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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#511

Post by redeemedfadi »

sq1020 wrote: post #441

Another example of the hypocrisy of our goverment which claims to champion ideals like freedom and equality before the law. As long as there are innocent people like this suffering grave injustices in gitmo, as long as drones are killing innocent Pakistani villagers, as long as the U.S. brazenly continues to financially and militarily support Israel, the president and every member of congress have blood on their hand…

The leadership of this country is made up of citizens of this country. I think John Q. average tax payer would do the same thing if he were in office. Our leadership is a representation of us. The government is made up of US Citizens. We can't just blame the government for it's bad decisions, because in truth it is our decisions.

If we want to change the government, we must first change ourselves. How kind are we to our neighbors, who live across the street?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#512

Post by parfe »

glesica wrote: post #506
enraged_camel wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama did call Congress out on their behavior. Openly, publicly and many times. It accomplished absolutely nothing. Look, when you have an entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich, that has sworn to do anything in its power to make sure you fail, there's not much you can do, even if you are the President of the United States.

Didn't the Dems have both houses of Congress for the first two years? Unless the "entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich" you're talking about is the Democratic party (I would argue that it is both).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1063766...

Due a lawsuit and illness and death the Democrats had a filibuster breaking majority for something like 58 days. And even then it would require every single senator to be in agreement.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#513

Post by tinco »

melvinmt wrote: post #502
tinco wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As a Dutch person I believe The Netherlands is the greatest country of the world) You say this is hubris, but you fail to mention that in many if not more objective ways America is the greatest country in the world. It has the largest amount of wealthy people, the largest amount of educated people, it has freed an entire continent of war, its justice system covers and protects an enormous amount of people, it holds…

> (As a Dutch person I believe The Netherlands is the greatest country of the world) Uhm, really? As another Dutch person I now suspect you to be a member of some extreme rightwing ideology (PVV?) because no sane Dutch person I've ever known would say such an absurd thing.

Then you have a naive view of the world around you. Many things suck in other countries that you just don't notice in The Netherlands.

Also, viewing your country as great has nothing to do with rightwing ideology. I do not for a second think that past immigration laws have done anything to degrade The Netherlands as a great country.

Also, immigration laws (PVV's main issue) have nothing to do with rightwing ideology, it is merely associated with it due to conservationists often being right wing. Hitler for example was famous for his dislike of immigrants and also was a leftist.

Also, please don't post dumb assumptions over other peoples ideologies on public websites..

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#514

Post by ucee054 »

berntb wrote: post #509
ucee054 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assert Breivik was a single crazy but you ignore the fact that his kahanist buddies in outfits like the JDL are well funded organized groups. You also ignore that in terms of the domestic terror threat, according to the FBI organized jewish loons are a larger threat than yemeni moslem loons - and that jewish loons aren't being locked up indefinitely http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2135229.html You…

Just so I get your position right: 1. Al Qaeda can be described as 19 brown people -- not thousands of members (and hundreds of millions in finances) with repeated attempts at mass murder through terrorism. 2. If the Western world wasn't racist -- Breivik should have gotten as much attention as al Q, despite his whole gang (he, himself) being in jail. 3. This attention of Breivik is merited because: Two groups of cra…

No you idiot. I was replying to rmc when he said Breivik was a lone nut job. I gave another example of McVeigh, who was definitely not a lone nut job, and pointed out that the same rule applies. And so the McVeigh example invalidates rmc's point by itself. Are you really that stupid that you keep missing the point?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#515

Post by ucee054 »

berntb wrote: post #509
ucee054 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assert Breivik was a single crazy but you ignore the fact that his kahanist buddies in outfits like the JDL are well funded organized groups. You also ignore that in terms of the domestic terror threat, according to the FBI organized jewish loons are a larger threat than yemeni moslem loons - and that jewish loons aren't being locked up indefinitely http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-2135229.html You…

Just so I get your position right: 1. Al Qaeda can be described as 19 brown people -- not thousands of members (and hundreds of millions in finances) with repeated attempts at mass murder through terrorism. 2. If the Western world wasn't racist -- Breivik should have gotten as much attention as al Q, despite his whole gang (he, himself) being in jail. 3. This attention of Breivik is merited because: Two groups of cra…

And no, Al Qaeda is not some James-Bond baddy organization with hundreds of millions in finances, you pulled that out of your ass.

Al Qaeda is a common name used by lots of different little local terrorist groups to make themselves seem menacing. eg if the Al Shabab boys in Somalia want to make themselves seem badass, they call themselves "Al Qaeda in Somalia"

But facts don't matter to you because you are a complete fraud.

So we'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and pretend that you are talking sense. We'll pretend that you were referring to Osama Bin Laden's organization in 2001. His actual organization, not the one in your fever dreams.

That organization had hardly any people outside of Afghanistan. And didn't use much money. Their entire budget for the attack was 19 air tickets and some box cutters.

The facts about the attack are also that it was small. Large for a terrorist attack, but small in the grand scale of things. 2 or 3 buildings knocked down, and about 3000 people killed.

