Did George W Bush commit war crimes to the american standard

[BobTheCoward]

I was thinking about accusations that Bush and Cheney were war criminal.

I have little doubt that they meet that standard in some nations around the world.

My question is if they committed a war crime as that term exists in America?

It seems it would be very difficult to have congress pass a war crime law that could affect the commander in chief. Almost every war crime, by definition, is a CoC decision reserved to the president that congress has no legal say.

Any thoughts?

[Cobalt]

Any thoughts?

"Oh God, here we go."

[WildCat]

Well they did mastermind the 9/11 attacks.

[shemp]

Well they did mastermind the 9/11 attacks.

That was the Jews. Bush and Cheney were responsible for the Brink's job.

[theprestige]

I was thinking about accusations that Bush and Cheney were war criminal.

I have little doubt that they meet that standard in some nations around the world.

My question is if they committed a war crime as that term exists in America?

It seems it would be very difficult to have congress pass a war crime law that could affect the commander in chief. Almost every war crime, by definition, is a CoC decision reserved to the president that congress has no legal say.

Any thoughts?

The "American standard" consists of being indicted on the charge of committing a war crime, being tried in a court of law for that crime, being convicted of that crime, and having that conviction upheld by one or more higher courts on appeal. So by the "American standard", no, they did not commit any war crimes.

Alternatively, American law provides for Congress to remove the President for office any time they see fit, for whatever reason they like. For example, Congress could have declared that Bush committed "war crimes" (according to whatever definition Congress preferred), and removed him from office on those grounds. Again, history is clear: even by this American standard, they did not commit any war crimes.

Finally, there's always the Court of Public Opinion. Americans value individuality and independent thinking (among other, often contradictory things). Americans are welcome to believe--and preach--any asinine thing that comes into their heads, whether or not they have any evidence or reason to support it. By this American standard, they certainly did commit war crimes, but it depends who you talk to, and what exactly you talk about.

[jimtron]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the American standard," but the Bush admin did break laws while engaged in combat (as did many administrations before and after). I doubt that most Americans want anything seriously done about it though.

eta: Bush has been found guilty of war crimes (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq _attack/singleton/) along with Tony Blair; not by the U.S. though.

[ponderingturtle]

They failed to meet one important part of the conditions nessacary, being defeated militarily.

[Virus]

So what are you guys going to do about these imaginary war crimes that you hope happened?

[BobTheCoward]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the American standard," but the Bush admin did break laws while engaged in combat (as did many administrations before and after). I doubt that most Americans want anything seriously done about it though.

eta: Bush has been found guilty of war crimes (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq _attack/singleton/) along with Tony Blair; not by the U.S. though.

This is what got me thinking.

But did they break an American law?

I will define break for here.

1) The law exists
2) it applies to the president


I want to emphasize that I am not pro-war crime or pro-bush. I am all for rewriting the constitution to address war from a 21st century perspective. But you have to go by what exists, not what you want.

[Toontown]

So what are you guys going to do about these imaginary war crimes that you hope happened?

Same thing they always do: try to get some more idiots voted into office.

So far their stragedy of stirring up idiotic voters is working with end-times-like efficiency.

[Border Reiver]

This is what got me thinking.

But did they break an American law?

I will define break for here.

1) The law exists
2) it applies to the president


I want to emphasize that I am not pro-war crime or pro-bush. I am all for rewriting the constitution to address war from a 21st century perspective. But you have to go by what exists, not what you want.

War crimes though are considered to be "international offences" with "universal jurisdiction". And the laws do exist and indeed were defined by the Great Powers of WWII. There the high government officials of the nazi regime were accused of various offences, and convicted. One of the offences was "Waging of Agressive War", which essentially went against the Doctrine of Westphalia by saying to sovereign states that "No, you just can't declare war whenever you feel like it."

All that being said, the "convictions" being referenced were from a Tribunal in Malaysia, gathered by a leader who could be considered "somewhat biased" against those two. That, and it is really unclear if a defence or counter argument was presented, or if it was just "the prosecution" presenting a case.

Now if either Bush or Blair was in front of the ICC that would be something different.

[Virus]

Apparently the civilized world wants overthrowing a genocidal fascist regime to be a war crime.

If that's what you want then that's what you want.

[JihadJane]

Same thing they always do: try to get some more idiots voted into office.

So far their stragedy of stirring up idiotic voters is working with end-times-like efficiency.


Decode, please.

[jimtron]

Apparently the civilized world wants overthrowing a genocidal fascist regime to be a war crime.


The folks accusing the Bush admin of war crimes are not against the overthrow of genocidal fascist regimes, AFAIK. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share it.

The complaints are about breaking domestic and international laws, engaging in torture, etc.

[Brainster]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the American standard," but the Bush admin did break laws while engaged in combat (as did many administrations before and after). I doubt that most Americans want anything seriously done about it though.

eta: Bush has been found guilty of war crimes (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/bush_and_blair_found_guilty_of_war_crimes_for_iraq _attack/singleton/) along with Tony Blair; not by the U.S. though.

A mock tribunal, held by Mahathir Mohamad, a 9-11 Truther (http://www.theborneopost.com/2011/09/12/mahathir-911-not-work-of-muslims/). What a surprise that Glenn Greenwald would link it without noting any problems.

[jimtron]

A senior official in the Bush justice department said for the first time today that (waterboarding) is currently illegal.

And John McCain said: I've made it very clear that I believe that waterboarding is torture and illegal

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/14/terrorism.usat

[Virus]

Oh yeah. Three 9/11 linked al-Qaeda terrorists had water poured up their nose. That's the critical human rights issue of the age. Next to a few college kids getting pepper sprayed.

[jimtron]

Oh yeah. Three 9/11 linked al-Qaeda terrorists had water poured up their nose. That's the critical human rights issue of the age. Next to a few college kids getting pepper sprayed.

This thread asks is Bush committed war crimes "to the American standard," it doesn't ask anything about "critical human rights issue(s) of the age."

A senior Bush official called waterboarding illegal and well known Republican John McCain called it torture and illegal (not to mention the many Americans on the left who considered it the same). So I think there's an argument to be made that war crimes were committed "to the American standard."

[gumboot]

I think you could make a case that implementing a policy of torturing detainees is a warcrime, and on that grounds you could claim Bush committed warcrimes. Other than that? No.

[gumboot]

One of the offences was "Waging of Agressive War", which essentially went against the Doctrine of Westphalia by saying to sovereign states that "No, you just can't declare war whenever you feel like it."



The problem with the prohibition on waging a "War of Aggression" is that no one has ever bothered to define what a "War of Aggression" is, essentially making the prohibition meaningless.

[Robrob]

The problem with the prohibition on waging a "War of Aggression" is that no one has ever bothered to define what a "War of Aggression" is, essentially making the prohibition meaningless.

Yes, it gets into a very sticky situation where the winners can declare the losers to be "criminals."

Oh yeah. Three 9/11 linked al-Qaeda terrorists had water poured up their nose. That's the critical human rights issue of the age. Next to a few college kids getting pepper sprayed.

Hyperbole presented as fact.

[Brainster]

So is Obama guilty of something for not trying him?

[jimtron]

So is Obama guilty of something for not trying him?

I know there are lefties that think so.

[Oystein]

The problem with the prohibition on waging a "War of Aggression" is that no one has ever bothered to define what a "War of Aggression" is, essentially making the prohibition meaningless.

Not quite true.

Any sustained war against another country not in defense against immediate and ongoing attack, or without the expressed consent of the UN Security Council, is a war of aggression.

The problem is less what a WoA is, but the legal process of who gets to determine when an aggression becomes a war of aggression, or which war is aggression, vs. self-defence.

[Oystein]

Oh yeah. Three 9/11 linked al-Qaeda terrorists had water poured up their nose. That's the critical human rights issue of the age. Next to a few college kids getting pepper sprayed.

Why bother to waterboard someone if it REALLY is just "water poured up their nose"? What effect woukld that have?

[Halfcentaur]

If Bush is guilty of acts of which we previously charged others in the past with war crimes for, how is this different? Is a war crime not a war crime if you think the victim deserved it? Is a war crime not a war crime if you had a good reason to do it?

Oh yeah. Three 9/11 linked al-Qaeda terrorists had water poured up their nose. That's the critical human rights issue of the age. Next to a few college kids getting pepper sprayed.

Hyperbole. If it's not torture, why use it as a form of torture? What makes torture bad, if torture even is something you consider bad?

[Border Reiver]

The problem with the prohibition on waging a "War of Aggression" is that no one has ever bothered to define what a "War of Aggression" is, essentially making the prohibition meaningless.

Not quite, Nuremberg and Tokyo are useful precedents.

The lesson of course is don't lose, or be weak enough afterwards to allow other nations to grab your leaders.

[ponderingturtle]

If Bush is guilty of acts of which we previously charged others in the past with war crimes for, how is this different? Is a war crime not a war crime if you think the victim deserved it? Is a war crime not a war crime if you had a good reason to do it?



Hyperbole. If it's not torture, why use it as a form of torture? What makes torture bad, if torture even is something you consider bad?

Because the only way we will prosecute our torturers is to have evidence released publically. That is why Obama backed down on his campaign pledge to release photos of americans torturing its prisoners.

We only charged the abugraib people because the pictures got out.

[WildCat]

We only charged the abugraib people because the pictures got out.
No, those incidents were being investigated prior to the pictures getting out.

[funk de fino]

I think you could make a case that implementing a policy of torturing detainees is a warcrime, and on that grounds you could claim Bush committed warcrimes. Other than that? No.

^^^^ This

[funk de fino]

No, those incidents were being investigated prior to the pictures getting out.

Investigate and charged are two different things.

[ponderingturtle]

No, those incidents were being investigated prior to the pictures getting out.

And nothing would have been done with out the political pressure. It also did not do anything to those in charge. As the abuse was obvious from the situation, asking untrained soldiers to soften up prisoners will easily lead to abuse check out the Stanford prison experiment.

Of course there is also the question of how they learned such culturally specific abuses.

[BobTheCoward]

If Bush is guilty of acts of which we previously charged others in the past with war crimes for, how is this different? Is a war crime not a war crime if you think the victim deserved it? Is a war crime not a war crime if you had a good reason to do it?



The argument is that many war crimes (killing civilians, pillaging, etc) are laws governing the tactical and strategic choices of people directing the military. In America, the constitution declares the president the commander in chief, and restricts congressional authority to funding. captures on land or sea, the declaration, and the UCMJ.

The last one is important. Does it apply to the ability to create war crimes? If we assume it doesn't, then congress cannot regulate the tactical and strategic decisions of the president. Then, none of those war crimes could ever apply to the president if tried in an american court.

[Toontown]

I think you could make a case that implementing a policy of torturing detainees is a warcrime, and on that grounds you could claim Bush committed warcrimes. Other than that? No.

No such case could be made. Bush sought legal counsel on the issue of aggressive interrogation techniques, and approved only those techniques that were deemed legal. Bush also informed congressional leaders of both parties on the approved interrogation techniques.

No one said a word. Not one word. Until it became politically expedient to raise a stink. Then numerous political hacks of various stripes began to raise their usual dishonest stinks.

Nothing is a 'war crime' until it is defined as such by some legal authority. Vague definitions of 'torture' which can be retroactively interpreted to mean anything that's useful for scapegoating purposes simply won't cut it. It is hardly credible that waterboarding was defined as 'torture' when it was routinely being used on Army Special Forces trainees as part of their training.

[Toontown]

Apparently the civilized world wants overthrowing a genocidal fascist regime to be a war crime.

If that's what you want then that's what you want.

If that's what they want, then they can hardly be reasonably considered "civilized".

But I assume you are using the term "civilized world" in a strictly relative sense. Compared to a genocidal fascist regime.

[Toontown]

Decode, please.

Why? It's plain english. The decoded version would be much the same as the undecoded version.

[gumboot]

Not quite true.

Any sustained war against another country not in defense against immediate and ongoing attack, or without the expressed consent of the UN Security Council, is a war of aggression.


Please cite your source for this definition. Like I said, there exists no definition under International Law for what constitutes a War of Aggression. Some have argued that any war that is not legally sanctioned (i.e. in self-defense or approved by the UNSC) is a war of aggression, however most international law experts tend to reject that notion, arguing rather that "war of aggression" would constitute a sub-set of non-sanctioned warfare (an example of a non-sanctioned war that is not a war of aggression would include a war based around a territorial dispute).



The problem is less what a WoA is, but the legal process of who gets to determine when an aggression becomes a war of aggression, or which war is aggression, vs. self-defence.


The Rome Statute of the ICC identifies the crime of waging a War of Aggression to be under its jurisdiction, but also states that it cannot exercise said jurisdiction until the parties to the statute agree on a definition and set out circumstances under which it can be prosecuted. That hasn't happened.


Not quite, Nuremberg and Tokyo are useful precedents.

The lesson of course is don't lose, or be weak enough afterwards to allow other nations to grab your leaders.

Indeed. The problem with Nuremberg (aside from its questionable legal standing) is that the actual crime that was created was "Crimes against Peace" and "war of aggression" was simply given as one of a number of examples within the definition of that crime, which leaves the definition of "war of aggression" unexplained. Further, the Nuremberg crime was derived from the now defunct 1933 crime of Waging a War of Aggression which had, as one of its prerequisites, a Declaration of War against a non-belligerent state. This is, indeed, the primary reason that so few countries have formally declared war since WW2, which further complicates any accusation of war of aggression.

[gumboot]

No such case could be made. Bush sought legal counsel on the issue of aggressive interrogation techniques, and approved only those techniques that were deemed legal. Bush also informed congressional leaders of both parties on the approved interrogation techniques.

No one said a word. Not one word. Until it became politically expedient to raise a stink. Then numerous political hacks of various stripes began to raise their usual dishonest stinks.

Nothing is a 'war crime' until it is defined as such by some legal authority. Vague definitions of 'torture' which can be retroactively interpreted to mean anything that's useful for scapegoating purposes simply won't cut it. It is hardly credible that waterboarding was defined as 'torture' when it was routinely being used on Army Special Forces trainees as part of their training.

Ahem...


No coercion may be used on prisoners to secure information to the condition of their army or country. Prisoners who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind whatever.

Article 6
Convention Between the United States of America and Other Powers, Relating to Prisoners of War; July 27, 1929

The first Geneva Convention is pretty explicit in defining mistreatment of detainees as a warcrime. I'm sorry Toontown, but on this point you're wrong. Waterboarding a detainee is absolutely 100% a warcrime. It is illegal under international law, it has been for 80 years, and nothing can justify it.

Whether the military waterboard their own forces or not as part of their training is totally irrelevant.

[gumboot]

Investigate and charged are two different things.

Ah... I think you need to recheck your timeline. The US military first announced an investigation was underway on January 16, 2004. In February they announced that a number of soldiers had been suspended from duty. In March they announced they had laid initial charges against six soldiers.

Through all of these announcements the media expressed very little interest at all. It wasn't until April 2004, when 60 Minutes released a documentary on the abuses, that anyone actually cared. By then prosecution was well underway. Even then, interest was muted.

Then in May 2004, when the US Military released the Taguba Report which contained the findings of Major General Antonio Taguba's investigation the firestorm really sparked into life when a number of high-profile media outlets (most notably the New Yorker and NBC ran articles. Their articles were based almost entirely on the report released by the US Government.

Abu Ghraib is actually a perfect example of the military being pro-active in identifying abuse, stopping it, and being open and honest about its existence.

(Having said that I feel like they weren't aggressive enough on the prosecution side of things, though there were procedural screw-ups like most charges against Lieutenant Colonel Steven L. Jordan being dismissed because the interviewing officer failed to read him his rights.)

[Toontown]

Ahem...

"No coercion may be used on prisoners to secure information to the condition of their army or country."

1. Terrorist detaineees are not Prisoners of War. They are, at best, nothing more than 'enemy combatants', undeserving of Prisoner of War status, which is considered an honorable status, in and of itself. In fact, real Prisoners of War may not be interrogated at all, except when suspected of having committed crimes.

2. Terrorist detainees are not interrogated "to obtain information to the condition of their army or country", since they do not have an army or a country. They are interrogated for the purpose of extracting information which might save the lives of the people the terrorists intend to slaughter.

[gumboot]

Ahem...

"No coercion may be used on prisoners to secure information to the condition of their army or country."

1. Terrorist detaineees are not prisoners of war. They are, at best, nothing more than 'enemy combatants', undeserving of Prisoner of War status, which is considered an honorable status, in and of itself. In fact, real Prisoners of War may not be interrogated at all, except when suspected of having committed crimes.


A detained enemy combatant is by definition a prisoner of war. Further, the Geneva Conventions state that any detainee whose status has not been determined by a tribunal is to be treated as a POW until such time as their status is determined. POW status is not an honourable status. It is the default status of all detainees.

The argument against POW status only applies for non-Afghani detainees (or non-Iraqi in the case of Iraq) because the Laws of War forbid third parties from engaging in the conflict. However a competent tribunal must determine their status as an illegal combatant first, at which point they are to be tried and either convicted or released.

POWs, by contrast, can be detained until hostilities cease.

Further, you are wrong that POWs cannot be interrogated. They can. But you cannot use coercion of any kind. It is not illegal to interview them and ask them questions.



2. Terrorist detainees are not interrogated "to obtain information to the condition of their army or country", since they do not have an army or a country. They are interrogated for the purpose of extracting information which might save the lives of the people the terrorists intend to slaughter.

They are interrogated to obtain information to the condition of their army, which comprises their fellow combatants/terrorists. Using coercion to do so is illegal.

[gumboot]

And nothing would have been done with out the political pressure. It also did not do anything to those in charge.



Ah, yes it did. The commanding officers at the prison were punished. The senior officer most responsible was only charged on minor crimes, but that was because his interviewer forgot to read him his rights, so the court dismissed the charges. Not because the military didn't go after him.

[Toontown]

A detained enemy combatant is by definition a prisoner of war. Further, the Geneva Conventions state that any detainee whose status has not been determined by a tribunal is to be treated as a POW until such time as their status is determined. POW status is not an honourable status. It is the default status of all detainees.

The argument against POW status only applies for non-Afghani detainees (or non-Iraqi in the case of Iraq) because the Laws of War forbid third parties from engaging in the conflict. However a competent tribunal must determine their status as an illegal combatant first, at which point they are to be tried and either convicted or released.

POWs, by contrast, can be detained until hostilities cease.

Further, you are wrong that POWs cannot be interrogated. They can. But you cannot use coercion of any kind. It is not illegal to interview them and ask them questions.

They are interrogated to obtain information to the condition of their army, which comprises their fellow combatants/terrorists. Using coercion to do so is illegal.

You are using the Geneva conventions to assign a status to terrorists which should not apply to terrorists. The Geneva conventions apply to wars between countries, in an obviosly failed attempt to make war between countries more humane and civilized.

As long as you insist on doing that, there is no basis on which we can agree on the general subject of treatment of terrorists.

[rustypouch]

It's interesting how some people can justify torture.

[bikerdruid]

It's interesting how some people can justify torture.

what's a little water up the nose, between enemies?:rolleyes:

[Toontown]

It's interesting how some people can justify torture.

It is far more interesting how some people would allow thousands of innocents to die in terrorist attacks, citing deep-seated fears that Western civilization will devolve into tyranny if a few terrorist kingpins get water poured up their noses.

My position is simple: It is asinine to apply rules to situations for which said rules were never intended to be applied.

But something tells me that so simple an explanation won't get through. So I'll add an analogy:

Applying the Geneva convention rules on the treatment of POW's to terrorist detainees makes as much sense as applying the rules of basketball to football. You end up with a lot of empty football stadiums and herds of huge linemen lumbering up and down basketball courts, trying to remember they're not supposed to knock the other guys on their asses.

And also a lot of dead people who didn't need to die to protect the noses of terrorists from the dreaded water.

[Complexity]

They committed crimes and war crimes in my opinion.

[Toontown]

They committed crimes and war crimes in my opinion.

And that 'opinion' is just that - an opinion, nothing more. Anyone else can have an equally valid opinion.

