftists, which basically involves emotionalist mental mush leading to stuff like socialism, peacenikism, misguided environmentalist lunacy, and a whole bunch of identity politics and lip-service for the minorities or under-privileged.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: 1. Captured terrorists are not war prisoners.
Bush has said literally hundreds of times that we are AT WAR. If prisoners caputred during a war are not war prisoners, what are they? If they are not prisoners of war- and entitled to certain rights under Military Code of Justice (as affirmed by the Supreme Court last year) then the Gitmo prison is, by definition, a Gulag: any prison or detention camp, esp. for political prisoners.
Political Prisoners- making us just as bad as the so-called "Axis Of Evil" countries that inprison people without giving them fair trials or allowing the accused to face their accusers and review evidence being used against them.
And if you're one of the people that believe the hysteria about the "dangers" of incarcerating such terrorists on US soil, I have some examples of terrorists that have been tried in Federal courts with all due process: Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted, 1996, U.S. District Court (before then-U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey) -- plotting terrorist attacks on the U.S. (currently: U.S. prison, Butler, North Carolina);
Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted, 2006, U.S. Federal Court -- conspiracy to commit the 9/11 attacks (currently: U.S. prison, Florence, Colorado);
Richard Reid, convicted, 2003, U.S. Federal Court -- attempting to blow up U.S.-bound jetliner over the Atlantic Ocean (currently: U.S. prison, Florence, Colorado);
Jose Padilla, convicted, 2007, U.S. Federal Court -- conspiracy to commit terrorism (currently: U.S. prison, Florence, Colorado);
Iyman Faris a/k/a/ Mohammad Rauf, convicted, 2003, U.S. Federal Court -- providing material support and resources to Al-Qaeda, conspiracy to commit terrorist acts on behalf of Al Qaeda (currently: U.S. prison, Florence, Colorado);
Ali Saleh al-Marri, accused Al Qaeda operative -- not yet tried, held as "unlawful enemy combatant" (currently: U.S. Naval Brig, Hanahan, South Carolina);
Masoud Khan, convicted, 2004, U.S. Federal Court -- conspiracy to commit terrorism as part of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Islamic jihad (currently: U.S. prison, Terre Haute, Indiana);
John Walker Lindh, convicted, 2002, U.S. Federal Court -- providing material support to the Taliban (currently: U.S. prison, Florence, Colorado).
In fact, None of these convicted terrorists are inprisoned at Gitmo- "Supermax" facilities serve just fine and have never had a escape.
So there's no reason to not treat prisoners of war as such unless you're looking for a loophole that allows for human rights abuses.
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [qb] 1. Captured terrorists are not war prisoners.
Bush has said literally hundreds of times that we are AT WAR.
No word games, please. You know as well as I do that does not make the prisoners we take "prisoners of war" in the legal sense of Geneva any more than Vietnam or Iraq were wars in the legal sense of the Constitution.
quote:If prisoners caputred during a war are not war prisoners, what are they?
"Unlawful enemy combatants" . . . you used the term yourself.
quote:If they are not prisoners of war- and entitled to certain rights under Military Code of Justice (as affirmed by the Supreme Court last year) then the Gitmo prison is, by definition, a Gulag: any prison or detention camp, esp. for political prisoners.
There you go with more word games. "Gulag" conjures up connotations of harsh Soviet torture-chambers of the last century . . . you seek to equate Gitmo to that connotation by appealing to a denotation.
By that denotation, your local jail is a gulag. Kinda loses the emotional oomph you wanted your "by definition" claim to have, doesn't it?
quote:And if you're one of the people that believe the hysteria about the "dangers" of incarcerating such terrorists on US soil,
I don't really buy into that argument. I don't care if we store them here . . . despite their best wishes, they are not explosive . . . but I simply don't think they deserve the tender loving care of the American legal system.
(As someone joked, making them go through our court system is cruel and unusual punishment . . . torture by any reasonable definition.)
