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The Law of Unintended Consequences
The Law of Unintended Consequences
#1
Whoa! Now here's a take on the SCOTUS Military Tribunal Decision I hadn't considered!
Quote:
Today's Supreme Court ruling seems to me a remarkable point in the development of a kind of quasi-sovereignty for non-state organizations.
Were there to develop an Anti-Qaeda force, a private military to pursue Al Qaeda and win the war on its own terms, then their members would also have the Geneva Conventions apply to them, were they ever to be apprehended or detained by the US, yes? In other words, if the Geneva Convention now applies to a non-state that is a non-signatory in the eyes of the US, does it not then apply to ALL non-states that are non-signatories?
This is quite a large new degree of sovereignty that has been granted to non-state organizations. How will the concept of citizenship evolve with decisions like these?
If protections that normally accrue to states after debate and ratification can now be given over to non-states which have no mechanism for ratification, let alone debate, one can easily imagine a scenario in which non-state organizations form themselves and immediately possess the rights of a state, with no corresponding need to adhere to any laws in their own activities.
If this is the case, then we have the answer to the war: it will be privatized, and its ultimate victories won by uninhibited private military actors, not the hamstrung citizen militaries of nation-states.
I'm a gamer geek far more than I am a politics buff, so you know what immediately came to my mind? The Private Corporate forces in sources like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020. Stuff like Lone Star Security and the various other Merc Armies for hire in worlds like that.
No, the analogy isn't perfect. But it just struck me as a sort of "if this keeps going in this direction" sort of thing.
I mean, you already have the legal definition of a corporation as a "person". I mean, how far a jump in logic is it to have something very like GENOM with it's own private security "army" becoming a stateless state?
Because that's what the corporations in a lot of genre cyberpunk are. And I wonder if we just gave the real life corporations another tool to be more like that?
Scary, ain't it?-Logan
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"This kind of thing tends invariably to devolve into the kind of "No, Nakajima, THIS is true power!!" argument that only really works if you're yelling it from the cockpit of a giant robot . . ."
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Not under Geneva convention
#2
Good science fiction idea. Removing the Judges and lawyers and makes for good writing material. It goes along with the effort to remove nationalism. A lot of the Lawyers and Judges think it will lead to globalism, but it's more likely to produce loyalty to smaller groups than loyalty to a global system.
I can think of 4 or 5 science fiction series set in the future that use the removal of Judges and lawyers by one method or another as part of the background.
Actually the court making a ruling on this is wrong in at least two counts...
The constitution gives the courts no say in the way the president makes war. Congress controls the purse strings and can stop voting money, but the courts can only act on the laws passed by the other branches of government.

If I remember correctly the Geneva convention was never considered to fully apply to spies or warriors hiding in and behind the civilian population.
Spies dressed as civilians caught in the act could be taken out and shot. Their rights under the Geneva convention are very very limited.
howard melton
God bless
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at least one mistake
#3
Quote:
The constitution gives the courts no say in the way the president makes war. Congress controls the purse strings and can stop voting money, but the courts can only act on the laws passed by the other branches of government.
When a treaty is ratified it does become in effect law, and interpretation of the treaty is generally left to the courts, though sometimes congress makes 'clarifications' on how it should be read.
Also what the president was doing is most likly unconstitutional, remember that pesky 4'th amendment? We really should remove it from the constituion along with the first and second. Or better yet, scrap all of them.
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At least one mistake
#4
Hello Catty
I didn't Quote your good argument's back, but here are my counter arguments and some of my reasoning for my positions.
If these prisoners were American citizens(by whatever method) then I'd agree with you about the amendments being broken.
However I do not believe non-citizens of the United States should get the full benefit of our constitution.
If you believe otherwise that is your right and I respect it, but I cannot agree with that viewpoint especially for a enemy that wishes to destroy said constitution.
The Geneva Convention use to have(and might still have) specific statements about what actions were required on the part of the soldiers and nation for him and his nation to gain the benefits of that agreement or treaty.
Spies or soldiers hiding as civilians in the civilian population by looking like civilians were specificaly outlined as not gaining most of the benefits of the treaty.
The rights of these spies were severely limited and they lost most of the protections offered by the geneva convention.
In other words the geneva convention only protects those enemy soldiers now prisoners that acted within the conventions requirements to gain those rights.
