You are saying that because somebody has called President Bush a stupid name, millions of people with a shared political philosophy must act?
Apparently it’s acceptable for you to label democratic political parties, human rights organisations and juducial bodies as ‘pro-terror’, without any justification. I find this utterly repugnant.
I post a cite on the StraightDope showing that 3 innocent UK citizens have been falsely imprisoned by the US for years without trial, without legal representation, without seeing their family and faced barbaric questioning throughout. This doesn’t bother you.
Do you know this quote?
‘First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.’
I’m not okay with rounding up relatively random people, letting them sit in a concentration camp for a couple years, and then…when we get around to it…assigning them a legal status. If they are criminals, try them. If they are war prisoners, keep them until the war ends. But it’s no sort of okay to detain people without assigning them a legal status and a reason for several years.
As for not letting them out until the war on terror is over…well…when the fuck will that be? We’ve had terrorism for centuries, and I don’t think we are going to stop it forever. If you are going to have a war, declare a war. Name the people you are fighting and the conditions for victory. Get congress to agree with you. THEN you can start taking war prisoners.
You mean the guys who claimed they went sightseeing and bride shopping in Pakistan immediately after 9-11? The ones captured in Tora Bora? The ones who are to this very day under 24-7 surveillance by the British Government? The ones from the allegely moderate Muslim community which nonetheless hosted Abdullah El-Faisel and Hassan Butt? I don’t believe them so no, it doesn’t bother me a whit. What bothers me is that people believe them.
Feel free, if you choose, to continue to believe that among the legitimate do-gooders and reflexive anti-Americans on the far left there aren’t any pro-terrorists mixed in. But there are.
Hmm, but given the way that Bush’s policies have boosted Bin Laden’s agenda to the extent that the man himself felt obliged to make a pre-election video to help his favourite President, don’t you think that it is likely that there are at least an equal number of ‘pro-terrorists’ on the ‘pro-killing-innocent-children-with-big-bombs’ far right?
You seem to have a blind hatred and want to spew insulting rubbish.
You first posted about ‘the political pressure brought about by the pro-terror left.’
As I said, this obviously includes Amnesty International, the UK Judiciary and the UK press.
I protest about the dreadful conditions at Guantanamo Bay and your response is that torture and imprisonment without trial is justified because someone called President Bush a name.
Now you announce that 3 people released by the US after evidence provided by MI5 are ‘under 24 hour surveillance’ (got a cite for that?), and that you don’t believe them. So British Intelligence must be pro-terror, right?
Of course you have no evidence that will stand up in a court, but you make no apology for the appalling fact that these men were tortured by the US until they made a false confession.
Oh no.
Instead you announce that there must be some ‘pro-terrorists on the far left’.
Of course you have no evidence for this either, yet you are happy to slur innocent people.
Is all this really what the US stands for now?
I really think you need to look at what you are saying.
The USA abducts people at will from their homeland or from where ever they happen to be for whatever reasons in a country that is attacked &nd invaded by the USA.
The USA tells the world that International Law and even US Law does not count for these people bec
The USA abducts people at will from their homeland or from where ever they happen to be for whatever reasons in a country that is attacked and invaded by the USA.
The USA tells the world that International Law and even US Law does not count for these people because the USA invents a name for these abducted people., a name that is non-existent and hence can not be found as residing under the protection of any existing law.
The USA locks these people in cages like animals and tortures them now and then a bit and does a few other things that can’t be done to anyone under the Geneva Conventions or even under the US law, for that matter.
Even as long as 3 years after their abduction and being locked up in cages and being tortured a bit to have “confessions” the USA can not come up with any founded case against these people.
So finally some of them are released and can go home. No talk about excuses or compensation whatsoever coming from the USA.
It is considered absolutely abnormal and “terrorist” - like when some of these people who were abducted, tortured, deprived from 3 years of their freedom and life after being released are a little bit angry against what the US did to them.
It is also considered abcolutely abnormal that a fex of them now definitely are brought into a mindset that eventually could lead them to perform acts of terrorism against people who wear the US label or who are citizens of the uSA.
I have a question to those who consider it so absolutely abnormal for these people to be mad, even to a degree that where probably they did not think, about comitting terrorist acts, they now are comitted to the case of harming the US and its interests.
