Artful Dodger: Hopefully yes. Hopefully it'll end the use of tyrants and the like by other country's, as those who would use 'evil' people will realise that it will end up biting you in the butt later.

eg... Iran is so annoyed with the west due it's people being killed by WMD supplied by the west. Now that mess is haunting the world and will for many years.

This is not 'demonising' but being honest of the results of actions that were flawed and irresponsible.

Czuch: So.... are you saying it's ok for the USA to supply people it knows that are 'bad' with the ability to kill their own people and others more efficiently, and knowing before hand that it does kill it's own people and others and will use WMD material that is supplied to them to that extent... it's ok??

And then change it's mind (probably due to embarrassment) then to moan about feeding them, which is a direct result of previous supplying of WMD materials which leads to the necessity of sanctions.

Are you saying that in all cases of the USA (or any other western country) supporting murders and the ilk, it's ok?

If so.. then you'd have to understand why some nations are angry at the USA (and other western nations) for such actions.. wouldn't you.

Übergeek 바둑이: It's odd that there is so much talk about water boarding even though it's only been used on the hardest of terrorists and only when the situation was somewhat desperate. And only three times and none since 2003. It seems to me that a great deal of though and care went into the use of this technique. It wasn't used as a matter of routine.

As for Iraq: I am troubled at the loss of life. Whenever civilians die it's sad. To be fair, the US does not blindly bomb. The US does not target civilians and is not careless when going after military targets.

When mistakes happen, it does not reflect the totality of the US armed forces. Most positive stories are never told. Only those that will help get ratings make it to prime time.

In hind sight, going into Iraq does seem to have been a mistake. With the exception that Saddam was a murderer of his own people, he wasn't more of a threat than most. But the once the US entered Iraq and was involved in the think of it, chatting about shoulds and shouldn'ts seem moot. Where do we go from here.

The US gets demonized too often. Even the current president apologizes for the US. Never mind the years of money and blood that this noble country has offered the world since it's inception.

I think that the best that can come of any of this fight against terrorism is to ask what we have learned and where do we go from here.

Time will tell if Iraq was fully a mistake. But lets be fair: many positive things came about because the US stood up to a tyrant.

GTCharlie:

Perhaps what I am getting at is that war crimes have become mired in moral and legal relativism. Milosevic was a war criminal of the worst kind and what he did is heinous and inexcusable.

The question is, if waterboarding was a war crime during WW II, did it stop being a war crime during the War on Terror? Japanese soldiers were sent to prison for waterboarding American POWs. Somehow in all the legal wrangling of the Bush administration the Patriot Act made it acceptable.

At the same time, we have done nothing to stop the Russians or the Chinese from oppressing their Moslem minorities. We have turned a blind eye to it because atrocities committed during the war in Iraq were swept under the carpet.

The Abu Graib scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg and most of the photographs were never seen by the public because of censorship. Iraq is no better than Vietnam was. I ask, does anyone know how many people have been killed in Iraq? Does anyone care? How many people must be killed before a war becomes a crime?

We have seen war planes bomb Iraq and sat there as if it were mere entertainment. Those nice fireworks on CNN do not show human death in real terms. The number of dead in Iraq is certainly a lot more than there were during the Balkan wars. The Coalition of the Willing has dispatched a lot more people to their death than Milosevic ever did. So, are we really better than he was?

WalterCronkite 1916-2009. R.I.P.

Übergeek 바둑이: You;re comparing the slaughter in Sbrenica and Gorazde and rape camps to what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan????????

really?

(V): The ability to create them. From dear Ronald Raygun. It's in your government records.



The ability to create them... whoopty doo..... lots of people have the ability to create them, doesnt mean they use them against their own people, or purposely target innocent people with them


Doesnt mean you have to neglect your own people to the point where I have to feed them for you either

While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Ronald Reagan's Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime's repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq's Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Immediately prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein delivered a WMD declarations report to the United Nations in an attempt to avert a U.S. invasion. Do you recall that U.S. officials intercepted the report and removed special sections of it, based on claims of “national security”? Well, it turned out that the removed sections involved the delivery of those WMDs by the United States and other Western countries to Saddam Hussein, information that obviously caused U.S. officials a bit of discomfort on the eve of their invasion.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0406g.asp

Czuch: The ability to create them. From dear Ronald Raygun. It's in your government records.

(V): The US gave Saddam wmds?

Czuch: Is he.. in what way?? That he kills people for you and your hands are not stained in blood? I thought accomplices were still guilty.

Czuch: Who supplied the WMD's that made him a threat?? The USA.. so if the USA had not given him the material .. which he used against the Iranians, yet that was ok.. he wouldn't have needed monitoring.

Isn't that clear????

(V): Have you ever heard.... an enemy of your enemy is your friend?

(V): And if the USA was tired of monitoring him... why create him in the first place!!



you got it backwards...

Czuch: I'm not contradicting anything.. just trying to understand the reasoning.. and yes the time phrase was years... but you do understand the phrase don't you in the context I meant it??