I, for example, would consider it an inexcusable crime against humanity to fail to extract as much information as possible from Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed.

[rustypouch]

It is far more interesting how some people would allow thousands of innocents to die in terrorist attacks, citing deep-seated fears that Western civilization will devolve into tyranny if a few terrorist kingpins get water poured up their noses.

My position is simple: It is asinine to apply rules to situations for which said rules were never intended to be applied.

But something tells me that so simple an explanation won't get through. So I'll add an analogy:

Applying the Geneva convention rules on the treatment of POW's to terrorist detainees makes as much sense as applying the rules of basketball to football. You end up with a lot of empty football stadiums and herds of huge linemen lumbering up and down basketball courts, trying to remember they're not supposed to knock the other guys on their asses.

And also a lot of dead people who didn't need to die to protect the noses of terrorists from the dreaded water.

Wow. So do you constantly live in fear, or does the thought of hurting people make you moist?

[Toontown]

Wow. So do you constantly live in fear, or does the thought of hurting people make you moist?

Translation: you have no answer. Only a false dichotomy to serve as a pointless fig leaf.

[rustypouch]

Translation: you have no answer. Only a false dichotomy to serve as a pointless fig leaf.

Hey, you're the one getting jollies from the idea of torturing people.

It's something I cannot understand. Hurting potentially innocent people for information they *might* know disgusts me. Besides, information from torture is suspect, at best. People will say what they think the torturer wants to hear to make them stop.

How can you justify hurting people for useless information? Or they don't count because they're brown?

[Toontown]

Hey, you're the one getting jollies from the idea of torturing people.

It's something I cannot understand. Hurting potentially innocent people for information they *might* know disgusts me. Besides, information from torture is suspect, at best. People will say what they think the torturer wants to hear to make them stop.

How can you justify hurting people for useless information? Or they don't count because they're brown?

A common leftist trick is to lure the opponent into accepting a false premise. In this case, there are three false premises hard at work, topped off with a false dichotomy.

1. The three terrorist kingpins who were waterboarded were probably innocent of any wrongdoing.

2. No useful information was obtained.

3. Toontown gets 'jollies' from the idea of torturing people.

Feel free to present convincing evidence of (1), (2), and (3) instead of attempting to slip them in as uncontested premises.

But don't expect me to respond to any more of your deceptive gibberish.

[Virus]

Hey, you're the one getting jollies from the idea of torturing people.

It's something I cannot understand. Hurting potentially innocent people for information they *might* know disgusts me. Besides, information from torture is suspect, at best. People will say what they think the torturer wants to hear to make them stop.

How can you justify hurting people for useless information? Or they don't count because they're brown?


Do you really care that much about three terrorists having water pored up their nose? I don't.

[Toontown]

what's a little water up the nose, between enemies?:rolleyes:

Nothing, really, considering that they could have been shot in the gonads on sight instead of being captured, and no amount of pseudo-legalistic mumbo-jumbo would have had any effect whatsoever.

Not that capturing them was doing them any favor. They're better off dead. They had their shot at the monkey life, and they flunked miserably. But they've learned how to better their circumstances substantially. It's called talking. Singing like a tweety bird. Providing actionable intel.

[leftysergeant]

I, for example, would consider it an inexcusable crime against humanity to fail to extract as much information as possible from Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed.Then you endorse a crime. We are not allowed, by law, to torutre criminal suspects, either, for damned good reasons.

That it does not work as advertised is the least of them. Whoever authorizes waterboarding should be in jail himself.

[bikerdruid]

Providing actionable intel.

that has been shown to be wrong.

[gumboot]

You are using the Geneva conventions to assign a status to terrorists which should not apply to terrorists.

I'm not assigning it to terrorists. I'm assigning it to combatants detained by the US during their occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Anyone captured as a "terrorist" outside these conflicts is simply a criminal, and should be processed in the normal way criminals are processed.


The Geneva conventions apply to wars between countries, in an obviosly failed attempt to make war between countries more humane and civilized.

The Geneva Conventions apply to international armed conflict such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.


As long as you insist on doing that, there is no basis on which we can agree on the general subject of treatment of terrorists.

I'm not interested in opinion. I'm interested in legal fact. You can think whatever you want. The law cares neither about your opinion nor mine, nor George Bush's.

[Toontown]

Do you really care that much about three terrorists having water pored up their nose? I don't.

It is contradictory to suppose that he gives a rat's ass about those mass-murdering bastards, while he professes to be disgusted at the idea of the evil Bush causing people to be hurt.

But hey, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's deeply concerned that their waterboarding risked bringing about the fall of civilization by some sort of wierd slippery-slope-butterfly effect.

[gumboot]

Do you really care that much about three terrorists having water pored up their nose? I don't.


I do. Because I believe I live in a civilisation where we value fundamental principles including the rule of law, equality, and democracy. I believe I live in a civilisation where these ideal are not merely a catch-phrase nor a guideline but the foundation principles upon which our entire society is built.

And as such I care very, very deeply about governments within my civilisation which reveal by their actions they do not hold these ideals in the same high regard.

I couldn't care less about the terrorists. They are scum and if they died tomorrow I would shed nae a tear for their loss.

I care very much about my civilisation, and I care very much about adhering to our principles no matter what rather than treating them as an ideology of convenience.

[rustypouch]

A common leftist trick is to lure the opponent into accepting a false premise. In this case, there are three false premises hard at work, topped off with a false dichotomy.

1. The three terrorist kingpins who were waterboarded were probably innocent of any wrongdoing.

2. No useful information was obtained.

3. Toontown gets 'jollies' from the idea of torturing people.

Feel free to present convincing evidence of (1), (2), and (3) instead of attempting to slip them in as uncontested premises.

But don't expect me to respond to any more of your deceptive gibberish.

An authoritarian trick is to dehumanize people who are slightly different to justify treating them badly.

I'm curious as to what useful information came from detaining and torturing the thousands of other people detained by the US. I also like how you referred to yourself in the third person.

[Toontown]

Then you endorse a crime. We are not allowed, by law, to torutre criminal suspects, either, for damned good reasons.

That it does not work as advertised is the least of them. Whoever authorizes waterboarding should be in jail himself.

If Bush goes to jail for waterboarding, then a lot of your Democrat congressional heros should go with him as accessories. They knew about it, said nothing, and failed to initiate impeachment proceedings.

But we both know the reason the noble Democrat defenders of civilization did nothing was because they knew they couldn't make it stick.

[Toontown]

I'm curious as to what useful information came from detaining and torturing the thousands of other people detained by the US. I also like how you referred to yourself in the third person.

I'm curious to see you prove that thousands of people were tortured by the U.S.

You know, instead of merely inserting it as a given.

[Toontown]

I do. Because I believe I live in a civilisation where we value fundamental principles including the rule of law, equality, and democracy. I believe I live in a civilisation where these ideal are not merely a catch-phrase nor a guideline but the foundation principles upon which our entire society is built.


Right. And the rules of basketball are not merely guidelines, but are the actual rules by which the game of basketball is played, and are the foundation upon which the game of basketball is built.

But that doesn't mean basketball rules are applicable to football.

Come to think of it, how many wars have we actually brought to a successful conclusion since the Geneva conventions were written up? And how many of our enemies have found any use for the conventions except ass wipe?

I'm thinking zero and zero.

Right. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation. Still, the Geneva conventions have yet to prove themselves to be of any measurable value. And yet you want cling to them in every situation as if the future of civilization critically depends on every jot and tittle of them.

[Robrob]

Come to think of it, how many wars have we actually brought to a successful conclusion since the Geneva conventions were written up? And how many of our enemies have found any use for the conventions except ass wipe?

A lot of them actually, The four Geneva Convention treaties were signed in 1864, 1906, 1929 and 1949 respectively. Essentially they were updated and modified after each major conflict.

Still, the Geneva conventions have yet to prove themselves to be of any measurable value. And yet you want cling to them in every situation as if the future of civilization critically depends on every jot and tittle of them.


Would I be correct in guessing you have not served in the military? And none of your family or friends?

[leftysergeant]

If Bush goes to jail for waterboarding, then a lot of your Democrat congressional heros should go with him as accessories. They knew about it, said nothing, and failed to initiate impeachment proceedings.

Grover's punks had control of both houses for most of the shrub's interregnum. Impeachment would have died in the Senate.

That doesn't mean that he is not a criminal or that Rummy and his nosferatu sidekick and Gonzo and that piece of crap John Yoo should not burn in hell for muirdering people and degrading civilization to the point that supposedly sentient beings are willing to believe that a torture technique which is known to be WORTHLESS for intelligence-gather purposes is just playing rough with people who have it coming anyway.

Torture is and should remain illegal because it is used to pervert the law.

Think SALEM. Got the picture yet? How much more do I have to dumb-it-down?

[Virus]

I just don't think three terrorists getting water poured up their nose is that big a deal.

[Toontown]

A lot of them actually, The four Geneva Convention treaties were signed in 1864, 1906, 1929 and 1949 respectively. Essentially they were updated and modified after each major conflict.

The signing of various sheets of paper has no bearing on whether any of our enemies ever consistently observed any rules of war. I think we both know they have not done so to any significant extent.


Would I be correct in guessing you have not served in the military? And none of your family or friends?

You would be dead wrong. I'm a combat veteran. My opponents' attitude toward the Geneva conventions was such that I knew for a fact that allowing myself to be taken alive would be a very bad idea.

[Toontown]

Grover's punks had control of both houses for most of the shrub's interregnum. Impeachment would have died in the Senate.

So? You think that lets them off the hook? If Bush was committing war crimes, then the congress was obligated to bring charges, win, lose, or draw. Instead, they said nothing and did nothing until it became politically expedient to start making impotent accusations.


That doesn't mean that he is not a criminal or that Rummy and his nosferatu sidekick and Gonzo and that piece of crap John Yoo should not burn in hell for muirdering people and degrading civilization to the point that supposedly sentient beings are willing to believe that a torture technique which is known to be WORTHLESS for intelligence-gather purposes is just playing rough with people who have it coming anyway.

I see. So... based on your righteous anger on the subject of the horrific damage done by Bush to "civilization" by pouring water up some mass murderers' noses - am I correct to assume you were equally adamant that the tongue-chopping Saddam and his mass-torturing/murdering henchmen be brought to justice?

Or are you just playing silly little finger-pointing political hack games? I do hope you're not going to start lying to me now...or condemning me to hell...

Because on the last page of the Bible the words "...all liars shall have their place in the lake of fire" are as ominous as your man Jesus' blunt warning, "Judge not...for as you judge, so shall you be judged."

[leftysergeant]

So... based on your righteous anger on the subject of the horrific damage done by Bush to "civilization" by pouring water up some mass murderers' noses - am I correct to assume you were equally adamant that the tongue-chopping Saddam and his mass-torturing/murdering henchmen be brought to justice?

So, because we are special, it is okay with you that we commit criminal acts to gather ******** "intelligence" to use to justify going to war against a country which had not attacked us. *********** brilliant.

[bikerdruid]

So, because we are special, it is okay with you that we commit criminal acts to gather ******** "intelligence" to use to justify going to war against a country which had not attacked us. *********** brilliant.

weird how the 'f' word generates so many asterices, eh?

[Virus]

What do you care about three terrorists getting water poured up their nose? Didn't the Communists murder a hundred million people? Don't you advocate violent revolution?

[leftysergeant]

What do you care about three terrorists getting water poured up their nose? Didn't the Communists murder a hundred million people? Don't you advocate violent revolution?

So we have to fight communists because they are savages who torture people, and in order to fight communism we have to torture people, but that does not make us savages. I follow your logic perfectly.

Right down the old sewer.

[gumboot]

Right. And the rules of basketball are not merely guidelines, but are the actual rules by which the game of basketball is played, and are the foundation upon which the game of basketball is built.

But that doesn't mean basketball rules are applicable to football.


Did you just compare civilisation to a game of sport?



Come to think of it, how many wars have we actually brought to a successful conclusion since the Geneva conventions were written up? And how many of our enemies have found any use for the conventions except ass wipe?

I'm thinking zero and zero.


You would be wrong, in both cases. You don't appear to know your military history very well.



Right. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation. Still, the Geneva conventions have yet to prove themselves to be of any measurable value. And yet you want cling to them in every situation as if the future of civilization critically depends on every jot and tittle of them.


If you're former military and this is the sort of attitude you display towards the ILAC this actually explains a lot about why Iraq and Afghanistan is such a mess. I actually find it rather disturbing that military personnel would advocate ignoring the ILAC.

Perhaps more alarming is your disregard for the Rule of Law, because that has much greater implications for your society.

Best of luck, America. You're going to need it.

[Toontown]

So, because we are special, it is okay with you that we commit criminal acts to gather ******** "intelligence" to use to justify going to war against a country which had not attacked us. *********** brilliant.

I'll repeat the question. Maybe you didn't read it right the first time.

So... based on your righteous anger on the subject of the horrific damage done by Bush to "civilization" by pouring water up some mass murderers' noses - am I correct to assume you were equally adamant that the tongue-chopping Saddam and his mass-torturing/murdering henchmen be brought to justice?

Because it is clearly stated in the last book of your Bible, "If any man has an ear, let him hear; he who leads into captivity, goes into captivity. He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword." I don't see a lot of caveats or exceptions there.

So I'm just assuming that, based on your clear moral superiority, informed by your Good Book, that the cup of your righeous wrath against the nose-watering Bush was poured out in double measure upon the seat of the beast, Saddam.

No, wait. That was Bush who did that. And you've never forgiven him for it.

Oh well. We could argue forever about the true meanings of seemingly obvious Bible verses. It will all be made clear on Judgement Day. Hopefully your transgressions will be chalked up to poor reading comprehension and you'll be forgiven.

Er...which, frankly, is more than you would do for that nose-watering bastard Bush. So I dunno, dude. It might be soul-searching time again.

[leftysergeant]

So... based on your righteous anger on the subject of the horrific damage done by Bush to "civilization" by pouring water up some mass murderers' noses - am I correct to assume you were equally adamant that the tongue-chopping Saddam and his mass-torturing/murdering henchmen be brought to justice?

How many times must you be told that this is an idiotic diversion from the main point, to wit, that Bush the Lesser and his merry morons are unfit to walk among decent human beings?

Iraq was never in the Shrub's jurisdiction, and they werte no immediate threat. Grover's punks just wanted the oil fields and a test bed for Friedman's idiotic ecconomic theories. Militarily, it was the most idiotic thing to do when there was a real enemy on our flanks waiting to capitalize on the anger that an illegal and unjustified invasion would cause.

The merry morons used waterboarding to manufacture false evidence to invade. The invasion is, because of that, even more a crime.

Did I mention that waterboarding does not get you objectgiuve truth about the enemy's positions and capabilities? It get you the answers you want, and the piece of crap from Texas wanted the answers that would make it look like he had an excuse to whack the man who tried to whack his daddy.

What a worthless, brutal, uncivilzed punk.

[Virus]

You would be wrong, in both cases. You don't appear to know your military history very well.


Name a war where both sides gave a fig about the Geneva conventions.

[Toontown]

Did you just compare civilisation to a game of sport?

Please don't be a drama queen. Drama-queeniness is not synonymous with civilized behavior, if that's what you're trying to do.


You would be wrong, in both cases. You don't appear to know your military history very well.

Oh? Then you will have no trouble explaining the starved, diseased soldiers in Confederate concentration camps, the poison gas used in WWI, the gas chambers and ovens of WWII, the horrific mistreatment American POW's endured at the hands of the Japanese, North Koreans, and North Vietnamese, etc, etc.

And I would also be grateful if you would inform me as to what wars we have been able to bring to successful conclusions since the 4th convention was written up in 1945. Because all I see are failures, quagmires, and endless deployments along eternally tense, hostile borders. Could it be that that 4th one was the final straw that finally made it a 'war crime' to win a war?


If you're former military and this is the sort of attitude you display towards the ILAC this actually explains a lot about why Iraq and Afghanistan is such a mess. I actually find it rather disturbing that military personnel would advocate ignoring the ILAC.

The Geneva conventions have been observed by the allies in Afghanistan and Iraq to a greater extent than any war in history. And yet, as you say, Afghanistan and Iraq are "a mess".

But that's all my fault, of course, even though I never harmed a civilian or POW, because I'm not getting on your overwrought bandwagon because a few terrorist kingpins got their noses watered.

Frankly, all the civilians who were harmed in my CAP village were done by the NVA, after we pulled out. About 250 of them, dead at the hands of their 'liberators'. You need to be careful about the way you carelessly hurl those assertions and accusations about. I'm beginning to see your debating tactics in a new and progressively less flattering light.


Perhaps more alarming is your disregard for the Rule of Law, because that has much greater implications for your society.

Rule of law? Oh, you mean the rule of law I always observed, but my enemies never did? Like the time a VC came into my village and tricked a child into exploding a grenade next to the village chief? As crazy old Colonel Kurtz would have said, "My god! The GENIUS of that! The clarity! The horror!"

The possibility you've apparently failed to take into account is that I don't necessarily have to agree with a law before I'll obey it. There are several laws I disagree with in principle, but I obey them.


Best of luck, America. You're going to need it.

Oh, the gripping drama of it all. I can hardly stand it. Amerika is going straight down the tube because watering Khalid Sheik-Mohammed's nose was the war crime of all war crimes. How will we ever recover our honor? The rule of law is gone forever!

Damn. That was one hell of a slippery-slope-butterfly-effect, watering those terrorists' noses. Who would have guessed the consequences would be so far-reaching?

[Toontown]

How many times must you be told that this is an idiotic diversion from the main point, to wit, that Bush the Lesser and his merry morons are unfit to walk among decent human beings?.

Clue: your "main point" is not THE main point.

You have your "main point". I have mine.


What a worthless, brutal, uncivilzed punk.

Yeah. Better rush out and buy more guns and ammo. We got brutal, uncivilized punks getting into the White House. That must be some kind of Biblical sign.

Still haven't seen any of those long-haired, woman-faced locusts though. But what really worries me is that giant hail out of heaven. Because men will bite their tongues and curse the God of heaven because of it. Because the plague thereof will be exceeding great.

Damn. Some of you people need to take a chill pill. You get all overwrought way too easy. Even your god is a big-assed drama queen.

[Robrob]

The signing of various sheets of paper has no bearing on whether any of our enemies ever consistently observed any rules of war. I think we both know they have not done so to any significant extent.

So because an enemy acts like an animal, that means we should as well? How very grade school of you. Luckily the US government and military all disagree with your POV.

You would be dead wrong. I'm a combat veteran. My opponents' attitude toward the Geneva conventions was such that I knew for a fact that allowing myself to be taken alive would be a very bad idea.

And do you think your opponent's knowledge of how you would treat him properly under the Geneva Convention might have been some encouragement for him to surrender rather than fight to the death? Out of curiosity, in your time in the military did they ever give you classes on the GC? Did you pay attention?

Name a war where both sides gave a fig about the Geneva conventions.

Amongst other things, the GC is to encourage proper treatment of our troops by the enemy as well as to ensure they are treated properly when taken captive by us. For example, while the Germans didn't exactly abide by the GC but they knew if they were taken captive by the allies they stood a pretty good chance of surviving the war. Taken by the Russians, not so much. Guess to whom they surrendered more? Which do you think resulted in fewer allied casualties, Germans surrendering or Germans fighting to the death?

What do you care about three terrorists getting water poured up their nose? Didn't the Communists murder a hundred million people? Don't you advocate violent revolution?

Hyperbole aside, so because one group of animals murdered people, that means it's OK for you to do bad things? How very grade school of you.

[leftysergeant]

Name a war where both sides gave a fig about the Geneva conventions.Why does it matter? The good guys do. WE do, when the country is not being led by an utter moron and a cabinet full of uncivilized dirtbags.

That the other guys don't is usually part of our causus belli.

If torture were such a good idesa, Bush the Lesser would have been much more successful than Obama at meeting military and diplomatic objectives.

He wasn't.

Torture is a moron's pastime.

[gumboot]

Name a war where both sides gave a fig about the Geneva conventions.


World War One.

