You need moral authority to hide behind winky faces? 
What do they have to do with me? Or your blanket insinuation that people who get upset by the torture allegations hate white Americans? Should I whip out Anne Coulter quotes to defend my accusation that you’re a racist, or more generally, that people who support Bush are racist?
Neurotik, I empathize with your frustration, and I know this is the Pit 'n all, but is this really a practice that you want to engage in? It seems like there’s* always* going to be someone on the other side whose first instinct is to start flinging ape projectiles indiscriminately. Duffer was plainly the first one in this thread to start in with accusations of racism and anti-Americanism, and yet will probably never be convinced that those remarks were at all inappropriate or that he/she wasn’t the only one wronged by the exchange. Remember, you are dealing with people who do not seem to be able to grasp the concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” among other basic American principles. It seems infinitely more productive to reply to their attacks with well reasoned observations, which may possibly one day encourage some of them to recognize the emptiness of their own tactics. By electing to meet them on their own terms, you will never be able to achieve anything more than a stalemate where twice as much shit gets thrown, twice as many baseless accusations are circulated, and justifiable outrage at the issues raised in the OP gets highjacked into pointless and irrelevant personal attacks. * This is what they want. * They don’t want you to frame your arguments based on reason or basic human rights, because then they will lose. They don’t want you to call attention to their legitimate failings. They have a limitless amount of bile to vent: if they can keep you distracted by provoking you into doing the same, then they can blithely continue fooling themselves that their beliefs are justified.
Come to think of it, though…that’s kind of what the Defense Department was doing in the first place, wasn’t it? Throwing baseless shit in an attempt to obscure the issues? You two aren’t conspiring to act out a little morality play for the rest of us, are you? If so, I apologize for the hijack.
No, dimwit, he´s suing for the infringment of his human right to not being incarcerated and allegedly tortured without a cause. And now, to add insult to injury the US DoD tries to slip that smelly nugget about supposed Al Qaeda SOP, so they let him go because there´s zero proof of terrorism connections and then imply that he´s connected to AQ, how friggin´ low can you get to defend that?
By the way, someone help me out here, didn´t some captured and then released US pilot sued Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War?
It’s just personally disgusting to me that someone would come on line and defend torture, then go back to their dumb jokes and icons, like it’s just some other cute disagreement among chums.
Ideally, no. At this point and under these circumstances, yes.
One would think so, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. I gave up trying to reason with people whose first inclination is to smear the opposition, rather than attempt reasonable debate themselves. From now on, I intend to either ignore it or just sling mud right back, depending on the insult and who it comes from.
Easy way to solve this, for those who support the practice:
Would you complain if you, personally, or your wife, or your mother, or your father, or your children, were picked up ‘on suspicion’ of terrorism, and without any evidence, they were tortured? Would you like to think of your parents begging for the pain to stop? Your children? Would you like it to be you, pleading that you didn’t know anything, asking to just be let free…
If that was the situation, would you still support it?
Of course they wouldn’t. But, you see, it’s not going to happen to them, so they don’t have to care. That’s the way Brutus explained it, anyway.
Yeah, but we both (all) know that’s a fundementaly dishonest dodge.
Nobody can predict the future, and who knows why you might come to the attention of people in high places.
Let’s say you have a kid, and your kid donates to a charity (that turns out to be a front for/have connections to terrorism). Let’s say your kid posts on a public forum, moderated or unmoderated, or have an online journal. Let’s say your kid, in an effoft to piss off their conservative (or liberal) parents, talk about the US government being evil, or getting together/talking with friends about ‘doing something’ about it.
Is that reasonable for ‘suspicion’?
Who says yes or no?
There’re no laws to govern ‘suspicion’, no rules, no procedures. At best y’all are counting on the personal judgement of individual men and women who apply these ‘standards.’
And, you are suggesting that we subject other people, 'long as it’s not you, to this capricious and brutal form of ‘justice’?
Come on.
Yeah, well…I only said that it was possible, not likely.
Fair enough, I guess. It just seems a bit pointless to me, insofar as your targets will likely feel all the more vindicated from such a response, and any bystanders might be reluctant to debate you in the future (or to support your legitimate arguments, for that matter) if they sense that you have a conspicuous tradition of engaging in smear tactics. As I said before, since this is the Pit, it’s maybe not such a big deal here. And certainly I can understand the need to vent from time to time. It just seems as though this approach could be potentially counterproductive in the long run, since it may sway others to take your arguments less seriously. Rightly or wrongly, a practice of slinging mud can reflect badly on the credibility of a person’s beliefs. Then too, any catharsis you experience from doing so could easily be offset by the response from your target, who is probably perfectly capable of producing unlimited replies equally as annoying as the one that provoked you in the first place. I guess if you feel that your above exchange with duffer left you feeling less stressed out than merely pointing out the initial fallacy would have, then it might be worth it to you. I personally have a hard time maintaining those levels of vitriol to no good purpose. And in any event, perpetuating the mudslinging stands a good chance of derailing the thread in question (as, I suppose, my current post discussing the costs/benefits of mudslinging does to a certain extent as well. Sorry all).
