Warning: Graphic & Disturbing Content

Published on January 4, 2005 By hitparade In Politics

Recent developments in the war on terror-- i.e., the clamor over the plan to incarcerate select terrorists for life, and the capture of several of Zarkawi's top lieutenants- prompted posting the following link.

Warning: The link shows the beheading of Nick Berg, an American citizen abducted while on business in Iraq. This is the due process that these dirty rotten SOBs afforded to Nick Berg.

We can't continue to use the kid gloves of a choir boy to fight this war on terror. I say, untie the hands that want to help - not every one is afraid to get their hands dirty- and permit certain parties to get medieval and down right brutal.

http://www.thewednesdayreport.com/twr/twr20v18.htm

Link

Once there, scroll down the page ...

Comments (Page 3)

cactoblasta

on Jan 06, 2005

And the analogy you used was piss poor.

Thanks. But I really do think that the average Middle Easterner is not a bloodthirsty savage simply because of their genes. The current terrorists are a lost cause. But their successors are not yet so definite. Something causes that transformation. If you can make the first step extremely formidable, then you can prevent many from taking it. After all, how many are willing to risk everyone they've ever known? Or you can simply either give them something else to do and not give them a violence-based reason for acting - ie drag their economy up/give them jobs/allow them victory in their countries and let inertia and corruption do their job.

1. We're not talking about "freedom fighters."

Okay... I did include two options for those who are uncomfortable with one or the other - kind of a delete whichever doesn't fit your biases, whether insane (ie for the jihad cause) or sane (calling a spade a spade).

2. The fantasy that killing them helps their recruiting is just that. We are a convenient scapegoat because we won and are currently in control. Wouldn't matter to them if it was the UN, the Russians, whatever. The al Zarqawi's over there have an agenda, and it ain't to "let my people go."

It is only in the face of the greatest of injustices that the average man will act. The greater the perceived injustice, the greater the response from the common people. Surely this a basic accepted fact of society? After all, if you can attract the young boys with words of fire and veangeance, and then get them to throw stones at tanks, you are likely to receive sympathy when those kiddies are killed, regardless of the immorality of your actions. Injustice piles on injustice and the only one who benefits is the terrorist himself/herself. Killing someone without solid evidence or through using brutal methods gains no sympathy for your cause, and therefore should be avoided in an international arena that is as much popularity contest as anything else.

3. So allowing them to kill innocents without fear of retribution will convince them that killing doesn't pay? How many of our innocents should we offer up? How many would it take to convince them that we no longer "must be stopped?" What's the magic number? You want to go over there and offer yourself up as sacrifice for our perceived sins, go right ahead - won't change their minds a bit.

I said you had two choices. Either kill them brutally and at the same time kill everyone vaguely related to them (using every technique for inflicting pain ever developed over the course of several days) or use the traditional techniques of the political operator as used in Sandinista Nicaragua. Let them win and then show them that the US will never, ever tolerate independent thought in the region. Ten years of ineffectual government will turn the people against the terrorist ideology and it's only a matter of time before victory is assured.

There are probably other choices, but I fail to see how taking a middle path like the US currently takes is ever going to lead to success, and nor do I see success in a half-hearted brutality campaign.

Rightwinger

on Jan 06, 2005

You know what's really, really sad? The fact that these people follow their supposed "clerics", whose goals and agendas are so clearly political, rather than spiritual. False prophets, all of them.
They tell their people only what they want them to hear, and have them memorize only those parts of the Koran that support their personal views and goals. I love how the people march and chant, waving their flower-or-banner-bedecked placards...pictures of their clerics. The pictures are always angry images, of the subject yelling and/or gesturing angrily. The flowers and flags contrast nicely with the firey images of the cleric yelling.

cactoblasta

on Jan 06, 2005

It's all very 1984 really. People gathering together for hate sessions against the evil Americans led by the hated fanatic Bush. Like Smith says, it doesn't matter if the causes of the hatred are real or not. All that matters is that the pseudoclerics have a steady source of discontents to throw at their political enemies. It's only by undermining the authority of the clerics that we're ever going to see an end to the attacks.

on Jan 06, 2005

The following moral question, while not new, seems fitting for this discussion: You know that by the year 1945, Adolf Hitler is responsible for the murder of millions, and you somehow find yourself in a position to kill him in the year 1915, what do you do?