[Robrob]

Oh? Then you will have no trouble explaining the starved, diseased soldiers in Confederate concentration camps, the poison gas used in WWI, the gas chambers and ovens of WWII, the horrific mistreatment American POW's endured at the hands of the Japanese, North Koreans, and North Vietnamese, etc, etc.

So your answer to horrific treatment is more horrific treatment?

Could it be that that 4th one was the final straw that finally made it a 'war crime' to win a war?

You might want to go ahead and read the thing. Didn't they teach it to you in the military?

But that's all my fault, of course, even though I never harmed a civilian or POW, because I'm not getting on your overwrought bandwagon because a few terrorist kingpins got their noses watered.

Well why not? You certainly seem to feel it would have been the right thing to have done. Oh that's right, the Geneva Convention prevented you from doing it...

Rule of law? Oh, you mean the rule of law I always observed, but my enemies never did?

Which made you the better man, yes? But for some reason you think others should ignore it when you didn't.

The possibility you've apparently failed to take into account is that I don't necessarily have to agree with a law before I'll obey it. There are several laws I disagree with in principle, but I obey them.

So you were afraid to stand up for what you thought was right? Strange, if really thought not following the GC was more effective, a brave man would have gone and done the right thing.

[respect]

How many times must you be told that this is an idiotic diversion from the main point, to wit, that Bush the Lesser and his merry morons are unfit to walk among decent human beings?

Iraq was never in the Shrub's jurisdiction, and they werte no immediate threat. Grover's punks just wanted the oil fields and a test bed for Friedman's idiotic ecconomic theories. Militarily, it was the most idiotic thing to do when there was a real enemy on our flanks waiting to capitalize on the anger that an illegal and unjustified invasion would cause.

The merry morons used waterboarding to manufacture false evidence to invade. The invasion is, because of that, even more a crime.

Did I mention that waterboarding does not get you objectgiuve truth about the enemy's positions and capabilities? It get you the answers you want, and the piece of crap from Texas wanted the answers that would make it look like he had an excuse to whack the man who tried to whack his daddy.

What a worthless, brutal, uncivilzed punk.

Even by the pathetic standards of conspiracy theorists and their wild anti-semitic imaginations, this is way out there. Really? Grover Norquist made the American government go to war to test out the Jew's already well supported theories? I have never seen you post anything that wasn't ignorant, uneducated bigoted garbage, but this takes the cake. Simply pathetic.

[gumboot]

Please don't be a drama queen. Drama-queeniness is not synonymous with civilized behavior, if that's what you're trying to do.


I'm just trying to be clear on your metaphor, because it's a bizarre one, and doesn't really work.


Oh? Then you will have no trouble explaining the starved, diseased soldiers in Confederate concentration camps, the poison gas used in WWI, the gas chambers and ovens of WWII, the horrific mistreatment American POW's endured at the hands of the Japanese, North Koreans, and North Vietnamese, etc, etc.

It's impossible for us to even imagine how bad those conflicts would have been if the sides involved had total disregard for the laws of war (actually, we can, look at some of the nastier civil wars and border conflicts in Africa over the last 60 years and then add the destructive potential of what was available to western armies in those conflicts). Your argument is akin to pointing to a murder and using it to justify abolishing the crime of homicide.



And I would also be grateful if you would inform me as to what wars we have been able to bring to successful conclusions since the 4th convention was written up in 1945. Because all I see are failures, quagmires, and endless deployments along eternally tense, hostile borders.

Here's a few to get you started off the top of my head:

Vietnam War
Greek Civil War
Malaya Emergency
Falklands War

I think it's telling that the only war since WW2 in which the US was a primary combatant that concluded neatly was one they lost. There's a lesson in that.


Could it be that that 4th one was the final straw that finally made it a 'war crime' to win a war?

No it doesn't. The only thing the 4th Convention was really aiming to address was prevent the wholesale area bombing of civilian populations that we saw in WW2.


The Geneva conventions have been observed by the allies in Afghanistan and Iraq to a greater extent than any war in history.

That's debatable. Actually, it's not even debatable. It's plain wrong. In Iraq in particular the US's failure to even attempt to meet its obligations under Section III of Hague IV is the primary reason the place is such a mess. Even the soldiers who were actually there tend to recognise this, and see how the administration's mindless quest to retroactively justify the invasion was responsible for the insurgency. I mean, for pity's sake, when the US forces first entered Iraq the civilian population welcomed them.


And yet, as you say, Afghanistan and Iraq are "a mess".

They're a mess precisely because the US failed to adhere to the ILAC regarding the obligations of occupying powers. In Basra the British initially had greater success than the US precisely because they actually followed the rules. The same thing happens when you compare US actions versus the PRT areas of non-US countries. Unfortunately isolated areas of successful occupation can't stay stable if the surrounding area is quickly being turned into a disaster by incompetent occupiers.



But that's all my fault, of course, even though I never harmed a civilian or POW, because I'm not getting on your overwrought bandwagon because a few terrorist kingpins got their noses watered.

It's not your fault personally, but your rejection of the importance of the ILAC is systematic of a military that is shooting itself in the foot time and time again. Other western armed forces simply don't have the same problems with occupation that the US has, and it's two-fold because they ensure their soldiers understand and respect the laws of war, and they properly prosecuted breaches of them, and because the governments are actually serious about doing the job properly. Locals see this, and come to trust and value the occupiers instead of viewing them as thugs. Citizens see the cavalier attitude their leaders have to civilians, and they follow suit. Soldiers see how commanders treat civilians and they learn off them, It's really quite simple.

And once again, it has nothing to do with the victims of torture. I don't care about them. It's the torturer that's the problem. The very fact that you refuse to even acknowledge that waterboarding is torture says it all, really.


Frankly, all the civilians who were harmed in my CAP village were done by the NVA, after we pulled out. About 250 of them, dead at the hands of their 'liberators'. You need to be careful about the way you carelessly hurl those assertions and accusations about. I'm beginning to see your debating tactics in a new and progressively less flattering light.

One anecdotal experience in one village doesn't discount the global realities of armed conflict.


Rule of law? Oh, you mean the rule of law I always observed, but my enemies never did? Like the time a VC came into my village and tricked a child into exploding a grenade next to the village chief? As crazy old Colonel Kurtz would have said, "My god! The GENIUS of that! The clarity! The horror!"

The possibility you've apparently failed to take into account is that I don't necessarily have to agree with a law before I'll obey it. There are several laws I disagree with in principle, but I obey them.


Your arguing in favour of violating a law. Clearly you see nothing wrong with violating that specific law. The fundamental principle of the rule of law is that you do not pick and choose which laws to obey as it suits you. The Geneva Conventions are International Law. If you value the rule of law you do your best to adhere to them. It's really as simple as that. Any call to disregard the law, in full or in part, reveals a rejection of the rule of law.



Amerika is going straight down the tube because watering Khalid Sheik-Mohammed's nose was the war crime of all war crimes. How will we ever recover our honor? The rule of law is gone forever!

Damn. That was one hell of a slippery-slope-butterfly-effect, watering those terrorists' noses. Who would have guessed the consequences would be so far-reaching?


As soon as you accept that it's okay to break one law, the rule of law becomes meaningless. It's not a slippery slope, it's basic logic. The rule of law is an all-or-nothing scenario.

[gumboot]

Toontown, I don't mean to upset you or attack you personally, and if you feel I have, I apologise. I have a great deal of respect for you.

I am not accusing you of being a war criminal. But I do know for a fact that at present the US military does not require deployed soldiers to be versed in the ILAC, unlike virtually every other Western country, and there appears to be plenty of evidence that US military personnel do not universally consider adhering to the ILAC to be that important. When a culture of this type is allowed to grow it results in things like the Abu Ghraib abuses. Consider, if you will, that these were Military Police. These are the very soldiers who most closely deal with POWs and civilians in an occupation scenario. These are the people who you need to be the most versed in the ILAC and most certain about the importance of the rules of law. And yet these soldiers were deployed without ever getting trained on the subject. These soldiers felt it was appropriate to abuse and mistreat the prisoners in their care. When the abuse was uncovered the punishment issued to these soldiers was by and large a joke.

What does that say about the US military's commitment to the ILAC?

Nothing good.

[Toontown]

So because an enemy acts like an animal, that means we should as well? How very grade school of you. Luckily the US government and military all disagree with your POV.

Wouldn't be the first time the US gov and military have been wrong about war. As a PFC grunt with 5 months in country, I could have told McNamara and Westmoreland that their attrition strategy did not stand a chance, in part because I was the one being worn down to a frazzle by the constant patrolling and ambushing, with it's inherently paltry results.

And partly because the communists had safe havens in the mountains, Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. They didn't need to send any more troops into South Vietnam than they were willing to sacrifice to keep the war going until we quit. They were never going to run out of bodies, and the Soviets and Chinese were happy to provide them all the weapons and rice they could carry south, ad infinitum. I was appalled that we had leaders in the White House who did not understand this utter simplicity.

But the foolishness of bean-counters aside, I'm curious to know if you really think I am advocating the systematic waterboarding of all prisoners, or are you just mouthing off?


And do you think your opponent's knowledge of how you would treat him properly under the Geneva Convention might have been some encouragement for him to surrender rather than fight to the death? Out of curiosity, in your time in the military did they ever give you classes on the GC? Did you pay attention?

I don't recall any GC classes. But that was 1968, when they were drafting criminalistic street punks and putting them behind us with deadly weapons, and the punks were murdering us in the pursuit of petty vendettas. I was almost the victim of one of them. The street punks were more dangerous than the 'other' enemy. The one that tried to do me waited until I was engaged by NVA sappers, then attacked me from behind with an M-79. So I don't kid myself that we were very well trained, manned, or led.


Amongst other things, the GC is to encourage proper treatment of our troops by the enemy as well as to ensure they are treated properly when taken captive by us.

the GC's effectiveness in that respect has been quite limited. All but nonexistent. Enemies tend to use it as a tactical advantage. Holing up in populated areas, utilizing human shields, taking hostages, intentionally trying to get civilians killed for propaganda value, etc. That's what keeps them in the fight.

Do you really think rank and file al Qaeda will be discouraged from surrendering because a few of their bosses got water poured up their noses? The truth about the typical treatment of US detainees is being systematically hyperboled and lied about in forums like this one all over the internet. Do you really think the masters of rank and file al Qaeda pawns are going to be more honest than internet political hacks?

Nevertheless, I do not advocate indiscriminate torture. I just think this is a stupid, stupid thread, an exercise in mindless hyperbole, trying to make Bush out to be a war criminal because a few terrorists got their noses watered.

If I were leftysergeant, I would declare that anyone indulging in such mindless, counterproductive finger-pointing should burn in hell.

[leftysergeant]

Even by the pathetic standards of conspiracy theorists and their wild anti-semitic imaginations, this is way out there. Really? Grover Norquist made the American government go to war to test out the Jew's already well supported theories?WTF? I didn't mention Israel. The moneyed interests that Grover represents wanted Saddam's oil. His meat puppets went to get it.

Unfortunately, neither the Iraqis nor our congress let them do everything they wanted to with it.

But this is all off-track. By torturing prisoners, Bush the Lesser and his merry morons lowered the moral standards of my country, and I cannot forgive him for that.

[leftysergeant]

But the foolishness of bean-counters aside, I'm curious to know if you really think I am advocating the systematic waterboarding of all prisoners, or are you just mouthing off?

If we srtart excusing dirtbags like the Shrub and his merry morons for doing it to one class of criminals, we open the door to their doing it toothers, including common criminal suspects. You know what hapens then? Do you know what INEVITABLY HAPPENS THEN?

Innocent people get convicted of crap they did not do and monsters continue to walk among us.


I don't recall any GC classes.

You probbly slept through it. Air Force basic was shoreter than Army basic and we got all kinds of information on that topic. (As though it was a pressing thing for us to know how to handle people we took prisoner, considering how much time we would spend executing such duties!)

Do you really think rank and file al Qaeda will be discouraged from surrendering because a few of their bosses got water poured up their noses?

No. Of Course not. But that people like you excuse the merry morons for having done it makes it easier for al Qaeda to paint us as monsters when they are recruiting people to their rasnks.

And you must still take into consideration the fact that, after the merry morons gave al Qaeda this recruiting tool, they have not a scintilla of actionable intelligence of any sort to show for their sub-humanness.

Waterboarding made us less safe.

Nevertheless, I do not advocate indiscriminate torture. I just think this is a stupid, stupid thread, an exercise in mindless hyperbole, trying to make Bush out to be a war criminal because a few terrorists got their noses watered.

The stupidity of the thread increases every time you claim that waterboarding is not acrime against humanity and the security of this country.

[JihadJane]

Toontown: "Do you really think rank and file al Qaeda will be discouraged from surrendering because a few of their bosses got water poured up their noses?"

If torture supporters really are happy about torturing people why do they have to reduce it to juvenile cartoons to make it sound harmless?

[Virus]

Toontown: "Do you really think rank and file al Qaeda will be discouraged from surrendering because a few of their bosses got water poured up their noses?"

If torture supporters really are happy about torturing people why do they have to reduce it to juvenile cartoons to make it sound harmless?

Yeah but you think the government was behind 9/11. If the government hijacked planes and murdered 3000 of its own civilians surely three guys getting water poured up their nose is the most trifling of issues.

[leftysergeant]

Yeah but you think the government was behind 9/11. If the government hijacked planes and murdered 3000 of its own civilians surely three guys getting water poured up their nose is the most trifling of issues.I'm not a twoofer and I think that Bush the Lesser and his whole scurvy crew are war criminals. The two are not mutually excluusive.

Nor is knee-jerk reactionary thinking exclusive to twoofers. I see your mindset as no different from that of little Dickie Gage.

[JihadJane]

Yeah but you think the government was behind 9/11.

No, I don't.

If the government hijacked planes and murdered 3000 of its own civilians surely three guys getting water poured up their nose is the most trifling of issues.

Irrelevant spume.

[Toontown]

I'm not a twoofer and I think that Bush the Lesser and his whole scurvy crew are war criminals. The two are not mutually excluusive.

Maybe not. But there is a definite tendency for obsessive belief systems to flock together in the same heads.

Nonetheless, your argument is impressive. You are not a twoofer. And yet you fervently believe Bush and crew are war criminals.

Well. There you have it, gentlemen. What more evidence do we need?

Crucify!

Crucify!

Crucify!


Nor is knee-jerk reactionary thinking exclusive to twoofers. I see your mindset as no different from that of little Dickie Gage.

Gotta hand it to you, leftie. Your hate is all-encompassing. You hate people most of us have never heard of.

"little Dickie Gage"? Sounds like a country-western singer.

Well, whoever he is, he must be a real bastard. If you happen to run into him in hell, do your part to help God punish wrongdoers. Stick a trident in him for Christ. Maybe you'll get out early on 'good' behavior.

[Toontown]

I am not accusing you of being a war criminal.

Well, that's good of you, seeing as how that would be among the most ignorant and unjust accusations in the sordid history of internet finger-pointing.

Not only am I not a war criminal, my specific task in Vietnam was to protect civilians. I was twice criticized for failing to shoot unarmed women who were running away. In the first instance, while I was in the infantry, the rules of engagement assumed that runners were VC. There was some validity to it. People knew the rules. In the second instance, the Vietnamese Popular Force platoon commander in my village criticized me because the operative rules of engagement in the village assumed that anyone carrying rice in a northerly direction were VC, and I had failed to shoot a distant, northerly-moving rice-carrier. Again, there was validity to it. Everyone in the village was angry about the VC coming in and stealing their food, and wanted something done about it.

So many rules. So many rule-makers. So many yammering mouths. So many finger-pointers. So few willing to put it on the line.

The petty crap I endured in Vietnam, the kind of crap I endured after returning, and the kind of self-righteous, pseudo-moralistic mumbo-jumbo I'm being subjected to here today are among the reasons I cannot advise any young man to ever take up arms on behalf of these people. They are far too likely to call for a young man's head on a plate, should some unfortunate incident occur, such as the one in Fallujah, in which a young, exhausted Marine was recorded shooting a wounded or dead insurgent he thought was feigning death to set up an attack. Many were the calls for that young man's future to be ripped away from him by ambulance chasers. Too quick to judge, too slow to understand. And when we ask them "How much should we give?", they only answer "More, more, more, more!"

Obsessive finger-pointing blame-gamers should consider themselves incredibly fortunate that anyone would ever lift a finger for their pampered, untrustworthy, protective-bubble-dwelling asses.

[BobTheCoward]

Hey. There was an actual point to the thread.

Please stick to examining the constitution delegation of powers and whether it permits legislation on war crimes to curtail the president.

[funk de fino]

I just don't think three terrorists getting water poured up their nose is that big a deal.

You could handle it eh?

[Toontown]

You could handle it eh?

Whoosh!

The argument is not over whether waterboarding is unpleasant. It is unpleasant. It is supposed to be unpleasant.*

The argument was supposed to be about whether the congress can legally make a law which impinges on the president's executive authority, but that fell by the wayside on page 1. The answer seems obvious. The president (is) the law in all areas where the president holds authority. That's kind of the idea behind having a president - so there is someone who has enough power to get something done in less than...let's see...how long has it been since congress passed a budget?

At any rate, the question has been asked of the wrong crowd, as you and several other erstwhile volunteers of your valuable time and labor have thoroughly demonstrated on numerous occasions. Ask these people a direct question, and often as not you get a question back, usually in the form of "So you think that...yada yada yada?"

Then there is the long, tedious exchange involving denials and recriminations. You know the drill. The final result being that the original question gets lost in the shuffle - the object apparently being to make it look like you're responding while not really responding. Yes, that is precisely how far the level of discourse has devolved in politics. And that's when there are rules and moderators.

So good luck, Bob, trying to get a reasonable answer to a question many of the agenda-bearers don't really want to answer. You saw how leftysergeant started backfilling when I suggested the congress critters might be making themselves accessories if they could somehow succeed in legally bringing Bush up on war crimes charges.

*And now, funk, back to your burning question: can we take (it)? I assume by (it) you mean the feeling of drowning. I can only speak for myself. I have felt that I was near drowning. As a teenager, I jumped off a dam into some deep water. Being young and strong and running against the wind, I allowed myself to sink into the water for a while, until the water bacame cold and dark and I felt something cold and clammy brush against my leg - something I suspected might have been a very large catfish. It was only then that I looked up at the distant surface and saw how far I had allowed myself to sink. I didn't think I was going to make it back. I broke the surface gasping and wheezing.

Yeah, it was scary. Nearly drowning is supposed to be scary, and even more scary if something cold and clammy just brushed against your leg. But if you don't actually drown, you get over it, unlike being beheaded by terrorists, which you don't get over.

So...if anyone wants to know how to quickly find out everything a terrorist knows, forget waterboarding. Take his ass where I went on that warm summer day long ago. Make sure there's a big, fat, clammy catfish down there. That'll scare the piss out of him. One trip down there is all it will take.

[gumboot]

Not only am I not a war criminal, my specific task in Vietnam was to protect civilians. I was twice criticized for failing to shoot unarmed women who were running away. In the first instance, while I was in the infantry, the rules of engagement assumed that runners were VC. There was some validity to it. People knew the rules. In the second instance, the Vietnamese Popular Force platoon commander in my village criticized me because the operative rules of engagement in the village assumed that anyone carrying rice in a northerly direction were VC, and I had failed to shoot a distant, northerly-moving rice-carrier. Again, there was validity to it. Everyone in the village was angry about the VC coming in and stealing their food, and wanted something done about it.

This thread isn't about your experiences in Vietnam.



The petty crap I endured in Vietnam, the kind of crap I endured after returning, and the kind of self-righteous, pseudo-moralistic mumbo-jumbo I'm being subjected to here today are among the reasons I cannot advise any young man to ever take up arms on behalf of these people.

Again, nothing to do with the thread. And the only thing you're being "subjected" to is that some people don't actually agree with you. Take it easy. This is just an intellectual discussion. Why are people getting so emotionally invested in every discussion on these forums lately?



