If what you say is so - about the "sleeper cell" - then my retort is, don't be so bloody stupid. If they've broken the law, they've broken the law. Al Capone wasn't picked up for the Valentine's Day Massacre, was he? Don't tell me that the US "PC Brigade" supports terrorists. I can only assume that there's no evidence that they are illegal immigrants, or your Imigration Department isn't doing its job.


I'm horrified at the thought that the American government (assuming your opinion reflects that of the government, even though you obviously don't represent it here) has reneged on the UN Convention Against Torture, and doesn't have the courage to admit it publicly. What would the rest of America think about that - the People, I mean?

The Convention was not a contract, where value is given by consenting parties, but an undertaking freely given to the world at large.

As for 9/11, your claim that 3,000 American deaths (actually it was less than that, there were non-Americans who died there too) cancelled any obligation the US had assumed. WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!!

I quoted Article 2 in my last post. I refer you to it again. It says NO EXCEPTIONS.

In any case, at the time of writing (0000hours GMT on 31/5/2008) between 84,099 and 91,762 Iraqis have paid with their lives*. Just how many more deaths are needed until American blood-lust is sated?

As for Saddam, no he wasn't a WMD all by himself, or even with his army beside him. His army had the fortitude of a wet paper bag and he carried the threat of a pussy cat. No WMD's could be found, could they? Why? Because they didn't exist. The only threats he posed were to Israel (but he'd never have attacked them), Iran (as proxy for USA), and to his own Kurdish and Shi'ite population. USA has helped him to power and was content to let him massacre his own people for decades before it decided to stop him. Ha! (If that sounded like a hollow laugh, it's because it was.)

In my opinion, Bush jr had a score to settle with him dating back to the previous Gulf War, and that was the primary cause for the second war. The decision was made long long before 11/9/2001, but the attack on the twin towers gave him the excuse, and he fed that lie to the American people and to the rest of the world. SADDAM HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11 OR BIN LADEN, and had Bin Laden sought refuge in Iraq immediately after the attacks, Saddam would surely have handed him over.

Your feeling of mutual consensus is ill-founded.
Then we must continue to disagree. I don't see how the article you quoted helps, other than to demonstrate how far apart we really are.

I’ve already responded to this point. I am only quoting you here to explain the following misinterpretation from across the pond:

Buggers=Fuckers=shit heads=assholes=terrorists=politicians

The term “fuckers”, in this context does not refer to “people-who-engage-in-sexual-intercourse”. I’ll assume for the sake of keeping this a clean debate, that this was an honest regional misinterpretation on your part, and that you are not intentionally mincing words here. But yes, in your interpretation of the word, I am a fucker, and I am quite good at it!
No - you already dealt with a different point. The point you dealt with was that you can't round up suspected criminals in your own jurisdicition and treat them as if they had no legal rights, because the American people wouldn't stand for it.

My point was that USA had kidnapped innocent Iraqis and foreign nationals in Iraq, and sent them to a concentration camp to languish for years without any of the rights you consider "inalienable". Apart from hacking off a few heads, that kind of behaviour is no different from the terrorists who kidnap and behead Western journalists.

As for your use of the word "fucker," I have already pointed out that you are using it perjoratively. Terrorists are not fuckers: they are terrorists. Illegal imigrants are not fuckers, they are illegal imigrants. Foreign residents in USA are not fuckers, they are foreigners. Stop calling them fuckers! It won't undermine your arguments, will it?

"Loose Lips Sink Ships,"
In Britain, we had the slogan Careless Talk Costs Lives

The document you have quoted was, no doubt, very useful for GI's and prevented many of them from giving away the location of their units.

But we are talking about forcefully extracting significant information about impending attacks on American people from prisoners that we hold, and that is quite another thing.

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Intel= where Osama is hiding - intell: no idea
... where Saddam was hiding - you got that one!
... Where Saddam was building his WMDs - when will you admit the WMD's were either a myth or a lie?

... Where [terrorists] were/are planning on striking next - I don't believe you get much success by torture (despite the VoA report quoted by Mr Fixit: OK - a few, but I'll bet a dollar to a dime that most intel comes from disaffected terrorists themselves in return for protection, and without it, the government would be virtually helpless).

... where their terrorist camps have moved to, the names of the people who are in their groups, the names of the sleepers in our country, etc. - This is not the sort of information that saves American lives, it's just general strategic information.

