Right. The difference being is that I believe that people who we can’t prove have done anything wrong should have the right to freedom, and you apparantly believe that they should be locked up in a fucking concentration camp just in case, and don’t see anything wrong if a bit of harmless torture should come their way.
BTW Avenger, legit question and without the animosity you have seen fit to visit upon me. Being in Wales, is there a concern about Muslim terrorists? This is more a GQ but I’m asking anyone in general that reside in GB. I know it’s a concern in the US (obviously) France and Spain. I know there are groups in and around London that are watched, but when it comes to Wales, Scotland and Ireland I never hear of anything.
Is it more a concern for London or are there areas outside of England-proper that are dealing with this?
And don’t tell me not to ask a question that no-one can answer. I was asking how you knew something that you asserted as a fact.
Retract or defend.
Perhaps you should know that in the course of human history, there has traditionally been this little assumption, what we in the know call a “presumption of innocence”, which in layman’s terms tends to mean that if we want to lock someone up or in some way punish them, we have to show why they deserved it. So if you’re defending the US government’s actions here, then it rather is incumbent upon you to say what exactly this specific person did, rather than give us another illuminating and rambling lecture on why Terrorists Are Bad People.
If you can’t, perhaps you might take a moment to examine what implications this has for your position. They are not good.
This seems, on the face of it, to be an extremely occult sort of defense of the quoted Defense Department statements. The inference that I think most people would make here is that, since (A.) the US government held someone for three years without trial, and then (B.) elected to then release them rather than actually press whatever case they thought they had, and (C.) the UK government’s action in releasing the man immediately upon his return suggests that whatever information the US shared with the UK in fact indicates that there’s no evidence that the guy is dangerous enough to detain even for one day, then all this kind of suggests that the Defense Department’s disingenuously non-specific remark about Al-Qaeda members making false claims about torture is simply a pathetic attempt to smear their accuser. That’s the interpretation I made, anyway. Department of “Defense,” indeed…
Surely responding to such an exchange by saying, in effect, “Can you prove that Al-Qaeda doesn’t train their recruits to make false torture claims?” isn’t terribly useful in this case, since even if proof of such practice exists (does it, actually? Just curious here), you have in no way addressed this specific claim. This would seem to be equivalent to responding to someone’s defense of any given United States government pronouncement with the challenge, “Is it your contention that the United States government has never distributed false information?” I’m no fan of the current administration, but even I would recognize such a tactic to be empty of substance.
And I really would like to be sure that my government isn’t torturing innocent people (or, really, even guilty people–bleeding heart that I am). I just wish that the Defense Department could provide a more substantive rebuttal than this.
Depends what you mean by concern? There have never been any attacks by Islamic terrorists anywhere in the UK, and people are realistic about the scale of the threat. I guess Cardiff would be a lower profile target than London, in the same way that LA would be a lower profile target than New York.
Sure, I’ll lie to you, once you lie to me and that the clear intent of your little smear that people who don’t support your side don’t care if white people are killed or not since we hate them shouldn’t be taken as anything except a personal insult.
Fuck you, duffer, and fuck your pathetic hypocrisy. You claim to support justice and true American ideals - and then you claim that torture is appropriate for people whose guilt hasn’t been decided by anything resembling American ideals of proper justice. You have more in common with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Ladin than you do with any decent American.
Come on Duffer and Manhattan!
“We are letting this man go, because after three years we couldn’t find enough to charge him in a military tribunal.”
“Okay, so I guess he must be innocent.”
“Yeah, looks like it.”
“Hey, he says he was abused.”
“Well, that proves it! Only an Al Queda agent would dare claim that.”
“But we just said he was innocent.”
“Doesn’t matter, if an innocent person it tortured, they retroactively become an Al Queda agent.”
“Um, ok… Who should we detain next?”
No, the people in custody are the ones most likely to kill the most Americans in the most efficient way they can think of. Don’t even try to now deny that you’d support the imprisonment of Mohammad Attah. Before 9/11 he was only an exchange student. Imagine if he was imprisoned with no reason? There are a few thousand people that wish he had been.
But had he been jailed on 7 Sept 2001 you’d likley have been one on the front line defending him and maybe even kicking in bail money. Right? C’mon, be honest. You would have defended him just as vehemtly. If not, your defense of those at Gitmo is facetious,
That said, I notice more NAZI-speak from you. Concentration camps? I support torture? I’ve lurked the SDMB long enough that these electrons you spew don’t really affect me. But keep typing if it makes you feel better. Hopefully we’ll see each other outside the Pit and we can be civil in other threads.
One more thought you have to take into consideration on this. These people crying abuse are at some point going to be able to sue in American courts. Got that? They can sue the enemy and in all liklihood have it heard in a very liberal (by proxy sympathetic) court.
I’ll get upset when someone can show me where Hussein or any member of the Takiban afforded the same to…um…anyone.