Actually, it absolutely IS grounds for suspicion. Nothing wrong with pointing that out. The problem isn’t that it’s not suspicious, the problem is that the Bushiviks play the False Dillemma card, where our only choices are “suspicious” or “not suspicious,” and “suspicious” is an absurdly large set that includes everyone from Saddam Hussein to whomever happens to be nearby and has a funny sounding name when there’s a few empty cells in Abu Ghraib.
Frankly, “national security” is the oldest bullshit card in the history of government, having been used by hundreds, if not thousands, of states the world over to put people in prison for any reason at all, justice or not. That people can’t see this pattern amazes me.
Something like your scneario actually may be suspicious, but the government’s correct course of action is only what needs to be done to investigate the matter. I certainly would understand the government conducting at least a cursory investigation into persons who donated to a charity connected with terrorism, in accordance with the principles of justice and law, using things like warrants and hearings and the various conventional means of investigation. I’m sure you would too. If my kid didn’t really do anything wrong, it’ll come out in the wash, without having to ship him off to Gitmo to have his balls electrocuted by Private Lunkhead.
Yeah, I was using suspicious to indicate that without legal basis, torture can only be conducted based on a hunch. And while my scenario would be grounds for investigation, nobody would allow torture if it was their child.
…some more questions for you Duffer
Sayed is driving a businessman around in a Taxi in Afghanistan. He is stopped at a roadblock, yanked out by the local “soldiers” manning the roadblock, then handed over to the Americans for a bounty payment. The Americans, without granting you access to a trial or a lawyer, send you over to Guantanamo, where he spends the next year before being released, with eyes so badly damaged that you have to wear sunglasses during the day, and your knees damaged that he needs assistance to walk. Would this be acceptable if was an American in America?
Over in Bosnia, a group of six people are released by the courts over a suspected bombing plot due to lack of evidence. They are bundled into a car, taken to the airport, and sent to Guantanamo, ignoring an injunction by the Bosnian Human Rights Commision. Would this be acceptable if it happened to an American in America?
…so there are people at Guantanamo who were sent there mistakenly of a mangled bureaucracy. People were, and possibly still are, locked up at Guantanamo because of paperwork. If this were to happen to an American, in America, would it be acceptable?
Prisoners are kept awake with loud noises and bright lights. They are beaten and abused. They are subjected to sexual taunts, some have their faces smeared by menstual blood (actually red ink) by women pretending to be prostitutes. And surprise, surprise, after seven or eight hour interrigations, some of those at Guantanamo confess! I ask you duffer, if these techniques were used by American police officers, on American prisoners, would it be acceptable? (Please remember, that many of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were NOT captured on the battlefield’s of Afghanistan, were not captured with weapons in their hands, were not involved with any terrorist groups, so I believe that the comparison to the police as opposed to the military is apt)
I ask you these question, because, from over this part of the world, it just seems to be absolutely impossible for anyone not to be outraged by the behaviour of your government and the troops themselves at Guantanamo Bay and other US detention facilities such as Bagram, or the detention centre by Baghdad airport. That you can so blissfully put your head in the sand, ignore prisoners protestations of innocence, excuse the abuse of those prisoners, that you can just point and laugh and call us “liberals”, you know, it just confounds me. So please enlighten me, if what happened to some of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were happening to citizens of the United States, would you get up in arms? If not, why not?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3545709.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/insideguantanamo.txt
http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?aid=2730
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3812713.stm
Does anyone else here find it a little strange that the story linked in the OP has actually been significantly edited since first going online?
Shit fuck fuck shit!
The post above was by me, not FreshSheets
Sorry mods.
Fuck off. 20% of the dead were from outside the US. I grew up 5 houses down the road from one of them.
I have no problem with hanging the bastards that helped killed her, but I do object to the wholesale abandonment of due process and judicial oversight that you seem to relish.
“Only the true messiah would deny his own divinity!”
Sweet Jeebus. When Monty Python starts looking like the sane option, you know we’re in trouble.
This has to be the most surreal thread I’ve seen in years. Duffer is putting on a doublethink clinic. Shit, even Brutus is staying out of this one.
Duff I don’t know what to say. I find your mode of thinking to be quite bizarre. Do you not see all the problems that arise from detaining people without any evidence? Do you agree with the simple concept that if someone is “guilty” it’s because of evidence that proves so, and in it’s absence, we can’t claim someone to be guilty?
Pssst. Not to be a total nitpicking fool or nuffin’…
but your band is kicking off 2005 with a sweet new track.
duffer, duffer, duffer.
Roland Deschain has been banned. There is no longer any threat to your place as Our Stupidest Doper. Your position is secure. There’s no reason to keep up these efforts.
Please. Enjoy your title in peace.