They are far too likely to call for a young man's head on a plate, should some unfortunate incident occur, such as the one in Fallujah, in which a young, exhausted Marine was recorded shooting a wounded or dead insurgent he thought was feigning death to set up an attack. Many were the calls for that young man's future to be ripped away from him by ambulance chasers. Too quick to judge, too slow to understand. And when we ask them "How much should we give?", they only answer "More, more, more, more!"

You'd do well not to presume a position without evidence. If you were to go back through the multitude of threads relating to alleged "warcrimes" by US forces you will often find me rejecting the accusations. I'm well aware of the confusion of warfare, and the cost of playing hesitant for fear of breaking a rule. I'm well aware that the Laws of War have a vastly different standard of guilt than normal crime - specifically all one needs to do to justify an action is demonstrate that you believed it was legitimate and/or necessary.

But we're not talking about shooting a civilian in the heat of battle, or mistaking a civilian with a video camera for an insurgent with an RPG. We're talking about the abuse of a captive. There is ZERO ALLOWANCE for that behaviour in the Laws of War. There is no grey zone, no confusion, no need for instant decisions by which you and your comrades live or die.

You do not harm captives. Period.

And a government that not only allows its forces to harm captives, but implements the harming of captives as a formal policy is absolutely without question guilty of a warcrime.

All I care about are the facts, Toontown. Emotion has nothing to do with this. I look at what the law says, and I look at what is done, and from that I determine my stance.



Obsessive finger-pointing blame-gamers should consider themselves incredibly fortunate that anyone would ever lift a finger for their pampered, untrustworthy, protective-bubble-dwelling asses.

I'm not sure who you're referring to here, but this sort of comment isn't really productive to the discussion.

[BobTheCoward]

But we're not talking about shooting a civilian in the heat of battle, or mistaking a civilian with a video camera for an insurgent with an RPG. We're talking about the abuse of a captive. There is ZERO ALLOWANCE for that behaviour in the Laws of War. There is no grey zone, no confusion, no need for instant decisions by which you and your comrades live or die.


That is the thing though, it may be impossible for the president or those under his orders to commit the act, violate a valid american law, and exist a court in America that has that jurisdiction.

That is what I want to drill down and look at. Can legislation apply to the president in this case? What authority grants it? What is the case history?

[leftysergeant]

The argument is not over whether waterboarding is unpleasant. It is unpleasant. It is supposed to be unpleasant.*

Actually, it is inhumane and it is torture, thus illegal.

(Did I mention that it yields bugger-all for accurate intelligence?)

The argument was supposed to be about whether the congress can legally make a law which impinges on the president's executive authority, but that fell by the wayside on page 1. The answer seems obvious. The president (is) the law in all areas where the president holds authority.

Cow cookies. He is still bound by the constitution. The merry morons stepped outside that framework and are not to be given a free pass just because in their stupidity and arrogance, they thought they were right.

So democracy is inefficient. whoop. I prefer that inefficiency to the efficiency of tyrany.

Yeah, it was scary. Nearly drowning is supposed to be scary, and even more scary if something cold and clammy just brushed against your leg. But if you don't actually drown, you get over it, unlike being beheaded by terrorists, which you don't get over.

Simplistic reasoning, not supporterd by science. Torture is so designed as to destroy the victim's will or any thought that he might be able to regain any control over his own situation. After a very short time, it becomes a habit.

By comparison, if you fall into the pond, you have some hope of being able to use your own strength to save yourself.

[Toontown]

This thread isn't about your experiences in Vietnam.

I just wanted to make certain no one got the crazed notion that I'm a war criminal. Surely you can understand that. It would hardly be the first time people have willfully misconstrued everything I've said.

When you falsely accuse me of this:

Gumboot: "Perhaps more alarming is your disregard for the Rule of Law, because that has much greater implications for your society."

Simply because we disagree, then I'll defend myself, irrespective of what the thread is supposedly about. And you don't have to like how I go about it. You probably won't like it any more than I like being falsely accused of criminality.

[BobTheCoward]

He is still bound by the constitution.

And how was it violated?

[leftysergeant]

And how was it violated?That crap about due process and cruel and unusual punishment. The stuff that that clown Gonzo called "quaint."

[Virus]

Victor Davis Hanson:

Rules for Killing Rogues.

Furor surrounded the waterboarding of Mohammed that purportedly resulted in valuable intelligence about future terrorist operations. But why was that considered immoral and illegal when we routinely act as judge, jury and executioner of suspected terrorists through predator drone attacks inside Pakistan?

Mohammed, a confessed killer, was one of just three detainees waterboarded. In contrast, we have executed from the air well over 1,500 suspected terrorists by Predators. President Obama has ordered four times as many drone attacks in the last two years as former President Bush did in eight. Are those killings more constitutionally suspect than Bush's treatment of the three terrorists at Guantanamo?

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson051011.html

[Robrob]

Wouldn't be the first time the US gov and military have been wrong about war. As a PFC grunt with 5 months in country, I could have told McNamara and Westmoreland that their attrition strategy did not stand a chance, in part because I was the one being worn down to a frazzle by the constant patrolling and ambushing, with it's inherently paltry results.

As a PFC, your POV of the war, of the results of military efforts, or of the GC was somewhat restricted to your own level of experiences. Don't you think?

But the foolishness of bean-counters aside, I'm curious to know if you really think I am advocating the systematic waterboarding of all prisoners, or are you just mouthing off?

If you think you have been misunderstood, you should probably explain your POV better.

I don't recall any GC classes. But that was 1968, when they were drafting criminalistic street punks and putting them behind us with deadly weapons, and the punks were murdering us in the pursuit of petty vendettas.

You were drafted because you were a "criminalistic street punk?"

the GC's effectiveness in that respect has been quite limited. All but nonexistent. Enemies tend to use it as a tactical advantage. Holing up in populated areas, utilizing human shields, taking hostages, intentionally trying to get civilians killed for propaganda value, etc. That's what keeps them in the fight.

Which you know from all that training you didn't receive? As I said before, half of the GC is to control what "they" do. The other half is to control what "we" do. Did anyone ever surrender to you? Would they have surrendered if they knew you would execute them, torture them or other wise violate the GC?

Do you really think rank and file al Qaeda will be discouraged from surrendering because a few of their bosses got water poured up their noses?

Now we are back on this topic? OK, first - other than Tier 1 elements, we are not engaging the rank and file of al Qaeda on any regular basis. Second, is Joe Taliban more or less likely to surrender to us if he knows he's going to (or even thinks he might) be tortured?

The truth about the typical treatment of US detainees is being systematically hyperboled and lied about in forums like this one all over the internet.

So we haven't tortured prisoners to death?

Nevertheless, I do not advocate indiscriminate torture. I just think this is a stupid, stupid thread, an exercise in mindless hyperbole, trying to make Bush out to be a war criminal because a few terrorists got their noses watered.

If you don't advocate it, why do you insist on minimizing it to a cartoon? If it's that innocuous, why does it (supposedly) work?

Yeah but you think the government was behind 9/11. If the government hijacked planes and murdered 3000 of its own civilians surely three guys getting water poured up their nose is the most trifling of issues.

The government wasn't behind 9/11 so your hyperbolic claim is moot.

Why do you continually try and reduce torture to a cartoon? If it's so innocuous why did it (according to you) work?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCWN9UWtWkc

[Travis]

Here's a question: does anyone think Bush would have authorized waterboarding if his legal counsel had come back telling him they thought it was torture?

Because it's always been my impression Bush didn't think much about it and approved it only after he had lawyers assure him it wasn't actually torture.

[gumboot]

That is the thing though, it may be impossible for the president or those under his orders to commit the act, violate a valid american law, and exist a court in America that has that jurisdiction.

That is what I want to drill down and look at. Can legislation apply to the president in this case? What authority grants it? What is the case history?



Warcrimes are violations of international law, and yes, Presidents can, and are, charged with said crimes. The alternative options for prosecuting such a violation are:
1) A US Courts Martial
2) An international warcrimes tribunal
3) Trial in the International Criminal Court

The legislation that applies in this case is the International Laws of Armed Conflict, which constitutes the body of international treaties relating to the waging of international armed conflict which have been ratified by enough states to pass into customary law. The authority that grants it is the world community, and I suppose since 1945 you would say the UN. The case history includes numerous war crimes tribunals and trials in the ICC since that time.

[funk de fino]

Whoosh!

The argument is not over whether waterboarding is unpleasant. It is unpleasant. It is supposed to be unpleasant.*

The argument was supposed to be about whether the congress can legally make a law which impinges on the president's executive authority, but that fell by the wayside on page 1. The answer seems obvious. The president (is) the law in all areas where the president holds authority. That's kind of the idea behind having a president - so there is someone who has enough power to get something done in less than...let's see...how long has it been since congress passed a budget?

At any rate, the question has been asked of the wrong crowd, as you and several other erstwhile volunteers of your valuable time and labor have thoroughly demonstrated on numerous occasions. Ask these people a direct question, and often as not you get a question back, usually in the form of "So you think that...yada yada yada?"

Then there is the long, tedious exchange involving denials and recriminations. You know the drill. The final result being that the original question gets lost in the shuffle - the object apparently being to make it look like you're responding while not really responding. Yes, that is precisely how far the level of discourse has devolved in politics. And that's when there are rules and moderators.

So good luck, Bob, trying to get a reasonable answer to a question many of the agenda-bearers don't really want to answer. You saw how leftysergeant started backfilling when I suggested the congress critters might be making themselves accessories if they could somehow succeed in legally bringing Bush up on war crimes charges.

*And now, funk, back to your burning question: can we take (it)? I assume by (it) you mean the feeling of drowning. I can only speak for myself. I have felt that I was near drowning. As a teenager, I jumped off a dam into some deep water. Being young and strong and running against the wind, I allowed myself to sink into the water for a while, until the water bacame cold and dark and I felt something cold and clammy brush against my leg - something I suspected might have been a very large catfish. It was only then that I looked up at the distant surface and saw how far I had allowed myself to sink. I didn't think I was going to make it back. I broke the surface gasping and wheezing.

Yeah, it was scary. Nearly drowning is supposed to be scary, and even more scary if something cold and clammy just brushed against your leg. But if you don't actually drown, you get over it, unlike being beheaded by terrorists, which you don't get over.

So...if anyone wants to know how to quickly find out everything a terrorist knows, forget waterboarding. Take his ass where I went on that warm summer day long ago. Make sure there's a big, fat, clammy catfish down there. That'll scare the piss out of him. One trip down there is all it will take.

It's you who has had the whoosh moment and the post wasn't directed at you or one of your posts. You know what calling it "water up the nose" is supposed to do.

The argument is about war crimes. Torture is a war crime. All the handwaving about who was waterboarded is as irrelevant as your reminiscing.

My 12 years service were spent being disgusted whenever I saw cases where any allied forces being tortured. Now it seems many here feel that we should stoop to the low standard those scumbags set. Defend it all you want but it does your service a disservice.

[gumboot]

When you falsely accuse me of this:

Gumboot: "Perhaps more alarming is your disregard for the Rule of Law, because that has much greater implications for your society."

Simply because we disagree, then I'll defend myself, irrespective of what the thread is supposedly about. And you don't have to like how I go about it. You probably won't like it any more than I like being falsely accused of criminality.


It's not an accusation but an observation. Quite simply, if you have no problem with a single law being broken, you have disregarded the rule of law. That's how it works. It doesn't mean you think all laws should be ignored, or that you personally break laws, but it remains that if you support the rule of law you cannot support the breach of any law.

[gumboot]

Victor Davis Hanson:

Rules for Killing Rogues.

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson051011.html



The difference is that killing enemy in combat is legal. Mistreating prisoners in your care is not.

It's really that simple.

[gumboot]

Here's a question: does anyone think Bush would have authorized waterboarding if his legal counsel had come back telling him they thought it was torture?

Because it's always been my impression Bush didn't think much about it and approved it only after he had lawyers assure him it wasn't actually torture.


I was waiting for someone to bring this up. :) This is the very reason why my response to the OP wasn't absolute.

There's potentially enough space there that the senior administration could avoid responsibility. However one crucial factor undermining that is that were it the case, one would expect the administration to come down hard on either their legal advisors (if they advised wrong) or their front-line operators (if they went beyond what was authorised).

Also let's not forget that the mistreatment of detainees under US care is not limited to what appears to be a few isolated cases of waterboarding. There's plenty of evidence of more widespread mistreatment of prisoners, specifically under CIA care.

The principles of command responsibility (known as the Yamashita and Medina standards, both established by the USA) are such that had the US administration taken measures to stop CIA mistreatment of detainees, they would not be responsible. An example is the abuse at Abu Ghraib. The US command investigated the alleged abuse, charged those involved, and undertook to retrain personnel. For this reason the senior commanders are not liable for charges.

But where the administration is aware of the mistreatment, and does nothing to prevent it, they become liable for the charge of:

"unlawfully disregarding and failing to discharge his duty as a commander to control the acts of members of his command by permitting them to commit war crimes"

As a military commander you have a legal responsibility to ensure those personnel under your command do not commit warcrimes. Failure to address known instances is itself a warcrime.

Now, coming back to legal advice, an argument can be made that in seeking legal clarification, the administration were following their obligations under the law. If you suspect a warcrime is being committed you investigate, determine if one actually is, and stop it if it is happening.

The focus, then, turns to the US Department of Justice, which provided the advice to the administration that waterboarding was not a warcrime. This advice was faulty, as waterboarding most certainly is a warcrime; indeed the USA itself has executed people for that very crime.

Thus the alternative to the Administration being charged with warcrimes must be that those who gave the advice that it was legal are punished for their failings. I am not sure if their actions are actually criminal as such (is it illegal to provide false advice to the government?), but they certainly constitute a gross failure of duty, and if they still work for the US government they should be fired.

[gumboot]

Hey. There was an actual point to the thread.

Please stick to examining the constitution delegation of powers and whether it permits legislation on war crimes to curtail the president.


To address the OP (again), the laws of war are international law, and not legislated by US congress but by the world community. I hope that clarifies things for you.

Interestingly, because International Law is created through the signing of international treaties by heads of state, the person who opened the office of President to being prosecuted for war crimes was, in fact, the President!

[Toontown]

As a PFC, your POV of the war, of the results of military efforts, or of the GC was somewhat restricted to your own level of experiences. Don't you think?

No. Amazingly enough, I could also read, and could even listen to the radio from my isolated position in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but I even went to CAP School, Vietnamese language school, and had lots of Vietnamese to talk to. More than McNamara or Westmoreland ever talked to in their lives.

Not to mention that I was proved correct. It wasn't that difficult to figure it out. Attrition could not and did not work, and I explained why, and it's very simple. If you're having difficulty understanding why it couldn't work, try thinking really hard. Try thinking about what you would do if you were general Giap.

the Marines clear and hold strategy was the only strategy that had a chance. But the McNamara and Westmoreland were bean counters. They didn't get it, and didn't like it much. The enemy didn't like it at all. That should have told them something, but it didn't.


If you think you have been misunderstood, you should probably explain your POV better.

Oh, I don't think I've been misunderstood at all. I think the bad rap you're trying to lay on me is fully intentional, with malice aforethought.

Yeah. You're that obvious.


You were drafted because you were a "criminalistic street punk?"

Learn to read. And now you've become ludicrously obvious.


Which you know from all that training you didn't receive? As I said before, half of the GC is to control what "they" do. The other half is to control what "we" do. Did anyone ever surrender to you? Would they have surrendered if they knew you would execute them, torture them or other wise violate the GC?"

I shared living quarters with a Kit Carson scout. That's a former VC who surrendered and then switched sides. Somehow he found the courage to risk it.:rolleyes: I'm sure he still would have surrendered even if he knew 3 VC honchos had been waterboarded. He was a pragmatic man. Seemed to be able to figure the odds pretty well.

Get this straight, and the sum of your knowledge will increase immediately: We did not then and do not now make a practice of mistreating prisoners, and our enemies, for the most part, knew it then and know it now. The three stooges who were waterboarded were exceptions. Practical people understand these things. But not dogmatists.


So we haven't tortured prisoners to death?

Cherry-pick much?

I'm sure some unfortunate things have happened in a decade of war. Unfortunate things always happen in war. Happy hunting ground for cherry-pickers, eh? As long as a cherry-picker isn't trying to actually prove anything to anyone with an actual brain.


If you don't advocate it, why do you insist on minimizing it to a cartoon? If it's that innocuous, why does it (supposedly) work?

Because it's a freaking mole hill. Maybe if you're an ant, it looks like a mountain. But what happened was, 3 mass-murdering turds, out of all the sorry bastards on the monkeyball, got their noses watered.

And now you've officially become insufferably tiresome. You must be very proud. But hey. Who didn't know that was going to happen.

Goodbye.

[Robrob]

No. Amazingly enough, I could also read, and could even listen to the radio from my isolated position in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but I even went to CAP School, Vietnamese language school, and had lots of Vietnamese to talk to. More than McNamara or Westmoreland ever talked to in their lives.

And those Vietnamese you talked to, they approved of you violating the GC? Oh wait, you didn't - so the point of your yarn would be?

Not to mention that I was proved correct. It wasn't that difficult to figure it out. Attrition could not and did not work, and I explained why, and it's very simple. If you're having difficulty understanding why it couldn't work, try thinking really hard. Try thinking about what you would do if you were general Giap.

War doesn't work? They stopped honoring the GC? What are you talking about and how does any of that apply to the topic?

the Marines clear and hold strategy was the only strategy that had a chance. But the McNamara and Westmoreland were bean counters. They didn't get it, and didn't like it much. The enemy didn't like it at all. That should have told them something, but it didn't.

Oh, so now it's the "type" of war that doesn't work? OK, so how does that involve the GC you don't approve of? You do realize "clear and hold" requires us to decently treat those in the areas we are holding?

Oh, I don't think I've been misunderstood at all. I think the bad rap you're trying to lay on me is fully intentional, with malice aforethought.

Yeah. You're that obvious.

Learn to read. And now you've become ludicrously obvious.



Paranoid much?

I shared living quarters with a Kit Carson scout. That's a former VC who surrendered and then switched sides. Somehow he found the courage to risk it.:rolleyes: I'm sure he still would have surrendered even if he knew 3 VC honchos had been waterboarded. He was a pragmatic man. Seemed to be able to figure the odds pretty well.

So your friend surrendered under the GC but you "feel sure" he would have surrendered even knowing he'd be tortured?

Get this straight, and the sum of your knowledge will increase immediately: We did not then and do not now make a practice of mistreating prisoners, and our enemies, for the most part, knew it then and know it now. The three stooges who were waterboarded were exceptions. Practical people understand these things. But not dogmatists.

I never said you did. Why do you keep defending yourself from accusations not made? So in your year of experience in country as a PFC, without any education in the GC but always following the GC, you now feel we should stop following the GC and start violating it because that will help us convince the enemy not to fight?

Cherry-pick much?

I'm pretty much quoting you back to you. Is that a problem?

I'm sure some unfortunate things have happened in a decade of war. Unfortunate things always happen in war. Happy hunting ground for cherry-pickers, eh? As long as a cherry-picker isn't trying to actually prove anything to anyone with an actual brain.

Still not tracking, are you talking to me or someone else perhaps?

Because it's a freaking mole hill. Maybe if you're an ant, it looks like a mountain. But what happened was, 3 mass-murdering turds, out of all the sorry bastards on the monkeyball, got their noses watered.

Or perhaps it's something else all together you've got going on?

And now you've officially become insufferably tiresome. You must be very proud. But hey. Who didn't know that was going to happen.

Goodbye.

Interesting response to pretty a straightforward question. Still haven't actually answered either - would not honoring the GC convince more or fewer of the enemy to surrender?

[Toontown]

And those Vietnamese you talked to, they approved of you violating the GC? Oh wait, you didn't - so the point of your yarn would be?

Hey, I have a novel idea. Hows about you stop hopping around like a frog?

As for the Vietnamese, they were hardly in a position to pass judgement on anyone's violations of the GC, being industrial-scale violators themselves.

Not signatories, you know. Not into that sissy stuff.


War doesn't work? They stopped honoring the GC? What are you talking about and how does any of that apply to the topic?