I wouldn't kill Adolf. He may be awful, but he taught us a major lesson in racism and how it could corrupt an entire government, and make it move to kill millions. Unfortunately some leaders don't listen to history.

criticizing an inept President was not politically correct

Ok it's time to move out of US of A if you can't criticize any leader within it. If any leader don't accept criticism, good or bad kind, he or she don't deserve to be a leader.

Welcome to The Machine

on Jan 06, 2005

There are probably other choices, but I fail to see how taking a middle path like the US currently takes is ever going to lead to success, and nor do I see success in a half-hearted brutality campaign

Its because you are missing the point. I'm done wasting my time with this.

hitparade

on Jan 06, 2005

See the paradox?

First class reasoning, Rightwinger and yes, I do. I have to admit that this kind of stuff (time travel) always leaves me scratching the noodle. Time cop was a great flick. I remember catching a contradiction (paradox) concerning the time travel sequences, but cannot remotely recall what it was.

hitparade

on Jan 06, 2005

New U.S. memo says torture violates law

Written by Associated Press

Friday December 31, 2004

Page: | 1 |

By CURT ANDERSON
Associated Press Writer
Dec 31, 11:29 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department backed off its narrow definition of torture as "excruciating and agonizing pain" by releasing a legal memo rewritten since the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. The new document said torture violates U.S. and international law.

The 17-page memo omitted two of the most controversial assertions made in now-disavowed 2002 Justice Department documents: that President Bush, as commander in chief in wartime, had authority superseding U.S. anti-torture laws and that U.S. personnel had several legal defenses against criminal liability in such cases.

"Consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture," said the memo from Daniel Levin, acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, to Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

Critics in Congress and many legal experts say the original documents set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After the Iraqi prison abuses came to light, the Justice Department in June disavowed its previous legal reasoning and set to work on the replacement document.

The White House insisted on Friday that the United States has operated under the spirit of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit violence, torture and humiliating treatment.

"It has been U.S. policy from the start to treat detainees humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions or under the spirit of the Conventions where they do not apply," said White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy.

The Justice Department memo, dated Thursday, was released less than a week before the Senate Judiciary Committee was to consider Bush's nomination of his chief White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general.

Democrats have said they would question Gonzales closely on memos he wrote that were similar to the now-disavowed Justice Department documents that critics said appeared to justify torture.

The release also coincided with continuing revelations of possible detainee abuse, most recently a series of memos from FBI agents uncovered in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit alleging instances of Defense Department wrongdoing during a variety of interrogations.

The new Justice Department memo sets a far different tone, beginning with this sentence: "Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms."

The document, again directly contradicting the previous version, says torture need not be limited to pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Instead, the memo concludes that anti-torture laws passed by Congress equate torture with physical suffering "even if it does not involve severe physical pain" but still must be more than "mild and transitory." That can include mental suffering under certain circumstances, but it would not have to last for months or years, as the previous document said.

"This damage need not be permanent, but it must continue for a prolonged period of time," the memo says.

In addition, the memo clearly states that U.S. personnel involved in interrogations cannot contend that their actions were motivated by national security needs or other reasons. And, it says, the interrogator cannot justify torture after telling the victim that he could avoid it if only he would cooperate.

"Presumably, that has frequently been the case with torture, but that fact does not make the practice of torture any less abhorrent or unlawful," the Justice Department memo says.

Most of the original memos were signed by then-assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, who was writing in the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as government officials scrambled to confront a new terrorist foe. Bybee is now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco.

The Pentagon, Justice Department and CIA have opened numerous investigations into allegations of prisoner abuse and some detainee deaths stemming from the war on terror and in Iraq. Several U.S. soldiers have also been subjected to court-martial proceedings for their roles in the alleged abuse, some of which was documented in photographs from Abu Ghraib circulated worldwide earlier in 2004.

---

On the Net:

Justice Department: www.usdoj.gov

Posted, The Arizona Republic:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JUSTICE_TORTURE_MEMO?SITE=AZPHG&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[BlackNET5]

hitparade

on Jan 06, 2005

Plan to Keep Detainees in Jail for Life Criticized by Senators

Written by Los Angeles Times

Monday January 3, 2005

Page: | 1 |

From Los Angeles Times Staff and Wire Reports
January 3, 2005

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sunday dismissed as "a bad idea" a reported U.S. government plan to keep some suspected terrorists in custody for their lifetime, even if there was not enough evidence to bring them before a judge.

Both Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested that the proposal, reported in Sunday's Washington Post, was unconstitutional.