I do not believe most of our prisonors and thier supporting quasi-governments have acted in such a manner and indeed have openly professed methods and openly commited actions that have removed them from the full application of the Geneva convention.
At it's heart the idea set forth in the Geneva convention was establish to gain fair and equal treatment for prisoners on both sides of a issue.
By no account have American prisoners been treated decently or fairly by the terroristic extremist moslems they are fighting.
In fact the Extremist have been quite GLEEFUL in demonstrating and presenting evidence of thier NON-GENEVA method of treating prisoners.
At it's core the Geneva convention main idea says fair treatment of our prisoners will mean fair treatment of your prisoners.
The Geneva Convention has been BROKEN countless times by the extremist moslems.
To me our court seems very stupid to try and force our military to follow a treaty that has been broken at every opputunity by the enemy.
Our court seems to have forgotten that a treaty is only a treaty if both parties honor it.
howard melton
God bless
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Geneva conventions
#5
I must admit ignorance of the exact text of the geneva conventions, but I'm fairly sure the Supreme Court has read up on them.
But I do know something of the aplicable laws and customs in the US and attempted to clarify why the Supreme Court does have the authority it's claiming.

Quote:
However I do not believe non-citizens of the United States should get the full benefit of our constitution.
This is an old argument the constituion (specifically the 4'th amendment) says 'persons', not 'citizens'. This has created quite a bit of argument between the lawyers, and I don't feel qualified to give a definite answer, but my gut feeling is it applies.
The register article lined elsewhere matches my reasoning quite closely:
www.theregister.co.uk/200...page2.html
Quote:
If you believe otherwise that is your right and I respect it, but I cannot agree with that viewpoint especially for a enemy that wishes to destroy said constitution.
So if the goverment could somehow remove citizenship from you they could legaly do whatever they want with you?
There have been 759 source prisoners in Guantanamo and only 10 of them have been charged with a crime. The release of 100 or so is planned because they are innocent. That is too big of a miss rate to cassualy trample the rights of the people there.
People who trade their Freedom for Saftey don't deserve either.
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Geneva convention
#6
I also admit ignorance of the Geneva conventions exact text.
I've read portions directly quoted in other sources or parphrased, but lawyer-ease and political-ease are comparable to paint drying in fun content for me.
/QUOTE/
This is an old argument the constituion (specifically the 4'th amendment) says 'persons', not 'citizens'. This has created quite a bit of argument between the lawyers, and I don't feel qualified to give a definite answer, but my gut feeling is it applies.
/END QUOTE/
I don't have a high opinion of most lawyers or judges, but I also am applying a feeling.
Good article I can see the constitution being applied to legal non-citizens, but illegal immigrants, which are criminals(see below criminals losing rights.) and prisoners of war shouldn't have the full benefit of our constitution.
I believe since the constitution puts most of the power dealing with the execution of war in the hands of the executive office that Prisoners of war fall under his control effectively taking it out of the courts control. Prisoners of war have a special status thats outside our constitution like the laws of other nations are outside our constitution.

/QUOTE/
So if the goverment could somehow remove citizenship from you they could legaly do whatever they want with you?
/END QUOTE/
I never said they could legally do whatever they wanted, just that the full rights and power of our constitution should not apply.
Prisoners taken in military actions should not have the full benefit of our constitution...
Thinking about it, isn't this what happens to criminals who originally had the full benefit of our constitution?
We already have a system in place for removing our constitutional rights.
It can "do anything" up to and including the death penalty.
Thanks for this question I hadn't quite looked at our criminal justice system as being a mechanism for removing constitutional rights from selected individuals. It's given me an idea for a science fiction story.
/QUOTE/
There have been 759 prisoners in Guantanamo and only 10 of them have been charged with a crime. The release of 100 or so is planned because they are innocent. That is too big of a miss rate to cassualy trample the rights of the people there.
/ENDQUOTE/
I'm not saying these prisoners of war don't have rights, but that they don't have the constitutional rights every citizen of the USA has. They like the nations they serve are not under our constitution..
I'm going to post a message dealing with a story idea that should follow as soon as I can type it.
howard melton
God bless
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The Rangers Reach
#7
Logan Darklighter started this thread with a idea taken to a near extreme leading to corperations having mercenary forces for hire.
Catty contends that the American constitution and all it's rights apply to EVERY PERSON.
