While congress argues over weighty, important matters like flag burning and steroids in baseball and the Supreme Court grudgingly told us what we already knew, and the president blusters that spying on Americans is okay as long as it’s in the name of the holy war on terror, yet another story broke concerning the competence of U.S. Intelligence.
Look. I get that you’re not all that fired up to find these witnesses. I get that there are other fish to fry, and as far as you’re concerned, he’s in jail so your work is done. But if you’re going to say you actually looked for these people who, as it turns out, are fairly high profile, aren’t in hiding, and are happy to blather their heads off to the international press, MAYBE YOU COULD’VE TRIED A LITTLE FUCKING HARDER, HUH??? I mean, Jesus fucking Christ on a Goddamn fucking pogo stick, could you possibly try to NOT make yourselves (and the rest of our country) look any more like a bunch of torture happy assholes than you already do? If a newspaper can pick up a telephone and find these guys, surely YOU could have.
If this isn’t the final nail in the coffin that is the sad, wasteful farce taking place at Gitmo, then we’ve sunk even further than I thought.
We left the country that publishes this newspaper for exactly this kind of oppresion. Nice irony.
It’s not our intelligence that sucks. It’s us. It’s a kangaroo court–we could have found them if we really tried, but we didn’t, because we don’t care about justice.
If I was the Judge in any criminal case where that happened, I’d be seriously inclined to grant the obvious Defense motion to dismiss for prosecutorial misconduct. Might also be wanting to investigate sanctions on the “officers of the court” responsible for this clusterfuck…but I kinda doubt a military tribunal would see it my way, for some reason.
In fact it is the general and demonstrable pattern of current US intelligence policy that ‘intelligence gathering’ means ‘finding intelligence officers with no integrity and Republican affiliation who will report what the administration wants to hear’.
e.g. ex-doper Bluesman.*
*promise that’s the last time I mention that prick.
It would have been an even better thing if it hadn’t fucking happened in the first place! Holy fuck, do you really need the SCOTUS interpretation to tell you what you already know? Not only were these people rounded up without any evidence against them and sold to the US by bounty hunters, they were told they would be required to prove themselves innocent…instead of us proving them guilty! What world do you live in that you can be so blase about that?
And this story would further suggest that attempts to prove themselves innnocent have been met with an active hindering of their case. It’s depraved enough that justice is delayed by imprisonment without trial, but actually thwarted?
Seriously, how long can this stuff go on before you’re not allowed to call the U.S. “the Land of Justice™!”
I don’t understand why for so many they were just meaningless words from a silly piece of fiction.
I heard one talking head, angry with the SCOTUS decision, say, “But we want to kill as many of these people as we can!” (That’s close to her exact words.) When I was growing up, any seven year old kid would have known that she was the bad guy.
What I would like is for our government to actually enforce the rules it derides other countries for not following.
What I would like is for people who are still finding excuses for the crimes we are perpetrating in the name of “protecting democracy from terrorism” to open their eyes and realize, if our government will find a way to do this to people of other countries, they will find ways to do it to citizens of this country. That they already have, in fact, and still these idiots think it’s in their own best interest because they got $200 whole dollars back on their taxes.
What I expect is for people to look the other way, watch the ball game, shrug, and say “whaddaya gonna do?”
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said about the disgrace of not trying to make a dilligent search for these witnesses.
I do have a couple of questions: Were these people in the same situations two years ago? Considering the chaos that Afghanistan has been through it’s recent past, there’s room for a doubt that these people may not have been as easily found two years ago, as they are today.
If they’re all in the same situations that they were two years ago, this is really a slam-dunk. If not, there may be room to claim that a search had been attempted for these witnesses, at that time.
I’m not offering a single prediction in favor of this view of the events. I doubt it strongly, but it seems it may be a possibility.
Still damned disheartening, even if this “best case” scenario could be proved to have happened.
With the slight difference that Bush didn’t railroad his own people into prison. Oh no. Good ol’ boy Bush grabbed foreigners and slammed them into captivity, conveniently outside US soil so nasty little incoveniences like laws wouldn’t interfere.