"There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process … if you're going to detain people, whether it's for life or whether it's for years," Levin said on "Fox News Sunday."

Detaining individuals for life without judicial review "is a bad idea," Lugar said on the same program. "So we ought to get over it, and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this."

The Post reported that the Pentagon and CIA had asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for handling detainees, including hundreds of individuals currently in custody but with insufficient evidence against them to bring to a court.

The State Department is also involved in reviewing possible approaches, the Post said, and any new proposals would affect those captured in future counter-terrorism operations as well as those now in custody.

Among the proposals, the Post reported, is one to fund construction of prisons in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen to house detainees from those nations. The prisons would be operated by those countries but monitored by the State Department for compliance with international human rights standards, the Post said, citing a senior administration official.

Also proposed, the Post said, was construction of a 200-bed prison where detainees who authorities believe have no more intelligence to offer would have a greater level of comfort and freedom, more akin to that found in U.S. prisons.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, asked about the reported plans on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he was "not familiar with that and I can't talk to it…. I just don't have the facts on that one."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-detain3jan03,1,6260714.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[BlackNET5]

zergimmi

on Jan 06, 2005

hitparade & Moderateman, yes that's the way to do regress back to the dark ages, you morans always look for the most pathetic way to sought problems, you tlk like throwbacks to the dark ages, obviously some of us have not yet reached the level of civilisation we are trying to teach others. I never thought I would say this but even George Bush is an improvement on your attirudes, carrying on like a pair of good old boys. You are really quite hypocritical, in your way of dealng with the world, having said that I do not condone the actions of terrorists any more than I support your rantings, but I also know that we should be leading by example so the vast majority can see that we are well intentioned, instead the Government locks people away for life with little or questional evidence, this really send a positive message to people deciding on whether life as a terrorist will solve their problems.

Rightwinger

on Jan 06, 2005

---hitp

Thanks.....as I was writing my story (See? It's not written in stone that all "artists" must be liberals.

), I kept coming across problems in the storyline that conflicted with theory, and I wanted my story to be a scientifically accurate as possible. I'd be thinking about someting I'd already written, and D'oh! I'd come to understand some discrepency and have to go back to rewrite it, and think of some way around it without having to rewrite everything I'd written since.

I believe constructed entire interstate systems of neurological pathways during the writing of that story.

"Time Cop" was a pretty good movie, but if you want the best (or most accurate, as much as dramatic license allows, at least) time travel flick(s) ever made, hold onto "Back to the Future".
For Hollywood, it was pretty close to actual time travel theory, with some off the wall stuff needed to make the story interesting, of course. According to my research, it's actually a favorite of many physicists who work on such things. Another good one was, believe it or not, "The Time Machine"....you wouldn't really be able to travel across time and space the way Mr. Peabody and Sherwood do in the old cartoons, getting into the WayBack Machine In Frostbite Falls Minnesota to visit ancient Rome or the caveman days or something.
If you got into a time machine, you'd emerge in the same exact spot in a different era (much like Doc Brown's DeLorean appearing on Old man Peabody's (Hm....Peabody....Mr. Peabody...."Old Man Peabody".....I wonder if that was thrown in there as an homage to Mr. Peabody and Sherwood? I just realized that.

) farm, which existed where the Twin Pines Mall was, only thrity years prior.

One of the neat things that happens in "BTTF" is when Marty, escaping from the terrorists who killed Doc Brown, leaves "Twin Pines Mall". When he goes back in time, he accidently runs over one of the pine trees planted by Old Man Peabody. When he comes back to 1985, to see Doc get killed again, and see himself heading off into the past, the sign he's standing by says "Lone Pine Mall".

Rightwinger

on Jan 06, 2005

You are really quite hypocritical, in your way of dealng with the world, having said that I do not condone the actions of terrorists any more than I support your rantings, but I also know that we should be leading by example so the vast majority can see that we are well intentioned, instead the Government locks people away for life with little or questional evidence, this really send a positive message to people deciding on whether life as a terrorist will solve their problems.---zergimmi

The vast majority does see that we're well-intentioned. Our mission is to stem the spread of terrorism; terrorists kill people indiscrimiately. We're not well-intentioned in that goal? Come on.
Due process is an enlightened concept of the West that the people we're holding would quite probably never have been given in their own countries anyway, and they sure as hell would never have given it to any of us.

