Slaughter of Foreigners in Yemen Bears Mark of Former Gitmo Detainee
Posted By: Trigger Happy on 2009-06-20
In Reply to:
The fate of three of nine foreigners abducted in Yemen last week is known — their bodies were found, shot execution style. The whereabouts of the other six — including three children under the age of 6 — remain a mystery.
But terrorism experts say their abductors and killers are almost certainly not a mystery. They say the crimes bear the mark of AL Qaeda, and they fear they are the handiwork of the international terror organization's No. 2 man in the Arabian Peninsula: Said Ali al-Shihri, an Islamic extremist who once was in American custody — but who was released from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Link for full story: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,527868,00.html
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we love foreigners
But if you had said that you lived in Pakistan or Iraq or France, or Saudi Arabia, etc., we probably would not have been open to your insightful opinion.
To show the detainee photos or not
I vote to show them.
Obama ran on the idea of a transparent administration.
Why does he now refuse to show these photos?
I know what he's said: does no good; hurts the US abroad; other motivations.
But transparent sticks with me.
Someone give the reasons not to show the photos, please.
Here's part of a current cnn.com article on the release:
======================================
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder repeated Obama's assertion that the decision to oppose the photos' release had been made "consistent with the best interests of our troops."
Holder emphasized Obama's conclusion that making the photos public would endanger U.S. troops and have a "negative impact" on the military situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama expressed concern Wednesday that a release of the photos could "inflame anti-American opinion" and have a "chilling effect" on further investigations of detainee abuse without adding to the understanding of past abuses.
Before Obama's announcement, the Pentagon was set to release hundreds of photographs of prisoners in detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of the month.
====================================
I can agree with this reasoning but what happened to transparency? Is this for the national good then? Maybe I'm just skeptical after eight years of lies and obfuscations and secrecy and can't accept statements such as this. Perhaps I need more time. BTW, the troop thing I can go along with but the other----Obama has shown the world his views and he is popular in most places. Now he's hiding something another admin. did. Puzzles me.
Your ratings info is outdated. How about that ICE detainee
is he a hack too? Get over Bill-O and try a little coverage of the other side of the immigration issue.
Actually, we're all headed for the slaughter
x
Geez.....all that because I would like to stop the slaughter of the unborn....
and there is not a bit of that in you pile-on, ranting, screaming, judgmental zealots with poisonous, nauseating, self-important dreck for beliefs (mostly your words, I substituted one). Yep, persecution complex seems to have attacked you all en masse. Only it is not the world, it is one little poster named sam who you think is against YOU. Not you, come out of persecution palace. It is the act of abortion I am against. Way to personalize there in persecution palace. This more describes you, the pile on and try to silence the pro-lifer group. Which is exactly what makes people reject YOUR beliefs and ideology.
More lambs to the slaughter.....oh lordy, gotta have
nm
I daresay a 66-yo GM remembers democratic leadership slaughter
nm
Obviously old news that bears repeating...
xx
If SP had her way, the only place we'd be seeing polar bears
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/opinion/05palin.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Sarah Palin vs the polar bears, despipte scientific evidence of their endangerment...as usual.
Lions and tigers and bears! OH MY! nm
That's a fact. Oil over environment/polar bears.
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/22/you-go-girl-alaska-gop-gov-will-sue-bush-administration-over-polar-bear-listing/
Yep. She as (Neo)Con as they come. Not just this issue. Pretty much across the board. McCain was trying to shore up that side of the party with her while at the same time reining in the Hillary supporters and women's vote. Where this logic is coming from is anybody's guess, but sounds like a Karl Rove stunt to me.
For all those Obama/Biden lovers.....this bears
Biden's years up there mean nothing to me. The longer you stay, the more jaded and entrenched you become in the very crap we are trying to get outselves out of now, with the exception of a few who have never changed their stance. Years of service do not necessariy equate to good deeds....ya gotta do better than that. The man is so wishy washy on his votes, he'll fly whatever way the wind blows him, which is why he is now running with Obama. Anyhooooo....
He stood shoulder to shoulder with Obama while running for presidential candidacy and said when asked what he thought about Obama....
"I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training" AND......
"If the Democrats think we're going to be able to nominate someone who can win without that person being able to table unimpeachable credentials on national security and foreign policy, I think we're making a tragic mistake..."
Biden has denounced Obama's poor foreign policy "judgement" over and over and over and in his own words said that "Americans are quickly realizing -- that Barack Obama is not ready to be President."
