I don't have any news articles to cite or links to add, but I think this is a good topic to discuss.
I couldn't believe Pelosi for one second. I saw her press conference on Fox and every word that came out of her mouth seemed like a lie. She studdered almost the whole way through. I think just about everyone that saw the speech could smell a lie on her breath. Its one thing that she says the CIA "mis lead her" but she is obviously now misleading America. She is distorting the truth to make Americans hate our security forces.
I can't stand how these liberal shit stains are making Americans hate America and feel sorry for our enemies. Melkor said it best when he texted me "the only way to measure if the torturings were justifiable was how many Jihadists died because of them." Correct me if I'm wrong Melkor, but that was what I got from it.
Piss on these cowards for blaming our CIA agents of doing something wrong. We should have done a lot worse to those bastards, never forget 9/11.
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She is a disgusting human being who married into money. She ably represents the disgusting electorate of San Francisco. She gives them what they want. However, that a sleezy, traitorous, airheaded person could be nominated Speaker of the House shows just how far over the deep end the Democratic party has gone.
ReplyDeleteOf course the same could be said of our president, and how far off the deep end our nation has gone that he could be elected.
Yeah, basically they're saying "you better kill them when you capture these out-of-uniform enemy combatants who have no Geneva Rights, because otherwise they will be given every right as a full citizen of the USA".
It seems that, to be elected a leader of the Democratic party you have to show a distinct lack of accomplishment in real life. Married or inherited wealth helps, as does affirmative action.
I don't know, maybe I'm getting Old-timer's disease, now I'm not 50 yet, but maybe I'm having a tough time recollecting the last 8 years??? Who was it that caused the Democrats and the majority of the nation, many Republican transferees, and the rest of the world to go off the deep end....ummmmmmmm??????
ReplyDeleteOh, I will say this, and don't take me lightly, I love the picture of Meghan McCain enjoying a brewski while she blogs, I would vote for her and her large American.....
I wonder what the whole point of bringing up water boarding is? Maybe to please the far left? Looks like the issue got turned against them. It is nice to watch Pelosi get caught up in her own lies. Maybe this will help bring this anti American hippie down and show the nation what a bunch of clowns and hypocrites these people are.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing at the leaders Americans have put over themselves. But if we are willing to put them there then we deserve them and the wreckage they will bring to this nation.
Why all the sympathy for the terrorist? What about the potential victims? An attack on a building in LA was prevented by the information gained by these methods. These people hate America and would kill every one of us if given the chance. Showing them we are really nice and not so bad is not going to change their opinion about us. The only way to compromise with these people is to kill ourselves or allow them to kill us.
I doubt water boarding can be considered torture. I read that some military people are water boarded in some pow training. There are ways to get information other than just beating them. Make them uncomfortable, deprive them of sleep and food, put them in a bright room and have them questioned by a skillful integrator.
Melkor, did you get waterboarded when you went to SERE School?
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ReplyDeleteI should hit preview before I post instead of reading after I post...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was waterboarded. It was a punishment if you "messed up." For me, it was when I did not give the name of the plane we were on during a mass capture. Since it was basic information, everyone likely knew it, and because it was a mass capture (a situation where its most likely they will execute a prisoner), I should have given up the info after a few "rough handlings"
We should not be mad at Pelosi for all of this however, we should be laughing our asses off as it:
1) shows how ridiculous she looks
2) shows how she has turned the CIA/Intel establishment against her
3) Forced Obama to pull another reversal over intelligence (in this case revealing the torture photos...he says because it would cause disturbances, but the real reason I suspect is because how sensitive Pelosi has made it for the democratic party)
4) Will probably get her smug San Francisco ass posted.
Number 4 is the only one I worry about since Pelosi has proven, in my mind, to be a weak willed whiny bitch. Bush ran roughshod over her and she could barely act. What if the dems actually get a strong Speaker of the House. That could be dangerous. But then again maybe, against the Messiah, we should have stronger Congressional leadership. Even if the case calls for a stronger Democratic Leader, it might be necessary to swallow that bitter pill so we can have a proper system of checks and balances to stand up to the executive. I don't know.