Please explain who missed that Saddam was nasty and how.. this point I find interesting!!

(V): One minute Saddam is a good guy, been given WMD material,. next he's bad.


Problem with this analysis is that it was NOT one minute to the next, the time frame was many years, and under different administrations.


You dont seem to mind the US becoming more socialist, even though it has only been a few months since we were not headed in that direction.... see, things change, but you dont seem to mind sometimes, and sometimes you do


Your politics are full of contradictions, really, depending on what suits you for any specific argument... typical of one with a liberal mindset (US liberal that is)

Artful Dodger: ... In Afghanistan... ok.... But there were none in Iraq. Unless this is part of some long term policy to get Iran and other country's in the area.

Is there such a plan?

Czuch: So the war was good for America in what way? A stable middle east, yet by all rights wouldn't you say that the USA had done little or blocked peace attempts in the past? One minute Saddam is a good guy, been given WMD material,. next he's bad.

And if the USA was tired of monitoring him... why create him in the first place!! You knew he was no good yet the USA gave him WMD material!!

why?

gogul: Very intelligent post. I only have an issue with two points. One is that I am not against the killing of the offenders. On the contrary, I want them all killed.

As for Bush being a global threat, I don't agree. His job was not to placate the countries of the world but to keep America safe. He brought the war to the terrorists. They wanna blow up buildings and strap on bombs and blow up kids. The US only help rid the world of such as these.

I'd never vote for Bush again but he's better than that lying snake 'Al Gore. And anyone is better than Obama. Obama is giving the US away and dismantling all its powers. Even Bush is better than an Obama.

(V): why were you tired of Saddam?




We were tired of him, again, because we were spending too much time, resources and money on the monitoring and feeding etc...

(V): And it would be helpful if you remember what you said, that democracy was the main reason that we went to war in Iraq... or was it WMD's??





Not true.....we went in because it was in our best interest to do so. By that I mean, that a stable middle east, starting with a free iraq, was good for the US, and the world, in many ways.

Bwild: Domestic politics... Funny playground isn't it.

gogul: as this shows....search by the bill number, SB-2099. http://ron.dotson.net/guns/sb2099.htm

And for these homeland security laws, the stupid mode of the mighty in this decade. The argument that this doesn't bother me because I'm allright and within the law and a moral human is wrong.

As it is today, we have our own hand over our home, our property, our children, our private sphere (? on that).

Homeland security laws threat this freedom, and the way governments treat the residents as if we would be under age is a joke. It's their own crimes that forces governments to manipulate and to take away our freedom. If I'd live in Germany and not in Switzerland, I would be in Berlin and making every politician impossible, they really wentnuts in Germany. I wish I knew more about other countries, but government will be forced by the street to clean up the kitchen and the dust under the carpet.

Yes, I think it was the manipulator Cheney who felt free enough to phrase that they merit it all. That was the land of the free those times lmao.

Think about this sort of general hatred against Arabs that swashed over from the US. Do your medias feel comfortable about? US-medias disapointed countless friends of America, millions round the globe. It made terrorists this hatred, a hatred which was never justified. America is loved and admired in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, and G.W.Bush gave it up. For what? Strange piety maybe? Or the wish to exploit? Did this gang felt like they merit the world?

Artful Dodger: Item, there is no acknowledge for terrorists. Not even if a government acts in non acceptable ways. It is impossible to condone the killings of innocent, when I don't even support the killing of offenders.

Among the mechanisms of terrorism there is something I can't ignore, which is that missing transparency is the excuse for terrorists to do something, no matter what. Missing transparency puts the lives of innocents in danger IMO.

All, at least so many statesman I can think of suffer from mobbed-up deseases, they get in trouble very fast once in office, and their stake on terrorism is to provoke it. Deliberately I phrase this strait away, I'd like to ignore the propaganda and anger that walks with the war against terror.

On the other hand side, terror organisations are low life like probably nothing else. Some counties aren't able to get rid of it, and the world is thankful about the US help. This is true for the countries that have to deal with Al Quaida and similar IMO. I think the Bush administration idioty was to size up the terror problem from local low lifers to a global world freedom threat. This is ridiculous, I think that since 2003 Europe was united in seeing Bush as a global threat.

Czuch: Yes.. and in saying so I included quantum math. It is part of the model you know And yes.. you said you presume your models work until they don't...

.. So.. we are in agreement that the model is that there is no model. No way to predict accurately events. Builders know this. Even if they have a plan, they always have to include an uncertainty principle for things that they cannot control.

And it would be helpful if you remember what you said, that democracy was the main reason that we went to war in Iraq... or was it WMD's??

But then saying you have no higher moral ground would negate such reasons. And then the question is.... why were you tired of Saddam?

(V): And if you knew about quantum physics then you'd know nothing is certain at that level.


i NEVER SAID THAT ANY MODEL WOULD CREATE CERTAINTY.... YOU SAID THAT MODELS DONT WORK, PERIOD! tHEN YOU PROMOTED gODS MODEL....