Oh, how cute. Bullfrog makes a play on words. war=attrition. Brilliant. Aside from the fact that you're just dead wrong.


Oh, so now it's the "type" of war that doesn't work? OK, so how does that involve the GC you don't approve of? You do realize "clear and hold" requires us to decently treat those in the areas we are holding?

You trying to get a clue or something? If you're not careful, you're going to get one.

I was one of those in the areas we were holding, and a very popular one, which explains why I'm here annoying you today.

I suppose you would have had to be paying attention to notice that I didn't entirely disapprove of the GC. I just said it's asinine to apply it to terrorists. The rules just don't work on terrorists. They just take advantage of the rules. That's their thing. Using the GC against the stupid infidels. You didn't even know that? Damn, you do need a clue. Bad.

Or maybe you're just trying to piss me off.


Paranoid much?

It's not paranoia if you're really just trying to mess with me. And a chimpanzee could see by now that you are, in fact, really just trying to mess with me.


So your friend surrendered under the GC but you "feel sure" he would have surrendered even knowing he'd be tortured?

If your reading comprehension is really that poor, I'm afraid there is not much I can do for you.

But I'll give it a try. As noted, he was pretty good at figuring the odds. He wouldn't have been concerned about a few VC honchos getting the water.

He didn't even like VC honchos. He wanted to kill all the bastards. If he'd gotten his hands on one, he would have taken the bastard to GC-violating school.

Apparently there was nothing exciting or cool about being a VC. You got conscripted, they threatened you and your family, they screwed you over, you died. If you didn't knuckle under they murdered your family. Ah, the joys of communism...


I never said you did. Why do you keep defending yourself from accusations not made? So in your year of experience in country as a PFC, without any education in the GC but always following the GC, you now feel we should stop following the GC and start violating it because that will help us convince the enemy not to fight?

Why do you keep writing up what I didn't actually say instead of sticking to what I have actually said? Once again, I simply don't believe the GC applies well at all to terrorists. Might as well try to apply it to a nest of rats.

Yeah, I know. Rats are people too. Yeah. Sure they are.


Still not tracking, are you talking to me or someone else perhaps?

Yeah, I know you're not tracking, and yes, I'm talking straight at you.


Interesting response to pretty a straightforward question. Still haven't actually answered either - would not honoring the GC convince more or fewer of the enemy to surrender?

If you think that's interesting, you'll be fascinated with this: that's not the question you asked, thus wasn't the one I answered.

But since you're asking now: why, pray tell, would we even be interested in capturing more fracking terrorists? We don't even know where we're going to put them. They were going to close Gitmo, and they haven't even been able to do that. We can't get any information out of them. Every one of them we capture is nothing but a burden, a headache, and an added expense, keeping the bastard fat and happy with his 3 squares and his koran and his prayer mat and his lawyer and his trial and his incarceration or release. Who needs the aggravation?

And that's what you are actually accomplishing with all this concern about the GC rights of terrorists. You're just making it so that the troops will simply lose all interest in capturing the dead-weight bastards, and just kill them where they're found.

I do hope your reading comprehension is up to that. But if not, I guess you'll just have to suffer. This crap has taken way too much of my time.

More and more, I understand why Virus sticks with the one-liners. It's clearly the most efficient way to communicate with you people. Why bother with a lot of verbiage that just goes in the eyes and straight out the ears after passing through the strawman generator. I see that now...

[Toontown]

It's not an accusation but an observation. Quite simply, if you have no problem with a single law being broken, you have disregarded the rule of law.

Wrong. To "disregard" means to ignore. If I consciously obey a law, I have not ignored the law.


That's how it works.

No, that's not how it works. That's how you want it to work.


It doesn't mean you think all laws should be ignored, or that you personally break laws, but it remains that if you support the rule of law you cannot support the breach of any law.

I don't give a rat's ass how many words you parse. I'm not going to send a president up the river for waterboarding a few known, proven, and avowed mass murderers in an attempt to extract life-saving information from them.

Nor will I send Obama up the river for hitting them in (sovereign) countries with predator strikes.

And here's the bad bad news for you. Neither are you. Neither are any of you. You're not sending Bush or Obama anywhere. You got that?

You want our presidents? Come and get em, big boy. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya. Feel lucky? Try it.

Hark. I think I hear the real-bell ringing. Fantasy time is over. It's time to get real.

[gumboot]

Wrong. To "disregard" means to ignore. If I consciously obey a law, I have not ignored the law.

Sweet Jesus. I don't believe I actually have to do this.

dis·re·gard
verb (used with object)
1. to pay no attention to; leave out of consideration; ignore: Disregard the footnotes.
2. to treat without due regard, respect, or attentiveness; slight: to disregard an invitation.

I didn't say you disregarded the law. I said you disregarded the rule of law. Which you did.



No, that's not how it works. That's how you want it to work.

Ah... no. It's just how it is. I'm sorry if that upsets you, but I didn't invent the principle of the rule of law.


I don't give a rat's ass how many words you parse. I'm not going to send a president up the river for waterboarding a few known, proven, and avowed mass murderers in an attempt to extract life-saving information from them.

Calm down. You're behaving ridiculously.


Nor will I send Obama up the river for hitting them in (sovereign) countries with predator strikes.

:confused:



And here's the bad bad news for you. Neither are you. Neither are any of you. You're not sending Bush or Obama anywhere. You got that?

You want our presidents? Come and get em, big boy. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya. Feel lucky? Try it.

How old are you, 12?

[Robrob]

Hey, I have a novel idea. Hows about you stop hopping around like a frog?

I'm responding to your posts. I can't help it if you tend to wander.

As for the Vietnamese, they were hardly in a position to pass judgement on anyone's violations of the GC, being industrial-scale violators themselves. Not signatories, you know. Not into that sissy stuff.

Which doesn't address the actual question, would your Kit Carson friend have surrendered if he knew he was going to be tortured?

I suppose you would have had to be paying attention to notice that I didn't entirely disapprove of the GC. I just said it's asinine to apply it to terrorists. The rules just don't work on terrorists. They just take advantage of the rules. That's their thing. Using the GC against the stupid infidels. You didn't even know that? Damn, you do need a clue. Bad.

"I suppose you would need to be paying attention to notice" I have said, several times, the GC applies to both us and them. How many Taliban do you think would surrender today if they knew they were going to be tortured?

Or maybe you're just trying to piss me off.

Am I the one posting taunts and insults? Let me check... nope, not me. You must have me mistaken for someone else.

It's not paranoia if you're really just trying to mess with me. And a chimpanzee could see by now that you are, in fact, really just trying to mess with me.

Undoubtedly now I will be accused of calling you a chimp?

If your reading comprehension is really that poor, I'm afraid there is not much I can do for you.

Insult.

But I'll give it a try. As noted, he was pretty good at figuring the odds. He wouldn't have been concerned about a few VC honchos getting the water. He didn't even like VC honchos. He wanted to kill all the bastards. If he'd gotten his hands on one, he would have taken the bastard to GC-violating school. Apparently there was nothing exciting or cool about being a VC. You got conscripted, they threatened you and your family, they screwed you over, you died. If you didn't knuckle under they murdered your family. Ah, the joys of communism...

Speaking of reading comprehension - for the third or fourth time, would the knowledge he would be tortured have made him more or less prone to surrender?

Why do you keep writing up what I didn't actually say instead of sticking to what I have actually said? Once again, I simply don't believe the GC applies well at all to terrorists. Might as well try to apply it to a nest of rats.

I notice the more you elaborate on your POV the less confident it seems. Now it's you "don't believe the GC applies well at all to terrorists?" I'd be interested in hearing what you base that on. Bear in mind we have been fighting terrorism while obeying the GC for longer than either of us has been alive. What makes it so different today?

But since you're asking now: why, pray tell, would we even be interested in capturing more fracking terrorists?

A live terrorist = information. Did I really have to explain that to you?

We don't even know where we're going to put them. They were going to close Gitmo, and they haven't even been able to do that.

We have any number of very acceptable high security prisons in the USA they could be safely housed in. For some reason some people didn't like that idea.

We can't get any information out of them. Every one of them we capture is nothing but a burden, a headache, and an added expense, keeping the bastard fat and happy with his 3 squares and his koran and his prayer mat and his lawyer and his trial and his incarceration or release. Who needs the aggravation?

I thought the torture was getting all kinds of actionable info from them?

And that's what you are actually accomplishing with all this concern about the GC rights of terrorists. You're just making it so that the troops will simply lose all interest in capturing the dead-weight bastards, and just kill them where they're found.

You said you didn't commit war crimes in Vietnam and that you followed the GC. So why would modern troops have to commit war crimes by following the GC? Are the Taliban just that much meaner and tougher than the VC?

I do hope your reading comprehension is up to that. But if not, I guess you'll just have to suffer. This crap has taken way too much of my time.

Your continued attempts at insults aside, if you want to leave or quit posting you should probably stop making threats and just go. No one cares.

More and more, I understand why Virus sticks with the one-liners. It's clearly the most efficient way to communicate with you people. Why bother with a lot of verbiage that just goes in the eyes and straight out the ears after passing through the strawman generator. I see that now...

I understand bumper sticker replies without the burden of actually having to explain or convince might seem appealing to you but it doesn't do much for anyone but yourself.

I don't give a rat's ass how many words you parse. I'm not going to send a president up the river for waterboarding a few known, proven, and avowed mass murderers in an attempt to extract life-saving information from them.

See, this is why you should stick to the pithy one-liners. Feel free to elaborate on just what "life-saving information" was extracted from them by torture.

You want our presidents? Come and get em, big boy. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya. Feel lucky? Try it.

Hark. I think I hear the real-bell ringing. Fantasy time is over. It's time to get real.

Speaking of fantasy, what was that posturing about?

[Brainster]

The focus, then, turns to the US Department of Justice, which provided the advice to the administration that waterboarding was not a warcrime. This advice was faulty, as waterboarding most certainly is a warcrime; indeed the USA itself has executed people for that very crime.

One can argue that just because the USA has executed people for waterboarding as a war crime does not necessarily mean waterboarding is a war crime. It simply means that lawyers were able to convince a military tribunal that it was after WWII. You could argue that relocation camps are legal because the were legal during WWII; and you would have a Supreme Court decision (Korematsu) to back you up in that case, and yet the idea of relocation camps is laughable in 2011 and would almost certainly be judged unconstitutional today.

You would also have to argue that not only was the legal opinion in favor of waterboarding wrong, but that it was so obviously wrong and unreasonable that the lawyers who gave that advice were knowingly and intentionally giving wrong advice. This strikes me as a very high hurdle indeed.

[Virus]

Imagine the outrage if four terrorists got water poured up their nose.

[JihadJane]

You want our presidents? Come and get em, big boy. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya. Feel lucky? Try it.

Hark. I think I hear the real-bell ringing. Fantasy time is over. It's time to get real.

Pathetic.

[Virus]

Pathetic.

Address the point then.

Who's willing, who's able and who cares enough about three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose to do anything about it?

[funk de fino]

You want our presidents? Come and get em, big boy. I dare ya. I double-dog dare ya. Feel lucky? Try it.

Hark. I think I hear the real-bell ringing. Fantasy time is over. It's time to get real.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Utter genius at work.

[funk de fino]

Address the point then.

Who's willing, who's able and who cares enough about three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose to do anything about it?

You have no idea what the point is.

[Toontown]

I'm responding to your posts. I can't help it if you tend to wander.

Right. You're responding by hopping around like a frog on a grill.


Which doesn't address the actual question, would your Kit Carson friend have surrendered if he knew he was going to be tortured?

Why would he "know" he was going to be tortured? Because a very small number of terrorist bosses were subjected to enhanced interrogation, I suppose your 'point' is. But I'm not buying it.

I guess if a guy can't figure the odds any better than that, he doesn't surrender and gets killed in a B-52 strike. And somehow, I find myself able to live with that. But just to be sure, I'll go look at myself in the mirror...

Yep. I can still look at myself unashamedly in the mirror.


"I suppose you would need to be paying attention to notice" I have said, several times, the GC applies to both us and them. How many Taliban do you think would surrender today if they knew they were going to be tortured?

Why would they "know" they were going to be tortured? I only know of a few al Qaeda that were subjected to enhanced interrogation.


Am I the one posting taunts and insults? Let me check... nope, not me. You must have me mistaken for someone else.

Right. You're just badgering.

Nope. That's no one else who's been badgering me for hours and hours. That's you all right.

You must be very proud.


Undoubtedly now I will be accused of calling you a chimp?

No. You will be correctly accused of badgering. Again. And again and again, if necessary.



Insult.?

That's a statement of plain, manifest fact. If your reading comprehension is really as poor as your response indicated, then there is absolutely nothing I can do for you.


Speaking of reading comprehension - for the third or fourth time, [B]would the knowledge he would be tortured have made him more or less prone to surrender?

For the third or fourth time, why in monkey hell would he "know" he would be tortured? Because 3 terrorist kingpins were subjected to enhanced interrogation? Was my friend a terrorist kingpin? Or just too stupid to know the difference?

Or is the 'problem' a manufactured product of your mind?


I notice the more you elaborate on your POV the less confident it seems. Now it's you "don't believe the GC applies well at all to terrorists?"

Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

But you are very annoying. I'll give you that. Very annoying. You must be very proud.


I'd be interested in hearing what you base that on. Bear in mind we have been fighting terrorism while obeying the GC for longer than either of us has been alive. What makes it so different today?"

Are we having fun fighting terrorism yet? Don't these half century long fights get tiresome after a while? Want to go for a century? I know you can do it. You have the strategy for it.


A live terrorist = information. Did I really have to explain that to you??"

No, you didn't have to. You wanted to, as part of your badgering routine.

You will let me know when we start having fun, won't you?


We have any number of very acceptable high security prisons in the USA they could be safely housed in. For some reason some people didn't like that idea."

Why bother? What use do we have for them?

The bosses might have some useful information, but you keep saying we never got any of that. The rank and file know nothing.

So why bother feeding and housing them? What, exactly, do you think we owe the subhuman scum? Do you like them or something?


I thought the torture was getting all kinds of actionable info from them?

Haven't you heard? Obama ended the enhanced interrogation. feel free to let me know how much actionable info we've gotten from them since. Wouldn't that be a good way to make your point? Or you only interested in badgering now?


You said you didn't commit war crimes in Vietnam and that you followed the GC. So why would modern troops have to commit war crimes by following the GC? Are the Taliban just that much meaner and tougher than the VC?

Oh, don't worry. I'm sure the troops will capture one if they absolutely have to. Like if the guy is waving a white flag.

The Taliban aren't being treated any differently than the VC. So why are you asking these stupid questions? Do you think the Taliban are being treated differently than the VC? What makes you think so? Or you just badgering again?


Your continued attempts at insults aside, if you want to leave or quit posting you should probably stop making threats and just go. No one cares.

When I want your advice, I'll let you know. Don't hold your breath. Don't get me wrong, I'm very impressed with the persistence of your badgering. You must want to badger me really, really bad. If only that persistence were to be used in some constructive way, who knows what you might accomplish...


I understand bumper sticker replies without the burden of actually having to explain or convince might seem appealing to you but it doesn't do much for anyone but yourself.

I'm sorry. Do I owe all of you something?


See, this is why you should stick to the pithy one-liners. Feel free to elaborate on just what "life-saving information" was extracted from them by torture.

Why would I need to elaborate on just what life-saving information was extracted from them by torture? Feel free to show me where I said that.

There were certainly attempts made to extract life-saving information from them. And that's what I actually said, isn't it. Yep, there that inconvenient little word is, right there in black and white - "attempt".

But don't get me wrong, again and again and yet again. I'm not saying they didn't get any useful information from the three blind mice. I just haven't gotten around to thoroughly researching the matter.


Speaking of fantasy, what was that posturing about?

Simple enough. The probability that Bush or Obama will ever be prosecuted for 'war crimes' is not significantly greater than zero.

So good luck with your little crusade to get Bush for trying to defend the American people, or whatever it is you're trying to do. Maybe you'll eventually have more luck at that than you have at trying to badger me. But frankly, your chances aren't good.

[Toontown]

Pathetic.

So? What are you waiting for? Jump on that 'pathetic' post and rip it apart. This is the big chance you've been lurking around here waiting for. Don't let it slip away.

:rolleyes:

[Border Reiver]

The point is that governments, militaries, etc. have a finite supply of social capital to spend. Social Capital being the good will, support, etc. of the people.

The people will eventually lose their confidence in the institution to be one they can support if they consistently violate the laws and mores of society. As a society we don't tolerate torture and wanton agression, and while we can be persuaded that such acts may be occasionally necessary, when such acts become commonplace, or worse, laughed off then we as a society lose faith in the institution (be that the government, the military, the police, etc.)

Western society tends to be a forgiving one, provided the wrongdoer stands up, accepts responsibility for their transgression and fixes the problem. Going "No problem here - we just tortured three terrorists/three criminals/suspects later shown to be not guilty - what's the harm?"

[Toontown]

Sweet Jesus. I don't believe I actually have to do this.

Well...don't cry. You don't have to do anything except admit that obeying a law is not 'disregarding' it.

And stop implying that I'm a criminal. You really do need to stop doing that.

[Toontown]

The point is that governments, militaries, etc. have a finite supply of social capital to spend. Social Capital being the good will, support, etc. of the people.

The people will eventually lose their confidence in the institution to be one they can support if they consistently violate the laws and mores of society. As a society we don't tolerate torture and wanton agression, and while we can be persuaded that such acts may be occasionally necessary, when such acts become commonplace, or worse, laughed off then we as a society lose faith in the institution (be that the government, the military, the police, etc.)

Western society tends to be a forgiving one, provided the wrongdoer stands up, accepts responsibility for their transgression and fixes the problem. Going "No problem here - we just tortured three terrorists/three criminals/suspects later shown to be not guilty - what's the harm?"

Cuts both ways. 'The people' have a limited amount of social capital to spend with me. And when 'the people' start demanding that a president be sent up the river for watering the noses of 3 known and avowed mass murders in an attempt to extract information about future slaughters they may have had in the works - for the sole purpose of defending 'the people' against further brutish attacks by known and avowed mass murderers - then 'the people' begin to lose social capital with me very rapidly.

Which explains why 'the people' in this thread who've been badgering me over their ridiculous childish vendettas, are all dead broke.

[gumboot]

One can argue that just because the USA has executed people for waterboarding as a war crime does not necessarily mean waterboarding is a war crime. It simply means that lawyers were able to convince a military tribunal that it was after WWII.

The problem with that theory is that the decision creates a legal precedent.


You could argue that relocation camps are legal because the were legal during WWII; and you would have a Supreme Court decision (Korematsu) to back you up in that case, and yet the idea of relocation camps is laughable in 2011 and would almost certainly be judged unconstitutional today.

You're mixing up US law and International Law, however.


You would also have to argue that not only was the legal opinion in favor of waterboarding wrong, but that it was so obviously wrong and unreasonable that the lawyers who gave that advice were knowingly and intentionally giving wrong advice. This strikes me as a very high hurdle indeed.

Given how open and shut the case is that waterboarding violates numerous articles of the ILAC, proving that the advise was obviously wrong and unreasonable is pretty pedestrian. They don't have to have knowingly and intentionally given the wrong advice, but the mere fact they went against something that is so obvious demonstrates total incompetence.

If a doctor was so incompetent they accidentally cut a person's heart in half while trying to perform stomach surgery, what do you think would happen to said doctor?

The simple fact is there is absolutely no way whatsoever of bending the ILAC to excuse waterboarding. Mistreatment of a detainee of any kind is forbidden. Mock execution is explicitly forbidden. Using coercion to gain information is explicitly forbidden.

[gumboot]

Well...don't cry. You don't have to do anything except admit that obeying a law is not 'disregarding' it.

And stop implying that I'm a criminal. You really do need to stop doing that.



I have never implied you are a criminal, and I have never said you disregard the law. I said you disregard the rule of law. If you can't understand the difference, I can't help you.

This matter is so simple that all of this nonsense is totally unnecessary.