He said Obama was not ready to serve as President. Better yet, let me just list the reasons why Biden is a patsy....
About Obama he said, "Having Talking Points On Foreign Policy Doesn't Get You There."
On Obama's voting against funding for US Troops overseas he said,
"If you tell me I've got to take away this protection for these kids in order to win the election, some things aren't worth it. Some things are worth losing over. That would be worth losing over. Hundreds of lives are being saved and will be saved by us sending these vehicles over which we are funding with this supplemental legislation. And I want to ask any of my other colleagues, would they, in fact, vote to cut off the money for those troops to protect them? That's the right question. This isn't cutting off the war. This is cutting off support that will save the lives of thousands of American troops."
On Obama's leadership in Iraq he said.....
"I Don't Recall Hearing A Word From Barack About A Plan Or A Tactic."
Biden on whether he would meet unconditionally with leaders of rogue states as Obama said he would.....
"Absolutely Positively No." Biden: "Would I make a blanket commitment to meet unconditionally with the leaders of each of those countries within the first year I was elected president? Absolutely positively no."
Oh, AND IT GETS EVEN BETTER......There's his undying love for John McCain, "God love 'em".
Biden has called McCain a personal hero and proclaimed that he would run on a McCain ticket. He has praised McCain’s stances on climate change and troop levels in Iraq. He acknowledged that McCain’s approach to foreign policy differs from President Bush’s — everything that flies in the face of lines of attack that Obama has been pushing against McCain. Remember he said he would be "honored to run against him or with him".(meaning McCain).
Now, here he stands alongside the very guy he can't stand. And you think this is an upstanding God fearing lover of his country? This man is no different than Obama; he'll do whatever is necessary to get his foot in the door for an upcoming Presidency, even if that means acceping a VP position from a guy he can't stand, doesn't agree on anything with, and likes his opposition better. Yea, what a deal we got there!!!!!
Your turn....
Palin says kill all polar bears
and ship all MT jobs overseas
Wrong. I love the environment, polar bears and
I read it before I posted it. I do no agree with her logic. She is talking out of both sides of her mouth like the bridge to nowhere thing (for it one minute, against it the next when that position became more politically viable). If she is so big on development, why did she strip funding from more than 300 development initiatives in her haste to exact revenge on her predecessor? Fact is, she has very little credibility as far as I'm for a number of reasons.
I simply provided the other poster with a link, voiced an opinion and left it up to to make up her own mind about the article. So...go crucify yourself.
Aww dang it! I looove polar bears. My boyfriend will fix that too! nm
x
Right on the mark.
It's simply unbelievable to me that Americans must hope for help from Hugo Chavez in a time of crisis while their own federal government is taking a long leisurely yawn while deciding whether or not help its own suffering people.
Never thought I'd see that day in America.
Mark 8:38
"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles." ~~ Barack Obama
Your post is off the mark...
Your post doesn't make sense and is erroneous in many areas. Obviously you have never listened to the lyrics of the song and you are not familiar with the content of the Neil Young song it addresses. And I agree, it's a great rock and roll song lyrics aside, but I just can't always put those lyrics aside. I also never said folks from the south weren't intelligent - you implied that, not me. As for hating it up north, well, you're incorrect. Me and most of the community love it here. People often move south for various reasons, some monetary but quite often due to the weather.
By the way, do your black friends enjoy your waving the confederate flag (I hope you don't wave it literally, but one never knows) and loving George Wallace? Probably not.
By the way, I was born in Virginia and also lived in southern Indiana and have friends/relatives all over the south. I am also an avid student of the history of the south. So I am fairly well educated regarding the cultural, socioeconomic problems currently facing the south, albeit some parts regions than others. So you see, I am dealing with it and find the best to way to "deal with it" is to seek the truth.
You are so off the mark it isn't even funny
you are so incensed you are stating Jesus' political status like it was written in the Bible. I'm not talking to people who want to bash me....you don't even read my posts....goodbye.
Oy vey Mr/Ms. Question mark
You are so frightened by the term socialism - does it occur to you that at least the French citizens have not forgotten how to stand up to their government?
Please take just a moment and open your mind (that means turn OFF the Limbaughs out there)
Is this femnist off the mark? I think so...sm
First of all, there is NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING wrong with standing behind your husband. Did any feminists go bonkers when Hillary did it. To some degree this article challenges marriage.
