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Wikileaks Releases Sensitive Guantanamo Manual
James Hardine writes "Wired is reporting that a never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, via the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks.org, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002. The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. The disclosure highlights the internet's usefulness to whistle-blowers in anonymously propagating documents the government and others would rather conceal. The Pentagon has been resisting — since October 2003 — a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union seeking the very same document. Anonymous open-government activists created Wikileaks in January, hoping to turn it into a clearinghouse for such disclosures. The site uses a Wikipedia-like system to enlist the public in authenticating and analyzing the documents it publishes. The Camp Delta document includes schematics of the camp, detailed checklists of what "comfort items" such as extra toilet paper can be given to detainees as rewards, six pages of instructions on how to process new detainees, instructions on how to psychologically manipulate prisoners, and rules for dealing with hunger strikes."
No matter what the ideological slant you may take, I strongly suspect that the truth is going to be a lot more mundane - again, assuming this thing is not a fabrication in either one direction or the other.
(speakin' of which, how do you tell for certain that it's not just a fabrication, either for or against? It's something I've always wondered when it comes to public wikis - unless you can verify who submitted it --or it can be independently verified-- you'll never be quite sure of its veracity.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The folks at wikileaks should be heralded as heroes, and given millions of dollars.
We've spent about half a trillion dollars on this 'war', and we have nothing to show for it except negative opinions from our allies, and a show of weakening ourselves in a vicious cycle to our enemies.
Make sure you read it anyway. It'll come in handy for the eventual day you end up in a secret US prison for "National Security Reasons". According to you, you would've opposed the Sons of Liberty during the American Revolution because they were anonymous individuals opposing the government also.
Too bad Bush wasn't publicly elected either.
we certainly know we can trust everything we read on the internet as fact.
Democracy is a fine system. For beginners.
...laura
Hmmph, surely if the folks at Gitmo are doing nothing wrong then they should have nothing to hide? Only wrongdoers demand secrecy.
Three Squirrels
... I'm pretty sure I'd rather have publically-elected and appointed officials be the final arbiters of government secrecy, and not self-appointed anonymous individuals. Sometimes for true liberty and justice you need someone other then the government controlling the information. To really have liberty you need to know what your Publically-elected and appointed officials are doing. Democracy doesn't work when the information is controlled by the government. If the government is the sole arbiter of information then you in fact no longer live in a democracy."There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Self-appointed anonymous individuals -- whistleblowers to the rest of us -- are an absolutely critical source of information for the public in the face of secretive bureacracies. The Pentagon Papers which showed the clear pattern of government lying over Vietnam, or the Watergate leaks on the abuse of presidential power, are two obviously important examples of why leaking secrets are vital to political liberty and democracy. It's foolishly naive to believe that what appointed officials think should be the last word on state secrets.
The founding fathers were pretty clear: secrecy is the enemy of democracy. If it's not troop movements during wartime or plans to the new Deathstar, there are very few reasons not to have something public knowledge in a democracy. After all, it's my money.
Actually, I would say it's people like YOU that are the primary reason the country is fucked. People like you who choose sides, who label your fellow American citizens instead of uniting with one another. How about instead of arguing with each other over who is less corrupt, why don't people realize that republicans and democrats ARE BOTH AMERICAN!!! YOU ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!!
Maybe if you folks would stop squabbling with each other, issues would actually be resolved and we wouldn't be as fucked as we are. Fighting amongst ourselves solves NOTHING. All it does is make us look like a child throwing a tantrum. The two party system as it exists today (along with the lines of division it creates amongst the citizens of the US) is the root of all of our problems.
Living With a Nerd
Negative opinion of your allies? What allies?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Actually, when I went to Wikileaks, I found the entire order of battle and equipment register for all of our forces in Iraq. What exactly was the motivation for leaking that and what higher purpose was served?
There's a moral difference between releasing a document related to human rights (which are obviously being abused at Gitmo) and releasing a document that serves no useful purpose other then giving somebody a complete picture of our forces in Iraq. Leave it to the right-wing trolls on /. to ignore the difference. I applaud them for releasing this document but question the motivation behind the other one.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No no no, see its only the general public who shouldn't have anything to hide.
Remember, if the Government wants to hide stuff, its "national security." If the Government also wants to illegally wiretap everybody, its "national security." If the Government wants to send you to Syria to be tortured or lock you up for years with no evidence, its "national security."
But if you question the Government, you're a threat to "national security."
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Allow me.