But on the wider issue of "torture" what I meant was that in order to properly judge the effectiveness of the policy we have to weigh how many terrorists it enables us to kill/capture vs how many are galvinized to join the cause or has made it more difficult to combat the cause. To repeat my broken record, if a policy equals a tactical victory for a strategic failure, we should discontinue the practice.
I can already see what Bud-D is about to right, "I doubt there are thousands of people joining the terrorist cause because of waterboarding" and I would bet that is partly true. However, I think how CNN reports waterboarding might be different than how al-Jazzeria reports it, or how it's spun around other arab media outlets offering an easy PSYOP victory to the terrorists. In addition, the opinion of non-fundamentalist muslims is important to take into account. They likely will never join in a war against the US or their own government, but they can certainly make it difficult for our Arab allies to assist in the overall war against terrorism (lack of will to help US, tanking popularity popularity for the gov't, in the few cases voting matters: vote against the government).
To take the discussion to a wider front, I think that waterboarding is one piece of easy ammunition for anti-war groups in Europe (although it certainly is not the only thing that has drained our popularity) to make the war in Afghanistan more difficult for Europeans to support. If the War on Terror is the only thing left that can elicit any stirrings of masculine guts in feminine Europe, than we need to make sure that the WoT is still a morally righteous thing (in their eyes) to do
(Pew Poll: All NATO allies except the British think we should pull out of Afghanistan instead of stay in: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1166/obama-trip-turkey-europe-likely-reactions ).
Thus, in the midst of Obama's popularity in Europe (in Jan) and the Feb trip where he raised the issue of troop and monetary commitments to Afghanistan, I think it was a good idea for him to ban the practice before encouraging the Europeans to participate. I don't know how long we would be able to monetarily and politically finance the war on terror without European support.
The argument could be made that by granting the hippies waterboarding, they'll pick another scary EIT and protest till they get that banned. But since January we have not seen the media target any other of the EIT's and I'm pretty sure that after the sensitivity over the issue and the deflections the White House has made:
(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/05/15/white_house_dodges_question_about_pelosi.html kinda funny that foxnews is the only news org willing to question the white house on this)
I think that as long as everyone but fox news worships him as their false idol, they will not be willing to challenge any of the EITs that are being used under Obama's watch.
I got water boarded with JP-5(Jet Petroleum) along side with Jeff Dean at Bulk Fuel School. No sweat off our sacks. I'd do it again.
ReplyDeleteShe has backed herself into a corner by accusing the CIA of lying to her. A desperate move. Maybe this can work to help unseat the democrats.
ReplyDeleteHow do we make the war morally righteous in Europe's eyes? Obama did apologize to the Europeans a lot during his recent visit there and I don't know how much support they gave him as a result of his visit. One reason they did not want to support the Iraq war was because France, I think, was involved in illegal business dealing with the Iraqi government.
I don't know how much financial support the Europeans give for the war? I am not saying it is not important to have their support and that it is not needed. But I guess you can only pander and compromise so much on fighting the war. If they didn't use EIT, then there possibly could have been an attack on LA. So I don't know at what cost we be willing to pay in order to pander to Europe.
The way I see it is that America can't pander too much to people that will likely never support the Afghan war and don't have any desire to pursue a war, but I do see the importance of having support from allies and the Muslim countries. I guess that is the tricky part of diplomacy and conducting a war. This is along the same lines as Obama believing that just talking to people that see America as the great 'Satan' will make them like us and give up their goal of destorying America. America needs to be a leader and not worry so much about offending countries that don't value freedom and human life.
It says something about the state of America that a lot of people would look at a man that can speak well and repeat slogans well as a messiah.