To someone else, you said some stuff I want to respond to:
quote:In a nut shell, you've put yourself in with Rush Limbaugh in hoping the President Of The United States "fails". That means you hope he fails at stopping the two wars that get American servicemen killed every day.
No, it means we hope he fails at screwing up the war on terror's successes, producing more damage and lost lives down the line.
Thanks to Bush's actions, the price of peace in Iraq should be lower than it has been in awhile, so perhaps Obama's efforts will meet with success.
But the problem was that Obama wanted to do the same thing even when the price was high. His opinion did not change in keeping with the facts on the ground. That's scary.
quote:That he fails in getting the nation out of the worst recession of our lifetimes.
The issue here is that the recession is a Democrat socialist creation, and the bailouts are being managed by Democrat socialists. Given that Obama wants to double down on the socialism angle . . . spending our way out of this while nationalizing various sectors of the economy . . . you're damn right I want him to fail, because if he succeeds we're not America anymore, the recession will have lasted far longer than it should, and the road back to economic freedom will be much longer and harder than it needs to be.
quote:That he fails to restore America's prestige and respectability.
It's only damaged to the world's leftists and our enemies. Much of Europe's recent leadership changes have been in a rightward direction (for them). Do the math.
quote:It's saying you hope our country fails, for no other reason than that President Obama is a Democrat and you root for the other team blindly.
You just stole the classic conservative line about American leftists. Funny thing is, you just declared Obama's wishes to be America, basically.
Thing is, at least conservatives have the founders and history on our side to determine what America is. We haven't always lived up to our ideals, but classical liberals (i.e. Founding Fathers, once . . . called conservatives, now) have never had much doubt.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: No word games, please. You know as well as I do that does not make the prisoners we take "prisoners of war" in the legal sense of Geneva any more than Vietnam or Iraq were wars in the legal sense of the Constitution.
quote:"Unlawful enemy combatants" . . . you used the term yourself.
quote:"Gulag" conjures up connotations of harsh Soviet torture-chambers of the last century . . . you seek to equate Gitmo to that connotation by appealing to a denotation.
Do you really not see the contradiction, here? It doesn't matter what term you call something by, it is what it is. Gitmo is (was?) a place where human beings are (were?) being held indefinitely without due process of law.
quote:By that denotation, your local jail is a gulag. Kinda loses the emotional oomph you wanted your "by definition" claim to have, doesn't it?
A jail cannot hold prisoners for extended periods of time without trial, nor can people even be put in one without legally-determined probable cause being established beforehand. Also, there are public records kept of all of this.
quote:I simply don't think they deserve the tender loving care of the American legal system.
That sort of undermines the fundamental principles of the American legal system, doesn't it?
quote:The issue here is that the recession is a Democrat socialist creation,
Uh, what may I ask are you smoking? The recession is a result of the free market and a lack of oversight and accountability vis à vis irresponsible banking practices.
quote:you're damn right I want him to fail, because if he succeeds we're not America anymore
[...]
Thing is, at least conservatives have the founders and history on our side to determine what America is. We haven't always lived up to our ideals, but classical liberals (i.e. Founding Fathers, once . . . called conservatives, now) have never had much doubt.
The United States of America has its roots in socio-religious extremists who came here, cheated and slaughtered the indigenous population of people, and stole from them a land so rich in nearly every resource that it seemed inexhaustable. Over time we expanded and consumed ever-expandingly. Whenever we ran out of room, we stole more and consumed it and pressed on.
We held a race of fellow human beings in slavery long after other major powers declared it to be illegal; even though we could not acquire new slaves, we had a sufficient extant population of them that we could sustain and breed them indefinitely. Moral opposition to this practice had long been present, but we chose to compromise and appease slaveholders because they provided food and wealth and exports to the country. Again and again the issue was deffered until a horrible and bloody war resulted, and even then we were mainly concerned with preserving our unified assets, moreso than with the suffering of our fellow human beings.
Once we had pushed the frontier all the way from one shining sea to another, we began expanding it into the islands that lay off our shores, overthrowing what governments occupied them and replacing them with ones that would be more responsive to our wishes, chiefly among them: "help us consume more."