****
Michelle Obama's sacrifice
It had to be hard for the high-achieving candidate's wife to give up her career -- and I'm in a feminist fury about it.
By Debra Dickerson
Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, speaks April 16 at a Women for Obama luncheon in Chicago.
May 21, 2007 | You knew it had to happen.
Damn it all, Michelle Obama has quit her $215,000 dream job and demoted herself to queen. Though the party line is that she's only scaled back to a 20 percent workload, I doubt her former co-workers will bother alerting her to many staff meetings. She's traded in her solid gold résumé, high-octane talent and role as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals to be a professional wife and hostess.
Now, the energy and drive that had her up jogging before dawn and a gratifying day of work and family will mainly be spent smiling for the cameras. Just as we watch curvy, healthy-looking singers and actresses like Lindsay Lohan become anorexic too-blonde hoochies before our very eyes, so we're now in danger of having to watch the political version of that process: Any day now, Michelle Obama's handlers will have her glued into one of those Sunday-go-to-meeting Baptist grandma crown hats while smiling vapidly for hours at a time. When, of course, she's not staring moonstruck, à la Nancy Reagan, at her moon doggie god-husband who's not one bit smarter than she is.
My heart breaks for her just thinking about it. Being president will be hard. So will being first lady for the brilliant Michelle -- imagine, having to begin all your sentences with My husband and I...
I'm in a feminist fury about Michelle (I'll use her first name to avoid confusion with her husband) feeling forced to quit, but make no mistake: I'm not blaming her. Few could stand up to the pressure she's facing, especially from blacks, to sacrifice herself on the altar of her husband's ambition. He could be the first black president, you know! Also, she must be beside herself trying to hold things together for her daughters. I'm blaming the world and every man, woman, child and border collie in it who helps send the message that women's lives must be subordinate to everyone else's.
No doubt her modern, progressive husband assured her she didn't have to quit -- probably even tried to dissuade her. It's also quite likely she's making this sacrifice so her children will have at least one parent available. But the result is the same. Our daughters grow up knowing that their freedom to work at hard-won, beloved careers hinges on the doings of their husbands.
Still, there's an opportunity in this setback. Now is the time for feminism to reach out to black women via the contingent of Obama-esque overachievers out there who ought to be chilled to the bone by Michelle's retirement from work of her own. Given Secretary Rice's, not to mention Oprah's, persistent singleness, black women who have earned high status may well wonder why they should bother trying to both date and develop successful careers if one's going to cancel out the other. No other group is less likely to marry. Given the innate conservatism of the black community, the burden to tend to hearth and home falls disproportionately on its women, sending the message to ambitious black girls that they can't have both fulfilling careers and families.
It would be one thing if Michelle had tired of working, but she's clearly ambivalent about leaving paid employment, as the Washington Post's recent coverage made clear:
Every other month [since] I've had children I've struggled with the notion of 'Am I being a good parent? Can I stay home? Should I stay home? How do I balance it all?' she said. I have gone back and forth every year about whether I should work. When she finally winds down her duties as vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals in the days ahead..., she said, it will be the first time that I haven't gotten up and gone to a job. It's a bit disconcerting, she said. But it's not like I'll be bored.
No, you'll have your well-manicured hands full being your husband's hostess in chief. Funny how she didn't mention her husband's parental angst; there have been whispers that he's been pretty busy, too, what with being the great black hope and all. Wonder what finally made her decide to quit.
While I'm not blaming Michelle, I am issuing a challenge: This political and professional sutee won't end until women refuse to step into the fire, disapproval be damned. Sen. Clinton can't do everything: The rest of us women must stand our ground. Whatever else you think of Clinton, you can't deny that she blazed a trail for women's right to work and, like, be smart in public. And, man, what a beatdown she got. Since it was bringing about the end of the civilization as we know it, she caved, took her husband's name and gave up a public policy role; she had to wait, like a good girl, until her husband couldn't run for anything else. Valuable years of productivity, wasted. But at least giving up her career wasn't Hillary Clinton's first choice, as it is for most of the elite women who are abandoning their careers.
Linda Hirshman was an early observer of the phenomenon of top-tier women leading the retreat back to the kitchen. Following up a controversial article, Homeward Bound, with an equally controversial book, Get to Work, she harshly chastised elite, well-educated women for choosing not to work once they married high earners. Using census data and interviews, she argues that:
As a result of feminist efforts -- and larger economic trends -- the percentage of [working] women ... rose robustly through the 1980s and early '90s. But then the pace slowed. The census numbers for all working mothers leveled off around 1990 and have fallen modestly since 1998. In interviews, women with enough money to quit work say they are choosing to opt out. Their words conceal a crucial reality: the belief that women are responsible for child-rearing and homemaking was largely untouched by decades of workplace feminism ... Among the affluent-educated-married population, women are letting their careers slide to tend the home fires. If my interviewees are working, they work largely part time, and their part-time careers are not putting them in the executive suite.