Getting back to Logan's orignal focus here is another idea for an unintended result.
Taking Catty's idea to a near extreme.
What if our court system eventually decides that it can rule on the laws of other nations and has a responseability to try and enforce our constitution on every person.
Say our judges making rulings against the government of China for infringing on the free speech rights of thier citizen given them by our constitution.
In the story idea image these judges and our court system putting "teeth" into these ruling by ordering law enforcement to arrest these governments.
Yes I know it's taking a idea to an extreme, but it could be useful in a science fiction story in the same line as some of the darker and more extreme law enforcement series.
howard melton
God bless
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that's what's happening
#8
I don't quite contend they apply to every person. More of a guideline on what the US goverment is allowed to do and condone. So once captured by the US, yes they do apply. (So the US goverment would not be allowed to let private persons torture sombody)
but the extension of local law everywhere is already happening, and with the internet it's kind of inevitable, since local and international law intermingle. See forinstance;
www.reghardware.co.uk/200..._allofmp3/
The homenigation of international law is inevitable with globalization (or if not inevitable at least hard to avoid) because you'll get disputes between danish workers working in china for a french subcontractor that where hired in america, and had their contract renewed in holand with the project being financed by a swiss bank and working for a german company. Now 4 of these countires have laws that apply that state that they allways apply, even in foreing countries, and the suit was filed in Australia. Those kinds of tangels happen occasionally, and they are becomeing more common (well not as convoluted as this example, hopefully) but with a situation like that companies could tie up the lawsuit for decades. If you want to be free of regulation that is the way to go.
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POW's not criminals and China's attack Censor
#9
Catty
I know you didn't contend they should be applied to every person world wide. I was just using an extreme for a science fiction idea.
I still think applying the full constitution to Prisoners of War is wrong.
Enemy soldiers aren't automatically criminals.
It is not a crime to hate America and declare war on the USA nor is being a enemy warrior a crime.
(It is a crime for a US citizen to be a enemy warrior.)
Terrorism is a crime under the geneva convention and I believe those are the ones being tried as criminals.
The others can be prisoners of war and yet guilty of no crime, it does not follow that we should release those prisoners or given them the benefit of our constitutional guided civilian court system.
Just as most of the German prisoners of war held here in the 1940's were not criminals letting them go would have been wrong and foolish.
Applying our constitution and civilian law to modern POW's and letting most of them go because they weren't criminals under our civilian law would be just as wrong.
I hate to say it, but a enemy soldier shooting at American troops or ambushing military convoys doesn't make that soldier a terrorist.
(Something the reporters seem to forget.)
What makes most of the radical moslems terrorist and criminals is not the attacks on the military, but the attacks on civilians and non-combatants such as unarmed women and children.
-----
Just after reading your post on the globalization and spreading of laws I came across a security article about how the Chinese firewall Censored or blocked websites from Chinese citizens.
The Chinese Censor programs seem to be using methods that "punishes" the offending source that one of thier citizens tried to access for material that is illegal in china.
When a Chinese citizen tries to access something that is flagged by thier Censoring software it floods the citizen's computer and the offending source with reset commands.
This is a denial of service attack on the source and is illegal in the US and many other nations. There has been some talk of charging China with a crime.
howard melton
God bless
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Re: POW's not criminals and China's attack Censor
#10
I think what Catty is trying to get at is not that all these people should just be let go because they haven't broken any U.S. Criminal laws, it's that most of them are being held without charges, for years and years. If they're caught shooting at people, or plotting to blow up civilians, fine then, off to the lock up with you. However, many of these people are being held on mere suspicion (hence the 100 people being freed). I don't know about you, but if I was completly innocent of any wrong doing but got tossed in a military prision for several years and was interrogated ceaselessly just because I happened to be a terrorist cousins or something 'Destroy the Great Devil America' would probably start to sound pretty good. And that's before you start to throw in the torture and peeing on the Koran allegations.
Oh, and remember there not Prisoners of War. There 'Enemy Combatants'. Semantics is the very SOUL of all law.--
"An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo."
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 
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Re: POW's not criminals and China's attack Censor
#11
Thank you Florin that is what I meant. But many people assume they are all guilty, when the legal consensus seems to be that if they where tried in a regular military court all or at least most of them would walk of free.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#12
First you have to remember that these guys all got picked up on the battle grounds... armed. They are enimy combatants not Random J. Citizen picked up off the streets of some Amish convent. POWs are able to be held until the war is over, without being charged. Its in the international rules somewhere.