That bunch of arrogant, evil motherfuckers–Bush, his cronies and a gutless Congress–have made ‘American’ something shameful. Their major achievement has been to be a PR goldmine for the very people they claim to oppose. Bin Laden and crew probably cream their robes over how thoroughly this shit ‘proves’ their hatred.
They have. They FUCKING HAVE and it boils my blood! I just cannot express how angry that makes me.
Let’s always keep in mind that these pricks are merely metastases of a much more threatening problem in our society: their supporters. Term limits come and go. Voter fraud allegations notwithstanding, elections still exist (unless they find a “credible threat” to justify postponing them. FUCK!). But the very fact that numbers have been close is even more infuriating than the likes of the Shrub Administration and the majority leadership in congress.
A significant portion of the population of the United States of America condones their shit. They condone their shit and engage in circle jerks about what “firm, decisive leaders” they are and how they stand for family values and precious flags and other pathetic ideological detritus. These people will continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and fume about the evul terriss-faggot-libruls even if the Democrats manage to retake some part of the legislative branch.
THOSE useless-at-best fucks will still be here. Some of whom will eventually come into this thread to give the benefit of the doubt to the guardians of truthiness, injustice, and the corporate way.
So as a courtesy I’ll leave a pre-emptive fuck you for them when they happen along. Fuck you plus change, assholes.
Gotta wonder what your obsession is with a guy who hasn’t posted in a political thread since early 2004, and hasn’t posted at all on the Dope in nearly a year and a half.
Must be the challenge and the thrill of slamming someone who isn’t around to slam back. :rolleyes:
WHY! Why?
That is the question. When George is booted out will there be some feeling of guilt about his term or will the average Bush voter feel like all is well?
This is what I find most alarming about America too. In 2000 you had to do a little research to know what a bunch of pig-dogs Bush and his Administration would be, though the information was definitely out there – PNAC, anyone? Focus on the Family, anyone? – but in 2004 the American voters knew what kind of pig-dogs they were electing, and close enough to 50 percent of us voted for the stinking filthy scum that infested the White House to allow them to cheat their way into another 4 years. I wanna give a hearty “fuck you” to every one of you that voted for Bush in the last election. To hell with you. You’re a stinking, stupid pigs who’ve dragged America’s name through the mud so you can feel safe and secure in your little suburban pigsties. You’re an ugly stain on the history of America. If you had an ounce of decency and humanity in your souls, you’d kill yourselves out of sheer chagrin. But of course, you don’t, and your’e stupid fucks besides. So to hell with you.
Fuck you. I understand the guy is your friend OK. But he outright swore he’d turn up to defend his integrity, gave out licence to question it when no WMD turned up and instead turned tail and ran.
He gave me the licence. If he want to withdraw it, let him say so.
Secondly as for your previous ‘innocently doing his job’ line. He out and out made the decision to fabricate intelligence reports, contrary to what the evidence suggested. Because he supported the Republican invastion agenda. And guess what 10 of thousand are dead because of vermin like him. Dead who would otherwise live if he had the integrity he claimed. If that’s not true then I’m wrong. Otherwise the warmonger never receives one tenth of the scorn he attracts.
Well, it’s a good reasonable doubt theory as to their whereabouts, but I’m inclined to think they just didn’t look all that hard. Let’s go back and look at where the article says they found two of the witnesses.
Now. The witness who has died, we have no idea as to his station in life at the time of the tribunal or of his death, they didn’t go into detail. Likewise, “former defence ministry official” leads me to think Gul Haider may have been difficult to find; he may have been on the run himself, although the (Afghani) defense department seems to have kept tabs on him.
The first witness, Shahzada Massoud, was probably still in a fairly high profile situation two years ago. One does not become adviser to the President overnight.
The same goes for Ahmed Ali Jalali. He teaches at the National Defense University in our nation’s capitol, for cripes sake. It isn’t as if the FBI didn’t know where he was. I’m sure he didn’t just walk onto campus and say “I think I’ll teach here.” Considering the uproar over immigrants and our suspicion of anyone brown, there’s more than likely an FBI file on him. Especially when you take into consideration what university he’s teaching at. So, no, I don’t believe they went to too much trouble to find these men.