I am not saying Michelle Obama is just another member of the so-called opt-out revolution; clearly, her reasons for leaving her job are historic -- and even so, she clearly seems pained to do it. And I hate to add to Michelle's load, but even though she's made the choice to leave work, I hope she'll keep her role in women's history in mind and increase the tiny inroad political wives have made into something approaching women's freedom of choice. With her personal wealth (albeit obtained by marriage) Theresa Heinz laid some groundwork, speaking her mind on the campaign trail and generally refusing to be mealy-mouthed and dull. Kudos to Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, too, for refusing to give up saving lives to chat up reporters on her husband's tour bus. But until more women who want to work feel free to do just that, they'll continue to be mere appendages of their men, and the American workplace will remain just as family-unfriendly as it is now.
What can Michelle do? If Obama wins, she should go for it and take on a meaningful public policy role, à la Hillary Clinton's healthcare work. Just a lot more carefully. Why on earth should such an accomplished woman just arrange white-tie dinners? Until then, she should become more outspoken, building on her husband's willingness to confront dysfunction in the black community -- a black mother can get away with what no one else could. Obama has chastised blacks for apathy, for crime, for equating achievement with acting white, for allowing their neighborhoods to deteriorate; Michelle's street cred as a churchgoing, round the way sister who made good makes her ghetto pass (her ability to operate as an insider) irrevocable. There will be no discussion of whether or not she's black.
Since the Obamas are liberals, Michelle is bullet proof. Anyone who dares to insult her with the same level of vitriol as has been visited on Hillary Clinton and leading white Democrats like Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein will be trampled by a herd of black ministers, civil rights leaders and church ladies in big hats. (Condoleezza Rice doesn't get the same protection.) In a post-Imus world, any critiques of Michelle had best be worded very carefully. She could also build on her husband's interfaith pioneering with mainstream organizations to bring the resources of those well-endowed communities to bear on black problems.
Of course, black problems are really American problems; having the golden couple spearheading the fight will make it sexy to help blacks with their systemic problems (education and entrepreneurship, to name two). The two Obamas can de-race these issues (here is where she can use her fancy education) and help America understand that black progress is American progress.
Most important, though, I hope Michelle will bring feminism to black women.
Feminism is rightfully criticized for being irrelevant to black women and ignoring their issues. When it's not plain arrogant, that is. An excellent example of mainstream feminism's high-handedness is Maureen Dowd's recent petty bitching about Michelle's jabs at her husband on the campaign trail. She sounded like a 1940s white woman reprimanding a sassy black maid. But feminism's failure to engage with black women is only partly its own fault; black men have worked hard to reinforce the image of feminism as not just white, not just lesbian, not just a plot to make contented black women unhappy with their lot but also (as usual) a war against black men. This black male victimology has been so successful at changing the subject whenever black women complain that, 20 years after Anita Hill was successfully demonized as a tool of white feminists for daring to bring down a prominent black man, here's Michelle's tortured answer to the Washington Post's F-question:
You know, I'm not that into labels ... So probably, if you laid out a feminist agenda, I would probably agree with a large portion of it, she said. I wouldn't identify as a feminist just like I probably wouldn't identify as a liberal or a progressive.
How difficult it must be for someone so whip smart and so famously blunt, according to insiders, to have to mouth these political pieties. But if we know nothing else about Michelle Obama, we know she's determined to live in the world the way it is, not the way it should be. But she's in a prime position to help change all that.
Now is the perfect opportunity for the movement to reach out to black women by embracing Michelle and black women's causes in general. Progressive women should be working their way toward the middle ground a political wife must occupy and politely engineer ways in which Michelle can put her postelection time, win or lose, to worthy causes important to the black community -- welfare-to-work, hiring and job training, for example.
But even as I seek silver linings, I'm still sad for Michelle. As the Times reports, She expresses no regret about scaling down her job ... where colleagues say she excels at tackling thorny problems. But this winter, after spotting a book on the Obamas' coffee table celebrating Mr. Obama's Senate victory, her staff created a matching volume of her accomplishments. Mrs. Obama wept when she saw it.
