Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheriff Gonna Getcha
Crazyhorse,
First, you are incorrect when you claim that the U.S. Supreme Court held that the U.S. cannot try unlawful enemy combatants in military tribunals. In fact, they said we could try such individuals in military tribunals, provided they are structured properly. Moreover, it’s not just “Bush’s Supreme Court” that thinks so. “FDR’s Supreme Court” thought as much in the 1940s with respect to Nazi terrorists.
Second, we are in the United States and the Supreme Court determines what U.S. law is and what our obligations under treaties are. Courts overseas can say what they want, but they do not have any binding effect here in the U.S. To cite a German court case for what is “legal” is as strange as citing a Sudanese court opinion for what is “legal.”
Third, to say that Rumsfeld personally participated in torturing prisoners at Gitmo is a big stretch if your basis for saying as much is that he authorized the use of ugly and unlawful interrogation techniques. That’s pretty misleading.
Fourth, the notion that terrorists wouldn’t use Iraq as a training ground if we left is perplexing. Why exactly wouldn’t they use Iraq as a base of operations? I disagree with 90% of Bush’s claims and arguments, but that doesn’t mean that everything he says is a lie or wrong.
Finally, I wouldn't cite Seymour Hersh in support of your arguments. He was the same guy who said he KNEW we would invade Iran in the Spring of 2006.
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Seymore won the Pulitzer Prize and his reporting that Bush had plans to invade Iran in 2006 may have led to the plans' destruction. The jury is still out on that scandal. The smart money says that Bush had plans to invade Iraq in 06 and still has them.
The terrorists in Iraq have no interest in Iraq. They have an interest in driving us out of the middle east, but once we're gone they'll have no reason to worsen the situation in Iraq in hope of influencing the Iraqi's to turn on us. With no enemy in Iraq, they'll want to stick around a civil war no more than we do. They don't need new territory or to waste their resourses fighting Muslims. They'll live in Iraq by avoiding the civil war or deploying elsewhere until the war in over. Then, they'll try to unite the whole muslim world to achieve their objective, which is, by the way, not to take over the world.
People in the middle east are prone to be terrorists because they want non -Muslim's out of the middle east. They attacked us on 911 because American hegemony in the middle east is perceived by them as a threat to them.
No hegemony, no terrorists. One way to make America safe is for America to stop trying to take over land and resources in the middle east. In other words, the way to end this war is to lose it and develop more laudable national interests. This perspective I am setting forth is a "conservative" perspective. Unfortunately, conservatives today have no idea what conservatism is. Goldwater is probably turning over in his grave.
Forget the Supreme Court (Bush's court). International law doesn't give a darn about what is declared as legal by individual nations. War criminals are sentenced to prison or to death no matter what the laws are in their respective countries. Bush and Rummy are war criminals and will be tried and punished under the Geneva Conventions if they are caught and taken by any number of other countries. No one will care what the Supreme Court rules, not even Americans. It has almost zero credibility since handing over the presidency to Bush with transparent skulduggery
The only think it's done of any integrity lately is to refuse to go along with Bush's kangaroo court. By the way, their decision was narrower than you give it credit for. It gave no charter for military tribunals. Any program Bush comes up with will take him back before the court.
Finally, Rumsfeld. To say that Rumsfeld didn't "participate" in the prisoner's torture, is roughly akin to saying Eichmann didn't "participate" in the murder of Jews.
The particular prisoner was tortured by methods specifically perscribed for him in particular by Rumsfeld, who personally upgraded the torture when what he ordered didn't work at first. He didn't personally pull the prisoner's clothes off and pour the water, but he also wasn't off in an ivory tower conjuring up abstract concepts. He was on-site, participating, giving the orders to apply particular tortures to the prisoner. He watched and ordered. He was there. He was the torturer in chief and apparently fascinated by it.
Afterward, he wrote a note ordering the same tortures be inflicted on the prisoners at Abu Graib.