So, again, which is it for you? If models dont work Chuck, then Gods model must be faulty as well?

Artful Dodger: Good. Then you'd recognise that your whole argument is based on sand?

Czuch: Yes I do, and such a model includes quantum physics. And if you knew about quantum physics then you'd know nothing is certain at that level.

I also include, 6 dimensional space and 'brains and multi verses... big 'brains!!

Übergeek 바둑이: lobodan Milosevic was tried for crimes against humanity, and all he did is in essence the same that American troops have done in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such as? "Milosevic tortured and killed islamic fundamentalists" ?

Extraordinary rendition is nothing new. It was used during the cold war as the US shifted communist insurgents from one Latin American country to another. For example, Salvadoran communists would be sent by the CIA to Honduras or Guatemala for interrogation and torture. Back then there was no Internet and CNN was in its infancy, so such occurrences, like most Cold War atrocities, went unknown.

The Bush administration did two things that allowed extraordinary rendition to take place. First, it classified all enemies captured during the war in Afghanistan as "unlawful combatants". By exploiting technicalities in the law governing the Geneva Convention the Bush administration made all prisoners of war "unlawful" meaning that their human rights would not be protected by the Geneva Convention.

This is how the Guantamo Bay prison (and later Abu Graib) came to be. To do this the Bush administration needed approval from Congress and the Supreme Court. The appointment of Alberto Gonzalez to the Supreme Court made it possible for such legal manouvering to take place.

Waterboarding is a really old torture technique going back to the Spanish Inquisition. The US developed a modern method during the Vietnam war. It was used as a torture and interrogation technique against the Vietcong. It was further refined through the 1980s in Latin America as political prisoners were interrogated to stop local Communist parties from suceeding in carrying out their revolutions. A good example was Chile where dictator Agusto Pinochet used it against civilians and suspected communists.

Waterboarding used to be illegal. In 1983 law enforcement personnel who used waterboarding were sentenced to 10 years in prison. After WWII Japanese soldiers were sent to prison for using waterboarding against American POWs.

The Bush administration lowered the classification of waterboarding and made it "benign". A torture technique that goes back for hundreds of years became acceptable.

The Bush administration got away with this by getting around the Geneva Convention and by convincing the American public that waterboarding is not torture and is an essential interrogation technique against terrorists.

Well, might is right. The people who held power during the Bush administration are above the law. Slobodan Milosevic was tried for crimes against humanity, and all he did is in essence the same that American troops have done in Iraq and Afghanistan. Milosevic tortured and killed islamic fundamentalists trying to break Serbia apart. If Milosevic had done so during the Iraq war, he would have been ignored just as the world ignored what the Russians did in Chechnya against separatist moslems, or what the Chinese did in Western China against their moslem minority.

(V): Now you have me confused again, with your contradictions..... models dont work except God created a model at creation that bound?????


You have ignored this one.... You say that models dont work, yet you seem to promote the model that God set into place????

(V): So Czuch... you've just blown the reasons you say America started the Iraq war on. Moral high ground.


Wrong again... we started the war in iraq because we were sick and tired of wasting our time and resources monitoring Saddam and paying to feed his people.....

(V): So, we can say the same of USA people that get killed or tortured?


yes, sure you can say that, but Daniel Pearl??? Really?

Which is why one must hold every story of theirs to a powerful microscope. 

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004326

gogul:  Ok, now that I've finished that first article I can say that if true, it needs to be exposed because that goes too far.  I'd like to know the truth but I doubt we'll ever know.   There's always another side.  One thing that strikes me is that for a secretive operation there certainly are a great deal of known facts.  That's very odd for something that is supposed to be top secret.   

Just an aside but I'll bet if given the choice, those dudes would have preferred water boarding. 

gogul:  I'd heard about this but to be honest I'm not fully caught up on the ins and outs.  That the ACLU is behind the suit troubles me.  They sue anyone - even the boy scouts.  But I'll look into it and decide.

One thing off the top of my head:  If the US had detained nuns or a couple of pre-school teachers, well then that is something.  But I'm less sympathetic when it comes to terrorists. 

The govts of this world will face their stupidity believe me, they'll have to clean the kitchen und the dust under the carpet a day. As Sarcozy said: too much dust under the carpet means problem in the future.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4611518.stm

This is in german unfortunately, march '09 http://www.dickmarty.ch/Docs/2009326_berlino_cia_bundestag_20min_090326.pdf

Artful Dodger: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/31/local/me-rendition31


Obama doesn't want this trial, for the reason it could treat the national security.

gogul:
overwhelming indices would be a place to start.  But it must be backed with some facts etc in order to be accepted.  

Artful Dodger: Do you use the word evidence as in 'clue'? I don't have 'prove' but overwhelming indices *edit: I got the evidence*

Wikipedia: black site

Madrid and New York, that are the events where islamic terror seemed involved. A decade of terror in the western world spots on Madrid and New York. Are all these national security laws since really justified? The answer is a no.

gogul:  I know nothing of such black holes or people dying while being interrogated.  Some evidence please.