# Cheney criticizes Geneva Conventions -- to West Point cadets **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 27, 2007, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738 "2007-05-27T23:56:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/21 "2007-05-28T02:53:53Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] Sure, you could put it on your dick…oh,wait. There, that’s about the level you play at, isn’t it? :rolleyes: [/QUOTE] usually he’s more eudite than this, but this war /administration has taken a toll. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/22 "2007-05-28T02:57:31Z")
They’re both female. Give it up already. Your gay jokes and inferences are weak and, really, not very funny. Nor original. Take up a new hobby. Something along the lines of hitting yourself with a hammer would be not only more productive, but much more entertaining to the rest of us. Or a self-vasectomy. You could serve man much better that way. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/23 "2007-05-28T02:59:28Z")
[QUOTE=wring] usually he’s more eudite than this, but this war /administration has taken a toll. [/QUOTE] Yeah, I know. But he makes it so easy to ignore the rule of kicking a dog while it’s down. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/24 "2007-05-28T03:05:05Z")
I’m being savaged by a chihuahua! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/25 "2007-05-28T03:18:02Z")
I’m going to do something unusual. I’m going to defend Dick Cheney. Here’s a larger excerpt of what he said: > [@](#): > > The standards of this Academy only highlight the deepest and most fundamental difference between the United States and our sworn enemies. A month ago, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Pace, spoke to this class about each officer’s duty to follow a moral compass in all of his or her actions. In these four years you have learned the rules of warfare and professional military ethics. You’ve studied the tenets of morality. You’ve reflected on the seven Army values: of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. You have lived by a code of honor, and internalized that code as West Point men and women always do. > > As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away. These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it. They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. The terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds, and they hate nothing more than the country you have volunteered to defend. In this context, it’s clear that what the Vice President meant was that he expected the cadets (and by extension all military officers) to behave in a moral fashion even when faced by an opponent that is not adhering to the same moral code. I agree with the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/26 "2007-05-28T03:20:56Z")
Also I think it would be helpful if the Vice President walked the walk as well as talking the talk. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/27 "2007-05-28T03:25:06Z")
In that context, he’s also asking the cadets to share his view of The Terrorists, that massive, undefined, frightening blob of enemy, as less human than us, less aware of basic moral precepts, less civilized, wanting only to kill us and rape our women, etc., therefore having less of a right than us to be treated as human. IOW, it’s exactly the very same sort of propaganda that almost always gets proffered by any warring government, in an attempt to legitimize its war and its own conduct in it by objectifying and dehumanizing its opponent. But in most wars, it’s clear who the enemy we’re dehumanizing actually _is_. Against that, a broader world wondering who’s more on the side of righteousness already knows about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the Gonzales memo. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/28 "2007-05-28T03:55:45Z")
> [@Cheney](#): > > As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away. These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it. They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. The terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds, and they hate nothing more than the country you have volunteered to defend. The most insidious aspect of this carefully crafted crap is the emphasis it places upon terrorists. If they fight in Iraq or Afghanistan they will be fighting insurgents or participants in a civil war. They may come across some actual terrorists, also. But the impression left is that predominently, your enemies will be terrorists who are all absolute scum, barely human, and the embodiment of evil. I believe in WWI the practice was to depict the Germans as baby eating semi-humans with doglike jaws and fangs. Of course, we are all too sophisticated to fall for that sort of propaganda these days. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/29 "2007-05-28T04:35:42Z")
Boy, when ol’ Shooter starts in telling lies, he does not screw around, no sir! And he doesn’t just pick and choose which Bushivik bullshit to serve, he brings the whole gang to play! After he gets the crowd all warmed up with a few standard pieties and bromides, he gets down to business… Nine-eleven, of course, serves as the foundation of this fortress of horseshit. But having established that, he moves on. But, so far, the only enemies he has directly alluded to is Al Qeuda, > [@](#): > > …As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States… So, so far we’re talking about AL Queda terrorists, pretty much exclusively. Not much mention of Iraq so far, but wait for it, its segue time… Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit us again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization. > [@](#): > > …In Iraq today, the al Qaeda network that struck America is one of the elements trying to destroy a democratic government… Now that’s about half true, but he’s just getting warmed up. > [@](#): > > Their ultimate goal is to establish a totalitarian empire, a caliphate, with Baghdad as its capital. They view the world as a battlefield and they yearn to hit us again. And now they have chosen to make Iraq the central front in their war against civilization… In Iraq today, the al Qaeda network that struck America is one of the elements trying to destroy a democratic government.. Another droll half-truth! Semanticly correct, AlQ is “one of the elements”. The others, apparently, are of such minor import as to be passed by without notice. Because AlQ has chosen to make Iraq the central front. Note that well. They picked it. Notice there is no mention as to why they have picked this, no suggestion that it was anything we might have done. only that AlQ is apparently consumed with the vision of making Baghdad the Muslim Vatican or something. (must finish later…) ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/30 "2007-05-28T05:03:48Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] Also I think it would be helpful if the Vice President walked the walk as well as talking the talk. [/QUOTE] Um, from Jan 1993 to Jan 2001 we were told previous miltary service wasn’t important when debating military action. “Oh, there he goes bringing up Clinton!!!@eleventy-one!” Deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/31 "2007-05-28T05:33:55Z")