The justice system is a mockery of its own title. Where is the justice for the illegally detained? It is morally unconscionable to believe we have the authority to exert our power against the people of the world in the ways we are. The tacit approval of torture by the government is a key indicator of how far from grace we have fallen.
There are mountains of evidence and personal testimonies from people who have been unjustly caught up in this whole debacle in which we are involved. Yet people like you still ignore the pleas for help and evidence of the destruction of the core principles upon which America was founded. I equate your viewpoint to that of creationists. You live in a world of self delusion which spawns further ignorance. That ignorance is exploited by the people who are causing this catastrophe as they invoke your name as the people who "support" their actions, justifying these actions as if they were approved by the sincere majority of Americans.
I'm sure you are an intelligent and thoughtful individual, but you need to open your eyes to the truth of how the war on terrorism and the drug war (by the way these are actually one and the same) are tearing apart not only America, but the world as a whole.
+ Mass graves are not being filled. Now the murdered civilians get to be buried by their families instead.
+ Females are attending school. As before. Of course, they still aren't able to work, or wear what they want.
+ The Rape Rooms are shut down. Now soldies may rape and murder the families in the families own homes.
+ Saddam isn't paying $25,000 to families of suicide bombers. As before. Instead, suicide bombers are now working for free, and there are twice as many, and they are attacking more American targets than before.
Hell yeah ! And here's a few more:
+ No weapons of Mass Destruction ever found
+ No realistic plan at all to rebuild Iraq
+ More Iraqi deaths since occupation than under Saddam
+ Kurdish terrorists now attacking Turkey
+ The creation of huge Iraq sized terrorist training camp
+ American and UK forces too tied up in Iraq to effectively deal with problems in Afghanistan
+ American troops seen as evil due to their behaviour running various prisons
+ Trillions of dollars wasted to no good effect
+ Thousands of American deaths and countless more severely injured
+ Iraq poised for a civil war the second the US pulls out
+ Iran and other enemies of freedom reaping the benefits of an overstretched US military
+ Constantly rising oil prices
- Females were attending school anyway, perhaps you were thinking of Afghanistan ?
- Mass graves are still being filled from the daily death toll of suicide bombs and terrorist attacks
You forgot a few things:
+ Mass Graves aren't being filled
You're right. The dead are just being left at the side of the road now. I guess you need a government to bury the bodies.
+ Females are attending School
They were in Iraq before the war, too.
+ The Rape Rooms Are Shut Down
I think you forgot about Abu Ghraib, or whatever the next prison PR disaster will be.
+ Saddam isn't paying $25,000 to families of Palestinian Suicide Bombers
Now the guys behind the suicide bombers don't need to pay people to kill Americans; they have enough volunteers that'll do it for free.
+ Uday and Qusay Hussien are dead
+ Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - Captured
+ Chemical Ali - Captured
+ Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: DEAD.
Replace 'old' bad guys with new, living bad guys. Rinse, repeat.
I guess you drank enough of the neocon Kool-Aid to parrot the Administration's talking points.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
It seemed to me like sarcasm.
Chances are the comment had a lot to do with how the current government says that extra surveillance on Americans is necessary to fight terrorism, and that we should trust them to not misuse the information they get. He's just using their own flawed argument against them.
According to the surveys Saddam's Iraq was safety paradise to live in, compared to the civil war that is going on in the country as a DIRECT RESULT of the american invasion on the country. (Side note: You (in a general sense), are racist when you talk about the death of a few thousand american soldiers, but neglect to mention or even less, acknowledge the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.)
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
A great thing with democracy is that it leads to accountability. If we disagree with the decisions of the democratically elected representatives, we can vote them out of office at the next election.
...
However, when they keep stuff secret, we have no such option. Is it important to keep us unaware that part of a prison is not accessible to the people whose job it is to ensure that the prisoners are treated according to relevant laws and conventions? Maybe, maybe not. But when a politician decide to keep it secret, we have no way - apart from leaks - to hold them accountable for it.
Can democracy without accountability work? I don't think so. Democracy requires a transparent system to work. Which might hurt security. So it is back to freedom versus security, which is most important, and how much freedom can you sacrifice before your security is lost as well?
They are not easy questions to answer, and they certainly cannot be answered simply by a dichotomy between "publicly elected officials" and "anonymous self-appointed individuals".
A whole other issue is that sometimes the "publicly elected officials" aren't going to see the secrets, part of the government keep stuff secret from the people who are supposed to overlook them. In these cases, the leaks are essential to uncover the faults in the system.
...there is human slavery happening and women getting punished for being raped in other parts of the world, but, no, the US is the core of all EVIL[tm] in the world, right?