Activists have desided that these guys need trial and circus' now. Thus filed a court case.
I live in Massachusetts thus live in bizzarro Sci-Fi land for this kind of thing. The best example is the stupidity of the gay marriage issue once it hit the State's high court. Ignoring the actual issue and my personal feelings over it, one thing that annoys me is that I can't vote/complain about the actions of people around me on this issue... the voters got by-passed in a should-be and probably is legally impossible and stupid way.
The Court in question declared that Mass should have gay marriage and that the legislature much pass a law in 180 days to legalize gay marrage or else... and they did. This means the Court granted itself the right to demand the state legislature pass laws because the courts said so. If you have complaints take it up with the State's highest court.
Yes, this makes no rational sense.
Thus I live in a state that the state courts annexed the state legislature, because it granted itself the ability with no legal precident I know of. The state legislature is refusing to vote on whether or not they'll let us peon voters vote on it. They need two sessions in a row to vote yes and don't want them voting on whether or not we peons get to vote on it to or not to effect their elections.
Anyway enough about the Divine black robes in my state... The desion I've heard is that the 5 SC that voted for this ruling aren't even in agreeement on why the voted that way. I've heard that the 100 page desion of the majority is somewhere between 1.5% and 15% in agreement with the offical agreement document.
I refuse to read over a hundred pages of legalese garble just to get more specific... I can't even mock them in a review section of their websight. Either way the Rules of War don't say those POWs need to be charged... they are Prisoners of War not common criminals. You hold them so they can't be reinforcements for the other guy.
This trial stuff is for WAR CRIMINALS... these currently wanted trials are to shut up whiners anyway (in WWII this would have meant 3 million German troops getting indivisual trials lasting days or weeks each)... not for internation law reasons. This is all about a case with O'sama's bodyguard/personal driver... Not Random J. Bystander.
You want Sci-Fi, write about a world where they did do trials for all the German POWs the Allies had. They'd have to invent time travel just to have the defendants live long enough for trials. Since laws change they all get trials under laws decades or centuries in the future this would cause weirdness... or a guy time traveling to assassinate the jerks that made the US 80% covered in court houses.
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#13
Hi, Necra, nice to see you again. Let's tackle this one issue at a time.
You can't have POWs when you haven't declared a war on a sovereign nation. You see, there's that thing where POW stands for "Prisoner of WAR", and therefore, if there is no WAR, there is no prisoners of it. It is also true that even if they were POWs, they are entitled to fair treatment under the Geneva Conventions of which the United States of America is a signatory, despite members of the current administration referred to it as "quaint" and stating flat-out that they do not intend to abide by it with regards to treatment at Gitmo (until the sudden turn-around just the other day, that is).
Edit: Let me make this even more clear for you, in several ways.
- First, not everyone at Gitmo is al-Qaeda-related. Many of them are there due to alleged connections to the Taliban, which was the government of Afghanistan. So the "wah wah wah, they're terrorists and not entitled to basic human rights" argument is not only wrong, but was wrong from the outset.
-As the Supreme Court pointed out, Article 3 of the Geneva conventions covers prisoners caught in "wars not of an international character", which thereby covers alleged al-Qaeda members who were caught during the civil war in Afghanistan, which the US has in detention in Gitmo.
-The Supreme Court did NOT say they must be classified as POWs. It simply said the Geneva Conventions must be applied to them, and unless the administration wants to make and pass new laws to cover the situation, the President does not have the authority to run the closed, limited, no-presumption-of-innocence trials the US had been intending to run. Note too that the US was ALWAYS planning to run trials, and your comparison to World War II soldiers is thus patently false, since trials were always going to take place; it is that the US administration was dragging its feet for years on the matter, and that the trials they planned to run were illegal.
-What Bush tried to do was not only illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and involved unconstitutional acts, but was also illegal under the US laws of military justice. If you think that it should be fine for a President to do that, I must question why you don't call him 'King', or perhaps 'Emperor'. I'd also be very curious to know how tolerant you would be of flagrant violations of the law by a Democratic president.
