The people in those prisons are the ideological brethren of the people who cut Danny Pearl’s throat and posted video of it on the 'net for his pregnant wife to see. I hope we use smart interrogation tactics on them, but if we kick them in the balls and burn them alive I won’t give a shit for those murdering hateful evil bastards.
What if they aren’t terrorists but merely in the wrong place at the wrong time? People in your cities want to kill you and rape your wife/mother. That’s not a convincing arguement to let the cops do anything they want.
Better to torture and kill 100 suspected then let one actual terrorist go free, I guess.
Why should they? Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a unpatriotic terrorist coddler. Any attempts to investigate will be denouced as partisan politics by whiny democrats who are just upset they lost. And of course, they’ll have 30% of the population saying that anything done is justified.
How about not acting as a recruiting poster for otherwise moderate muslims. You know, the kind of people who thought their extreme neighbors and their claims of imperialist, sadistic americans was a bit loony, until we invaded iraq and started torturing people.
Suddenly nutty neighbor doesn’t seem so nutty, considering the Americans are willing to prove him right.
Just like we confronted the Nazi menace during WW2, you know, people who actually stood a chance in hell of actually beating us, by commiting enithic cleansing of Japanese, German and Italian Americans. Because you have to fight dirty in war.
And how are we any better, dammit? So we become like they do? That’s great.
Sorry, but I thought you know, we were the good guys because we were the GOOD GUYS. The kind of people who don’t do shit like that, because we’re supposed to be better than that.
I am sorry, but after hearing so much of this horse shit from our so-called leaders, I am just a bit sick and tired of it. Got anything besides worn out talking points?
You don’t get it. Mainstream America is Larry Borgia and Martin Hyde. It rejoices when the US enters a war out of pure malevolence. A formal policy and practice of torture is just spice to that meal.
That the President’s contempt for liberal America takes the form of transparent lies is a nice dessert to that meal. Satisfying.
Well, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Who the fuck knows? According to this Administration, King George may decree that anyone he pleases be arrested anywhere in the world and tossed down the oubliette, with no trial and no due process beyond whatever procedures the CIA has developed (which procedures they of course don’t have to explain or reveal to anyone).
Now, that appears to be in reference to prisoners the CIA held as a result of the Afghanistan campaign, not necessarily the 30 or so prisoners which the “black sites” we’re talking about here are described as holding. Of course the Administration and its supporters will say that all of these people whom we have “disappeared” are indeed ruthless cutthroat terrorist leaders. But, since absolutely everything about this program is secret, there’s really no way for us to tell if there isn’t some poor cab driver rotting away somewhere because he has some name that’s the Muslim equivalent of “John Smith” which he happens to share with Osama’s accountant. Or many such people.
What the hell happened to healthy distrust (or even unhealthy distrust) of the government among conservatives, anyway? You know, Janet Reno, Ruby Ridge, “jackbooted thugs”, all that stuff.
If some Timothy McVeigh wannabe sets off a truck bomb in middle America during the Rodham Clinton Administration, some of these God-fearing white male patriots may come to rue the precedents that are being set here.
I thought so too for a while, Sevastopol. But the latest CBS poll that elucidator mentioned elsewhere has confidence in Bush down to an all time low of 35%. That certainly isn’t mainstream. And out of that support, surely only a small percentage would take the extreme view that Martin does.
Only 229 years later, we’re well on our way to emulating the 18th century British Empire that we fought so hard to break away from. The apple doesn’t fall far, I suppose.
Why must we be the good guys? Why not just recognize that we are people just like they are and do what is necessary to get the job done. If it can be done in a humane way so much the better.
I wonder if it is this attitude that we think we are better than them that makes them a little nutty. I know when someone acts that way to me it pisses me off to no end.