The geek community is dead. It's a pack of ignorant, effeminate pud pullers gone so far to the Left that New Zealand wouldn't want them.
If it wasn't the presence of Lindh on the list, I'd have thought that was the grandparent's point - all Fonda and the Wiretap leaker did was stand up and point out that Government policy was unethical, just like this leaker has done.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Sorry, this will sound cold, but so what? Last time I checked we had a military to protect the United States "against all enemies, foreign and domestic", not to intervene in the internal affairs of other states. And if our intention was that noble, then why haven't we intervened in any of the African genocides?
Females are attending SchoolThat would make a better point in an argument about Afghanistan and not Iraq as it's my understanding that women were treated fairly well (by the standards of the Arab world) in Iraq. In any case, why the hell is it up to us to impose our moral viewpoint on other cultures?
The Rape Rooms Are Shut DownAnd exactly how were the rape rooms a threat to our national security?
Saddam isn't paying $25,000 to families of Palestinian Suicide BombersSounds like that's a problem for the Israelis. How are Palestinian suicide bombers a threat to the United States, again?
Uday and Qusay Hussien are deadAnd they were a threat to the United States, why?
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - CapturedSorry, but this is where I lose my cool. STOP FUCKING TRYING TO LINK IRAQ TO 9/11 AND al-Qaeda. He was captured in Pakistan. What the fuck does that have to do with the Iraq war?
Chemical Ali - CapturedAnd he did what to the United States, exactly?
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: DEAD.And he was a threat to us (prior to the invasion), how exactly?
I'm sorry, but I don't buy into this theory of an interventionist foreign policy. Iraq posed zero threat to the United States. You can't even use the argument that everybody thought he had WMDs, because he allowed the inspectors back in prior to the war and they would have eventually discovered that he didn't. There was no reason for us not to give them time to do their work unless we already decided to invade before Saddam agreed to allow them back in.
Beyond that, ever stop to think about what we could have done with the troops in Iraq if we had deployed them to Afghanistan? Perhaps we could have used our own forces during Tora Bora instead of outsourcing the job to the local strongmen? Perhaps our own forces would have managed to capture Bin Ladin instead of letting him slip away?
Funny how the defenders of the Iraq war are so quick to forget about Bush's "dead or alive" promise. I want the motherfucker that killed three thousand American civilians in cold blood. I could have given two shits about Saddam.
a liberal talking point.Look, another person throwing the word "liberal" out there, as if it should be some sort of insult. *sigh*
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Thanks for proving Stalin's point. One death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic. I love how you used the word "only" next to eighty thousand deaths.
so obviously liberal math skills are as poor as liberal logic skills.Is it impossible for conservatives to engage in a debate about anything without insulting people that disagree with them? I had some choice words in my other reply but I edited them out in the interest of a productive debate.
Wanting my side to win is racism?Playing the race card was a stupid move on his part. It's not racism to want our side to win. It's not racism to fail to point out civilian deaths on the other side. At worst it's short-sided.
I disagree with the war but if you could present me with an actual plan to win it I'd be behind you 100%. Unfortunately I don't see a plan to win it and staying there for the sake of not admitting defeat is costing us billions in treasure and the lives of our troops. Regardless of why we invaded, regardless of what mistakes were made and what was done right, it's basically a civil war now. Why the hell are we still involved? Would we have tolerated somebody else intervening during our own Civil War?
It's not racism to not be upset that people that want to kill as many Americans as possible are taking dirt naps. Sounds to me that the group that wants to kill Americans have race issues, not the Americans that want to fight back.There you go again, hurling insults and making unfounded accusations. Way to elevate the debate. Are you a Congressman or Senator by any chance?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
While I'm not a fan of this current administration or many of the things it has done and continues to do daily, who in their right mind would consider it SMART to release schematics to a fucking military installation?
Yeah this just happens to be a prison but how are you going to feel when someone releases the schematics to the air conditioning system at jrandom fort in your town and proceeds to gas and entire base of people?
I'm as big an opponent of fearmongering as there is. I hate the war on "terrorism" but for god's sake people, have some common sense.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
When the negatives so far outweigh the positives, are the positives really that important any longer? The women going to school thing was bullshit, under Saddam education was handled secularly, and with little to no discrimination. Now that the religious leaders are in charge we're seeing just how far that's taking them back to the dark ages.
Also, so fucking what if we (the US) are able to open a few schools? If the kids die on their way to the schools because of suicide car bombers, then the whole open schools argument is moot.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Right, because its all about winning! yay!
