Clearly he hates America and was trained to lie.
I guess that the point that I am making is that we are getting so caught up in how we talk about this, worrying about if this is as evil as things that have happened historically and that sort of nitpicking that we are utterly failing the basic gut-check that should tell any moral person that what is happening here is evil, being done in our name, destroying our credibility for probably generations and will come with a pretty fucking hefty bill sooner or later.
Realize that I am not really singling you out for my sarcasm. I don’t really have any recollection of your opinions on this matter one way or another. If anything, I was really just using your post as a straight line. Sorry to offend.
Is being gassed to death and burned worse then being beaten to death and burried?
I actually have a buddy who is now stationed as a prison guard at Gitmo. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, though, he was sent there only about two months ago.
The main reason I think the comparison is invalid is because, to me a concentration camp has generally inhumane conditions, meaning pretty much the whole camp and all the prisoners are abused and treated unjustly just from the way the camp as a a whole is run. I get the impression that the mistreatment at Gitmo is more isolated. I would agree that even one prisoner does not deserve to be mistreated anad abused, but I just am not sure I buy the concentration camp compariosn.
Is being beaten to death and buried part of an official, top-down campaign of genocide? Or is it the natural by-product of an environment where torture has been accepted as use and discipline has completely broken down?
And we won’t get into the whole, forced labor on restricted rations with the deliberate objective of starving people to death thing.
I figured there would be a contribution from someone on the right on this pretty soon. Kos (at dailykos.com) and others had their finger in the wind on this one. Apparently it is sweeping across the right-wing, who must be salivating for some good news these days.
Now, typically I would not lump Mr. Moto in among a group labeled “pea brains.” Surely he can see the difference between equating a political group with Nazis (a fairly broad and likely inaccurate comparison designed to demonize the other group ) and equating our specific torture behaviors with specific torture behavior committed by others (designed to get the behaviors to stop). I hope?
I agree, but it’s being done by both sides. Durbin’s comment was regarding an isolated instance and gave lots of different comparisons with a general point. Mindless comments like “Did the Nazis do worse, or just more?” is just moronic sloganeering that only helps the people who would rather divert attention away from the basic point that what has gone on at Gitmo is a complete and total disgrace and a total betrayal of every ideal that our country was supposedly founded on.
TYM: Mr. Moto is going to be so disappointed to come back to this thread and find that his bandwagon has been stripped of not only all four wheels but also the calliope.
Eh, he might just figure we’re a bunch of gutless liberals/Democrats clinging to a flagrant double standard. I hope he does address the questions raised, though, because I’m genuinely puzzled about the grounds for objecting to Durbin’s remark and comparing it to Santorum’s.
If somebody thinks I’m being a gutless double-standard liberal here, they need to explain to me why, because I frankly confess that so far I’m not seeing it.
I’m not comparing it to genocide. That’s why I said that they did more in the quip that you quoted.
When you have people at the very top of the administration doing their best to legally justify torture, I think you have a situation a HELL of a lot more rotten then broken-down discipline.
Only if we don’t get into the whole “flying people to other countries so they can be tortured” thing.
I was under the impression that none of the detainees has died at Guantanimo.
Is that incorrect?
Don’t know. Would they tell us?
The only torture-related deaths caused by Americans that I know of happened in Afghanistan.
I don’t think the distinction makes a difference (I made that comment in response to Guin, who was broadly commenting on our human rights standards, not just those in Guantanimo).
Well, we’ve heard about other detainee deaths in US custody, in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, although I’m not optimistic that the current allegations about Gitmo will all be proved false, I think it’s reasonable to believe that none of the detainees there have died.
And I think locale does make somewhat of a difference. Torturing prisoners and/or enemy combatants to death in a war zone like Afghanistan is horrific, barbaric, brutal, and un-American, no question. But doing the same in a completely secure facility thousands of miles from the region of conflict would be worse, IMO.
Gotta disagree. The people doing the interrogation and torture aren’t in any immediate danger when they’re doing it. These events are occuring inside secure facilities.
Moto, my man, I don’t think you’re reading the situation correctly. It seems to me you have inappropriate taken that first paragraph in the WaPo story at face value. The actual facts and quotes in remainder of the article don’t in any way support that first paragraph declaration.
Durbin is an idiot. Soley for the fact that he let a completely valid point be drowned out by the choice of the word Nazi.
I suggest that all politicians be outfitted with shock collars on their genitalia. And whenever they make a comparison to Naziism, they get a nice solid jolt.
You just keep thinking, Butch. It’s what you’re good at.
You would be right, too. It’s just the name of the regime that would be elusive.
I totally agree, however I would like to run with the idea a bit. I think that what we should instead do is hook it up to a cell phone that people can call to “vote” for a genital shock. After a certain number of positive votes: ZAP!. I further propose that the threshold for how may votes are needed be surprisingly low (I am thinking like 100).
I disagree. The quote is:
How is that NOT (per the first paragraph):