The President of the USA approved policy instructing members of the US Armed Forces and intelligence community to violate the International Laws of Armed Conflict. That is a fact. You can dance around it and act like a child all you want, but it will not change this fact.

[gumboot]

Address the point then.

Who's willing, who's able and who cares enough about three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose to do anything about it?



Virus, do you think the US military should adhere to the Laws of War?

[A Laughing Baby]

The Bush administration should be investigated for its full-scale embrace of torture. The Obama administration should be investigated for its blanket protection/refusal to look into the same, as well as for its targeted drone strikes (including one on an American citizen). I fail to see why this is controversial, let alone not widely embraced in a country supposedly fervently dedicated to rule of law and equality under law.

ETA: Unfortunately, given America's somewhat recent (since Nixon) propensity for refusing to accuse those in high levels of political power with any serious crime, I doubt that this is going to happen.

[Virus]

Virus, do you think the US military should adhere to the Laws of War?

Yes and I think people should adhere to a sense of perspective.

Three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose just isn't that big a deal.

[A Laughing Baby]

It is, actually.

[Virus]

To you. You're upset about killing the enemy in a war.

[A Laughing Baby]

To you. You're upset about killing the enemy in a war.

Not quite. I'm upset about selective application of law, and ideological acceptance of the same.

[gumboot]

Yes and I think people should adhere to a sense of perspective.

Three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose just isn't that big a deal.


I'm confused. You think the US military should adhere to the Laws of War, but you don't think an official policy that directs personnel to violate said law is a big deal?

You either think they should obey the law or you don't. You can't have it both ways.

[Virus]

Perspective.

[A Laughing Baby]

There's really no place for "perspective" in application of law, lest you run into disagreements such as ours, where one person thinks something should be okay because of an extenuating circumstance and someone else does not. Whether or not you are guilty becomes a matter of personal opinion rather than objective fact. Essentially, if you want something to be okay under law, you must change the law itself, otherwise you are simply saying that it's okay to violate the law.

[gumboot]

Perspective.


Are you or are you not okay with the Armed Forces breaking the laws of war?

[Virus]

Answered that.

[thaiboxerken]

Just like every other immoral, indecent act.... It's Okay If You Are Republican.

[gumboot]

Answered that.

So your position is:

Armed forces should adhere to the laws of war, but if they don't it doesn't bother me.

Yes?

[thaiboxerken]

So your position is:

Armed forces should adhere to the laws of war, but if they don't it doesn't bother me.

Yes?

I think that's his basic position. If they rape our people, it's ok for us to rape theirs.

[BobTheCoward]

The Bush administration should be investigated for its full-scale embrace of torture. The Obama administration should be investigated for its blanket protection/refusal to look into the same, as well as for its targeted drone strikes (including one on an American citizen). I fail to see why this is controversial, let alone not widely embraced in a country supposedly fervently dedicated to rule of law and equality under law.

Here we Go! This is a statement I was looking for. Talk to me like I am a foreigner moving to America. I am familiar with the constitution. I can easily be swayed to your side with procedural/legal arguments only.

How is torture illegal?

Does it apply to orders given by the commander in chief during time of war? If so, how? Does it apply to his underlings?

Is there a court that would have jurisdiction over the underlings? If so how?

Please cite references.

[Toontown]

The entire notion of sending Bush up the river for war crimes is unsupported by international law, counterproductive to the point of insanity, and offers no redeeming virtues whatsoever. Sending Bush up the river would accomplish nothing positive, would be contrary to established principles of international law, and would hand terrorists a major victory, for no sane reason whatsoever, in a manner which would be asinine almost beyond belief.

The attempts in this thread to elevate international law to the level of Holy Writ is particularly odious, because the ignorant notion is unsupported by international law itself. The U.N. Charter, several U.N. resolutions, and general international law have long acknowledged that the rule of law, while essential, is not the highest imperative, and may be overridden by higher imperatives, such as the broadly internationally recognised inherent right of individual and collective defense.

The right and obligation of a country to employ all necessary means to protect it's citizens from mass-murdering terrorists is primary, inherent, unassailable, and trivially obvious.

Anyone wishing to take that inherent right away from us will have to come through the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army, and then absorb a nuclear strike. So who wants to step up to the stupid-plate? Who wants to take that long shot gamble, and head on down to Fire Lake?

Volunteers? The stupid-line forms below, little boyz and girlz.

[SezMe]

Three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose just isn't that big a deal.
One of the most idiotic posts you've made. Why not ask someone who had the guts to give it a try instead of being an Internet Tough Guy. Believe Me, It’s Torture (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808).

[Toontown]

One of the most idiotic posts you've made. Why not ask someone who had the guts to give it a try instead of being an Internet Tough Guy. Believe Me, It’s Torture (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808).

Whether it is torture or not is irrelevant. The terrorists who were waterboarded had already masterminded the slaughter of thousands of Americans. The right to do what was deemed necessary to learn of any future slaughters they may have had in the works is guaranteed by the inherent right of collective defense, which trumps all other laws.

Article 51 of the U.N. charter is as good a place as any to begin to understand the primacy of the right of collective defense. The article essentially states that a country may defend itself against an attack without U.N. authorization. The clear implication is that the right of collective defense is primary, trumping all other authorizations and laws.

[gumboot]

Here we Go! This is a statement I was looking for. Talk to me like I am a foreigner moving to America. I am familiar with the constitution. I can easily be swayed to your side with procedural/legal arguments only.

How is torture illegal?

It is prohibited by the Laws of War. For example Section III of the 4th Geneva Convention.



Does it apply to orders given by the commander in chief during time of war?

Yes. As per numerous Laws of War, all combatants (which includes all levels of command right up to the CinC) are required to adhere to the Laws of War.


If so, how?

It is a warcrime to issue illegal orders (orders whose actions breach the Laws of War) to those under your command. It is also illegal for a commander to fail to take measures to prevent soldiers under their command committing warcrimes when the commander is aware of these activities. These are referred to collectively as Command Responsibility, first addressed in Hague IV and X, with legal precedents set by the Medina Standard and Yamashita Standard.


Does it apply to his underlings?

Yes. All soldiers have a legal obligation to only carry out legal orders issued to them. Carrying out an illegal order is a warcrime. This is because every combatant is individually required to adhere to the Laws of War.


Is there a court that would have jurisdiction over the underlings?

Yes, several.


If so how?

The first option is utilising the internal disciplinary structure of the offending party's armed forces, such as a Courts Martial. Examples include soldiers in Iraq prosecuted for warcrimes.

Where the offending individuals are held by the enemy, the enemy are permitted to conduct a Courts Martial of the individual using their own system. Examples include Allied POWs tried under German Courts Martial and likewise Axis POWs tried under Allied Courts Martial during WW2.

If the soldier's own forces refuse or are incapable of holding a Courts Martial, or where the crime is considered significant either in its severity or its scope, a special Warcrimes Tribunal may be established for the purpose of trying the individual. An example is the many allied warcrimes tribunals held after WW2 including the Nuremberg Trials.

Another more recent example is the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. This tribunal indicted, amongst others, Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian President (demonstrating that these tribunals have the authority to try heads of state).

Finally, a trial can be conducted in the International Criminal Court. The ICC is a permanent warcrimes tribunal and has investigated and prosecuted major warcrimes in places such as Darfur and the Congo.

As a signatory to the Laws of War and a member state of the United Nations (which now oversees International Law) the United States is bound by, and obligated to adhere to the Laws of War.

[gumboot]

Whether it is torture or not is irrelevant. The terrorists who were waterboarded had already masterminded the slaughter of thousands of Americans.

Well, one of them had...


The right to do what was deemed necessary to learn of any future slaughters they may have had in the works is guaranteed by the inherent right of collective defense, which trumps all other laws.

Ah, no. You're wrong. The right to self defense relates only to if you can wage war, not how you can wage war. You are still required to adhere to the Laws of War.


Article 51 of the U.N. charter is as good a place as any to begin to understand the primacy of the right of collective defense. The article essentially states that a country may defend itself against an attack without U.N. authorization. The clear implication is that the right of collective defense is primary, trumping all other authorizations and laws.


The right to self defense only allows states to wage war. It does not in any way relate to how they wage war. Essentially you're arguing that warfare waged under Article 51 is not required to adhere to the Laws of War. That is fundamentally wrong.

[Toontown]

Unless the laws of war are trumped by the inherent right of collective defense. There is no law which can compel a country to absorb an attack which might kill thousands of it's citizens. A country may do what is deemed necessary to defend it's citizens, without international consent or authorization, as clearly stated in article 51 of the U.N. charter.

[Toontown]

The right to self defense only allows states to wage war. It does not in any way relate to how they wage war. Essentially you're arguing that warfare waged under Article 51 is not required to adhere to the Laws of War. That is fundamentally wrong.

No. I am arguing that article 51 acknowledges and recognizes the primacy of the right of collective defense.

You are arguing that a country may find itself in the incredibly ridiculous and limp-wristed position of having to take thousands of casualties to satisfy the requirements of dogmatic, stiff, inflexible laws.

[BobTheCoward]

It is prohibited by the Laws of War. For example Section III of the 4th Geneva Convention.

Yes. As per numerous Laws of War, all combatants (which includes all levels of command right up to the CinC) are required to adhere to the Laws of War.



Do we both agree that treaties cannot usurp the powers in the constitution?

For example, the US cannot sign a treaty that declares the president leader-for-life and have it be recognized in US courts. A treaty could not be signed that declares congress must allot so much budget for education.

War powers are discussed in the constitution.

Prove that the laws of war governing torture (enacted by congress or treaty) has the constitutional authority to restrict persons in the government.

[Toontown]

The entire question is moot, because the right and duty of a country to protect it's citizens is a higher imperative which trumps all lower-order laws. The primacy of the right of individual and collective defense has been recognized in numerous U.N. articles and resolutions, and has long been a fixture in customary international law:

Article 51

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security...

Security Council Resolutions 1368 (2001)

Recogniz[es] the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense in accordance with the Charter;
. . .
Expresses its readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and to combat all forms of terrorism, in accordance with its responsibilities under the Charter of the United Nations

Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001)

Reaffirming further that such acts, like any act of international terrorism, constitute a threat to international peace and security,

Reaffirming the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations as reiterated in resolution 1368 (2001),

Reaffirming the need to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts . . .


U.N. resolutions repeatedly express, reaffirm, and reiterate the inherent right of individual and collective defense, and stress the need to combat terrorism "by all means".

[Virus]

I think that's his basic position. If they rape our people, it's ok for us to rape theirs.

No. I'm saying that a mass-murdering Islamofascist with some water up his nose isn't very high on my list of things to care about. Especially when the last decade of war waged on the Islamofascits has been the cleanest war in history.

Perspective. Not all bad things are equally bad.

[gumboot]

Do we both agree that treaties cannot usurp the powers in the constitution?

Of course.



For example, the US cannot sign a treaty that declares the president leader-for-life and have it be recognized in US courts.

Treaties are not recognised by US courts, they're recognised by Congress. However while Congress could recognise a treaty, the courts could have it struck as unconstitutional, yes. This has never actually happened, however.



War powers are discussed in the constitution.

Prove that the laws of war governing torture (enacted by congress or treaty) has the constitutional authority to restrict persons in the government.

Well for a start Article One Section 1 vests legislative power solely in Congress, and Article Two Section 3 requires the President to ensure faithful execution of the law.

Indeed, not only is it a warcrime for the President to instruct his agents to break the law, but it's also unconstitutional.

And since we agree that the Constitution is supreme law, above International Law, Americans should be really upset.

[Border Reiver]

Unless the laws of war are trumped by the inherent right of collective defense. There is no law which can compel a country to absorb an attack which might kill thousands of it's citizens. A country may do what is deemed necessary to defend it's citizens, without international consent or authorization, as clearly stated in article 51 of the U.N. charter.

Disagree.

The LOAC govern how the signatory states wage war in all circumstances.

The US is a signatory.

Therefore, the US must obey the LOAC when it wages war.

Look at the right to wage a defensive war as a corallary to individual self defense. Just cause you think Bob's going to try and knock you out and take your wallet doesn't give you the right to grab Bob and beat him till he confesses to the cops. And then go after Bob's buds just in case....

[gumboot]

No. I'm saying that a mass-murdering Islamofascist with some water up his nose isn't very high on my list of things to care about. Especially when the last decade of war waged on the Islamofascits has been the cleanest war in history.

Perspective. Not all bad things are equally bad.


Granted you're in Australia, so I can understand it not mattering to you, but do you think Americans should be okay with their President instructing government agents to break the law? Do you think Americans should be okay with the President violating his constitutional duties?

I would consider that rather serious, personally.

[Toontown]

Disagree.

The LOAC govern how the signatory states wage war in all circumstances.

The US is a signatory.

Therefore, the US must obey the LOAC when it wages war.



Then you won't complain if your family is murdered by terrorists, as long as the information which could have thwarted the attack could not be obtained all nice and legal-like.

[gumboot]

Then you won't complain if your family is murdered by terrorists, as long as the information which could have thwarted the attack could not be obtained all nice and legal-like.

Torture does not produce useable intelligence. Not only is it illegal, but it doesn't work.

[SezMe]

Whether it is torture or not is irrelevant.
Hardly. It is basically the topic of the thread.

[SezMe]

Torture does not produce useable intelligence. Not only is it illegal, but it doesn't work.
I'd like to emphasize this. Beyond the question of legality, torture is dumb policy. Claims in this thread about the need for it to prevent more death are unfounded.

[Toontown]

I'd like to emphasize this. Beyond the question of legality, torture is dumb policy. Claims in this thread about the need for it to prevent more death are unfounded.

the repeated failures to support this repeated assertion aside, it is even 'dumber' to assume Bush knew enhanced interrogation wouldn't work, but just did it out of pure meanness.

Bush had a primary obligation to defend the people against these brutes, had several of the top dogs in custody, and had good reason to suspect they might have further slaughters in the works. He therefore had a high-order obligation to extract all the information he could from them. Not knowing the best way to accomplish this imperative has no bearing on whether Bush is a war criminal.

[Toontown]

I have never implied you are a criminal, and I have never said you disregard the law. I said you disregard the rule of law. If you can't understand the difference, I can't help you.


I don't like you saying I disregard the rule of law. It's not true. I simply recognize that there are higher imperatives than the rule of law.

Perhaps you might need to have your daughter kidnapped by terrorists before you could begin to understand what those higher imperatives are. But I don't need that lesson. My not needing that lesson does not mean I have no regard for the rule of law.

If anything, you disregard the higher imperatives to the point that you don't even seem to acknowledge them, or know what they are.

[SezMe]

the repeated failures to support this repeated assertion aside ...

No, let's not leave it aside. You just don't want to read material that disagrees with your established view. Link (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/an_fbi_interrogator_on_the_effectiveness_of_tortur e/) and link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html) and link (http://blog.nola.com/guesteditorials/2009/04/how_effective_is_torture_not_v.html) and link (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec05/torture_12-02.html). And that's just the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

... it is even 'dumber' to assume Bush knew enhanced interrogation wouldn't work, but just did it out of pure meanness.
Congratulations, you have just won the Olympic Gold Medal in Jumping to Conclusions. Nobody, in this thread or anywhere else that I know of, asserted Bush did it out of pure meanness.

[gumboot]

I don't like you saying I disregard the rule of law. It's not true. I simply recognize that there are higher imperatives than the rule of law.

In doing so you're disregarding the rule of law. Need I remind you that the notion that no one is above the law was one of the founding principles of the United States?


Perhaps you might need to have your daughter kidnapped by terrorists before you could begin to understand what those higher imperatives are. But I don't need that lesson. My not needing that lesson does not mean I have no regard for the rule of law.

I would hope, if I had a daughter who had been kidnapped by terrorists, that the authorities would have the good sense not to indulge my emotional reaction. The principle of the rule of law is far, far too important to be put aside for the sake of an individual's personal tragedy.


If anything, you disregard the higher imperatives to the point that you don't even seem to acknowledge them, or know what they are.

To think there are higher imperatives is to disregard the rule of law.

Lex, Rex.

[gumboot]

Bush had a primary obligation to defend the people against these brutes, had several of the top dogs in custody, and had good reason to suspect they might have further slaughters in the works. He therefore had a high-order obligation to extract all the information he could from them. Not knowing the best way to accomplish this imperative has no bearing on whether Bush is a war criminal.


Are you aware of the fact that Abu Zubaydah's initial interrogator - FBI Agent Ali Soufan - was extracting vital actionable intelligence from him within an hour of commencing his legal, non-violent techniques? This intelligence included the revelation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's role in the 9/11 attacks (prior to this the USA did not even know he was involved with Al Qaeda), and also the intelligence that led to his capture a year later.

Within a few days the CIA took over interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, applying their illegal tactics, and the intelligence ceased. Intermittently, the CIA would recall Ali Soufan to continue his methods because theirs were unsuccessful. When Ali Soufan attempted to raise alarms about the torture of suspects by the CIA, he and his fellow FBI agent were ordered to leave the base, and FBI agents were directed not to be present during harsh CIA interrogation techniques.

To this day, Ali Soufan firmly believes that had he been allowed to interrogate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed using his own thoroughly proven techniques, he would have prevented the July 7 bombings.

You talk about saving lives, but fifty-two innocent civilians died because of the USA's blind devotion to a worthless and illegal method of intelligence gathering.

[SezMe]

To read some of Soufan's writings, see my first link in #166.

[leftysergeant]

the repeated failures to support this repeated assertion aside, it is even 'dumber' to assume Bush knew enhanced interrogation wouldn't work, but just did it out of pure meanness.

Of course not. The Shrub was not bright enough to understand that it didn't work, especially after that nasty little undead Cheney told him that it was a good idea.

Cheney, Rummy, Gonzo and Yoo are that mean and evil.

[Border Reiver]

Then you won't complain if your family is murdered by terrorists, as long as the information which could have thwarted the attack could not be obtained all nice and legal-like.

Given that the Canadian government has uncovered several plots through conventional police work I think I'm gonna be OK.

As several people have alluded to extreme interrogation methods are unreliable at best and counter productive at worst. The subject has a tendency to tell the interrogator what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear, not always what the truth as that person knows it is.

[Toontown]

In doing so you're disregarding the rule of law. Need I remind you that the notion that no one is above the law was one of the founding principles of the United States?

How dogmatic of you. How stiff. How inflexible.

So when are Bush and all his accessories and enablers going up the river? The list of accessories and enablers would be a very long one, the dragnet a very large one.

Talk is cheap. I want to see some action. Let's see some heads roll. I want to see these heaven-sent laws of yours in action.

Or could it be that there are higher imperatives at work?

I could live with your dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules if they actually worked. But they don't even work half the time. Real-world situations have to be shoe-horned into the ill-fitting, dogmatic things, and then they don't fit.

But terrorists love the dogmatic inflexibility.


I would hope, if I had a daughter who had been kidnapped by terrorists, that the authorities would have the good sense not to indulge my emotional reaction. The principle of the rule of law is far, far too important to be put aside for the sake of an individual's personal tragedy.

I'm sure your daughter would understand you putting a set of dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules ahead of her. She would know how much you worship the dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules.

But your dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules are not capable of getting Bush. So why are we even arguing about it? Your dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules fail again. But not so much failed, as ignored in recognition of higher imperatives.

After all, without being tempered by the higher imperatives, they're just dogmatic, stiff, inflexible, ill-fitting rules, written by dead people who, though very well-meaning, could not foresee the current world and it's problems.


To think there are higher imperatives is to disregard the rule of law.

Lex, Rex.

How dogmatic of you. How stiff. How inflexible.

And how dead wrong. To think there are higher imperatives is to recognize the existence of higher imperatives. Nothing more.

[leftysergeant]

How dogmatic of you. How stiff. How inflexible.

So when are Bush and all his accessories and enablers going up the river? The list of accessories and enablers would be a very long one, the dragnet a very large one.

First, we need to get rid of all the extreme right-wing republicons and the conservative Democrats in congress. We have otherm ore pressing needs that can be accomplished right now, if Grover's punks ever decide to reclaim their stuff from the litte troll. Going after the merry morons right now would just make their supporters circle the wagons and cause more problems for Obama and America.