Neither the courts nor the legislature are required to ask you to change the laws of the land. The entire goddamn point is that courts are a neutral body that interprets from the Constitution and legal precedent, and that if J. Q. Citizen don't like what laws the legislature passes, you can vote against the representatives who passed them in the next appropriate election. There is a bazillion legal precedents for this. In fact, EVERYTHING is a legal precedent of this. How can you be so incredibly ignorant of this? It is only the basis of your entire fricking government system. "Probably is legally impossible and stupid". Yes, Necra, I'm sure the State court of Massachussetts would be fascinated to hear about your opinions on what is and isn't legally possible.
If you bothered to read up on the situation, you would know that many prisoners in Gitmo are indeed Random J. Bystander. It is also known that a bunch of them have been freed over time, after years of incarceration, due to there not being enough evidence to convict them even in the unbalanced trials that the administration wanted (38 of which were admitted to not even combatants), many of whom have promptly turned around and accused the US of torturing them.
Man, why won't they stop whining about people who tortured them? What the HECK, man?
If you believe otherwise, kindly look up the case of Murat Kurnaz. Or Mustafa Ait Idir. Or Martin Mubanga. Or any of the numbers of other people who were unlawfully detained for years despite being charged with no crime (meaning they were NOT enemy combatants, because the US has admitted as much by releasing them without charging them of anything) and then promptly told stories of being tortured and showed injuries taken at Gitmo.
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#14
Your counter arguement fails to make sense at all.
Dictionary.com define war as:
Quote:
1.
a) A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
b) The period of such conflict.
c)The techniques and procedures of war; military science.
2.
a)A condition of active antagonism or contention: a war of words; a price war.
b)A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: the war against acid rain.

A war is a war is a war. Stop BSing about stupid things like one side not having a country, because they lost it in eariler battles or are a genocidal crime syndicate.
The rest is garble based on splicing hairs. You deniing a war is a war changes nothing. Support troops are still troops. Strangely they are releasing these ones they have declared not a threat anymore.
Quote:
Man, why won't they stop whining about people who tortured them? What the HECK, man?
Gloobleflarg, (and undefined term used as the basic point in an arguement): Torture. Seriously the 'torture' in question are things the U.S. does to train its own troops in boot camp and other based on claims the plumbing in Gitmo is capable of sucking entire books down the pipes.
Quote:
-As the Supreme Court pointed out, Article 3 of the Geneva conventions covers prisoners caught in "wars not of an international character", which thereby covers alleged al-Qaeda members who were caught during the civil war in Afghanistan, which the US has in detention in Gitmo.
Again BS. The fact the US was there to arrest/capture these guys in the first place means that 2 countries are infact involved. 2 or more countries being involved is by default international.
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Another site with some discussion on this.
#15
Hopefully all the webpages below will go to the correct bundles and subpages.
I'd decided to bow out of this thread as it had seemed to have settled into a definition argument.
Are the prisoners called POWs or DETAINEES?
I've been keeping up, but not posting replies.
I decided to jump back in with this post because yesterday I went and did my bi-monthly check of another Discussion forum and found a closely related thread mixed into the "Real World Military" section.
www.starfleetgames.com/di...1152729941
Steve's first post deals with our thread.
Yes, this supports my view, but there are some quite good rebuttals and replies to Steve's post just scroll down the page past all of Steves multiple replies and post to current Real world military threads.
I think Steve sometimes builds his replies to all the currently active threads off line then sends them at the same time.
The StarFleet Discussion Board breaks the thread into bundles of 25 messages.
To find more replies and counter replies related to the thread bundle link I posted above you can scroll through the later bundles following the above july 11 to early july 12 bundle.
HERE is the complete archive of the "REAL WORLD MILITERY" Go to the first july 12 bundle to see more of the replies.
www.starfleetgames.com/di...1153081770
I think it will be worth the effort for people on both sides of our thread's issue to pick out the replies from the Star Fleet Battles Dicussion board.
They are a close yet slightly different mirror to this thread and I hope the Star Fleet thread interest anyone reading the Drunkards Walk thread as much they did me.
ENJOY!
For completeness and ease of follow up here are a few links pulled out of the tree structure of the Starfleetgames website.
HOME
www.starfleetgames.com/index.htm
DISCUSSION
www.starfleetgames.com/discus/
GENERAL DISCUSSION where (real world military can be found)
www.starfleetgames.com/di...1153083962
REAL WORLD MILITERY
www.starfleetgames.com/di...1153081770
One note Steve Cole is one of the co-owners of Star Fleet Games.
howard melton
God bless
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#16
Quote:
A war is a war is a war.