Problems don't come much thornier than this. You've got a right to sing the blues, Michelle, so go ahead and cry. Then take action.
I agree she is off the mark...
and most off the mark because who is she to critcize Michelle Obama's life decisions? She is a grown woman and fully capable of making decisions for her own life. It is that same old thing...if you don't fit into the *mold* you are fair game. It is, frankly, none of this woman's business what Michelle Obama does with her life, and if she chooses to change her career to supporting her husband's run for the Presidency and support her children through the process too, all I say is good for her. She is an adult and has made her choice and certainly does not have to answer to feminists for it. It is not unheard of for a woman to choose family AS a career at some point in her life, or as the career OF her life, and she is no less a woman, no less a person, for that choice. This gal sounds like a lot of other disgruntled feminists I have read or heard speak....railing against what they secretly wish THEY had. My guess is that Michelle Obama is much more comfortable with her life and her decisions than this gal will EVER be.
You're so far off the mark..........
@
I think you missed the mark again
did you mean could NOT get by? You actually type for a living?
Gov. Mark Sanford....(sm)
It seems this guy likes to go on "mystery vacations," not telling anyone where he's going and being unreachable. And this guy is a potential candidate for 2012? Oh boy. My guess is that he went on one of his "trips" because he was just beaten to death in court for trying to use stimulus funds to pay off state debt instead of using it for it's intended purpose, or course...that being after he tried to refuse it altogether. Yeah...let's put him in the White House. Then we could have a president that goes MIA. LOL.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/06/22/2009-06-22_awol_gov_sanford_has_south_carolina_in_tizzy.html
Isn't this the first time either of them has broken the 50-mark?
nm
Mark my words...this is a hoax!
All you have to do is look at the picture and see the backwards "B" on her cheek. By the way, she was working at a McCain/Palin call center just before this alleged attack took place.
He's right on the mark about the martial law thing....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGM8kWMV6Kd2LoM80UvPXeeBJkqAD96N3GCG0
He's right on the mark about the martial law thing....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGM8kWMV6Kd2LoM80UvPXeeBJkqAD96N3GCG0
Oh yeah...so how did you totally miss the mark? LOL
I know R. Bennett was Clinton's attorney at one time. Therefore I never said one word about partisan and never even tagged him as a Republican. Hard to know in that case what wide open moment you're referring to - care to share? Hehe.
Great Mark Morford article
The guy can write and he's right on as usual.
Fun Bits About American Torture
In many ways, the U.S. is now just as inhumane and brutal as any Third World regime. Oh well?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, December 16, 2005
We do not torture. Remember it, write it in red crayon on the bathroom wall, tattoo it onto your acid tongue because those very words rang throughout the land like a bleak bell, like a low scream in the night, like a cheese grater rubbing against the teeth of common sense when Dubya mumbled them during a speech not long ago, and it was, at once, hilarious and nauseating and it took all the self-control in the world for everyone in the room not to burst out in disgusted laughter and throw their chairs at his duplicitous little head.
Oh my God, yes, yes we do torture, America that is, and we do it a lot, and we do it in ways that would make you sick to hear about, and we're doing it right now, all over the world, the CIA and the U.S. military, perhaps more often and more brutally than at any time in recent history and we use the exact same kind of techniques and excuses for it our numb-minded president cited as reasons we should declare war and oust the dictator of a defenseless pip-squeak nation that happened to be sitting on our oil.
This is something we must know, acknowledge, take to heart and not simply file away as some sort of murky, disquieting unknowable that's best left to scummy lords of the government underworld. We must not don the blinders and think America is always, without fail, the land of the perky and the free and the benevolent. Horrific torture is very much a part of who we are, right now. Deny it at your peril. Accept it at your deep discontent.
Torture is in. Torture is the tittering buzzword of the Bush administration, bandied about like secret candy, like a hot whisper from Dick Cheney's gnarled tongue into Rumsfeld's pointed ear and then dumped deep into Dubya's Big Vat o' Denial.
The cruel abuse of terror suspects is sanctioned and approved from on high, and we employed it in Abu Ghraib (the worst evidence of which -- the rapes and assaults and savage beatings -- we will likely never see), and we use it in Eastern Europe and Guantánamo and in secret prisons and it has caused deaths of countless detainees. And Rumsfeld's insane level of Defense Department secrecy means we may never even know exactly how brutal we have become.