We talk about positions of power being abused by governments and corporations. Take, for example, patent trolls abusing the patents system. The general consensus is that if a law can be abused, then it will be.
There is no law more ripe for abuse than the Official Secrets Act (or your country's equivalent).
Governments in democratic countries are legitimised by elections. The people of the country make a decision on who should represent them in parliament, where decisions are made on the running of the country. But such decisions are only valid if they are informed decisions, i.e. you should know how your representative is going to vote in parliament, and what actions they will take should they form a government. If your decision is uninformed, your representative cannot truly represent you.
When governments start to hide their actions behind the Official Secrets Act, your decision ceases to become informed, and the government can no longer be seen as democratic.
If you describe yourself as a patriot, are you patriotic towards your government or towards the people of your country? There is a difference.
Jane Fonda was a fucking treasonous cunt that deserved to be sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for what she did
I'm sorry, but *no one* deserves to be raped, and the very idea of using such a thing as punishment is disgusting and abhorent. But, I would like to believe you didn't actually intend to advocate such a thing.
Really, how many "vast" conspiracies were ever really proven? I sure can't think of any.
Proven government conspiracies:
- The US government's advance knowledge of the planned attack on Pearl harbor in 1941.
- COINTELPRO actions taken against civil rights leaders like MLK.
- CIA-backed coups and assassinations in Latin America during the Cold War.
- The NSA's illegal wiretapping program.
Read more history and current events.
Also, this article isn't about a "conspiracy" per se. It's about actions which are government acknowledges are going on refuses to tell the details about.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Really? The "final arbiters of government secrecy"? Why?
An unquestioning trust in the government goes against everything this country was founded on. The United States was supposed to be under the people. Government officials are supposed to be accountable for their actions to the people that elected them. "Of the people, by the people, for the people", remember? It's what made us different from every other government that came before us. Our officials are citizens, subjected to the same laws as the rest of us, not Royalty who are above the law. When an administration ignores the law, especially one as important as the Freedom of Information Act (see the summary), it is important for other citizens to step up and hold them accountable.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Of course comparisons with the IRA don't fit 100% with the current spate of terrorism because on the one hand the IRA were much more organised and effective than the current jokers and on the other the current terrorists don't have seem to have a political wing or any sensible demands they want met or anyone to meet with to discuss them.
In my opinion we should take reasonable steps to prevent terrorism, use the current police powers to deal with those we catch and chalk up any actual terrorist "successes" to being an unvoidable fact of life and not get ourselves worked up into a foaming lather over what seem to be at the most a hundred or so deaths. This might sound heartless and disrespectful to the victims but at least as many people seem to die in train crashes as die from terrorism which compared to Europes annual number of deaths is a completely insignificant figure.
Of the millions of items sent to Iraq, less then 200 cases of CS grenades were sent. Somehow that leads someone to believe that they are being used in combat, even in the absence of any proof or allegation. More likely they are being used for training.
Ya see, chemical training is required yearly. That means ya gotta have CS. Generally, you get a small cinder block house, put your people in it, pop the grenade and then let em scramble for their masks. I have personally been exposed to CS many times, having gone thru Nuclear-Biological-Chemical (NBC) training before the first Gulf war.
The 'people' we are fighting in Iraq can and will use any weapon or tactic. You can't fault us for training our 'people to prepare for them.
If the last shred of decency you have 5 years into a life sentence on a god forsaken island is the peace from a (sacred to you) religious book and someone is about to piss on that (figuratively speaking) how would YOU cope with that?
You assume that these people have a great life and they're wimps because they get barked at or someone flushes the koran. Put yourself in there shoes where people scrutinize every time you east, shit, piss and sleep and control every moment of your life and then they turn around and destroy the last sacred bit of decency you ever had.
I love how you used the word "only" next to eighty thousand deaths.
Just so long as that 80,000 is "them" and not "us", people like RailGunner will be OK with it. Of course, that reasoning flies in the face of why we went there in the first fucking place, but consistency isn't a strong point of conservatives. Propaganda and name-calling are.
First of all, the 650 thousand number you claim is discredited.
Just because whatever talking head you listen to said so doesn't make it true. The Lancet Medical Journal in which the survey was published is a highly respected peer-reviewed journal. It's going to take more to discredit the study than your sincere wish that it wasn't true.
The enemies of Democracy are
I find this topic and the arguments around it fascinating. My grandfather was imprisoned in Poland under false pretenses for five years. He had to negotiate for toilet paper. He performed many hunger strikes to win things like reading material, one time starving himself for 28 days. Seeing this manual is fairly chilling for me.
