Posted on 09/15/2006 5:03:46 AM PDT by demkicker
Anyone counted how many RINOs we're up to now? What is the real breakdown?<<
The real breakdown is their failure to understand the Constitution...it is written so that anyone that isnt a scholar of it can understand it...
Thank you for a very interesting and most informative post! You have some great ideas.
I'm talking specifically about the al-Qa'ida leadership, KSM, Abu Zubaydah, which are the guys at issue here. I've handled regular prisoners in Iraq, and can tell you straight up that no one treats their captured opponents better than we do. It wasn't uncommon for repeat offenders to ask us to send them to Abu G, where they would be "treated nice". If they heard Kurdish being spoken anywhere nearby, they'd beg us desperately not to give them to the Kurds.
Still, what good does that do us if the only ones who know we treat prisoners humanely are the insurgents? I'd have been happy to push a number of those guys in front of a commuter bus, but instead we treated them very well, and are now accused of being no better than the enemy. All of our effort in the world goes to nothing if we go on the record as saying that torture is okay sometimes, if we really need the info. It may be true, it may not, but it taints everything else we do.
Who are the nations that abide by the Geneva Convention and we are going to have a conflict with them in the futre?
What a nasty thing to say. John McCain is an angry , angry man who treats those who opposed him with contempt.
It is my understanding that the legislation requested by the Bush administration involves how WE interrogate terrorists, not third parties.
I agree that the idea of "torture" is abused and stretched, but KSM and Abu Zubaydah got more than a wedgie before they started giving up the goods. If we're going to go down that road, then fine, but let's at least be cognizant of the unintended consequences.
I'm more concerned with the intended consequences of Powell and these four senators who refuse to even be specific about the do's and don'ts regarding interrogation techniques.
I don't need to. They know. In the end, the military realizes that the GWOT is a global counterinsurgency effort that isn't going to be won with firepower.
I cannot disagree with you more. Firepower is the only thing that terrorists and dictators understand. Granted, after we've defeated and killed enough of them, other carrots can be used to help us eventually claim victory.
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| I really don't understand the argument with this issue. It's lame to claim that the President is rewriting Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. I haven't read anything from any of these four GOP senators that qualifies even remotely as an argument. Their comments thus far are simply rhetorical in nature, yet look suspiciously like and have the form of a sound bite. How on Earth can giving examples of torture be the same thing as pulling out of the Geneva Conventions or rewriting Article Three? I have read this Common Article Three and it's something I can live with because I can recognize torture when I see it. However, the problem is that we are no longer working with people that can reason. We live in a world where the enemy redefines words and concepts to fit their agenda. I see the President trying to protect our soldiers by saying "you can do A, but you cannot do B, and if the people of Belgium want to claim "A" is a crime, I'll back you, not the confectionaries. I'm about as fed up with McCain and his Vietnam-POW moral standing as I am over Kerry and his Christmas in Cambodia tale. Forty years ago I'm sure Senator McCain would have been happy to listen to The Red Hot Chili Peppers. |
I'd love to see them come on this thread and defend this bastard today!
There are none.
Pretty much by definition, any nation that's reasonable, moral and peaceful enough to abide by the Geneva conventions isn't going to fight us militarily.
Being a nation on this planet is like being trapped in a prison. Some of your fellow prisoners are thieves. Some are con men. Some are rapists and murderers. While we may be stuck with them, and may have to fight them every now and then, we don't have to be like them.
I don't know why I'm making this analogy, since you're just going to take the first three words of my reply, and make the brilliant observation of "If they don't follow the Geneva conventions, why should we?" But I figured I'd give it a shot.
Great post! You have articulated exactly the way I feel in your other comments as well.
More than nasty, it's stupid. All General Hayden wants is for Congress to do it's job, set some rules, and to be ready to accept responsibility. McCain may find doing his job inconvenient to his hobby, which is fence straddling, but life's not fair.
Thanks for that link, demkicker. McCain is on the wrong side of this issue and it's so clearly wrong and I think he knows it that your analysis about him running as an independent is absolutely correct, I think.
In fact, I think he's using this issue to force the wedge and give himself an excuse to run as an independent.
Also, further to your post, didn't SCOTUS basically advise that Congress should look at Article 3 and determine what some of the phrases meant?
YOU: "What a nasty thing to say. John McCain is an angry , angry man who treats those who opposed him with contempt."
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At his press conference today, I hope President Bush will pound the podium and go ballistic on this bastard, McCain and the other senators! There is no excuse for these remarks. At the very least, our military deserves to be insulated from law suits when they are risking their lives fighting inhumane terrorists.
"The point of my post was that future opponents could openly torture our guys and shrug it off as necessary,..."
Therefore they would show their true colors and we could further embolden people to our sides.
To clarify, I don't. Neither the Senate nor the Administration are right, as far as I'm concerned.
The Administration cares so much about squeezing intelligence out of prisoners that they don't care what a deeply negative effect it has on us politically in the rest of the world. They genuinely want to keep America safe, but the prevention they're looking at may prove worse than the disease.
The Senate is flat out AWOL from doing it's job, which is to provide legislation that regulates a government activity. They should have been on this long before, of couse. They don't want to, because they're afraid of signing their name to anything that they can't pose their way out of later. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't have the stones to do your job, then resign, and let someone else take the wheel. I think that a few people in the Administration are too aggressive on this issue, but that dozens and dozens in the Senate are cowardly oxygen thieves who won't get off their rears and reign them in.
Oklahoma's Senator Inhofe who sits on Senate Armed Services should be Chairman not that wishy washy Warner who should never have run the last time IMO.
You typed that with a straight face, did you?
Everyone knows the true colors of Iran, North Korea, or Syria. If they're not morally outraged already, hearing about our troops getting electric shocks and hot irons until they give up classified information isn't really going to interest them.
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