I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. The United States Constitution states in article 6 that all treaties signed are the supreme law of the land. The U.S. is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions. Obviously, this means the U.S. government will work tirelessly to ensure its obligations under said treaty and will do nothing to undermine its duty.
I’ve been told that marshmallows dissolve under waterboarding.
You mean patriotboarding?
Freedomboarding, isn’t it?
I don’t know, but I do know that when the US gives electric shocks to terrorist prisoners, that’s Freedomfrying.
Wow, that’s an amazing concept. A writer saying one thing while implying the exact opposite. They should come up with a name for that - call it coppery or tinnery or something.
But as you can see, I’m already familiar with the concept. And here’s another amazing literary device you might wish to explore - it’s called context. It’s checking out the way a line fits into a broader passage instead of just assuming that each individual line is indicative of the whole - something we refer to as “taking it out of context”.
For example, if you were to read all of Anthony’s speech (it’s a lot of words I know) you’d see that Shakespeare provides numerous lines to balance the repeated line “Brutus is an honourable man”. Anthony, by offering all of this evidence (friendship, weeping, coffer filling, crown refusing) to the contrary, clearly demonstrates that he really doesn’t believe Brutus is honorable.
And if you look at Cheney’s speech (again it’s a lot of words but so is this thread) you’ll see that once again context is a useful tool. As I have said repeatedly, the central message of Cheney’s speech is that we’re good because we follow the Geneva Conventions and the enemy is bad because they don’t follow the Geneva Conventions. How anyone can take the message that people who follow the GC are better than people who don’t and interpret it into something that’s anti-GC is beyond rationality.
Thank God the school district didn’t allow you teach classes in logic!
*OK, students, today we’re going to cover the concept of a syllogism.
Here’s an example of a valid syllogism: Shakespeare used a certain literary device in Mark Antony’s speech. Cheney gave a speech. Therefore, Cheney used the same literary technique as Shakespeare.*
Of course, according to your logic, I should assume that you mean the opposite of what your are saying, too. Oh, and it’s Antony, not Anthony. Guess you never taught spelling, either.
Ha! Nothing! I was just trying to illustrate how easy it is to say one thing and make it look like you mean just the opposite. I guess I suceeded too well! See? Sometimes words mean exactly what they say and sometimes they imply another meaning.
Believe me, I have nothing against you, Liberal or Little Nemo other than just disagreeing with you in this thread.
This is the third time you have tried to attribute an invalid syllogism (or similar construction) to those of us who are able to see the full implications of Cheney’s speech. The other two were:
If that is all that you have been able to understand of the arguments that have been presented, then you really do have reading perception problems.
I suspect that it is more of a stubbornness and anger on your part that is making you blind to other possibilities. You have no argument and so the only thing left to you is a really stupid insult.
In other words – actually, your own words – “You lie in order to advance your cause.” It just doesn’t work, John. That wasn’t my syllogism and everyone knows it wasn’t.
Look. You said, “He may very well hold contempt for the constitution and the GC, but there isn’t anything in this speech to indicate he does.”
I wanted to show you that someone could show contempt for something in a speech without actually saying contempuous words.
My thinking:
A person can show contempt for something without using contempuous words.
Mark Anthony showed contempt for Brutus while giving Caesar’s funeral oration without saying anything against Brutus.
Therefore, it is possible that Cheney was able to imply contempt for strict adherence to the Geneva Conventions without directly saying anything against the Geneva Conventions in his speech at West Point.
Note that this is aside from the question of whether he did or did not do this – just that it is possible.
As for your comment on the spelling of Mark Anthony: I have commented several times that I am a terrible speller. Nevertheless, I did teach spelling. It was difficult. I am not particularly careful here.
I did a Yahoo! search and found the following:
81,300,000 for Mark Anthony
6,940,000 for Mark Antony
2,530,000 for Marc Antony
39,000,000 for Marc Anthony
I’ve seen more than one spelling used in different textbooks through the years. It can be either. This website from the UK uses the spelling that I prefer. If for some reason it offends you, I don’t mind changing it. How do you want me to spell his first name?
Do you want me to check your post for errors or can we set that aside? I use that ability only when someone is picking at someone else’s grammar or when it is relevant to someone’s integrity. I make plenty of errors in my own posts and I leave myself wide open to criticism.
Just for the record, the gentleman in question was known to his friends and enemies as “Marcus Antonius” (or “MARCVS ANTONIVS” when carved in marble). Those are just four different ways of writing his name in English.
There was a time, an innocent time, when I would have thought waterboarding was some form of surfing.
I do believe you. 
But the fact remains that the quote in the OP is a criticism of “killers”, and not of the Geneva Conventions. Cheney’s history of contempt for the GC has no bearing on the OP’s claim that in this instance he criticized them to West Point cadets. The Shakespeare argument, as well, is almost Aposian in its desperate convolution. There is no grammatical or rhetorical defense that isn’t far-fetched and contrived. We should apply the principle of parsimony here (which most people in this thread would gladly apply to, say, a theological argument) and take the plain meaning of the text.