Many times over the years when I'd talk with people about his experiences, they would reassure me that such a thing wouldn't happen in a healthy constitutional democracy like the US. The cruelty and Kafkaesque behavior of his captors was relegated to the sickness of communism to be sure.
At some point long ago I realized that wasn't the case, and that we were very much capable of similar evils. Some people wouldn't agree with me, but here we have the plain as day proof.
I'm sure a percentage of the people reading this post think "who cares if they're mistreating suspected terrorists?". To each of you that feel that way, I would say this: if we had this conversation about my grandfather and communism before 9/11, or perhaps if you read his book, you'd have condemned his captors to hell for being so awful.
I love this country dearly but I'm ashamed of much of what we're doing right now.
Also: if the manual reads to you as being "not so bad" remember that it is very different when you're on the other side of it. And remember that it's just a manual: the real day to day life there is bound to be far more questionable.
> What exactly was the motivation for leaking that and what higher purpose was served? ...perhaps to even the playing field? Americans "fought dirty" in their revolutionary war by adopting guerrilla tactics, and succeeded in repelling the British forces which were invading and attempting to occupy their country. This victory is celebrated nationally on the fourth day of July, every year.
The Iraqi resistance's manpower and firepower are utterly dwarfed by that of their enemy, which happens to be a "coalition" of the World's current superpowers. Whining about this particular leak is like booing Robin Hood's valiant efforts to even the financial playing field.
One "higher purpose served" is that those men and women fighting to keep their country under their own control now have a better idea of what they're facing.
But there have been no more terrorist attacks on the US during that time.
There haven't been any fatal ocelot attacks in the US since we invaded Iraq, too.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I agree. And by that definition I don't think the war in Iraq can be won. I've said as much in other posts.
not an expression like terrorism or some suchActually, terrorism could be defeated, but not by force of arms. The way you defeat (Islamic) terrorism is by winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim World and addressing their legitimate gripes.
This is not what happens in the media, is it? You don't treat iraqi civilian lives with the same respect and importance as you treat the lives of the american soldiers. What does this tell me?Uhh, you see a hidden agenda in this? It tells me that people care more about local events that matter to them (the death of a solider from small town USA matters to the people in that town) then events that happen to people they don't know half a world away.
You can't blame the media for focusing so much energy to the hardships our troops face. You can blame them when they spend hours or days covering Britney Spears' latest trip to rehab when they could be covering the violence in Iraq.
his tells me that a lot of the americans and especially the media are at least xenophobic if not racist in this matterI'm sorry, but a lot of us are starting to get leery of racism being thrown around. This is offtopic to the discussion about Iraq, but it's reaching the point now where you can't even point out the differences between races without being called a racist. I'm automatically skeptical of anybody that needs to use racism to back up an argument.
And xenophobic? What is your basis for that? That our media isn't paying attention to what's going on in Iraq?
I feel that the american public condascendingly looks down on the iraqis as some sort of "tribal natives", people who are in need of assistance from the superior americansAgain, what's your basis for this? The American people were talked into the Iraq War because they thought Saddam was a threat. We weren't talked into the war because of some "White Man's Burden". What the hell are you basing these assumptions on?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I think trouble is...we all overestimated the intelligence and abilities of the Iraqi people. Most people, I guess, figured once they were rid of Saddam, that they'd jump at the chance to unite, and form a rational, somewhat freedom enbracing government. I mean, considering the dictatorship they'd endured, you'd think, eh?
But, it turned out not to be the case. Apparently they are pretty much all fscked in the head over there....can't get past racial/religious differences (and for God's sake how can even they tell the difference between suni and shiite?, they really do all look like one people on tv)....so, they constantly bicker and have apparently NO leaders in the group that the country can rally around.
Given this, I really don't hold up much hope for them to get their act together no matter how long we stay and support them. I think at some point, we're gonna have to withdraw...step back, throw a couple of knives in the center....and then, after it is over with...we just have to deal with the 'winner'....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
We can apply your depth of reasoning to anything that's happened between 9/11 and today, and it's all equally valid. Let's have fun with it:
You can't really prove these things. But then again, you can't really disprove them, so it's about time the liberals finally accepted that they're all true.
I'm sorry, but you have completely missed the point.
For starters, I was asking what the motivation was for the leaker himself.
Beyond that, there is no "Iraqi resistance" as conventionally imagined. Saying as such implies that the whole Iraq War boils down to our occupational forces being attacked by an armed guerrilla movement.