Or am I a stodgy grump by refusing rape rooms, torture stadiums, death by stoning (if you’re given mercy) as acceptable punishment while the “world” tries to make me feel guilty about a multiple rapist/murderer being put down with a simple IV injection.
OK, I’;m opposed to torture (DUH!), and i find the rightists apologias for American barbarism to be repugnant.
At the same time, i’m growing very tired of leftist racism:
Where do you get this garbage? Nobody here said that, nobody except you was thinking it. The odd thing is Arabs aren’t even “brown”–they’re Caucasian.
Given that this trashis always, always thrown out by the left as a strawman against the right, I can only conclude that they have soem internal discomfort with race that they are projecting onto the right.
I have no idea why I’m letting your piddle upset me so much, so I’ll end it. Doesn’t matter. Try to push someone else’s buttons.
[non-winking wally giving the bird]
Oh, and you really are an asshole. But I’m sure mom shouts that down to the basement anyway and I hate for you to suffer redundancy.
Truly, we have gone through the looking-glass. We actually have people in this thread saying things like “he wasn’t imprisoned, he was detained!” and “well, there is no evidence whatsoever he’s guilty of anything, but how do you know he’s not guilty anyway? Now he could sue for being tortured!”
There’s always room for political argument, but manhattan and duffer are now engaged in honest-to-God doublethink. I never thought I’d see it displayed so nakedly by average citizens.
Orwell would be proud. Or horrified. Or both. The man was a genius.
Woohooo our Judicial system is better than a fundamentalist islamic regime and brutal dictators. Break out the champaigne lets party!
We don’t know if you have or if you will commit a crime in the future would you please report to the nearest military installation so we may torture you to be sure?
I literally can’t believe this reasoning is being put forth. There existed an evil man whose arrest without cause would have saved lives (in hindsight), therefore we should be happy to arrest other people without cause? Do you really think this?
Randomly shooting Charles Manson would have saved a bunch of lives too, should we go around shooting people we think are suspicious?
Seriously - what’s wrong with you?
I generally agree that this accusation is thrown around far too much, and I still hesitate to apply it here, since I have no particular reason to think duffer is a racist. However, you must surely agree that he appears to have some magic criterion for who deserves imprisonment that apparently doesn’t include actual evidence. I don’t know what it is, but I sure wish he’d share it with us.
Will someone please, please help duffer out here, for the good of the nation?
:rolleyes:
What-fucking-ever. Once the right stops throwing out the strawman that people on the left hate white people and America, I’ll stop throwing out the strawman that people on the right are racist pigs.
I’m sick and fucking tired of being told that I don’t care about white people or that I hate Americans because I believe people shouldn’t be tortured at all, much less before they have been proven guilty of anything. Every single time this shit gets tossed out there against people like me, I’m going to start throwing bombs right back.
In other words, you refuse to take back your filthy smear against me and people on my side of the aisle. I figured you wouldn’t, assmunch.
Ooooooooh. Good one. Wow, an insinuation on an internet message board that someone lives in their parents’ basement. Incredibly original. Man, what a quick wit you have. I’m devastated by that comment. Really, I am. I mean, it’s just so original and devastating. Ouch. I mean, how did you come up so utterly original and so devastatingly biting in less than an hour? Really, I’m on the verge of tears here. You just absolutely cut me right to the bone with that comment. Honestly, it was just so harsh.
:snort:
An insult without feeling insulted. Next round is on me. 
Sure, as soon as we forget about Robert Byrd and Big Bad Ted.
Care to bring your strawmen to the bonfire? Don’t sell your soul to a political party. Be as skeptic of the Dems as you are of the Pubs.
You now repeat this allegation. When I questioned you before as to how you now this, you’re answer was “Don’t ask a question that can’t be answered by anyone here”.
We are clear here no? I support the rights of people to freedom unless they can be shown to have committed some crime or planning to commit some crime. You support the right of the state to ‘imprison people without reason’ on the grounds that they apparantly have some suspicion (on who knows what grounds?) that the person might be the type to commit a crime at some future point. regardless of the fact that your example makes little sense (presumably if Atta had been arrested on September 7th there would have been evidence against him and, if there wasn’t he would have been released), that is what you are saying, no?
Nothing to do with Nazi-speak. Dictionary.com defines a Concentration Camp as
- A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions.
- A place or situation characterized by extremely harsh conditions.
How does Guantanamo not qualify? As to torture, you’re posts in this thread indicate that the charge that prisonners at Guantanamo may have been tortured is of very little consequence to you. Eg “And now these fucks can sue in American courts over their “civil rights”.” If that is not an accurate reflection of your position, feel free to post a correction.
It’s one thing to make silly insults and add winky faces when you’re smack talking about a football game, but when you start apoligizing for torture, you’ve lost the moral authority to hide behind winky faces and act like it’s all in good fun.