I did find the fact that a lot of Europe and especially Brussels' , the administrative seat of the European Union, population is becoming mostly Muslim. Europe's culture and people are slowly dying. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510364,00.html
This is more dangerous than water boarding as fuel causes cancer. So water shouldn't be a big deal.
Anyway, Jeff I don’t know how true it is that Obama’s requests for more troops from NATO was a failure:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/04/europe-troops-afghanistan-nato-obama
But you are accurate that we bear a disproportionate share in the War on Terrorism and that the increase is only marginal, but at least they are not WITHDRAWING troops. We might have the largest share, but the cost of maintaining it without the Europeans would be extremely prohibitive. What we have to realize is that the decisions by some European Governments to send troops to Afghanistan is counter to the general opinion of their public and is politically dangerous for them to do (ask Tony Blair about this):
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33627.pdf
scroll down to the individual sections for the netherlands and how opposed their government was to deploying troops to Afghanistan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/20/france.afghanistan?gusrc=rss&feed=global
(this article details the opposition people had to Sarkozy's remaining firm on French commitments to Afghanistan although this was written before Obama's visit in April)
The decision these leaders are making are supportive of us (US) and is in the best interest of their countries despite what their miserable general publics believe (I’ll write a diatribe against Universal Suffrage later) . But it cannot be a one way street. Cooperation by definition = Compromise. It would be politically impossible for our allies to continue their support if we ignore their pleas and demands on the issue of waterboarding (and potentially tribunals for Gitmo detainees???? yeah, we can have that conversation too), it would be ludicrous for us to expect elected governments to lose elections solely to maintain a US policy. We have to keep in mind their survival. By banning waterboarding we lower the political costs for the War on Terror, we certainly won’t have large crowds rallying for the US or anything, but the energy of opposition to the conflict will be lowered, thus lowering the cost of cooperation.
The problem with all of this is that it is so hard to measure soft power and influence which makes it difficult for Bismark/Kissenger Realists to acknowledge when trying to figure out how we achieve our national interests. But it exists despite how much we hate it. If we ignore it we will be fighting alone and, I believe, lose this war.
Incase you are wondering, here’s the troop breakdowns by country. In order to cover the exits of our European allies we would have to contribute a little over 100% of the number of troops we currently have in country. Not cheap.
http://www.nato.int/isaf/docu/epub/pdf/isaf_placemat.pdf
In regards to concern of people that hate US and freedom I think you’re absolutely correct. Obama’s willingness to talk with Hitler II in Tehran is ABSOLUTELY RETARDED. Especially since it does sooo much to increase Hitler II's political survivability in the upcoming Majiles elections. Dumb. Like, freaking dumb. Once again, he ran on a platform of happiness openness to appease a uneducated base (and I mean base in every sense of the word). Obama is undermining the legitimate democratic opposition in Iran.
However, we should be concerned with what people in Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey, etc think. These are the governments that we have historic and positive ties with, if we jeopardize these relationships than we make it even easier for other LA plots to be plotted and executed, we give the enemy increased Lines of Communication, we hand him an easily exploitable PSYOP victory, and grant new safe havens if we ever manage to crush them in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Here’s a break down of world opinion during the Bush Years. Note that before everything went south, 52% of Turkey had a positive view of the US. That’s 52% of an Islamic country (albeit secular….sorta), it is now at 10. The Turkish President, which is supposed to protect secularism, is now lifting bans on headscarves, banning certain religiously sensitive materials in Turkey, etc etc, do you think this may have any relation to the rise of anti-Americanism in the country???