(Now, I’ve got to take a moment to ponder. Does Shooter think that Baghdad is some sort of “Holy City” to the Islamic faith? That Muslims clink their glasses in toast and say “Next year in Baghdad!” or something?) > [@](#): > > …We are there because, after 9/11, we decided to deny terrorists any safe haven… What sublime mendacity! They are in Iraq because of thier desire to make Baghdad the capital of the Sunni Caliphate (he _knows_ they’re Sunni, right? Right?) And we are there because we decided to deny terrorists a safe haven, because of 9/11. > [@](#): > > …We are there because, having removed Saddam Hussein, we promised not to allow another dictator to rise in his place…And we are there because the security of this nation depends on a successful outcome. So, you know, when you look at the whole speech…the half-truths brought in to buttress bald-faced lies, the innuendos stacked upon misinformation…he’s not so much dissing the Geneva Conventions (though he took a casual swipe in passing…) as he is dissing the intelligence of his audience. No one with even a rudimentary knowledge of recent history could fail to see through this crapola. It would insult the intelligence of a boy scout jamboree. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/32 "2007-05-28T05:45:40Z")
[QUOTE=Princhester] …They may come across some actual terrorists, also. But the impression left is that predominently, your enemies will be terrorists who are all absolute scum, barely human, and the embodiment of evil… [/QUOTE] Hold on now, that position is entirely defensible! If you are attacked by 10,000 Iraqis and two of them are AlQ terrorists, then you are being attacked by terrorists! No getting around that. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/33 "2007-05-28T05:46:30Z")
[QUOTE=duffer] Um, from Jan 1993 to Jan 2001 we were told previous miltary service wasn’t important when debating military action. [/QUOTE] I’m not sure but I don’t think Little Nemo’s point is that Cheney shouldn’t talk because he doesn’t have military service. I think the point is that Cheney’s own behaviour isn’t exactly squeaky clean. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/34 "2007-05-28T06:06:38Z")
> [@](#): > > Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. The “killers” from all other wars have a way of becoming our allies or at least our friends. The Geneva Conventions are in place so that we don’t react solely out of anger, prejudice and bigotry. Meanwhile, there are others who are our prisoners who are not killers who are also demanding the protections of the Geneva Conventions. When they haven’t been charged, how do we tell the difference? We should be _terribly glad_ that we have a country that is (or **was** well known for abiding by the Conventions. It was a matter of pride that we were once so civilized. You surely haven’t forgotten that this Administration managed to label the prisoners at Guantanamo in such a way that the Conventions for POWs didn’t exactly apply to them. > [@](#): > > Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away. So was it a “delicate sensibility” to ask that the Geneva Conventions be applied or was it a reasonable and rational thing to do? What is the implication here? To me he is saying that the enemy has a lot of nerve asking that the Geneva Conventions be applied when he isn’t granting them to our soldiers. To me that is what we called “spoling for a fight.” He is calling “neener, neener, neener” to the enemy before the cadets. > [@](#): > > These are men who glorify murder and suicide. Their cruelty is not rebuked by human suffering, only fed by it. They don’t call it “murder” in their training camps either. I guess most countries glorify death in service to one’s country and in the name of noble ideals. George Patton was a little more blunt about it when he said (I paraphrase) that the idea was to make the other guy give his life for his country. Is their cruelty fed by human suffering any more than ours? > [@](#): > > They have given themselves to an ideology that rejects tolerance, denies freedom of conscience, and demands that women be pushed to the margins of society. Name a woman President. Name a woman Vice President. Name a woman Chief Justice. Of course women are not as marginalized here, but not so fast. We are _still_ a nation that does not reject tolerance. And the VP’s own daughter could remind him of issues with freedom of conscience. > [@](#): > > The terrorists are defined entirely by their hatreds, and they hate nothing more than the country you have volunteered to defend. When you are reading a piece or listening, do not look for the person to spell out everything for you. Look at context. Consider the turn of a phrase. Don’t overlook innuendo. Consider statements in the light of the person’s record on the issues. Some of you would still be scratching your heads over the meaning of the “final solution to the Jewish problem.” Oh, yeah? And Godwin was a Nazi! ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/35 "2007-05-28T06:16:02Z")
[QUOTE=Zoe] … We are _still_ a nation that does not reject tolerance… [/quote] Uh, I’m a little unsure about that sentence. Did you just take a left turn at Albequerque? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/36 "2007-05-28T06:25:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Um, from Jan 1993 to Jan 2001 we were told previous miltary service wasn’t important when debating military action. As was already pointed out, I was referring to Vice President Cheney’s shakey record on respecting the Geneva Conventions not his military service record. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/37 "2007-05-28T07:43:32Z")
