To whom are you referring? Who do you claim has said anything of the sort?
And is there a cite for what Kennedy is alleged to have said that enrages the OP so?
Pathetic, or imaginary?
Let me try again (my fault not yours) … let’s say on the one hand you have someone that says, " I am against this war, I always have been. We never should have started it. Now that we have we’re messing it up and we should pull out 100% tomorrow."
Then let’s say we have someone that says, “This war is wrong because I believe that GWB got a check from Halliburton the day after he started it for $10 million.”
Now I’m sure that there are many who believe the former statement and I respect them.
Maybe we can all agree that the latter statement is way overboard (then again maybe not).
Having said that, I’d suggest that one need not reach that level of outrageousness to make irresponsible statements that, if made by a person of responsibility, are treasonous (for lack of a better word).
Reminds me of Evil Captor claiming that Karl Rove commited treason when he gave Valerie Plame’s name to Robert Novak.
It’s crap. “Aid and Comfort” means material aid, material comfort. “Adhering to enemies” means actual individual enemies.
The OP’s theory of treason is totalitarian. Anything that weakens the state is treason. Fail to meet your production quota of the people’s shoes? That’s treason, Comrade. We heard you complaining about your long hours at work. Complaints weaken the war effort. Complaints are treason, Comrade. You took an extra long bathroom break yesterday, when you should have been working for the success of the People’s Revolution. That’s treason Comrade.
If anything that helps the enemies of the US is treason, then treason is anything the state wants it to be.
Well, but “treasonous” isn’t a good word. Treason has a specific definition under the law, and a statement may be irresponsible, and it may even be detrimental to the security or wellbeing of the United States, without being treasonous.
Are there particular “irresponsible statements” that you’re criticizing here, and if so, would you please provide a cite for them?
I think we can all agree that it is irresponsible to make factual assertions without any evidence to back them up. I don’t particularly care whether it ought to be considered “treasonous”. It’s wrong, and that’s reason enough not to do it.
Wow, what a straw man.
I can play that game too. So, you don’t think Iraqis care that every day they are getting murdered by "freedom fighters? That they are being executed and suicide bombed by the dozens, daily? You think they enjoy the fact that they are lined up and murdered in the street because they are trying to get people to vote? I think I need evidence of that. :rolleyes:
You don’t care about the 63% of Iraqis who turned out to vote on the Iraq Constitution? You think it’s irrelevant that well over half of the eligible population voted for the current government? That government is being attacked by your insurgents. Iraqi men are being mass murdered as they stand in lines to join the police. Police stations are being raided while those there are being executed.
Let me give you a clue on who we are fighting.
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?sub=1602
The Iraq government has a military. Another clue: they are not fighting US soldiers. Who *could * they be fighting? :dubious:
He/she may be referring to me, as I used the phrase “hurt Bush”. True, I was referring to Iraq, not terrorism, but Bushbots tend to confuse the two.
Speaking of the terrorists, leaving Iraq is not helping them; it’s the last thing they want. If Bush had tried, he couldn’t have come up with a better way of helping Bin Laden and friends than invading Iraq; every day we stay, we make them stronger.
First, last I heard, quite a few Iraqis think the bombs are American, not suicide bombers; the idea being to make the resistance look bad. Second, we Americans rape, torture and kill them, so it’s not like they have any reason to prefer us; less than 1 percent support us, last I heard. Third, voting for a collaberationist government has a long history of getting you killed. Fourth, I already posted a poll of Iraqis; they don’t agree with you, and that’s what matters.
A “vote” under the gun of foreign invaders is meaningless. Those Iraqi men are collaberators; if they aren’t killed now, they’ll be killed when America leaves - that’s what usually happens.
The Iraqi government is a corrupt and a puppet; they fight who we want, if they fight at all.
Pathetic, and literate.
Der Trihs,
I had a long rebuttal post, but got so disgusted I deleted it.
I have zero doubt that you agree with them. Part of what disgusts me is you do not have the excuse of ignorance that they do with being in a war torn country that has a history of information censorship. Yours is just willful ignorance.