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=263
Don’t get me wrong. I would like to pistol whip a jihadist as much as the next red-blooded American. I watched Rules of Engagement and thought the decision to waste the crowd was the right thing to do. I don’t think waterboarding is torture and believe those that say so are limp wristed diplomats and lawyers. But I truly don’t think that waterboarding is the only thing that is keeping this country from being hit by another terrorist attack. Maybe it was used to stop LA, but that does not mean that information could have been gained from other EIT’s (remember, there is still quite the repertoire) as well the other intelligence reforms made after 2004. If the world thinks that Waterboarding is torture, then no matter how much we pound our fists and say/blog it isn’t (albeit we’re correct) won’t negate the fact that we will lose our image as the good righteous actor and transition into one that is legitimate to combat as an immoral force (and one that sheds all its allies in the process). Or from a realist perspective: If waterboarding captures a few other jihadists but in the process the Dutch pullout their 1800 troops, it is exactly the same as if we lost 1800 casualties to capture them. Unacceptable.
I'm happy to be a broken record and say "Great discussion!". Melkor, I think you're learning well the State Dept attitude ;)
ReplyDeleteI lean towards Jeff. The world was happy when we were big fat happy Pilsbury Doughboy nation under Clinton, and they think they'll get it again but more so with Obama. And they're probably right. Your point is good Melkor about the consequences of pissing the Dutch off so much they pull out. But, we can't let the world dictate to us what the right course of action in a given situation is. The rest of the world either resents us or hates us. One or the other. None of them has our best interest at heart. And that was true before GW. They were happy to see us pathetically limp-wristed before 9/11. Like I have said, any anti-US person in the world ought to be pissed off at Osama bin Laden, because he temporarily caused us to get off our fat ass and do what we need to do to protect our people and our interests in the world. We will never get love (unless we save some useless shits' asses for the umpteenth time). We can only get respect. We need to act that way. We don't let the world dictate what we do. That's not to say we should be out of control rulers of the world (say, like if Gandalf had taken The Ring). And it is right to discuss torture and come to a reasonable policy for its use, and that doesn't mean torture anybody for any reason. But just because Sweden says tickling somebody with The Soft Pillow (Monty Python Spanish Inquisition reference) is torture, doesn't mean its therefore torture.
I'm not poo-pooing Waterboarding. I wouldn't want to go through it. But, three of the writers and commenters on this panel have been waterboarded, and they don't think its torture, so that's good enough for me.
I was not aware of the level of support that Europe provides for the war on terror although I don't know how important or how vital this support is. I did not see Europe's support from the political cost of their support they provide for America; and therefore, if we want their support we need to take into consideration how the leaders are viewed in the eyes of their public. I see your point about Europe's support being more important than demanding certain EITs be used. I still don't know if there support hinges on the water boarding issue.
ReplyDeleteThe world is not so simple and the American public is not likely to be willing to be the only ones supporting or fighting the war on terror.
On compromising, Notre Dame is a Christian college and a big part of who they are at the core is respect for life. They just put aside their beliefs and who and what they stand for all for the sake of compromise and caving in to Obama. I know it is necessary to compromise on minor issues and as long as it doesn't go too far and change what one stands for. We can only go so far on compromising before we change who and what we are. America does need to be the leader of the free world and not be willing to change what America stands for just for the sake of being friends and having the support and love of the world. That makes up a slave to world opinion. Compromise is the way things are done in Washington and in the world. Compromising and getting along with everybody is the future.
The world is not black and white even if it should be. It is just reality.
If the Dutch pulled out 1800 troops it would only be the same as 1800 casualties if America did not replace or could not replace those 1800 troops and the replacements dies in combat.
When did things go south? Water boarding? Was the lost of support due to America fighting the war on terror after 911 or due to the water boarding issue? If Turkey would be angry that America is not treating terrorist like guest and if they would have a lot of sympathy for terrorist, then that says a lot about Turkey. They won't support us no matter what we due in regards to the war on terror. I don't know how America or the war on terror or the water boarding issue is looked at by them. Or if the facts are being twisted by the Arab media. If so, what can America do about it? Be held hostage by the lies and being misrepresented by the Arab media and their opinion?
Who has been water boarded?
ReplyDeleteProbably just Melkor. I see now that the Bulk Refuelers probably just had a virtual waterboarding in JP-5 when it spilled on their heads out on the flightline, not an actual waterboarding. Hoo-Rah!
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