... These are things that the public (including the sleepers who are here to spy and gain intel) should not know about before the military has had a chance to deal with it. - Hell - you have already said you know about a sleeper cell and the government refuses to do anything about it. Why torture someone to find out that information?


Intel is NOT confessions of maltreatment at a military base. It should not be twisted up just to suit your purposes. i thought you should know the difference, being the intelligent, articulate person that you are, MMI. Sweet of you to say so, but if I have twisted the truth to suit my purposes, I am far being an intelligent person, and if I am articulate too, then that makes things worse!

It's not about what we are doing to them, it's what we gain from them with the tactics we use....that is INTEL.

The ends are never justfied if the means are acts of torture.

Sometimes, when playing chess, your opponent is as aware of your plans as you are. The game is won or lost by his ability to counter that plan in fewer moves than it takes to complete it. But I take your point - if you have useful intelligence, it is utter foolishness to tell the enemy.

But isn't it paranoid to assume that all illegal immigrants are potential terrorists? Pedro from Agua Prieta? Francoise from Quebec?

If you allow torture for supposed terrorists, why not for suspected drug dealers?

Why not for wives of parking ticket dodgers to find out when hubby will be coming home?

The news of waterboarding is no surprise to anyone, is it?
Nope. Not at all. ... Well, let me rephrase that. The news of torture was not "news". Waterboarding was a new method, and the Whitehouse cavils about it being tortue because it doesn't cause actual pain. (The UN Convention describes torture as the infliction of severe pain, whether mental or physical, on a person.)

If waterboarding can cause a committed terrorist to reveal all he knows in 35 seconds flat (Mr Fixit's example) then, if it doesn't cause severe pain, it must do something terrifying (unfortunate word, but never mind) ... make the person feel he is about to die, perhaps? Does that count as mental pain?

Well, i say, the WMD "scare stories" are all a part of why we're waterboarding in the first place...Saddam was a WMD who had proven himself to be such by killing MASS amounts of people, including his own countrymen.
But he was no threat to USA or anyone else. He was certainly not able to mobilise WMD's against the United Kingdom at 45 minutes' notice, as Tony Blair said as he took us to war, with Bush's approval. As I have said, Saddam had no WMD's.


Four airplanes were used as WMDs. A WMD is anything used to cause.....Mass Destruction . If a person kills 5 or 10 people, he/she is a MASS MURDERER.
Conceded.

Now, for the Japanese Americans who were rounded up during WWII--Come on, MMI, are you kidding me? Simply to degrade and humiliate? That really sounds like an argument for the sake of argument, and i find it offensive that you would say it. People were afraid. The attack on Pearl Harbour caused them to believe that all Japanese came to this country to infiltrate its defenses. What would you expect them to think, they'd just lost thousands! It was a mistake (which wasn't repeated here in the US when the WMDs hit our Pentagon and WTC). No one set out to do that! It was the end result, of course, but they were rounded up and placed in camps because our paranoid government
was trying to keep our intel from getting into the wrong hands. It was wrong, absolutely, but it wasn't done simply out of spite, or just to humiliate and degrade.
I didn't say that, or if I did, I didn't mean to. I meant that as torturing the Japs in those camps yielded virtually no useful intelligence, according to Mr Fixit, then the only result of torturing them was to humiliate and degrade them. If you feel that national fear justifies torturing civilian prisoners just in case they know something (which Mr Fixit says, by and large, they didn't), then I'm surprised at you.

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honest to gawds ppl, this isnt a american vs brit thing is it,, lol, if i remember the brits are or at lest were right there with us in iraq,, as for torture, ask the brits what they do to the irish? of course they have slightly different laws over on that side of the pond
We went in with you but it is generally accepted that we were taken in on a lie (see above) and it is felt that Blair was nothing more than Bush's British yes-man. The war is deeply unpopular over here, and we have a lot of admiration for France and Germany who stayed out and said why. The Labour Party is in for a kicking at the next Gerneral Election over so many things, but especially over this war.

As for Ireland, yes we tortured people in the H blocks who had not been convicted of acts of terrorism. We have been convicted in the European Court of Human Rights for subjecting prisoners to wall-standing, starvation, sleep deprivation, noise subjection and hooding (not torture but degrading treatment), but we have done far worse. I do not defend that at all. It doesn't make things right for America, however, that we did it first.

“Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.”
I suppose political reality is where a person realises that self-levitation not possible at all.

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@ tessa



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* Source Iraq Body Count (www.iraqbodycount.org/)