Most of the armed groups of "resistance fighters" are too busy killing each other or members of the other sect to focus on attacking American troops. Some of them have even allied with us when they it's in their own interest to do so.
There is no Iraqi nationalism anymore. It's all about which sect (Sunni or Shiite) or tribe you belong to. Half of them would glad to have us there if we were busy destroying their enemies. Many Iraqis are afraid to see us leave because they suspect that the entire country will explode into open warfare once we are gone.
I'm not advocating staying there or justifying why we went in. But to pretend that this is some noble resistance against an occupying force is to completely ignore the facts on the ground. This is a civil war. One that we should get the hell out of.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Eerie....
I think trouble is...we all overestimated the intelligence and abilities of the American people. Most people, I guess, figured once they were rid of <president>, that they'd jump at the chance to unite, and form a rational, somewhat freedom enbracing government. I mean, considering the dictatorship they'd endured, you'd think, eh?
But, it turned out not to be the case. Apparently they are pretty much all fscked in the head over there....can't get past racial/religious differences (and for God's sake how can even they tell the difference between Democrat and Republican?, they really do all look like one people on tv)....so, they constantly bicker and have apparently NO leaders in the group that the country can rally around.
Given this, I really don't hold up much hope for them to get their act together no matter how long we stay and support them. I think at some point, we're gonna have to withdraw...step back, throw a couple of knives in the center....and then, after it is over with...we just have to deal with the 'winner'....
No weapons of Mass Destruction ever found
Saddam admitted he was going to build nuclear weapons as soon as the sanction were lifted.
+ No realistic plan at all to rebuild Iraq
Iraqis have to rebuild their own country.
+ More Iraqi deaths since occupation than under Saddam
+ Kurdish terrorists now attacking Turkey
Iraqis killed each other, not a US problem.
+ The creation of huge Iraq sized terrorist training camp
+ American and UK forces too tied up in Iraq to effectively deal with problems in Afghanistan
There are no significant UK forces in Iraq.
+ American troops seen as evil due to their behaviour running various prisons
The only people that need to fear American troops are the enemies of the United States.
+ Trillions of dollars wasted to no good effect
+ Thousands of American deaths and countless more severely injured
More American soldiers were killed in peacetime in 1980-1982 than were killed in combat in Iraq over the last few years.
+ Iraq poised for a civil war the second the US pulls out
Iraq will not have a civil war. They had the civil war, it is ending, thanks to American mediation, and Iraq will emerge a real country.
+ Iran and other enemies of freedom reaping the benefits of an overstretched US military
Then why wait to bomb Iran? You keep talking about Iran this and Iran that? We don't need to invade Iran to destroy it!
+ Constantly rising oil prices
Really, at the same time, Democrats actually proposed a tax -INCREASE- on gasoline to save the planet. You sound like a two year old bitching about everything, with no real vision or plan.
Despite all of the left wing hand wringing, whining, and treason,
THE USA IS WINNING AND IS GOING TO WIN THE WAR IN IRAQ.
This is my sig.
If gulags like Guantanamo Bay are required in order to win, is victory worth it?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Exactly. It's not like Saddam was some kind of religious nut, in fact history shows that he was very religious at all. He only ever used Islam when it was useful for manipulating observant Muslim Iraqis. In many ways, Iraq was as secular as you get it that area. It was the war which created problems with Islamic radicalism and militancy in the country.
Except they are not 5 strong kids. You are the strong kid, and you keep bullying them day after day, taking away their lunch money and emprisoning them into lockers.
Of course, they are fed up with this, so they keep dreaming of the day where they will actually be able to harm you in some way. Some day, it happens. Then, you feel threatened and harm them some more, because in your group of cool kids, you can't let that stand.
Now that we are done with the analogy stupidity, think of this: your failure to see the other side's point of view is what perpetuates mankind's mediocrity. Your perspective is as flawed as humanly possible, yet you walk around convinced and lecturing people about "why those Iraqis had it coming". For fuck's sake, when having an argument, or a war, try and see the other point of view. There's usually some logic there too, where you don't want to look.
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
and the world respects our word (all of this in contrast to the Clinton administration).
i'm from europe and obviously miss your sense of humour. if there's none in your statement, you still must be joking right...
i don't remember _any_ us administration before bush jr. having such a negative image around here, regardless of my colleagues and friends own political viewpoints. from lefties to liberals to conservatives, even reagan and bush sr. had a much better image. just today several participant agreed on the fact, that the us will hopefully leave its current track next year after the election.
you might argue that as long your pres works in the best of your interest, it doesn't matter. if it comes to your image in the world, face the facts.
my 2 ct.