Yup! I certainly hope people get held indefinitely with no trial in the War on Drugs. Or the War on Poverty!
Just asaying "this is war" does not make it an actual war.
When you are arguing legal precedents you have to look at the legal definition of war. I suggest you google "Geneva Conventions" find the actual legal definiton of war and then use that in your arguments from now on.
Oh, and as for the courts stepping in an deciding legal precedent like they are supposed to in the consitution of your country I hope that stops too! In fact, I hope you go back an retroactively change all that stuff they did. Like ending apartheid.
--------------
Epsilon
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#17
Quote:
Gloobleflarg, (and undefined term used as the basic point in an arguement): Torture. Seriously the 'torture' in question are things the U.S. does to train its own troops in boot camp and other based on claims the plumbing in Gitmo is capable of sucking entire books down the pipes.
You.
Gullible.
Enabling
Apologist.
You've seen photos of torture, there's reports of torture from multiple source, there's lawsuits from prisoners who claim they were tortured, there's condemnations by human rights organisations all over the world, and you continue to put your fingers in your ears and scream "No! I won't believe it!"
This would be a good place to quote the motto of how the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is good men to do nothing. But I don't believe people who are apologists for the practice of torture qualify for that description.
You are an enabler. Your complacent, arrogant refusal to believe anything you do not want to believe is symbolic of everything wrong with what the US is doing in Iraq.
And
Yes,
There
Is
So
Much
Wrong.
You will proclaim that your country has done nothing wrong as the attacks continue. You will profess confusion that anyone could object to the Americans building a 104 acre "embassy" the size of the Vatican in Baghdad. You will refuse to believe as more and more and more and more and more stories of atrocities and torture come to light. You will call it a victory by "enemies of freedom" when political pressure or a change in regime finally shuts down Gitmo. You will blame the media or the Democrats or the Europeans when the last American soldier retreats from Baghdad.
And you will never understand why you are hated.
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#18
The 'War on Poverty' is perfect example of why I hate Gloobleflargs. In order to have a war you must have to sides. Each side must be defined. The War on Poverty is a war it is just not a war on what its proponents say it is a war on. Its all based on the work of LBJ and his minions in the sixties. Poverty' is literally defined in a way that is defended by its forger as 'arbitrary, but not unreasonable'. More specifically she took the numbers for various basics of survival (housing, food costs, etc..) pick a random percentage on the scale for each (say 15-30 percent) added them up and declared that the national poverty line. Note this was calculated in the big most expensive cities and applied nationally. Or by state, city, etc... more rarely.
Most people in 'poverty' are completely unaware of this state. In fact donate money to these poverty ridden people, never aware they are the poor. The 'War on Poverty' is in reality a war on MATH. People keep entering and leaving poverty because of fiddling with numbers that do nothing. Its a sliding scale of numbers and this enemy called poverty (or 1st world US poverty anyway, not 3rd world Im starving and live in sewage poverty). It is an enemy impossible to defeat as the poor are the bottom mostly 10-20% of the wage earners. Its not a endlessly fluctuating percentage that can go up and down, but by its very definition cant be defeated, even if you made as much as Bill Gates and were in the bottom 1% of the poverty bracket your still by definition impoverished.
This may explain the idea of teaching kids new math this was stupid idea that it didnt matter if you got the answer correct or not only that you knew how you screwed up. You skipped one busy work step and you could actually get a negative score for trying at all.
The War on Drugs is a sad example of politicians setting procedure and not goals. They have an enemy and botched the events badly for the most part. Competence is not relevant. D.A.R.E. is near useless.
Quote:
You are an enabler. Your complacent, arrogant refusal to believe anything you do not want to believe is symbolic of everything wrong with what the US is doing in Iraq.
Before even bothering to look at whatever your links go to I'm thinking I struck a nerve with you. Probably on the having to define something to argue about it. So I'll go look at your linkfest:
-You: A grammatically dubious work That describes a small handful of things that arent even anything that didnt happen in high school. Granted I never got shot but you cant get even aspirin out of the nurses and they ignore you far longer than needed. The dogs are replaced with humans and they can and do hit you. Hell the turned the airconditioner full blast all winter and the heat on full blast spring till June. Apparently I should have been examined for wounds after every class.