Torture is right now being discussed in all manner of high-minded articles and forums wherein the finer points of what amount of torture should be allowable under what particular horrific (and hugely unlikely) circumstances, and all falling under the aegis of the new and pending McCain anti-torture legislation that would outlaw any and all degrading, inhumane treatment whatsoever by any American CIA or military personnel at any time whatsoever, more or less.
All while, ironically, over in Iraq, our military is right now inflicting more pain and death upon more lives than any torture chamber in the last hundred years, and where we have recently discovered the fledgling government that the United States helped erect in Saddam's absence, the Iraqi Interior Ministry, well, they appear to be so giddy about torture they might as well be Donald Rumsfeld's love children. But, you know, quibbling.
There is right now this amazing little story over at the London Guardian, a fascinating item all about a group of hardy hobbyists known as planespotters, folks whose solitary, dedicated pastime is to sit outside the various airports of the world and watch the runway action and make intricate logs and post their data and photos to planespotter Web sites. It's a bit like bird-watching, but without the chirping and the nature and with a lot more deafening engine roar and poisonous fumes.
These people, they are not spies and they are not liberals and they are not necessarily trying to reveal anything covert or ugly or illegal, but of course that is often exactly what they do, because these days, as it turns out, some of those planes these guys photograph are involved in clandestine CIA operations, in what are called extraordinary renditions, the abduction of suspects who are taken to lands unknown so we may beat and maul and torture the living crap out of them and not be held accountable to any sort of pesky international law. Fun!
It is for us to know, to try and comprehend. The United States has the most WMD of anyone in the world. We imprison and kill more of our own citizens than any other civilized nation on the planet. We still employ horrific, napalm-like chemical weapons.
And yes, under the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime, we abuse and torture prisoners at least as horrifically as any Islamic fundamentalist, as any terrorist cell, to serve our agenda and meet our goals -- and whether you think those goals are justifiable because they contain the words freedom or democracy is, in many ways, beside the point.
Go ahead, equivocate your heart out. It is a bit like justifying known poisons in your food. Sure mercury is a known cancer-causing agent. Sure the body will recoil and soon become violently ill and die. But gosh, it sure does taste good. Shrug.
Maybe you don't care, maybe you're like Rumsfeld and Cheney and the rest who think, well sure, if they're terrorists and if they'd just as willingly suck the eyeballs out of my cat and rip out my fingernails with a pair of pliers as look at me, well, they deserve to be tortured, beaten, abused in ways you and I cannot imagine. Especially if (and this is the eternal argument) by their torture we can prevent the deaths of innocents.
Maybe you are one of these people. Eye for an eye. Water torture for an explosive device. Does this mean that you are, of course, exactly like those being tortured, willing to go to extremes to get what you want? That you are on the same level morally, energetically, politically and, like Cheney and Rumsfeld, you are dragging the nation down into a hole with you? You might think. After all, fundamentalists terrorize to further a lopsided and religious-based agenda. We torture to protect ours. Same coin, different side.
It is mandatory that we all acknowledge where we are as a nation, right now, how low we have fallen, how thuggish and heartless and internationally disrespected we have become, the ugly trajectory we are following.
Because here's the sad kicker: Torture works. It gets results. It might very well save some lives. But it also requires a moral and spiritual sacrifice the likes of which would make Bush's own Jesus recoil in absolute horror. Yet this is what's happening, right now. And our current position demands a reply to one bitter, overarching question: What sort of nation are we, really?
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.
As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SF Gate Culture Blog.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/12/16/notes121605.DTL
©2005 SF Gate
Mark Fiore's Minister of Fear sm
This is a little old, but a funny short animation on Homeland Security's fear-mongering.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0428,fiore,55135,9.html
Mark my words, it won't be six months before the world
tests Obama like they did John Kennedy.
"Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
-- Joe Biden
Is Biden saying that America's current enemies - sorely aware of Obama's inexperience - plan to test a President Obama with similar crises, to see what he's made of?
I guess we all know how JFK's test turned out. "Bay of pigs" ring any bells.
Biden has also commented Obama's inexperience and said the job of the Presidency "does not lend itself to on the job training." He's also said Obama's "going to need help."
Well, I guess 'ol Joe has his foot in the door and that's all he really wanted. I don't believe he's changed his mind about our new President Elect. I think he saw his way into the White House and jumped on the bandwagon.
Great! We've got a totally inexperienced, slick snake set to run this country and the man who knows Obama will fail, has announced the Obama will be tested and fail, and probably wants Obama to fail, so he can come out smelling like a rose.