Geezus you are pathetic.
I’ll make you a deal: the next time you actually engage in an honest debate with my actual arguments, instead of breezily bloviating about the few words you bother to skim through, then I’ll pay you the attention you so desperately crave. Alternatively, maybe after you have your next big hysterical breakdown I’ll check back and see if twentieth times the charm. Until then, find someone else to stalk, please.
For heaven’s sake, Apos, don’t be such a sore loser.
And it’s “see if twentieth time**’**s the charm”.
Regards,
Shodan
:rolleyes:
Maybe someday you’ll get around to posting again, and we can have a discussion in which you actually develop coherent arguments for more than a few sentences. At that point it might be possible to declare a winner or a loser in an argument, at least if you’d stick around long enough to turn it into a real discussion. The last time I encountered you living up to this ideal was in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=419698&page=3&highlight=faith
But of course even there you quickly vamoosed instead of having to answer any of the crucial questions about what your position actually entails.
Already done. It’s called “sarcasm”. You might even have come across it before, in other contexts.
Perhaps you’d be interested in finding out, instead of dismissing uncomfortable thoughts as merely “orrational”? :dubious: You yourself just noted the importance of context. The context in which Cheney gave his speech is that his administration really has violated the GC’s; repeatedly, it has engaged in torture, routinely and apparently enthusiastically; it really has refused its prisoners the right to counsel or supervision. IOW, and this may be a difficult concept for you, he’s lying. He’s asking the audience to believe him and not your lying eyes. Does it start to dawn on you yet? :dubious:
Look further at the text itself, the lumping, the dehumanizing, the caricaturization already mentioned in this thread (but not by you). “They” attacked us, “they” have “delicate sensibilities”, “they” are the enemy because “they” want only to kill us. But he can’t even keep straight who “they” are!
Go bone up about propaganda techniques before you say anything more about rationality. Cheney’s speech was quite rational, but in the sense that he was trying to persuade his audience of something specific, not that it was related to the mere realm of facts.
It’d save work for the hamsters if we just had a sticky which read
“I, Shodan, have already won the debate despite the whole board being biased against me and without even substantially participating. Nyah nyah. All congratulations accepted and thoroughly deserved. No autographs, sorry”
Then maybe he would fuck off and stop wasting thead space.
First off, what’s your point with “orrational”? I figured I had misspelled a word and finally ran my post through a spell check to confirm I hadn’t used the word.
But moving on, could you please clarify exactly what it is you’re trying to establish? Because I’m seeing four different arguments. And I generally agree with you on three of them.
Does Cheney have a history of human rights abuse and defying the Geneva Conventions? Sure - and I’ve said so here.
Is Cheney trying to dehumanize enemy soldiers and/or insurgents? Again, no argument from me on that.
Does Cheney lie? Hell, yes. He probably packs three lies just into saying “hello”.
But none of these issues are the point of the OP or the point of any of my posts. That issue was whether Cheney was criticizing the Geneva Conventions in his West Point speech. And I still hold that he wasn’t. For all I know, he might have gone to the men’s room immediately after his speech and wiped his ass with the Geneva Conventions (and used the Bill of Rights for a second pass) but that speech was clearly pro-GC.
Then why do people who want the Geneva Conventions upheld have “delicate sensibilities”? Do you think that line was delivered with gladness of heart or a sneer on his face? Again, look at the context. That’s similar to calling someone thin-skinned or a coward.
Can you point to any other time when Cheney has backed down on his position on the Geneva Conventions? Has he now taken any public steps to see that our prisoners at Gitmo are treated as POWs? If he has changed his position in the slightest on the Geneva Conventions, why didn’t this make the news? In fact, can you think of any time that Cheney has changed his comments on anything without absolutely being backed into a corner and forced to watch a video of himself contradicting himself?
Cheney’s speech indirectly continues to undermine the Geneva Conventions – as has been his policy all along. He is only slightly more subtle than usual, but certainly not oblique.
BTW, I did a Yahoo! search for “West Point Cheney Geneva Conventions” without the quotation marks and checked the first thirty hits that I got. (I’ve been told that Yahoo! uses Google.) The links say such things as “Cheney criticizes Geneva Conventions…” or “Cheney ridicules Geneva Conventions” or Cheney attacks…" or “Cheney blasts…” or even “Cheney screws Geneva Conventions.”
Not one indicated that he showed any support for the Conventions or that he spoke in favor of the Conventions or even that he took no position at all.
Giles, Thanks for the definitive answer on the spelling of Mark Anthony in Latin (and the reminder.) But the question that bugs me now is Which version did Shakespeare use in his final draft?
On which page? 