How would your mindset be if I abducted you and brought you in the same conditions = after 3 years of mental and psysical struggle to survive these same “living” conditions?
I think I would risk that you at least fantasize about how to kill me personally.
Salaam. A
To all those that have provided comment denigrating the US’s handling of those held at Guantanamo, I congratulate you for not blindly accepting the crap fed to us by the mass media and our respective governments. You people are a representation that the human race might not be a total loss.
To Manhattan, you are a pristine example of the book smart versus street smart phenomenon, in that just because you may be able to recite the periodic table in morse code, doesn’t necessarily mean you have a clue as to what is going on in the real world. See you in the pit.
To “Chimp”, why don’t you just replace the word “war” with “Calvinball”, as you seem to be playing by the same rules.
For those interested, here is a good book on the subject…
Since he was locked up for about 3 years in a row and the USA could and did do with him whatever came to the minds of those who were in charge there, one could ask an additional quistion:
Since they have those so called “terrorists” who so called found their terrorism in “Islam” locked up in cages and can do with them what they want did nobody of these idiots in charge came (oand stil don’t come) to the idea to undo the Taliban Style Brainwashing I am without having to be there sure of that many of them had to undergo during their lifetime in Afghanistan.
All that is needed for this is extending the Communist Style Camp they have at Gitmo to Communist Style Re-education in Islamic teachings Camp.
That obviously this is not something they can even think about only shows once again how ignorant they are about Islam and how eager they are to take Taliban Style and Wahhabi Style idiocies as “the real thing”.
One of the reasons of course could be of course that Bush during his Private Conversations with God does not get the hint because he considers reading Jerry Fallwell as the ideal Bed Time Stories for Good Christians.
See, when other countries want to depart from these basic rules, they get labelled “rogue states.” What makes the U.S. exempt from this consequence? And has everybody else signed off on our exemption? 'Cause I don’t have a lot of appetite for spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder and around the corner and over the horizon for the next guy who thinks we need taking down a peg.
If they do not wish to release these prisoners, then the Bush Administration can call them what they really are, which is Prisoners of War, and follow the Geneva Conventions for treatment of same.
I guess that makes you pro-ignorance then. :rolleyes:
Your argument here is really disappointing. If they are terrorists or criminals; put them on trial. If they are prisoners of war; start treating them according to the Geneva Convention. If they are anything else; then the US has absolutely no right to hold them, no matter what their opinions of America or how suspicious you might think they’ve acted.
The USA doesn’t have a leg to stand on here and those responsible know it.
Dare I say I wonder what (Jew) Ratner would think about his beloved prisoners should he ever find himself stuck in an Arab prison.
Belive me, he wouldn’t be able to complain about beind held for three years. They’d make short work of him in a few hours.
It never ceases to amaze me how people will defend guys who would be foaming at the mouth to kill them if they were free men instead of prisoners now at the mercy of the American legal system.
In fact, strike that, Ratner could get every Guantanamo inmate released tomorrow and they’d still probably hate him because he’s a Jew. This should surprise nobody.
They’re at the mercy of a system created specifically to not be transparent, and to not offer any of the equality or safeguards that the American legal system offers.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the “detainee” baloney is shadey. They ought to do it either one way or another and not make up additional designations to pull off whatever shadey planes they have, just like most people here have said.
I just think it’s funny how up in arms people get over this. I mean, after 9/11 the nation was out for blood, itching to see the “terrorists” brought to justice, and now that we have them (many of them, plus assorted other people who are likely more with them than against them) there’s an outpouring of rage that they’re not being treated nicely.
So you think that Mr. Ratner should put aside his moral education as Jew? He should, perhaps, put aside principles for expediency?
Isn’t it Bush who claims that we must do the “right thing” regardless of any other considerations? So, we really mean that we should do “the right thing” only if we perceive the “right thing” to being the world’s top dog, with ethics, morality, and justice simply words we use to hide our true intentions?
But we do want them brought justice, that is, tried and convicted of crimes and given the harshest reasonable penalty. While the Gitmo affair bothers me because of the sketchyness of holding people without trial, its also bothersome because instead of actually bringing terrorists to justice, we have a bunch of people we grabbed out of Afganistan, who may or may not be terrorists, in a limbo, some of whom, like the dane you mentioned earlier, are being released due to a legal backlash, when they probably deserve imprisonment.