Well, buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.
I will not stop trying to stop the slaughter of the unborn in this country...
I never said you were a stupid wretch. What I said was, if you can watch that video below and not feel something, your heart must be seared over. If you can watch that video and advocate what you advocate, yes, I'm sorry, I find that cold. I am entitled to my opinion and all your ranting and name calling and belitting is not going to change that. Someone needs to speak for the child. You certainly aren't allowing it any rights, including the right to live. You are okay with that, I'm not.
Bush wants to 'leave his mark' on his term in office.
He'll probably do his best to continue skrooing up this country right down to the very last seconds he is officially able to sign anything.
Did you notice the question mark at the end of the article's title?
Do you understand the meaning of "potential?" Imagine that. Judges have a "natural predisposition" toward complying with the DEMOCRATIC WILL OF THE PEOPLE. What a crazy and novel idea.
The truth has been out there for quite a while now. There is no THERE there. This is sheer lunacy, but hey, knock yourselves out. Nobody's listening to this garbage and the entire nation has much more pressing issues to worry about, but to remind you of them here would be a complete waste of time, in view of this myopic obsessive fixation of a marginalized tiny fringe minority of the GOP (which has been recently denounced by other, more intelligent republicans).
to listen to this video, click on the red check mark
in the square.
And were they sent to Gitmo?
*
And if they came to Gitmo...(sm)
and were innocent, believe me, after the blatent torture and mistreatment, I'm sure they will hate us as well. In other words, all Bush did by opening Gitmo and using torture was create a breeding ground for hate. But I guess that's Obamas fault too?
Gitmo is going down...yeah! (sm)
Does anyone know exactly what planet Bush is from? He seems to be in his own little world. It's times like this you wonder exactly how did such an idiot ever get elected. LOL
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#28629277
glad gitmo is
going down, but I really want Bush and Cheney to be tried for war crimes. This is a dilemma for Obama - we have many, many issues to work on, but to allow the atrocities to go unpunished does not sit well with me. Let's have some trials, Mr. Holter.
Gitmo Torture
This will undoubtably shake some things up. If the detainees' trials cannot proceed because the "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized by the Bush administration have tainted the process so much that prosecutors cannot proceed in some of their cases, what happens now?
"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
....
Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.
And a serious question from me about Gitmo
If it's closed, where will the terrorists go? Our regular jails that would not be able to handle them. Leave them free in our own country to terrorize? Home to their own country? Did you know that some countries do not want to accept them back?
Did you know that some of the terrorists that were freed and sent home were captured a second time trying to kill our troops?
Shall this country be subjected to suicide bombings because Gitmo is closed? I don't think so. I don't agree with prisoner torture BUT what do you think has been happening since WWII? It's okay for other countries to torture our servicemen and women, but not okay for us to do it?
It's a double standard.
Why did O shut down Gitmo? Bet it is not
nm
What do you think - GITMO idea
How about this - we remove the terrorist/prisons from GITMO and move them to other prisons throughout the country. Then send all the crooked politicians, bankers, and people who are receiving bail-outs and turning around and taking holiday's with the money and going to spa's, and not using the bail outs on what they are for, etc. - send them to GITMO. - just a suggestion.
The people who are in Gitmo
are there because they were turned in by their own people or their names were given during interrogation. Yes, there may be some who are innocent but aren't there also some people in prisons who were covicted and are innocent. That happens. This is war and in war....you can take no chances.
Did we not put Japanese people into concentration camps during war? Did we not drop a bomb on two Japanese cities and totally destroy them with the A-Bomb? I don't recall administrations going back against previous administrations for those actions. It was war......just like now. This is war. Terrorists have set off bombs at the WTC. They blew a hole in the USS Cole. They took down both WTC towers and hit the pentagon with one plane going down before making it to its destination, which was suspected to be the White House. They want to continue more attacks on us and you are worried about waterboarding a prisoner who might potentially know information that could save American lives. You would much rather let them go or not "torture" them and not find out any new intelligence to save Americans and stop potential attacks?
Didn't we ridicule Bush for not seeing 9/11 coming? There were warnings. We were up his butt for not putting the intelligence together and thwarting the attacks on that day. So when he turned around and decided to interrogate prisoners for more information, now you hate him for doing that too. You can't have it both ways people. Terrorists want us dead and they will continue to plot and execute their attacks on us. Will it not sink in until, God forbid, you or someone you love is killed by them? They have no compassion for us. I can guarantee you that they are laughing at us for our soft interrogation process. They think we are weak and now we have given them more fuel to get more people to join their cause by making CIA memos public as well as pictures. Obama has made our military and all Americans more unsafe with his stupid stunt.