We'll throw in the US embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole as well.

And you are saying this grand total justifies extraordinary rendition, suspension of habeas corpus and the Geneva conventions, the Patriot act etc etc etc. while the Korean war didn't?

Mao's China and Kim Il Sung's Korea put together, with their legions of commandos (and now their nukes) were a threat.

Are you trying to say a few thousand suicide bombers are a bigger threat? Such a bigger threat that we have to give up civil liberties for them that we did NOT have to give up when at war with China?

Are you really that stupid?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#516

Post by ucee054 »

rmc wrote: post #370
ucee054 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way? Easy: what Norway did after Breivik. If a country is aping the Israelis, it's failed as a democracy.

That was one lone crazy person. Are there other members of Breivik's gang out there? Totally different from an organisation of many people (possibly growing).

By the way, I grew up in London in the 80s.

The IRA were bombing Britain all the time. There are still no trash cans in the London subway system today; they were taken out because the IRA might leave bombs in them.

The IRA even hit Downing Street and one of Thathcer's political conferences.

There might have been stepped up security in Northern Ireland itself, but security in London during that period was far less than during this stupid "War on Terror", and there weren't all these stupid "anti-terror" laws. The regular police didn't even carry guns back then.

Thatcher tried to use a regulation banning the voices of Sinn Fein from being put on air because they were advocating terror. The BBC just played the footage and used voice-over artists to say their words.

And this was how 80's Britain responded to the IRA, which was a large and well funded organization.

So I have an existence proof that you don't have to turn into a police state as a response to terrorism, because I grew up in a country that chose another option.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#517

Post by lmickh »

parfe wrote: post #512
glesica wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the Dems have both houses of Congress for the first two years? Unless the "entrenched party, backed up by the ultra-rich" you're talking about is the Democratic party (I would argue that it is both).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1063766... Due a lawsuit and illness and death the Democrats had a filibuster breaking majority for something like 58 days. And even then it would require every single senator to be in agreement.

So because the Democrats didn't have total control on Congress, they aren't responsible for the failures to drive issues forward? They had a majority. They should step up and take ownership for their part.

I remember when we expected statemen to work out difficult conflicts. Now they just throw up their hands and say "He did it" while people cheer them on for "sticking to their guns". It isn't our fault, they are the ones that refused to compromise by accepting my proposal...

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#518

Post by lmickh »

StavrosK wrote: post #481
dsrguru wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seeing Americans in movies go "best country in the world!" sounds absurd to us That sounds absurd to most Americans too. I've only heard that kind of rhetoric spoken by politicians, and it's definitely not a view most of us espouse. There are a large number of Americans who believe the U.S. has the most powerful military in the world, and there are a sizeable number of Americans who believe that the U.S. provides t…

Hmm, I think that we probably don't know the sort of people who would consider their countries the best in the world, but I have a feeling that there's a larger percentage of those in the US (think Bible belt) than in Europe. I imagine that this is localized, though, as there are people in Greece who are all Golden-Dawn fascist-patriots too. They're seen as uneducated caricatures, which I imagine is how their America…

Your statements have way more to do with your personal views then any facts.

As a person that lives in the Bible Belt, I can tell you that a significant number of folks that do not think America is the best. Many do believe it was at one time, but some of the strongest critics are in the Bible Belt now. The Tea Party movment, while arguably misguided, is a great example of that.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#519

Post by ucee054 »

rmc wrote: post #163
PeterisP wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU, a number of ministers have been disgraced enough to be thrown out of politics when their cooperation with USA "extraordinary rendition" came known. Where is the outrage in USA about Gitmo - which high-ranking officials have resigned in shame (or been thrown out for being shameless) about keeping these torture centers?

Sure, and some countries had their own Gitmos. The UK had hunger strikes and imprisonment without trial during their own civil war in Northern Ireland. It's not as black and white as "USA bad, EU good".

Your parallel is off. Ireland itself was the "war" zone, which would be analogous to the US black sites in Afghanistan. You don't want the comparison.

And civil liberties in the mainland were nowhere near as bad as this stupid war on terror.

The UK had internment without trial in the 1970s. The hunger strike episode was in the 1980s, and was started by people who had been tried and convicted. Not people being "rendered" illegally from other countries and certainly not random people handed in for bounty who never received trial.

Finally, the internment episode, which shows the UK in the worst light, is documented in this link in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius

The timeline is from 1971-1977. "Gitmo" has been going for twice that long already.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#520

Post by onli »

tinco wrote: post #513
melvinmt wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (As a Dutch person I believe The Netherlands is the greatest country of the world) Uhm, really? As another Dutch person I now suspect you to be a member of some extreme rightwing ideology (PVV?) because no sane Dutch person I've ever known would say such an absurd thing.

Then you have a naive view of the world around you. Many things suck in other countries that you just don't notice in The Netherlands. Also, viewing your country as great has nothing to do with rightwing ideology. I do not for a second think that past immigration laws have done anything to degrade The Netherlands as a great country. Also, immigration laws (PVV's main issue) have nothing to do with rightwing ideology,…

Hitler was not left.
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