-You: Torture defined as High School not vivisection, genital electrocution or a mouth full of urine soaked socks.
-Gullible:
Quote:
GENEVA The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday deplored the refusal of the U.S. administration to allow its neutral delegates to visit people being held in secret detention.
-Gullible: Im baffled on the point of this Are you pointing out that the concept of SECRET is beyond the Red Cross for a reason? They want access to places that may or may not exist here I find it ironic that this one is under gullible. WE, of the Red Cross, demand access to secret places holding secret prisoners that we havent provided proof of the existence of. This article lacks mention torture at all and kind of declares U.S. military doctors as incompetent
-Enabling: So The U.S. several months before hand cant find 4 guys that are witnesses for a prisoner So they can be brought to a foreign country to testify in a military base, half way around the world. Months later a new source can after things have settled dowm? Yes this isnt a case of these 4 guys hiding from the U.S. army. Seriously, months later 4 guys in hiding are found in public jobs after most of the shooting has stopped? For an article to mock the U.S. military? Apparently logic isnt involved. (Torture not involved.)
-Apologist: The hell? 3 guys kill themselves in prison and the point is what? This was not boredom here this is a propaganda event. Jihadists off themselves and then its used as anti-U.S. propaganda. I really fail to understand why this article is here care to explain?
First wave of links are a bust then you rant for a while and call me stupid and blind apparently for not believing the first 4 links or something in advance. No I dont count the fetish pictures of the loony who have her mom release the photos months later after being caught. Note those came out after being caught and went to the network that will forge documents to get a story through.
-And: Accusations with no proof offered.
-Yes, -These, -Is, -So, -Wrong: Accusations and people on trial publicly noted for said crimes.
-Wrong: Another loon on trial for being a phycho.
I never accused the U.S. of being perfect but your back in raving spittle flying mode here so I doubt this will sink in. The second group of articles is 5 articles on a group of 12 marines accused of being phycho killers. The last one is a 13th guy accused of being a cold blooded premeditated pyscho loony killer. Actually, every wrong you are stated with any real proof is about people on trial and many facing execution. Even adding in the fetish porn prison guards that were already tried thats what 30 out of 250.000-300,000 troops? That means well over 99% of the marines and U.S. troops are sane and rational.
Quote:
And you will never understand why you are hated.
And in one moment of truth your true colors You all but declared yourself an active jihadist here. Im now officially convinced that it is impossible to reason with you. Seriously, I thought you were here as a propagandist but when you have to finish up and argument by flying into a berserk rage it is simply pointless to try to understand you past Homicidal loony. Im not sure what you expect me to understand here but without knowing how to cast esuna or the like, it would result in much flying spittle and combat.
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#19
You don't get it, Necratoid. I have long since given up any hope of you ever understanding anything.
You are incapable of seeing why somebody can get angry about the pervasive use of torture by US forces as anything other than being an "active Jihadist".
You fancy yourself as a psychological expert on a political figure you don't even know the name of, and are unaware of the powers of their position. You refuse to believe in something the government you so desperately support admitted to long ago. You also are unaware that poverty has an actual definition beyond "what percentage of income-earners you are". You equate bullies beating you up in school (which is bad, no doubt) to having dogs set on you.
You are a poor joke. You can still piss me off sometimes, though, so congratulations on being so marvellously offensive a human being.
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Re: POW's not criminals, They are prisons of War.
#20
I've stayed out of this until now, but simply cannot ignore the illogic that Necratoid is perpetuating any longer. It's late here, so I'll only point out a couple of egregious examples; the remainder will be left as an exercise for the student.

Quote:
Im baffled on the point of this Are you pointing out that the concept of SECRET is beyond the Red Cross for a reason?
I don't know whether that's what he's saying, but the answer to your question is "Yes". The reason is found in the Geneva Convention For the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, Geneva, 12 August 1949, specificially but not exclusively in Articles 13, 24, and 28 of that Convention. This international treaty, signed and ratified by the United States of America, specifically gives the International Committee of the Red Cross the right and responsibility to inspect any site, secret or not, where any combatant is held by a signatory power, no matter whether the combatant is or is not a member of a regular armed force.
If enemy combatant prisoners are being held in a location, then failure to allow the International Red Cross to inspect that location is a violation of international treaty. If enemy combatant prisoners are not being held in a location, then the simplest way to prove this is to allow the International Red Cross to see this for themselves.