This story is obviously much bigger and more complex than just what I've outlined here, but there is a clear pattern of behavior that has run through American history and continues up to the present. But the world now is no place for this kind of behavior. Swelling populations and dwindling resources make it an inviable strategy. There are simply too many people and too little world for any country to just do as it pleases and step on or over anyone who doesn't like it.
In short, what America has been in the past is not what it can continue to be in the future if we want it to survive, and even then it may not. No government lasts forever, and that's probably not such a bad thing. Think Roman Empire here.
Communism and unbridled Capitalism are BOTH systems that have their ideological appeals, but DO NOT WORK in long-term, large-scale practice because their theories fail to account for human factors. Anarchy and Fascism, ditto. The most successful strategies not just for survival but for harmony, sustainability, and quality of life for the greatest number of people probably lie somewhere in between. Some people might call it Socialism and others may call it something else. I don't pretend to have the answers myself, and I certainly don't trust Obama any more than I'd trust any politician, but I also cannot fathom this defense of the Bush administration.
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
"Unlawful enemy combatants" is itself a word game- there is no legal definintion in any court that defines that- Bush was illegally holding prisoners by not having them in any known judicuial process- a fact that even the military prosecutors agree with. Guantanamo was home to only sham trials. Gitmo still houses "prisoners" that have been cleared of any wrongdoing- and that would now be killed if returned to their countries of origin. Not "combatatants" or "ememies" just people picked up in a warzone.
Blaming the democrats for the recession and for trying to fix it is the ultimate in revisionist history: a total lack of finical regulation (hearalded by the Republicans and yes, some Democrats) brought it on along with the trading of bad debts (which was once regulated as per the New Deal) and foolish home urchases by people that could not afford the homes they got mortgages on. The initial framework for these "bailouts" was so tragicly stupid that it would have allowed Paulson (a republican, you'll recall) to have unlimited say over the money with no oversight. I wont say that the TARP has been handled well but it's unknown territory and it's being slogged through by both parties.
You say that Obama will have an easier time making peace in Iraq because of Bush- when there should never have been a war there in the first place- and Obama's administration now must fight a much harder war in Afghanistan because of Bush's mismanagment and shortsightedness. Tens of thousands have died over a useless war with a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no strategic risk to the United States.
There's no justifying that with some platitude about spreading freedom- the first freedom is to remianing alive.
quote:That he fails to restore America's prestige and respectability. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's only damaged to the world's leftists and our enemies. Much of Europe's recent leadership changes have been in a rightward direction (for them). Do the math.
Un...you consider every NATO contry a "leftist of enemy"? Beacuse all our long-standing allies noted the lack of leadership on the part of the United States under Bush- almost all vocally condemned our tactics and policies at the United Nations- which Bush held in contempt.
If all your friends point out that you're doing somethng stupid that you'll regret, it does not make them "enemies" for pointing it out.
Registered: Aug 2002
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"You know as well as I do that does not make the prisoners we take 'prisoners of war' in the legal sense of Geneva any more than Vietnam or Iraq were wars in the legal sense of the Constitution."
So, let me make sure I've got this right. You are arguing that, because no war has been declared, the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay cannot, by definition, be prisoners of war. You cite Vietnam and Iraq as other examples of undeclared—thus, not—wars.
By your logic, then, no American captured by an enemy force since 1945 has been a prisoner of war. I guess John McCain must feel like a real asshole, then, going around telling people that he was a tortured prisoner of war, when there wasn't even a war for him to be a prisoner of.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Exactly- that would mean that he was never (legally) anything and therefore he was never tortured because legal rights would not apply to him- as it aparantly does not apply to the Gitmo pris....er...."guests".
By that same convoluted logic, the guys that behead soldiers and hostages are comitting no crimes as war was never officially declared. Of course, if captured, we'd hold them in a prison forever without trial anyway so the point is moot.
As an aside, how do you reconcille the untopian morals of Star Trek with these ultra-conservative, rights-limiting, torture approving, anything goes against an enemy viewpoints?
Registered: Aug 2002
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