I don’t agree with them. The present admin is ruthless and amoral enough, but too stupid to think of it.
Got it. Guess “You just viscerally hate Bush” (as one or two Dopers would say), and that makes you a traitor, huh?
Gotta part ways with you there. You’re assuming that the terrorists are fomenting terror for the sake of terror, not as a means to an end. While there may be some element of crazies who are acting out sociopathism or somesuch, that isn’t even true for Bin Laden - his aims are quite clear, and yes, they are centered on expelling the infidels from Islam’s holy sites and building Islam-based societies in the oversecularized Middle East. I do have to think that most of the armed insurgency in Iraq, and terrorist groups elsewhere, is motivated mostl by ideology than simple bloodlust, though naturally the latter assumption has some visceral satisfaction associated with it.
That our withdrawal from a futile situation, simply to end the killings of our own people there, would be trumpeted by Bin Laden and many others as a victory for Islamic fundamentalism, but then so to a large degree is our current helplessness. We would, however, save our own troops’ lives and eliminate a pretext for the ideologically-motivated segment of “the enemy” to continue attacking us. How is that not *more * patriotic than wanting to continue a situation where we can achieve nothing but to continue to get our own people, as well as many other innocents, killed? Over half the names on The Wall in Washington are there because of leaders who put their own stubbornness, their own refusal to let “the enemy” claim to have defeated us, ahead of our real national interests. Those who tried to say otherwise weren’t “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”, fuck the enemy anyway, they were trying to give aid and comfort to ourselves. This is the same situation in that regard. We don’t need to put any more names on the Wall that will inevitably be dedicated someday to those whose lives have already been wasted in this folly.
No, I don’t think they are ( just ) spreading terror for terror’s sake; I think we have served their larger agenda quite well however. First, Bin Laden hated Saddam, and Saddam was a secular tyrant; a major roadblock for Bin Laden, which we removed. Second, our occupation of Iraq ( and bad behavior there ) is a great recruiting tool, and alienates us from our allies. Third, Iraq is a fine training ground for future terrorists. Fourth, it makes it easy to kill Americans, without leaving the ME. Fifth, they now can turn Iraq into an Islamic theocracy.
I agree !
I hope you don’t mind me seeing the humor in this, but that’s because we changed the definition of what “Iraq” is. We’re not fighting the Ba’athist government, absolutely, but that’s the government we invaded and toppled, so I don’t think you can throw out his comment quite that easily.
I never sided with the “bring the troops home now” crowd, but I’ve got little confidence in anything that’s happening over there and while I have often said what you say in this quote, I’m not sure the presence of those troops is going to make a difference.
“If a lot of people think it, it’s not extreme?” I don’t think I buy that. Either way, that’s attacks on troops, not the terrorists attacks against civilians. The soldiers over there are also attempting to deal with those.
Isn’t that largely different people ? It’s not like there’s a central command for the resistance, and I would expect patriotism/revenge driven fighters to target troops. Random civilians is what I would expect from the religious fanatics; they are trying to make Allah happy, not win people over.
He’s just parroting neocon Bushite talking points.
Yeah, we were fighting Afghanistan. Then we were foghting Iraq. Now we are fighting Global Terror. Let’s just attack every country on the planet. You blindly accept every lie, every slogan. What has it accomplished? Not a thing. It’s all lies and you lap it up.
Uh oh. His lips are moving. He’s either reading, or lying.
Both the religious fanatics and the secular antigovernment Ba’athists are targeting both troops and civilians, because even though they have different ultimate goals and different visions of what Iraq should be, they have the same immediate goal, which is to get the Americans out and destabilize the Iraqi government. You need to understand why they target civilians. It isn’t just to “make Allah happy”. It’s to, first, punish those working for or supporting the government, and make sure that people are too afraid to, and second, to stop the government from doing things, like providing electricty or social services, that would help the average Iraqi, and thereby win them over, and third, to convince the average person that the government is powerless to protect them.