Quote:
The hell? 3 guys kill themselves in prison and the point is what? This was not boredom here this is a propaganda event.
So Necratoid says. Others say that this happened because their rights were being denied. We cannot know the truth, because they're now dead and nobody was allowed to visit them or inspect their cells while they were alive.

Quote:
(Quote)
And you will never understand why you are hated.
(End Quote)
And in one moment of truth your true colors You all but declared yourself an active jihadist here.
With that statement, Necratoid proved (a) that he'd rather use a baseless ad hominen attack than address the stated arguement, and (b) that Ayiekie was correct - he's closed his mind to anything that doesn't fit into his preconceived notions, and never will understand why his ingrained and possibly-unacknowledged prejudices cause people like him to be disliked.
(This reminds me of some Americans who told me that they couldn't believe that their country would send a citizen of a friendly nation to a third country to be tortured for information, even after I gave specifics of one recent case where this had already happened. They'd rather cling to their delusions than face the truth of what their leaders are doing.)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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***
#21
So. Ayiekie, just wondering:
In your opinion:
Holocaust, fact or Fiction?
Marquis de Sade, boxers or briefs?
If I posted a thread about the sky being blue, would you turn the discussion to your pet rant about the ALPHABETSOUPGETYOURTINFOILHATSON! and the gloobleflarg chambers hidden in the cogs and gears of the Gnomes of Zurich's clocktower?
I am not denying the possiblity of the CIA having done dodgy things, but you seem to be painting with a very broad brush. Tarring, say, the Girl Scouts of America as torturemongers, on par with Mengele and the aforementioned de Sade, simply because of Abu Ghraib and the girls being pseudomilitary Americans? Just as irresponsible as "W" has been accused of being. (Wrongly or rightly, I leave to History to judge.)

"A fanatic redoubles his efforts when he's lost sight of his goals." -- George Santayana
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
Reply
Re: ***
#22
Quote:
In your opinion:
Holocaust, fact or Fiction?
I call "Godwin" on Foxboy...

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Reply
re: Godwin
#23
Enh, I never wanted to win an argument here, anyway.
No matter how cogent or well-reasoned I *could* have been, it wouldn't have mattered in the long run since I'm an American, and therefore, I *must* be willfully stupid and back the Shrub 100%. [Image: eyes.gif]
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll
Reply
...
#24
Quote:
With that statement, Necratoid proved (a) that he'd rather use a baseless ad hominen attack than address the stated arguement, and (b) that Ayiekie was correct - he's closed his mind to anything that doesn't fit into his preconceived notions, and never will understand why his ingrained and possibly-unacknowledged prejudices cause people like him to be disliked.
I wonder if I'm the only one who thinks Ayiekie has proven those things about himself as well. '.'
Quote:
-Yes, -These, -Is, -So, -Wrong: Accusations and people on trial publicly notedEfor said crimes.
This is a good point. People are being investigated and put on trial... what more would you ask at this point?
-Morgan.
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Re: ***
#25
Foxboy, sweetie, honey, perhaps you lose sight of the fact that I can and have posted ACTUAL NEWS ARTICLES, from a variety of respected sources, to back up my claim that the United States is engaging in torture and other atrocities.
You will note I did not deny the Holocaust, accuse Girl Scouts of anything, draw any comparisons to Nazis whatsoever, or talk about conspiracies.
I posted links to respected news sources. I expressed outrage at these things going on, and by the denial of jingoistic self-satisfied people like Necratoid that they do.
You apparently disapprove of that, and that's your right. Now, let me ask you a question:
Assume for a minute that all these things are, in fact, going on (I could keep posting more articles, but apparently that's what you consider fanatical behaviour). Now, why is it that people should NOT be offended? Why is it that we should not be outraged that the United States tossed aside the Geneva Conventions, tortures people in secret prisons, and that disicipline in Iraq has been left so slack that soldiers have raped, kidnapped and tortured innocent civilians?
If those things going on wouldn't cause you to get angry, might I ask what would? Might I ask at what point the actions of a country become so horrible that, in your worldview, you are allowed to get angry at them? At what point it is safe for you to look at someone who denies these things are happening and say "you bloody fool"?
When is it okay for you, Foxboy, to say "this is wrong and must stop"?
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