Stop being such a politically correct left-wing flower child and reading shit into my post that wasn't there.
/.
Well, first off, no, I don't have fucking Office Space memorized. I have better things to do with my time than memorize lines from shitty movies.
Second off, whether you meant it or not, there *are* those who think that prison rape is perfectly fine, and I'm fucking sick of people tacitly condoning it by casually referring to "pound me in the ass" prisons, as if it's something justifiable, or in this case, funny. It's not. Find another goddamned joke. You're part of the fucking problem, whether you realize it or not.
How finding prison rape objectionable equates to "being such a politically correct left-wing flower child", I'll never know. I find that shit offensive, and frankly, you should too.
You have completely glossed over/missed the point of my post in favor of picking on a specific line that happens to be quite popular on
Actually, no, I misunderstood because I don't have that god damned movie memorized. In fact, for all the times I've seen that statement, this is first time (and I've been here a long time) that it's been pointed out that it is, in fact, a movie quote.
Besides, if I said "she should be sent to a prison and raped repeatedly", would you find that funny (well, you might, but perhaps that's the problem)? I doubt it. But, apparently a change of phrasing makes all the difference...
Normally I don't use expletives on the Internets but Fuck you! I am a muslim and I find your suggestions barbaric to the extreme. Did you know that most of the detainees in Gitmo were randomly or falsely accused. Did you know that they have no chance of finding out what the accusation were and even if they did, they couldn't do anything about it? Would you agree to muslims forcing non-muslims to follow our own practices, since this is similar to what you are proposing? Praying and reading the Koran is the most BASIC requirement to a muslim, not as you say a reinforcement to fundamentalism. I had hoped that Slashdot is populated by brother geeks who are above making such hate comments. If you are an American, than good luck to you when your government decides that you are a threat to national safety. Sure you say, they won't go after you. But maybe you download porn and as we know, porn is immoral. Maybe you pirate music and as we know, piracy is hurting the economy. Maybe you smoke weed and as we know, the war on drugs is still on. Maybe you buy products not made by American companies and thus you are not patriotic. We no longer view your country as a beacon of democracy and equal opportunity. Your country is no longer the good guys and no longer have the moral authority to chastise third world dictatorships if people like you condone torture and imprisonment without trial.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about the USA. Clearly not.
Our economy is in the tank right now; the US dollar is dropping like a rock relative to other foreign currency. Hell, the USD is worth less than 1 CAD for the first time I can remember. We're so deep in debt to other countries that my grandkid's grandkids will probably still be paying it off, all to fund this retarded "war". At the end of the Clinton administration, we had not only a balanced budget, but a yearly surpluss that could (in theory, though I guess I'm not naieve enough to believe it would ever happen) be used to pay down our debt. That's long gone. And you may not have heard, but millions of people just lost their houses because they couldn't afford their mortgage payments.
Our military is stretched so thin we couldn't fend off an invasion from Bermuda, let alone an actual serious military threat. And our government knows it, so much so that they're coddling North Korea and Iran, two countries that are infinitely more dangerous a threat to us than Iraq could ever have been if Saddam had even wanted to.
And the rest of the world hates us. Not that this is new, but our "word" doesn't mean dick to anyone but us after that whole WMD/uranium/etc. fiasco.
--Mike
I think trouble is...we all overestimated the intelligence and abilities of the Iraqi people. Most people, I guess, figured once they were rid of Saddam, that they'd jump at the chance to unite, and form a rational, somewhat freedom enbracing government. I mean, considering the dictatorship they'd endured, you'd think, eh?
Oh that is rich. You overestimated your own intelligence. Effectively the US decided on what they wanted to find in Iraq and wrote intel to match.
Oh yeah, the Iraqis are going to love the Americans because the bombs the Americans have been dropping on them were nice bombs. Oh and the sancations were good sanctions.
Do you have a learning disability?
meh
"First, you claim that the british methods did NOT work. We don't know that, unless you got a parallel universe handy to prove it"
No you have history to prove it. The IRA came into power not because people wanted a free Ireland, but because of serious civil rights abuses by the UK in the North of Ireland. The height of recruitment was just after "Bloody Sunday" where innocent civil rights protesters were shot by the British Army. In some cases where they were lying on the ground already.
You then had approx 30 years of serious violence on both sides. It was only around the time of the good Friday Agreement that people in the North realized they were getting equal rights and it calmed down.