I'm sure your daughter would understand you putting a set of dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules ahead of her. She would know how much you worship the dogmatic, stiff, inflexible rules.

Insisting that torture works is dogmatic. Have you been paying attention at all? It doesn't work.

As proof of that, you might have noticed that the merry morons never came near to whacking Osama.

[Toontown]

Given that the Canadian government has uncovered several plots through conventional police work I think I'm gonna be OK.

That is so very reassuring. It is all about (YOU), after all.

[BobTheCoward]

Well for a start Article One Section 1 vests legislative power solely in Congress, and Article Two Section 3 requires the President to ensure faithful execution of the law.

Indeed, not only is it a warcrime for the President to instruct his agents to break the law, but it's also unconstitutional.

And since we agree that the Constitution is supreme law, above International Law, Americans should be really upset.


This is going to take awhile to boil down to the questions, but we will get there.

Those legislative powers are not infinite. War crime implies it is a decision in the execution of the war. Powers are divided between the two branches in times of war.

How does torture policy of a prisoner captured in wartime fall under the legislative power? How much of it does fall under a commander in chief power? Is it a tactical or strategic decision to torture?

More broadly, how is the tactical and strategic decisions of combat divided? How does this relate to military intelligence gathering?

If you choose to use the approach of the captures clause, please identify an any documents that state it applies to prisoners rather than the capture of military assets (ships, forts, cannons, etc).

If you choose the UCMJ approach, please have it follow the tactical/strategic analysis.

[BobTheCoward]

I'd like to emphasize this. Beyond the question of legality, torture is dumb policy. Claims in this thread about the need for it to prevent more death are unfounded.

Could you please save these sentiments for a thread about that subject.

[leftysergeant]

That is so very reassuring. It is all about (YOU), after all.Wrong. You have made it about you.

You want to torture people, because you need to do something, damn it! Even if it is wrong.

Torture is a tactic. It sucks. It does not advance one's actual strategy, because it produces **** for intel, but some drooling moron may decide to act on that intel anyway.

[A Laughing Baby]

As a signatory to the Laws of War and a member state of the United Nations (which now oversees International Law) the United States is bound by, and obligated to adhere to the Laws of War.

It's semantics more or less, but the more binding treaty in this case I believe would be the Convention Against Torture, which was negotiated and signed by Reagan. Article 4 of that treaty requires each signing nation to:


...ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law...

George Bush himself said in 2004:


American personnel are required to comply with all U.S. laws, including the United States Constitution, Federal statutes, including statutes prohibiting torture, and our treaty obligations with respect to the treatment of all detainees...

As for Constitutional justification for following treaties, would not Article VI be sufficient?


All treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Now, I feel that there is the beginning of a novel argument being made here that torture is explicitly legal, and I fully admit that I have never considered such an argument. As far as I can see from the Constitution and the Convention Against Torture, torture is explicitly illegal.

[BobTheCoward]

As for Constitutional justification for following treaties, would not Article VI be sufficient?


It is not sufficient for me just yet.

Let me preface this with that I am not trying to be difficult. I just have a very narrow interest for this one thread. Also, I am not trying to trick people, or argue to a point where someone says, "I don't know." I have a very reasonable understanding of what knowledge people have and won't hold it against someone. There isn't a 'win' for me here.


There are military issues a treaty can't constitutionally restrict. For example, would a treaty that says, "all combat must be by frontal assault. No flanking attacks permitted" be valid?

I would say no. That is clearly a commander-in-chief decision. That is reserved for the president. Congress doesn't have the power to change that.

If you agree, then we now have to parse out what makes "torture of a POW for military intelligence" different.

[Upchurch]

Then you won't complain if your family is murdered by terrorists, as long as the information which could have thwarted the attack could not be obtained all nice and legal-like.
Appeal to emotion (which is, I remind you, a logical fallacy) aside, has this ever occurred?

[A Laughing Baby]

It is not sufficient for me just yet.

Let me preface this with that I am not trying to be difficult. I just have a very narrow interest for this one thread. Also, I am not trying to trick people, or argue to a point where someone says, "I don't know." I have a very reasonable understanding of what knowledge people have and won't hold it against someone. There isn't a 'win' for me here.


There are military issues a treaty can't constitutionally restrict. For example, would a treaty that says, "all combat must be by frontal assault. No flanking attacks permitted" be valid?

I would say no. That is clearly a commander-in-chief decision. That is reserved for the president. Congress doesn't have the power to change that.

If you agree, then we now have to parse out what makes "torture of a POW for military intelligence" different.

I understand, and I think I see what you're trying to get at in the end here. I disagree, though. There seems to be a conflation of direct combat with wartime activity not a part of direct combat.

Further, it would seem that to consider that treaty invalid, it would make sense to equally consider a treaty banning the use of, say, biological agents as invalid, as it is a treaty dictating the rules of engagement (i.e. what it is and is not okay to do on the battlefield--as someone relatively ignorant of military law I don't wish to confuse the discussion with definitions of what are and are not rules of engagement).

[SezMe]

So when are Bush and all his accessories and enablers going up the river?
They're not but that should not be taken as a sign that a crime was not committed. Rather, put it down to politics. The current administration has decided that pursuing war crimes is "looking backward" and thus not productive to solving the nation's problems. Any future Republican administration is certainly not going to pursue the issue.

So legally the issue is dead. But, again, that should not be taken as any sign whatsoever that war crimes did not occur.

[A Laughing Baby]

For further examples of this, see the Iran-Contra scandal, the pardoning of Nixon by Gerald Ford, the refusal by Obama's DOJ to investigate warrantless wiretaps, and almost certainly the refusal to investigate Obama's drone strikes by whoever is in office next.

[Virus]

Drone strikes are a good thing.

[A Laughing Baby]

Especially ones that kill American citizens, right?

[BobTheCoward]

Further, it would seem that to consider that treaty invalid, it would make sense to equally consider a treaty banning the use of, say, biological agents as invalid, as it is a treaty dictating the rules of engagement (i.e. what it is and is not okay to do on the battlefield--as someone relatively ignorant of military law I don't wish to confuse the discussion with definitions of what are and are not rules of engagement).

And that is a correct assumption. I do not see a treaty banning biological weapons as valid.

Or more realistically, if a treaty is signed making its use illegal, then congress authorizes the weapons in the budget, declares war, and then the president uses them, I do not see that as illegal.

[Virus]

Especially ones that kill American citizens, right?

Terrorists and enemy combatants.

[A Laughing Baby]

And that is a correct assumption. I do not see a treaty banning biological weapons as valid.

Or more realistically, if a treaty is signed making its use illegal, then congress authorizes the weapons in the budget, declares war, and then the president uses them, I do not see that as illegal.

I thought this was where you were going. From a legal standpoint, I don't think there's anything stopping you from being wrong (I may be incorrect on this). What you'd end up with, then, is a scenario where America does not consider the CiC to be a war criminal, while other treaty signatories do consider him or her a war criminal.


Terrorists and enemy combatants.

There was one that is widely known to have killed an American citizen. Are you okay with that?

[Virus]

There was one that is widely known to have killed an American citizen. Are you okay with that?

The terrorist deserved it.

[A Laughing Baby]

That's a dangerous line of thought. I'm sorry you feel that way.

[Virus]

That's a dangerous line of thought. I'm sorry you feel that way.

What do you think terrorists deserve?

[A Laughing Baby]

What do you think terrorists deserve?

As the man being discussed in this case never actually participated in an act of terrorism, I find classifying him with the already-ethereal group "terrorists" a shaky proposition at best. What he was most certainly guilty of was supporting radical militant Muslim groups, as well as encouraging support of them.

But let's discard all that. Let's assume he is a terrorist. Fine, that works for me. Here's the thing. He's also an American citizen, which comes with its own Constitutional rights to due process of law, trial by a jury of your peers, and so on. These are things he was deprived of when he was, in effect, summarily executed by a drone strike.

While it's an understandable concept to excuse the death of a man tied to such repugnant activity, there can be no excuse for the deprivation of Constitutional rights from an American citizen. Again, selective application of the law is the issue here.

[gumboot]

Those legislative powers are not infinite.

I know. Congress cannot make legislation in violation of the Constitution.


War crime implies it is a decision in the execution of the war. Powers are divided between the two branches in times of war.

Yes.


How does torture policy of a prisoner captured in wartime fall under the legislative power?

The President's scope for directives on the execution of war are limited by legislation. Because Congress has decided to legislate against torture (through the implementation of International Treaties) the President is violating their constitutional powers by trying to implement a policy of torture.


How much of it does fall under a commander in chief power? Is it a tactical or strategic decision to torture?

A President can only direct actions that fall within the law. It's really as simple as that.


More broadly, how is the tactical and strategic decisions of combat divided? How does this relate to military intelligence gathering?

Again, the specifics of how a war are waged are the President's concern, however the scope is limited to what is legally permitted. If you like, Congress sets the boundaries, but within those boundaries the President can act as they please.


If you choose to use the approach of the captures clause, please identify an any documents that state it applies to prisoners rather than the capture of military assets (ships, forts, cannons, etc).

No I do not believe it relates to the capture clause.


If you choose the UCMJ approach, please have it follow the tactical/strategic analysis.

I've already explained it to you. The Constitution grants Congress the sole power to enact legislation. It also requires the President to adhere to said legislation.

The only limit on Congress's legislative power is that they cannot pass legislation which conflicts with the Constitution. Nothing in the constitution allows a President to wage war in any way they see fit.

[Virus]

As the man being discussed in this case never actually participated in an act of terrorism, I find classifying him with the already-ethereal group "terrorists" a shaky proposition at best. What he was most certainly guilty of was supporting radical militant Muslim groups, as well as encouraging support of them.

But let's discard all that. Let's assume he is a terrorist. Fine, that works for me. Here's the thing. He's also an American citizen, which comes with its own Constitutional rights to due process of law, trial by a jury of your peers, and so on. These are things he was deprived of when he was, in effect, summarily executed by a drone strike.

While it's an understandable concept to excuse the death of a man tied to such repugnant activity, there can be no excuse for the deprivation of Constitutional rights from an American citizen. Again, selective application of the law is the issue here.

Where does the Constitution say you can't kill an enemy in a war?

[gumboot]

There are military issues a treaty can't constitutionally restrict. For example, would a treaty that says, "all combat must be by frontal assault. No flanking attacks permitted" be valid?

I would say no. That is clearly a commander-in-chief decision. That is reserved for the president. Congress doesn't have the power to change that.

If you agree, then we now have to parse out what makes "torture of a POW for military intelligence" different.


You're incorrect. If the President signed an international treaty that restricted warfare to frontal attack, and if Congress ratified said treaty, it would become part of US law and it would be unconstitutional for the President to violate it.

[A Laughing Baby]

Where does the Constitution say you can't kill an enemy in a war?

If you're only going to respond with disingenuous one-liners, I'm done being trolled. I don't know why I even tried to have a productive conversation with you in the first place.

[A Laughing Baby]

You're incorrect. If the President signed an international treaty that restricted warfare to frontal attack, and if Congress ratified said treaty, it would become part of US law and it would be unconstitutional for the President to violate it.

I think Bob's endgame scenario for this is the idea that it is fully possible for Congress to then enact a law that makes legal whatever the treaty banned, and it would thereby be legal for the President to do it, due to the "any laws passed notwithstanding" clause in Article VI.

[gumboot]

As the man being discussed in this case never actually participated in an act of terrorism, I find classifying him with the already-ethereal group "terrorists" a shaky proposition at best. What he was most certainly guilty of was supporting radical militant Muslim groups, as well as encouraging support of them.

But let's discard all that. Let's assume he is a terrorist. Fine, that works for me. Here's the thing. He's also an American citizen, which comes with its own Constitutional rights to due process of law, trial by a jury of your peers, and so on. These are things he was deprived of when he was, in effect, summarily executed by a drone strike.

While it's an understandable concept to excuse the death of a man tied to such repugnant activity, there can be no excuse for the deprivation of Constitutional rights from an American citizen. Again, selective application of the law is the issue here.


On the matter of drone attacks, you're dealing with military action during combat, and such a strike is wholly legitimate.

This is a good example of one of the messy problems the US has run itself into. Regarding the approach of terrorism, a decision has to be made whether to treat counter-terrorist action as a law enforcement issue, or as an armed conflict issue.

It seems to me fairly obvious that in broad terms counter-terrorism is a law enforcement issue, however in the geographic vicinity of Afghanistan and Iraq it is an armed conflict issue.

The way in which "terrorists" (presume this term to include suspected terrorists and those giving them material aid of any kind) are treated in each instance is vastly different, which is why this distinction is so crucial, and why the US's inconsistency in this regard is so problematic.

If we accept that Afghanistan is an armed conflict, anyone reasonably believed to be an enemy combatant - that is engaged in activity which supports the prosecution of armed conflict against ISAF/Afghanistan forces - can be engaged and killed on sight. The only limitation occurs when they throw down their arms and surrender, or when they are made incapable of partaking in the conflict by injury or sickness.

On the matter of US citizens, third parties to the conflict are prohibited from taking part, meaning any non-Afghani engaged in war against ISAF is an illegal combatant. At the combat stage, they can legitimately be engaged just like any other combatant. Their status only affects their treatment if they are captured.

What perhaps makes this more difficult is that there are individuals caught up in the conflict who were engaged in terrorist activities prior to the commencement of hostilities, who may not have been involved since. In this sort of scenario you cannot really justify classifying them as a combatant. Having said that, I think you could reasonable argue that it is appropriate to assume such a person is still supporting enemy combatant activities unless evidence to the contrary is available.

[A Laughing Baby]

On the matter of drone attacks, you're dealing with military action during combat, and such a strike is wholly legitimate.

This is a good example of one of the messy problems the US has run itself into. Regarding the approach of terrorism, a decision has to be made whether to treat counter-terrorist action as a law enforcement issue, or as an armed conflict issue.

It seems to me fairly obvious that in broad terms counter-terrorism is a law enforcement issue, however in the geographic vicinity of Afghanistan and Iraq it is an armed conflict issue.

The way in which "terrorists" (presume this term to include suspected terrorists and those giving them material aid of any kind) are treated in each instance is vastly different, which is why this distinction is so crucial, and why the US's inconsistency in this regard is so problematic.

If we accept that Afghanistan is an armed conflict, anyone reasonably believed to be an enemy combatant - that is engaged in activity which supports the prosecution of armed conflict against ISAF/Afghanistan forces - can be engaged and killed on sight. The only limitation occurs when they throw down their arms and surrender, or when they are made incapable of partaking in the conflict by injury or sickness.

On the matter of US citizens, third parties to the conflict are prohibited from taking part, meaning any non-Afghani engaged in war against ISAF is an illegal combatant. At the combat stage, they can legitimately be engaged just like any other combatant. Their status only affects their treatment if they are captured.

What perhaps makes this more difficult is that there are individuals caught up in the conflict who were engaged in terrorist activities prior to the commencement of hostilities, who may not have been involved since. In this sort of scenario you cannot really justify classifying them as a combatant. Having said that, I think you could reasonable argue that it is appropriate to assume such a person is still supporting enemy combatant activities unless evidence to the contrary is available.

I hadn't thought of it that way, and it's precisely this sort of thing that needs to be laid out in explicit legal terms, so that ambiguity doesn't exist in what is clearly an issue that's not going to go away any time soon.

[gumboot]

I think Bob's endgame scenario for this is the idea that it is fully possible for Congress to then enact a law that makes legal whatever the treaty banned, and it would thereby be legal for the President to do it, due to the "any laws passed notwithstanding" clause in Article VI.


The general principle of legislative precedence is that when two laws are in conflict, the more recent law is presumed to have repealed the older law, so yes, if Congress enacted a law permitting torture this would theoretically repeal the treaties and so forth that banned torture. This hasn't happened, however.

[gumboot]

And that is a correct assumption. I do not see a treaty banning biological weapons as valid.

Or more realistically, if a treaty is signed making its use illegal, then congress authorizes the weapons in the budget, declares war, and then the president uses them, I do not see that as illegal.


It is, though. Just because Congress authorises funding for weapons does not mean it allows them to be used. An obvious real example is nuclear weapons.

I think if Bush had ordered a nuclear strike on Baghdad, for example, Congress would have impeached him in the blink of an eye.

[Upchurch]

I think if Bush had ordered a nuclear strike on Baghdad, for example, Congress would have impeached him in the blink of an eye.
I'm skeptical of that.

[Virus]

If you're only going to respond with disingenuous one-liners, I'm done being trolled. I don't know why I even tried to have a productive conversation with you in the first place.

ACLU took your position and filed a suit in 2010. A federal judge threw it out.

The kill was legit. I win. Deal.

[A Laughing Baby]

ACLU took your position and filed a suit in 2010. A federal judge threw it out.

The kill was legit. I win. Deal.

That's incredible that they had the foresight, seeing as how Al-Awlaki was killed in late 2011.

ETA: I see that the suit had to do with the targeted killings list. The case was thrown out on political question doctrine grounds, which makes sense in its own right.

My concern is with the actual killing of an American citizen without trial. There may be overlap there. I have to think about it.

Further edit for clarity:

From here (http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/judge_tosses_suit_seeking_to_prevent_targeted_kill ing_of_cleric_who_urged_j/):


The opinion notes “stark and perplexing questions,” including this one: “How is it that judicial approval is required when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for electronic surveillance, but that, according to defendants, judicial scrutiny is prohibited when the United States decides to target a U.S. citizen overseas for death?”

But the court can’t reach the legal issues absent jurisdiction, Bates said.

“To be sure, this court recognizes the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion—that there are circumstances in which the executive's unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is ‘constitutionally committed to the political branches’ and judicially unreviewable,” Bates wrote. “But this case squarely presents such a circumstance.”


So it was thrown out for being unreviewable by a member of the judicial branch, not because there was no point to the lawsuit.

[ANTPogo]

So it was thrown out for being unreviewable by a member of the judicial branch, not because there was no point to the lawsuit.

That and the fact that they ruled that the named plaintiff had no standing. In any case, the court explicitly did not rule on the legitimacy of targeted killings (particularly of US citizens like Al-Awlaki) one way or the other.

The full decision can be read here. (http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Al-Aulaqi-Decision-Granting-Motion-to-Dismiss-120710.pdf)

[SezMe]

Drone strikes are a good thing.
The goodness of drone strikes .... wait a minute.

If you're only going to respond with disingenuous one-liners, I'm done being trolled. I don't know why I even tried to have a productive conversation with you in the first place.
You're right. Productive conversation and Virus should not be used in the same sentence.

So nevermind.

[gumboot]

I'm skeptical of that.


I guess I have more faith in the ethics of US politicians. :D

[Virus]

Why do you think you can join the other side in a war and get protections?

That's dumb. No society would make dumb rules for itself like that.

[Upchurch]

Why do you think you can join the other side in a war and get protections?

That's dumb. No society would make dumb rules for itself like that.

Not much of a history buff, huh?

[Virus]

Yeah traitors who join the other side in a war are not allowed to be shot at. I totally believe that. I really do.

[Border Reiver]

Why do you think you can join the other side in a war and get protections?

That's dumb. No society would make dumb rules for itself like that.


Yours did. So did mine. We try those people who violate the laws of the land (including ratified treaties). We did it in WWII, you did it when the Fenians tried to invade Canada in 1870, we can do it again.

Western societies hold themselves out as being better than the rest. If we fail to walk our own walk (that we follow the rule of law) or we show ourselves to be as morally bankrupt as our enemies claim we are.

[Upchurch]

Yeah traitors who join the other side in a war are not allowed to be shot at. I totally believe that. I really do.

Aw, adorable strawman!

Were you working on making those in history class instead of paying attention? As Border Reiver pointed out, the US made those kinds of rules for itself, as did others.

[Virus]

Aw, adorable strawman!

Were you working on making those in history class instead of paying attention? As Border Reiver pointed out, the US made those kinds of rules for itself, as did others.

OK professor, name the law that says traitors who fight on the other side can't be killed.

[Border Reiver]

They can be killed.