Look, how many criminals---drug dealers, theives, rapists, murderers, child molesters (oh, sorry, that one's a "lifestyle choice", right?) here in America get off on technicalities even though they, and we, know they're guilty as hell? They get off and go out and do it again...and again.....and again....
You know as well as I do that the people we have in custody wouldn't be there if they hadn't been captured in the act of committing terrorist acts or for their connection to terror organizations like al-Quaeda; at least they're off the streets. If we put them on trial and we get some looney, touchy-feely, liberal judge who wants to make a show that it isn't a kangaroo court, they could get back out there, and do it again.....and again.....and again.....and maybe, just maybe, they'll come and do it to you....or your family or friends; and you'd have been one of those in favor of giving them that chance. Would you like that? I wouldn't.

Keep them there. We're at least a little safer, anyway. And they're better off......guaranteed three hots and a cot (another thing they probably weren't guaranteed before capture), all provided for them by the American taxpayer....whom they want more than anything to kill. God Bless America.

hitparade

on Jan 06, 2005

Reply #24 By: Gideon MacLeish -

You DO realize that even if we DID "get medieval" on these folks, we'd still be engaging in a form of warfare far more modern and civilized than what is being used against us?

Just a point to be made (glibly).

Excellent point!

hitparade

on Jan 06, 2005

Reply #39 By: zergimmi -

hitparade & Moderateman, yes that's the way to do regress back to the dark ages, you morans always look for the most pathetic way to sought problems, you tlk like throwbacks to the dark ages, obviously some of us have not yet reached the level of civilisation we are trying to teach others. I never thought I would say this but even George Bush is an improvement on your attirudes, carrying on like a pair of good old boys. You are really quite hypocritical, in your way of dealng with the world, having said that I do not condone the actions of terrorists any more than I support your rantings, but I also know that we should be leading by example so the vast majority can see that we are well intentioned, instead the Government locks people away for life with little or questional evidence, this really send a positive message to people deciding on whether life as a terrorist will solve their problems.

With all due respect, I can already see the parody to be born out of such gibberish. In fact, it's already been done.

Humorless Liberals Need Not Read

Written by Terror Hunters.com

Subject: THE LARK PROGRAM

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20016

Dear Concerned Citizen:

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of
the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba.

Our administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was
heard loud and clear here in Washington. You'll be pleased to learn
that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating a new
division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the "Liberals
Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided
to place one terrorist under your personal care.

Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for
transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday.
Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be
cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your
letter of admonishment.

It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers.

We will conduct weekly inspections, in conjunction with the Red Cross,
to ensure that your care for Ahmed is commensurate with international
standards and those you so strongly recommended in your letter.

Although Ahmed is sociopathic, extremely violent, and was trying to kill
at least 20 women and children as we captured him, we hope that your
sensitivity to what you described as his "attitudinal problem" will help
him overcome these character flaws. I might add that he will bite you,
or worse, given the chance.

However, perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere
cultural differences.

We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling.

Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat
and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail
clippers. We do not suggest that you ask him to demonstrate these skills
at your next yoga group. He is also expert at making a wide variety of
explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to
keep those items locked up, unless (in your opinion) this might offend
him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters (except
sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This is
a particularly sensitive subject for him, and he has been known to show
violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress
code that Ahmed will recommend as more appropriate attire. I'm sure they
will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the bhurka - over time.

Just remind them that it is all part of "respecting his culture and his
religious beliefs" - wasn't that how you put it?

Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like
you, who know so much, keep us informed of the proper way to do our
job.You take good care of Ahmed - and remember...we'll be watching.

Good Luck!

Cordially,
Pres. Geo. W. Bush

CC: Donald Rumsfeld

http://www.terror-hunters.com

[Terror-Hunters.com; TerroristWarning.com]

hitparade

on Jan 06, 2005

Rightwinger-- you should post your stories.

BTW, Relativity speaking, Back to the Future was relatively easy to follow.

Rightwinger

on Jan 06, 2005

Rightwinger-- you should post your stories.

Uh...yes, well, ahem....I'm a little shy in that respect. I've only taken that step once. I posted a horror story to a website a while back. It was pretty well-recieved, I guess, but writing is more of a hobby with me. I guess I'm kind of like George McFly....I never let anyone read my stories.

BTW, Relativity speaking, Back to the Future was relatively easy to follow.

Yes, I know. That's what made it such a great movie. I simply said that it was one of the more accurate stories as far as theory is concerned, within limits.

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