As for your comments on limiting deaths. Bull. Warnings were often called in with little time to clear an area. In other cases they would plant one bomb and have another explode shortly after it while people were running away from the explosion. Not to mention drug dealing, punishment beatings. Don't try to glorify the IRA.
For the recent incident with Hezbollah. Israel have routinely for some time kidnapped people they believe are suspects of Hezbollah but as soon as the reverse is done to them they bomb the crap out of the infrastructure of the country. To put it in perspective, it would be like the IRA kidnapping a solider and then the UK Bombing airports in Ireland, and infrastructure and whole housing estates because a suspect lives in one of the houses there. Justified?
Or is it only justified when your side does it?
Tell me, is America ready for 30 years or more of terrorist attacks?
That phrase is not at all clear.
For example, plenty of people consider Jane Fonda being photographed at AA installations to be propaganda for the enemy and therefore aid and comfort to the enemy.
So aside from ill-defined terms like proaganda, what exactly was wrong with what she did? I think the argument is that by highlighting the very real threat of AA-fire that she was intimidating our soldiers and thus diminishing the effectiveness of our military. Am I right that this is the heart of the argument? (i don't know the details of her case. I am assuming that the AA installations DID exist and that she wasn't making shit up so please bear with me as i mis-use her as a case-study)
If so, then does not the same argument apply to people in the US who try to keep kids from enlisting by telling them about IEDs and the allied death-toll in Iraq?
Or, is it all about trying to pursuade our active-duty personel that a war is wrong/illegal.
You can try to pursuade the general public/gvt but not soldiers? Is THAT the problem with fonda's AA photos? There is certainly a reasonable argument to be made there.
A problem arises with the real-world application of that sort of distiction because of the availablility of Internet and other media to our soldiers. If I KNOW that soldiers will read my blog/youtube/whatever would it be wrong to post an argument so pursuasive that it might induce some soldiers to flee or go awol for moral/religious reasons? Opposing a war by voicing your opposition in the public debate is not giving them 'aid and comfort' (regardless of what Bush says). isn't it? strictly speaking i think that it is.
If we are the invaders then pursuading our government to withdraw our forces is literally aid and comfort to the enemy is it not? They would certainly be aided and comforted by that.
OK, I'm going to step out on a limb here and be political. In the last 5 years there have been around 200,000 deaths due to automobile accidents. We do not see the national guard patrolling the nation's streets and detaining speeders and unsafe drivers. We do not send drunk drivers to Guantanamo. These deaths are not a national security issue apparently.
The American Cancer Society estimates that about 1,500 Americans will die of cancer each day in 2006. Not counting non-Americans. The president proposes $4.78 billion for the National Cancer Institute budget for 2008. The proposed defense budget for the global war on terror in 2008 will be $141.7 billion. These cancer deaths are apparently not a national security issue.
So why have we spent over $600 billion since 9/11 fighting global terror? Because 3,000 people died in a terrorist attack. Yes this is tragic, this is shocking. Yes, Americans still feel the grief, Americans of all political persuasions. I do not want to see more deaths due to terrorism. But the global war on terror has lost perspective. Just count the numbers people. That's only 2 days of cancer deaths. That's less than one month of automobile deaths. This is not a liberal position, this is a mathematical position.
Not if what they're saying is true.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Of course, that reasoning flies in the face of why we went there in the first fucking place
We didn't go there for the safety of the indiginous population, that's for sure. We went there because our leaders are as well sighted as moles (and in the name of national security, oil supply security, etc.) Protection of the Kurds, Iraqi political dissidents, etc is nothing but smokescreen.
Put another way, there are some actions so heinous that pretty much any punishment is justifiable.
Most people would disagree. The purpose of punishment is to prevent re-offending, deter others from offending, and if possible to make reparation to the victim. Rape, torture and mutilation do not serve any purposes other than petty vengeance and spreading fear, and if you're the kind of person who thinks they can be justified you might be right at home working for those Big Names you mentioned.
.evom ton seod gis eht
You basically echoed the first guy, just from the other side. I'd have slapped him, but he was just an AC...I apply -3 to all ACs, so I didn't even see him.
Conservative/Liberal...Both sides are drinking the coolaid. There is nothing to be gained by just playing the label game over and over. If I say "I like guns, the death penalty, and free trade" I'm a Bushie who loves the war and eats Iraqi babies for breakfast. If I say, "I believe in social services, universal healthcare, and the right to an abortion" I'm a whiny tree hugger.
It's just ridiculous. Most people really aren't crazy, but when every discussion devolves into flamebait and name calling without there actually having been an argument over something to start it off? That's fucking crazy.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.