In combat, or after the guilty verdict. Not just because someone points at them and goes, " Traitor!"

We call it "due process" and even traitors are supposed to get it. Riel did.

[epepke]

I want a better class of war crime from my President.

[Virus]

They can be killed.

In combat, or after the guilty verdict. Not just because someone points at them and goes, " Traitor!"

We call it "due process" and even traitors are supposed to get it. Riel did.

He was in Yemen. A theatre of operations in the war on Al-Qaeda, of which he's a member.

Dead. Killed. Deserved it. Sucks to be him. You can't fight for the enemy and rove around the world with immunity.

[leftysergeant]

Alwaki was a fugitive operating with an enemy formation in the field. Too bad.

[gumboot]

He was in Yemen. A theatre of operations in the war on Al-Qaeda, of which he's a member.


Actually Yemen is not within the theatre of operations for either Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa nor Operation Enduring Freedom - Trans Sahara.

Yemen is a neutral power in this armed conflict and as such it is illegal for combatants to carry the war into their territory.

[SezMe]

Mark the day, my brothers and sisters, mark the day. Virus and lefty gamboling through Elysian fields, arm in arm, singing Kumbayah. Whoda thunk it? Surely the apocalypse is nigh. :)

[leftysergeant]

Yemen is a neutral power in this armed conflict and as such it is illegal for combatants to carry the war into their territory.Al Qaeda has conducted operations against the government of Yemen and Yemen and the USA are cooperating in rounding therm up or neutralizing them. It's legal.

[SezMe]

It's legal.
Please explain more.

[gumboot]

Al Qaeda has conducted operations against the government of Yemen and Yemen and the USA are cooperating in rounding therm up or neutralizing them. It's legal.

There is no Armed Conflict being fought in Yemen. You cannot claim to be fighting a "war on terrorism" and then treat every single site where suspected terrorists are located as a warzone. That's now how it works.

[Robrob]

Imagine the outrage if four terrorists got water poured up their nose.

Three terrorists getting some water poured up their nose just isn't that big a deal.

No. I'm saying that a mass-murdering Islamofascist with some water up his nose isn't very high on my list of things to care about. Especially when the last decade of war waged on the Islamofascits has been the cleanest war in history.

If you really believed it wasn't torture, why do you have to constantly try and minimize it? P.S. "Islamofacist" just makes you look outdated.

Where does the Constitution say you can't kill an enemy in a war?

Be sure to get back to us how you feel when we kill an Australian citizen.

ACLU took your position and filed a suit in 2010. A federal judge threw it out.

The kill was legit. I win. Deal.

Since the incident in question occurred in 2011, you lose.

[Robrob]

Right. You're responding by hopping around like a frog on a grill.

If you wouldn't wander so much we could stick to one subject. I might suggest fewer reminiscing about your five months in country a half century ago and more attention to current events.

Why would he "know" he was going to be tortured? Because a very small number of terrorist bosses were subjected to enhanced interrogation, I suppose your 'point' is. But I'm not buying it.

So he did know he wasn't going to be tortured. How quick would he have been to surrender if he knew he would be tortured? I've only asked this question about four times now.

Why would they "know" they were going to be tortured? I only know of a few al Qaeda that were subjected to enhanced interrogation.

See above question.

Right. You're just badgering. Nope. That's no one else who's been badgering me for hours and hours. That's you all right. You must be very proud. No. You will be correctly accused of badgering. Again. And again and again, if necessary.

Remember what I said about "wandering?" Please, just answer the question.

That's a statement of plain, manifest fact. If your reading comprehension is really as poor as your response indicated, then there is absolutely nothing I can do for you.

Please, just answer the question.

Or is the 'problem' a manufactured product of your mind?

Please, just answer the question.

Are we having fun fighting terrorism yet? Don't these half century long fights get tiresome after a while? Want to go for a century? I know you can do it. You have the strategy for it.

We've been fighting al Qaeda for half a century?

The bosses might have some useful information, but you keep saying we never got any of that. The rank and file know nothing.

So why torture them?

So why bother feeding and housing them? What, exactly, do you think we owe the subhuman scum? Do you like them or something?

Because they are our prisoners. When you were ignoring the classes on the GC did you also ignore the classes on handling of enemy PW? Remember the 5S, Search, Silence, Segregate, Safeguard and Speed to the rear?

Haven't you heard? Obama ended the enhanced interrogation. feel free to let me know how much actionable info we've gotten from them since. Wouldn't that be a good way to make your point? Or you only interested in badgering now?

AAFAIK, we've never gotten any actionable intelligence from any of the people we tortured. Feel free to provide evidence otherwise.

The Taliban aren't being treated any differently than the VC. So why are you asking these stupid questions? Do you think the Taliban are being treated differently than the VC? What makes you think so? Or you just badgering again?

You said following the GC was going to make soldiers commit war crimes. Since you said you followed the GC in Vietnam, it's a reasonable question why you think there's a difference.

I'm sorry. Do I owe all of you something?

Only if you are trying to make a point or present an articulate thought. So far it's been more drunken rambling.

Why would I need to elaborate on just what life-saving information was extracted from them by torture? Feel free to show me where I said that.

So no actionable information was extracted by the torture you recommend?

But don't get me wrong, again and again and yet again. I'm not saying they didn't get any useful information from the three blind mice. I just haven't gotten around to thoroughly researching the matter.

So the earlier comment was pulled out of your...?

Whether it is torture or not is irrelevant. The terrorists who were waterboarded had already masterminded the slaughter of thousands of Americans. The right to do what was deemed necessary to learn of any future slaughters they may have had in the works is guaranteed by the inherent right of collective defense, which trumps all other laws.

1) Are you claiming each one of the prisoners tortured had "masterminded the slaughter of thousands of Americans?"

2) Are you (now) claiming any "future slaughters they may have had in the works" were uncovered?

3) Are you claiming any actionable intelligence of any kind was extracted by torture?

Article 51 of the U.N. charter is as good a place as any to begin to understand the primacy of the right of collective defense.

How is torture "defense?"

The attempts in this thread to elevate international law to the level of Holy Writ is particularly odious, because the ignorant notion is unsupported by international law itself.

Weren't you just quoting the UN Charter in support of your position?

The right and obligation of a country to employ all necessary means to protect it's citizens from mass-murdering terrorists is primary, inherent, unassailable, and trivially obvious.

So raping prisoners would be OK by you?

Unless the laws of war are trumped by the inherent right of collective defense. There is no law which can compel a country to absorb an attack which might kill thousands of it's citizens. A country may do what is deemed necessary to defend it's citizens, without international consent or authorization, as clearly stated in article 51 of the U.N. charter.

You are arguing that a country may find itself in the incredibly ridiculous and limp-wristed position of having to take thousands of casualties to satisfy the requirements of dogmatic, stiff, inflexible laws.

So the torture prevented attacks which might have killed thousands of citizens?

Then you won't complain if your family is murdered by terrorists, as long as the information which could have thwarted the attack could not be obtained all nice and legal-like.

The "Ticking Time Bomb Scenario" really, that's your point? Feel free to elaborate on any time in history torture has provided information that thwarted an attack. "24" does not count as history.

the repeated failures to support this repeated assertion aside, it is even 'dumber' to assume Bush knew enhanced interrogation wouldn't work, but just did it out of pure meanness.

So now you're admitting torture doesn't work?

I don't like you saying I disregard the rule of law. It's not true. I simply recognize that there are higher imperatives than the rule of law.

He said you disregard the rule of law, not that you disregarded the rule of law. Is English is not your first language?

Perhaps you might need to have your daughter kidnapped by terrorists before you could begin to understand what those higher imperatives are. But I don't need that lesson. My not needing that lesson does not mean I have no regard for the rule of law.

Do you watch a lot of TV?

Anyone wishing to take that inherent right away from us will have to come through the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Army, and then absorb a nuclear strike. So who wants to step up to the stupid-plate? Who wants to take that long shot gamble, and head on down to Fire Lake?
Volunteers? The stupid-line forms below, little boyz and girlz.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you drink a bit don't you?

[leftysergeant]

No. You will be correctly accused of badgering. Again. And again and again, if necessary.

If we say "Prove it," and you just puill something out of your underwear and call it proof, it does not constitute "badgering" if we say, "No, that is not proof," and insist that you find some actual proof.

Are we having fun fighting terrorism yet? Don't these half century long fights get tiresome after a while? Want to go for a century? I know you can do it. You have the strategy for it.

Actually, letting monsters like Rummy and Gonzo get kinky with prisoners has contributed to our being in Aghanistan years longer than should have been the case. They suck at intelligence, just as they do at strategy. Never have two such sorry excuses for public officials had such power over prisoners and so utterly screwed up the mission by thinking with their nads. (They might have gotten away with it even at that had they been actual men.) The merry morons are to blame for the time that this war has dragged on, and you are defending one of the misdeeds which they committed to make it drag on.



No, you didn't have to. You wanted to, as part of your badgering routine.

You will let me know when we start having fun, won't you?



Why bother? What use do we have for them?

The bosses might have some useful information, but you keep saying we never got any of that. The rank and file know nothing.

So why bother feeding and housing them? What, exactly, do you think we owe the subhuman scum?

DEverybody is either free, a prisoner of war, or a criminal suspect, by law. You can't create another category of personnel just to suit your own insane need for revenge. Get real.

Haven't you heard? Obama ended the enhanced interrogation. feel free to let me know how much actionable info we've gotten from them since. Wouldn't that be a good way to make your point? Or you only interested in badgering now?

He got the information that allowed him to off Osama. Pull your fingers out of your ears. Obama is a better war leader than Bush the Lesser and his merry morons.

[Upchurch]

OK professor, name the law that says traitors who fight on the other side can't be killed.

That's not what you said. You said you could not join the other side and be afforded protections. That's different from being a traitor.

[funk de fino]

I don't like you saying I disregard the rule of law. It's not true. I simply recognize that there are higher imperatives than the rule of law.

This is a belter!!

[A Laughing Baby]

Since the incident in question occurred in 2011, you lose.

The suit he's discussing was filed in protest to Al-Awlaki being placed on the list of targets, basically a list of people to be killed. The judge tossed the case out on the grounds that he really couldn't rule on it, and made a point of not ruling on the legality of targeted killings by the United States government.

[Toontown]

Why do you think you can join the other side in a war and get protections?

That's dumb. No society would make dumb rules for itself like that.

A self-loathing one would. A self-loathing one might also try to send it's president up the river for trying to protect it against brutish mass-murderers, citing ludicrous slippery-slope arguments and obviously contradictory assertions that enhanced interrogation doesn't work, while simultaneously admitting that the subjects will crack every time and say anything to avoid the waterboarding.

Do you think that's what we're dealing with here?

[ANTPogo]

obviously contradictory assertions that enhanced interrogation doesn't work, while simultaneously admitting that the subjects will crack every time and say anything to avoid the waterboarding.

Pardon me for interrupting your rant against your strawman here, but this isn't contradictory. The fact that subjects will say anything to avoid torture is, in fact, the exact reason why torture doesn't actually work as an interrogation technique.

[A Laughing Baby]

Pardon me for interrupting your rant against your strawman here, but this isn't contradictory. The fact that subjects will say anything to avoid torture is, in fact, the exact reason why torture doesn't actually work as an interrogation technique.

Unless, of course, you view the pain of the torture as the ends, not the means.

[Toontown]

Wrong. You have made it about you.

You want to torture people, because you need to do something, damn it! Even if it is wrong.

Torture is a tactic. It sucks. It does not advance one's actual strategy, because it produces **** for intel, but some drooling moron may decide to act on that intel anyway.

You'll need to show where I actually advocated torture. There is a slight difference between advocating torture and denying that Bush is a war criminal for approving enhanced interrogation techniques against terrorist kingpins in an attempt to extract life-saving information.

And you might as well go ahead and explain why congress (Democrats included) is not complicit if in fact the enhanced interrogation was a war crime. Congressional leaders were informed of the enhanced interrogation techniques, including the waterboarding, and did nothing. Pelosi was forced to publicly admit under questioning that she was informed and did nothing.

If by some Satanic miracle you get your way, leftie, there's going be a big dragnet thrown in the water. If Bush were to be idiotically sent up the river by a nation gone mad, your warm, fuzzy feeling will be nothing compared to the ecstasy of our terrorist enemies. Sure, the radical left and the terrorists will join each other in the street-dancing for a while, but your warm fuzzies will quickly fade away. And then there will be the morning after, the party over.

[ANTPogo]

Waterboarding, in the particular form and technique used in the laughably-misnamed "enhanced interrogation", is torture.

Period.

[Toontown]

Pardon me for interrupting your rant against your strawman here, but this isn't contradictory. The fact that subjects will say anything to avoid torture is, in fact, the exact reason why torture doesn't actually work as an interrogation technique.

Pardon me for disagreeing with Your Highness, but if the subjects will say anything, then why wouldn't they include what they actually do know? And then why wouldn't simple lie-detector tests easily separate the wheat from the chaff?

Your assertion, Your Highness, is as contradictory as they come.

[A Laughing Baby]

Lie detectors would be absolutely useless if the subject is under duress, due to the way they function. They would register lies for every single question.

[Toontown]

They can be killed.

In combat, or after the guilty verdict. Not just because someone points at them and goes, " Traitor!"

We call it "due process" and even traitors are supposed to get it. Riel did.

Are you one of those who define 'combat' as waiting for the enemy to shoot you in order to determine that the enemy is in fact the enemy? Or would it be dragging your shot-up ass behind some cover and trying to return fire with bullets snapping just above your head and your life bleeding out on the ground?

People who win wars don't define it that way. They define hitting the enemy first and hard as combat in it's most effective form.

[ANTPogo]

Pardon me for disagreeing with Your Highness, but if the subjects will say anything, then why wouldn't they include what they actually do know?

And how are you going to figure out what's the truth and what's not, out of the rushed babble from the person you're torturing?

And then why wouldn't simple lie-detector tests easily separate the wheat from the chaff?

Because there's no such thing as "simple lie-detector tests" (if there were, why even bother torturing? Just hook 'em up to one of those and be done with it).

You might want to ask James Randi (perhaps you've heard of him?) about the reliability (http://www.randi.org/jr/042602.html) of the polygraph. (http://randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/807-to-fell-the-truth.html)

[Toontown]

Lie detectors would be absolutely useless if the subject is under duress, due to the way they function. They would register lies for every single question.

Then don't do it while they're under duress. Let them chill out for a while.

[Toontown]

Because there's so such thing as "simple lie-detector tests" (if there were, why even bother torturing? Just hook 'em up to one of those and be done with it).

Well, there certainly wouldn't be any simple lie-detector tests the way you would go about it. How would you know what to ask them? Duhh...is the bomb here? No? How about here? No? How about here? Duhhh!!!...where is the stinking bomb, goddamn it! (crickets)

But if you were simply checking info they had already given, you could simply ask whether it's true or not. True or false. Yes or no.

[A Laughing Baby]

A person who has been tortured and is being put under a polygraph by the very people that tortured him or her is going to give unreliable results on an unreliable test.

[Toontown]

This is a belter!!

Whatever that means...

I will assume you are disagreeing that there are higher imperatives than the rule of law. And you would, of course, be wrong. For a very, very simple example, survival trumps the rule of law. Usually, killing is illegal. But if someone is trying to kill you, and you kill him to prevent him from killing you, then a sane system of law would call that justifiable self-defense, thereby recognizing the higher imperative of survival.

After you have survived the brutal attack, you can then return to your usual high regard for the rule of law. Not that you would ever have actually deviated from it, since any intelligent system of laws would recognize the higher imperatives.

That too flexible for you? Need something stiffer, more dogmatic?

[Toontown]

A person who has been tortured and is being put under a polygraph by the very people that tortured him or her is going to give unreliable results on an unreliable test.

Got evidence?

[A Laughing Baby]

Whatever that means...

I will assume you are disagreeing that there are higher imperatives than the rule of law. And you would, of course, be wrong. For a very, very simple example, survival trumps the rule of law. Usually, killing is illegal. But if someone is trying to kill you, and you kill him to prevent him from killing you, then a sane system of law would call that justifiable self-defense, thereby recognizing the higher imperative of survival.

After you have survived the brutal attack, you can then return to your usual high regard for the rule of law. Not that you would ever have actually deviated from it, since any intelligent system of laws would recognize the higher imperatives.

That too flexible for you? Need something stiffer, more dogmatic?

This would make sense if the concept of justification through self-defense wasn't actually codified law. Which it is.

[ANTPogo]

Then don't do it while they're under duress. Let them chill out for a while.

Because there's nothing more relaxing than being returned to your cell right after being tortured on a military base where the US Army is indefinitely imprisoning you.

Well, there certainly wouldn't be any simple lie-detector tests the way you would go about it. How would you know what to ask them? Duhh...is the bomb here? No? How about here? No? How about here? Duhhh!!!...where is the stinking bomb, goddamn it! (crickets)

But if you were simply checking info they had already given, you could simply ask whether it's true or not. True or false. Yes or no.

Did you get all your knowledge of lie-detector tests from reruns of Law & Order or something? Even when used in the latter fashion (as they're supposed to be, and not in the naive strawman fashion of your first paragraph), polygraph examinations simply aren't reliable. Especially not for this.

[Toontown]

This would make sense if the concept of justification through self-defense wasn't actually codified law. Which it is.

A higher imperative is a higher imperative, and does not fail to exist if not codified in the law.

[A Laughing Baby]

A higher imperative is a higher imperative, and does not fail to exist if not codified in the law.

To answer in a word, no. People have claimed "higher imperatives" as a justification for many things throughout history. As a recent example, bombing buildings and killing civilians is certainly illegal and is understood to be illegal by Al Qaeda, but they're following a "higher imperative."

[Toontown]

Did you get all your knowledge of lie-detector tests from reruns of Law & Order or something? Even when used in the latter fashion (as they're supposed to be, and not in the naive strawman fashion of your first paragraph), polygraph examinations simply aren't reliable. Especially not for this.

What, in the realm of intelligence, is reliable? Intelligence gathering, by it's nature, must deal with less than 100% reliable information.

Look. If you can get the wheat with the chaff, then you take the wheat with the chaff. Then you sift.

[ANTPogo]

What, in the realm of intelligence, is reliable? Intelligence gathering, by it's nature, must deal with less than 100% reliable information.

Moving the goalposts already? What happened to "But if you were simply checking info they had already given, you could simply ask whether it's true or not. True or false. Yes or no."?

You know, using those "simple lie-detector tests [that can] easily separate the wheat from the chaff?"

Look. If you can get the wheat with the chaff, then you take the wheat with the chaff. Then you sift.

Your favored method of "torture plus polygraphs" is not going to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. It will, in fact, do just the opposite.

[Toontown]

To answer in a word, no. People have claimed "higher imperatives" as a justification for many things throughout history. As a recent example, bombing buildings and killing civilians is certainly illegal and is understood to be illegal by Al Qaeda, but they're following a "higher imperative."


Your reasoning is deeply flawed. When did we start adhering to al Qaeda's 'higher imperatives'?

The law itself is asserted to be a higher imperative. By you. And now you want to use it to send a president up the river for waterboarding 3 brutish, known, avowed mass murderers, for the sole purpose of trying to save lives, on the dubious pretext that the dogmatic letter of the law is the sole higher imperative.

But thanks for playing, and thanks for your service as poster boy.

[Toontown]

Moving the goalposts already? What happened to "But if you were simply checking info they had already given, you could simply ask whether it's true or not. True or false. Yes or no."?

Nothing happened to it. It's still there. Waiting for you to displace it with your 100% reliable method.


Your favored method of "torture plus polygraphs" is not going to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. It will, in fact, do just the opposite.

I have no favored method. My initial point, before (you) started scooting the goalposts around, was simply to point out the painfully obvious contradiction inherent in your assertion that waterboarding, for instance, cannot be used to extract the desired information, even though the subject will tell you anything he thinks you want to hear.

If you were smart enough to avoid the glaring contradiction, you might have asserted that waterboarding, in and of itself, cannot (isolate) the desired information. And then you wouldn't have needed to start scooting the goalposts around.