Wow. I went to bed. Sorry I didn’t reply soon enough. But I see I have really gotten to you. (an aside- I think message boards allow the TRULY cowardly to act out as they cannot in real life…would you call someone debating you a cowardly fuck? )
I would guess they happened in wartime in a detention camp. Now if you said they were forced to dig their own grave and were shot in front of it, THEN I would guess Nazi death camp.
Or if they were forced to do hard labor.
Or if they gassed “useless” women, children and elderly.
OR if they conducted heinous medical experiments on them.
Or if they were rounded up from ghettos.
Or if they had the gold dug from their teeth after execution.
Or if they died of starvation.
Or if they were housed 8 to a bunk.
But stress positions? Not Nazi stuff. Maybe the Nazi’s did that, but the comparison is intellectualy vacant.
So, you’re saying that stuff like the following two descriptions resembles American prisons? Really?
Oh, wait, when cutting and pasting I mixed up my quotes. Only one of the following quotes is actually from Gitmo, the other one’s from Sudan. Ah, well, I’m sure it’s obvious which one is which. (As an ironic aside, the AI report notes that the Sudanese prisoners have given one of those camps the nickname “Abu Ghraib”.)
Change “Kim Jong-Il” to “Saddam Hussein” and “Korea” to “Iraq, circa 1999” in the above.
Miller, I take your point, but this attitude is creating a de facto double standard between the civilized countries of the world, and terrorist regimes like North Korea. Jeanne Kirkpatrick made a related point in her book, Dictatorships and Double Standards.
You avoided my question when you intially replied. Unless you happened to post that last bit in your sleep.
Yes. I’ve done it before, I’d do it again. If you were here in front of me, I’d call you a cowardly fuck to your face as many times as you’d like.
Once again, you avoid the question. Please just answer it. Here is the question, one more time: if I gave you a description of what went on in Abu Ghraib or Gitmo (prisoners kidnapped out of their homes and held for years with charge, prisoners being beaten to death, prisoners forced to undergo sexual humiliation, prisoners deliberately burned with cigarettes while being interrogated, prisoners kept chained to the floor in extreme heat, etc.) and then asked you whether you thought those were committed in a military prison run by a) Nazis, b) Stalinists, c) Americans, or d) Khmer Rouge, what would you answer. There is only one correct answer - either (a), (b), (c) or (d).
Yes, newcrasher, I wish Durbin hadn’t said that. Do *you * wish he hadn’t had *occasion * to say it?
The torture and abuse problem exists regardless of the wording of any criticism of it. It existed before Durbin said anything. Why are you trying to make Durbin the subject, not the torture and abuse?
Moral high ground is relative. The terrorists stabbed the US in the back, and the US responded with atrocities. Doesn’t make the terrorists wonderful people but in the court of world opinion any pretense that the US had to being an injured party has long since been forfeited. Whether Bush or the terrorists are lower than the other is irrelevant, Bush jumped off the high ground directly into the sewer. Had he not done so, Durbin wouldn’t have had occasion to make the Nazi comparison.
I’m also a constituent of Dick’s, and generally ashamed of him.
For a brief moment, I was proud that my senator had the moral clarity and the balls to speak out about what is going on and to call a spade an instrument more like a shovel than a watering can.
Then the fuckin’ coward let himself be beaten down and forced to recant.
Hey, if you want to read it that way knock yourself out. Of course, this isn’t what I was getting at had you bothered to read the rest of the post…but I’m sure that was too much of a bother for you when you could just focus on one part. In case there is any hope of still reaching such a brain damaged specimen as yourself I’ll translate what I was REALLY getting at: Its not good to focus so much on bashing the US that you lose site of other atrocities out there. No ‘wah, wah, wah’ no ‘just hate America’ strawmen needed.
Um…I was trying to make a point, but one that is obviously lost on you, as from your reply you are just knee jerking with your standard tape recording screed of anything you think is ‘conservative’. Not that I’m sure it will register, but I’m neither a conservative nor a Republican…nor a Bush supporter. For the record I DON’T agree with whats being done at Gitmo, I DON’T think the US is right to hold those folks without a chance to defend themselves, and I DON’T think the US should be resorting to full scale torture. Do I hate America? No…I just think we are going about this in the wrong way. Hey…maybe like yourself Bush and his advisors ALSO have their heads up their asses? Its a thought…
And you are a pathetic and MENTALLY bankrupt individual who doesn’t know how to do anything more original that say ‘fuck you’…or the ironic (coming from you) ‘You’re disgusting and don’t deserve to live in America’ (ironic because this is usually some foam I hear coming from a ‘conservative’ talking to a ‘liberal’). Unfortunately for you my green card days are long passed and I AM an American citizen…so on that score you can blow it out your ass (and perhaps doing so your head will pop free…could be a good side benifit for you).
If you actually read what I wrote IN CONTEXT, then you would see that I’m NOT excusing any action or torture…certainly not by the US. If you could take the time to de-insert your head from your ass and actually take a look and read without the red haze in your eyes you would have seen this.
Or to put it another way…a lot of other folks who are passionate about this subject, who are against Bush and against America’s treatment of the prisoners ALSO read what I said…and you are the only one coming back with these ridiculous assertions that I’m saying somehow that torture is good, that America is always right, and that anyone disagreeing Hates America™, blah blah blah, rant rant rant.
I’m sure this is far beyond your feeble mental ability to grasp, as is clear from your post, but hey, I had to try. Crawl back into your hole, please…you are getting a bit tiresome now.
Did they? Afaik they were mostly just starved, worked to death and then gassed (in the case of the first 3) and then put into ovens or buried in mass graves. I don’t think systematic torture was really in play at any of those 4…at least, thats not what they are most noted for. If there WAS torture in play there it wasn’t for the same purposes (i.e. they weren’t exactly trying to extract information from the Jews in the case of the first 3, nor were the Soviets interested in extracting information from the political prisoners in their gulags…they had other prisons for that kind of thing).
Whereas, again afaik, there HAS been systematic torture of prisoners at Gitmo (either physical or psychological)…but no work to death/starvation thing, no gas chambers and no mass graves. So, on the surface at least they don’t appear to resemble each other. Were I to make a not so over the top analogy to compare to Gitmo that was actually (reasonably) factually consistent I’d say Gitmo resembled Lubyanka prison (were I to stay with a Soviet analogy).
Bleeding heart liberal that I am, I think of deliberately starving people, working them to death and keeping them caged up while killing them off en masse to be forms of torture. Quite severe torture, actually … you see any of those photos of concentration camp inmates when the Americans got there? That was torture, more severe than anything we’re currently dishing out, by orders of magnitude.
But we’ve still been torturing people. Torture, torture, torture, torture. It’s all bad.
And, hard as I’m sure this is for you to believe, I agree with you. Its all bad. But…its not all the same. Because two things are bad, does not make them the same.