If he continues to pursue this witch hunt, I hope to God it nails all the dems who didn't seem to have a problem with this in the past either and that includes Pelosi. If they are going to take down Bush and Cheney, they best nail the dems who didn't say anything and knew about it. If they are going down, they all better go down. I have lost any respect I had for Obama when he made this public. We are at war and these childish blame games are going to get more Americans killed. Shame on him!
The people who are in Gitmo
are there because they were turned in by their own people or their names were given during interrogation. Yes, there may be some who are innocent but aren't there also some people in prisons who were covicted and are innocent. That happens. This is war and in war....you can take no chances.
Did we not put Japanese people into concentration camps during war? Did we not drop a bomb on two Japanese cities and totally destroy them with the A-Bomb? I don't recall administrations going back against previous administrations for those actions. It was war......just like now. This is war. Terrorists have set off bombs at the WTC. They blew a hole in the USS Cole. They took down both WTC towers and hit the pentagon with one plane going down before making it to its destination, which was suspected to be the White House. They want to continue more attacks on us and you are worried about waterboarding a prisoner who might potentially know information that could save American lives. You would much rather let them go or not "torture" them and not find out any new intelligence to save Americans and stop potential attacks?
Didn't we ridicule Bush for not seeing 9/11 coming? There were warnings. We were up his butt for not putting the intelligence together and thwarting the attacks on that day. So when he turned around and decided to interrogate prisoners for more information, now you hate him for doing that too. You can't have it both ways people. Terrorists want us dead and they will continue to plot and execute their attacks on us. Will it not sink in until, God forbid, you or someone you love is killed by them? They have no compassion for us. I can guarantee you that they are laughing at us for our soft interrogation process. They think we are weak and now we have given them more fuel to get more people to join their cause by making CIA memos public as well as pictures. Obama has made our military and all Americans more unsafe with his stupid stunt.
If he continues to pursue this witch hunt, I hope to God it nails all the dems who didn't seem to have a problem with this in the past either and that includes Pelosi. If they are going to take down Bush and Cheney, they best nail the dems who didn't say anything and knew about it. If they are going down, they all better go down. I have lost any respect I had for Obama when he made this public. We are at war and these childish blame games are going to get more Americans killed. Shame on him!
Hey BB, what happened with O and Gitmo?
nm
The O is speaking right now about GITMO and
the photos, national security, and transfer of prisoners.
Thinking about Gitmo...
As a purely political move, Candidate Obama - who knew nothing about the real problems - promised to close Gitmo and signed that order on his first day in office.
1. Why close Gitmo? The main reason given is that Gitmo is a "rallying cry" for jihadists. I have not seen the slightest shred of evidence offered to support this mantra, which has become the poster child for the truism that if you repeat something often enough people will believe it.
2. Even if true, Obama does not explain why "The Shoe" (SHU = secure housing unit) in Michigan, for example, wll not simply become the new rallying cry, especially given that the Gitmo prisoners will find that conditions in a SHU are much more harsh than they had in Gitmo, which has been called "Club Fed".
3. The point is made that no one has escaped from "The Shoe". So what? No one has escaped from Gitmo either.
4. What Obama knows (because experts have told him) is that escaping is not the issue anyway. A prison on the American mainland is much more subject to an attack from the outside - such as an airplane being flown into it (some might remember the little incident on 9/11?) - than is the case with Gitmo. If the attack kills some of the terrorists housed there, they will simply be martyrs. The purpose of the attack would not be to break them out, but to destroy the prison and make a statement to the world about terrorist capabilities.
5. The town or city where the SHU is located will also make a lovely target for terrorists. Or, perhaps they'll murder some of the guards who live in the town. They do not have this capability with Gitmo.
There is no absolutely level on which closing Gitmo makes even the slightest bit of sense and most Americans know this. What this amounts to is nothing more or less than subjugating national security for purposes of shameful, irresponsible political grandstanding.
Impeach Obama now.
There is NOTHING to compare what has happened to anyone at Gitmo...
to what happened at the Hanoi Hilton. We do NOT torture anyone in that manner. Have you ever read what happened to McCain during that time? Have you seen pictures of what the man looked like when he came back??
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