[QUOTE=Cheney] “Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States,” the Vice President said in the Saturday morning speech. “Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.” [/QUOTE] The main problem here seems to be that most of the people Cheney et al captured weren’t, in fact, “killers” at all. Cheney defended Gitmo by claiming that these were the worst of the worst we’d picked up right off the battlefield: guys in open warfare with the US who thus did not fit into the usual laws. Problem was, he lied. The number of Gitmo prisoners who came off the battlefield? Around 5%. Hundreds were random folks we ultimately released without so much as an apology after years of psychological and physical torture. After his administration lost their case that these people shouldn’t even have habeas rights, they set up show trials that, frankly, I think anyone who was involved in should lose their commissions as JAGs forthwith. In one case, the “classified” file that the defendant wasn’t allowed to see was accidentally leaked, and it contained well… nothing except evidence exonerating the man. Which no one in his “trial” saw fit to mention. What did the judge accept as the habeas reason for holding this guy? He knew a man who the government said commited a suicide bombing in 2003. Problem was, this guy was taken into custody in 2001, so apparently now time travel passes muster in our oh so fair and impartial military courts. Worse, the guy the government said was a suicide bomber was, rather embarrassingly, neither a bomber nor dead: he was still living in Germany with his family. This is what Cheney is essentially defending the legacy of, ridiculing the idea that these “killers” demanded a modicum of sane and civilized legal treatment rather than the kafkaesque nightmare they got. Heck, one guy was in there for three years for, as far as anyone can tell, publishing the Pakistani version of the Onion. He wrote an article where he said that Pakistani politicians were all fat… and then someone decided that the 10,000$ bounty for Al Qaeda was a pretty awesome way to get rid of someone who would dare insult the fascist regime the US is now an ally of. Again, these are the “killers” Cheney is scoffing at. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that Cheney was in effect belittling the Geneva conventions and any hint of the legitimacy of applying them to people that the US basically just vacuumed up without any sane due process of law, who it claimed were killers but by and large were not. This is a man who fought tooth and nail, and lied over and over and over, to make sure the rule of law never applied to his actions. Labeling all his prisoners and victims “killers” when plainly a large number were wrongly imprisoned, tortured, and then quietly released: yeah, that IS amazingly galling. He’s making fun of, in part, truly innocent people who he just spent years covering up and lying about the status and situations of. Heck, most of the ACTUALLY dangerous Al Qaeda guys never went anywhere near Gitmo in the first place: they were kept in the famous black sites. Cheney and his administration, in fact, recently moved some of those guys to Gitmo almost certainly because it was turning into such a huge embarrassment that virtually no one of substance was there, and huge numbers of folks still there are there not because we have any actual evidence of them being dangerous, but because the very fact that they are there at all is a huge clusterfuck that no one quite knows how to deal with. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/38 "2007-05-28T08:35:07Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] Yeah, but where’s the criticism of the Geneva Convention? [/QUOTE] There doesn’t seem to be any. :dubious: There \*does \*seems to be some trolling on the part of the OP. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/39 "2007-05-28T09:36:41Z")
> [@](#): > > One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by ‘24,’ which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, 'The kids see it, and say, '‘If torture is wrong, what about ‘24?’’" I don’t have an opinion either way about the OP but I have to take issue with this. This has got to be a joke. Popular as 24 may be, Jack Bauer is the absolute worst role model any serious officer candidate material could ever have. He has no respect for the chain of command, violates procedure as often as he breathes and let’s not forget… also hijacked the president and menaced him with a gun! Any cadet who tried to be Jack Bauer would end up in the stockade so fast it would be comical. And they could try making the same arguments Jack uses to get out of trouble and I bet all they’d hear in response is “Tough shit, you’re not going anywhere!” In Season One, Jack gives Tony shit because CTU is a “military operation.” I laughed out loud at this because it’s painfully obvious that CTU is about as far from a military operation as you can get. Any West Point grad who can’t tell the difference between the contrived world of 24 and the real world deserves their inevitable date with the MPs, who are not going to be impressed by a second-rate Jack Bauer impersonation. The “Jack Bauer is desensitizing us to torture” idea holds about as much water as the “violent video games are causing school shootings” idea. And torture on 24 quite often doesn’t work or gets applied to the wrong person. Even when it does work, the bad guys are always one step ahead anyway. 24 is a television show and I’m willing to give West Point cadets the benefit of the doubt in that they might just realize that. What the fuck is this general smoking? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2007, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738/40 "2007-05-28T13:51:34Z")
[QUOTE=Princhester] I believe in WWI the practice was to depict the Germans as baby eating semi-humans with doglike jaws and fangs. [/QUOTE] And in WW2, [Japanese](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.gif) were depicted as grinning, bucktoothed, thick-glasses-wearing, pidgin-speaking weasels. But, knowing better now, we’d \*never \* try to do something, like, oh, illustrate Zarqawi as a cartoonish character with only weak, vestigial limbs, caught in a rat cage. That could never have the desired demoralizing effect on other Iraqis. [Oh, wait …](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Your_future_al-Zarqawi.jpg) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cheney-criticizes-geneva-conventions-to-west-point-cadets/405738.md?page=3)