Live data from Hacker News

CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

amanpour.blogs.cnn.com

71–80 of 138 posts

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.

>"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". > [T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuste…

To not understand the Senate representational system is to not understand that the explicit purpose of the Senate was to prevent the tyranny of the majority. That was the foundation of the U.S. Constitution. The Great Compromise of 1787 was expressway to ensure smaller states had their rights protected. Without that compromise, tax dollars could be voted to improve New York City while draining the economy of less populous states. That's the genius of the American system. It is the very definition of a check and balance. The States are sovereign entities and deserve an equal voice. The House of Represenatives provides representation based on population, so that does ensure that every person is represented equally, while the Senate technically represents the states, which ensures that each state is represented equally. The foolish amendment that enabled the direct election of Senators somewhat diluted that dichotomy, but ultimately the Senate represents the states.

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.

>"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". > [T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuste…

In terms of the Kyoto Protocol, are we still buying into the myth that global warming is caused by human carbon emissions? Have the last 17 years disproved that yet?

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, it favors many districts where you win 51% of the vote over few districts where you win 80%. You'd actually need gerrymandering to reverse this effect if, like today's Democratic party, your voters are concentrated in urban areas that would otherwise be perfectly natural districts to draw.

>"Seat allocation" doesn't favor rural districts, Yes it does, at least in the sense that "rural" means "low population density" or "low ratio of population to Congressional seats". > [T]he Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation. >In the last few years, 41 senators representing as little as a third of the nation’s population have frequently blocked legislation, as the filibuste…

The senate represents the states and the house represents the people. It would be entirely unfair if a small number of high population states could easily impose their will on a large number of small population states. States and their citizens gave up some of their sovereignty when they joined the union, and in return were promised some equitable form of representation, no matter the size of their population. Large states like Colorado bring massive amounts of land an natural resources to the union.

There's a reason we're a constitutional republic and not a pure democracy. Pure democracy would inevitably lead to a tyranny of the majority. Nine US states have over half the US population. Would it be fair for those few states to able to completely over-ride the interests of the other 41 states in the union?

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#74
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Italians can go pound sand. They had no problem allowing the lead Achille Lauro hijacker safe passage to Egypt. And in 2008 they release another Achille hijacker -- a murderer and PLO terrorist. I don't really care if the Italians had their sensibilities offended by rendition. Rendition never resulted in an Italian citizen's death, but the Achille Lauro incident certainly resulted in an American's death. I am not…

Nobody's clean, everybody got that. Can we move on, and aim for the best solution ?

Well, citing an Italian court as some sort of example is hilarious in my view.

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#75
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they are not using the word "agent" as a CIA job title, but rather in the actual meaning of the word: An agent is one who acts for, or in the place of, another, by authority from him; one entrusted with the business of another.

The media uses the word "agent" to refer only to those who work in intelligence and defense agencies, so your explanation doesn't seem sufficient. And even if you are right - the word "agent" has a clear and different meaning in the context of intelligence, so at best this is a really bad choice of words.

It's an innaccurate choice of words and reflective of media ignorance on the subject. The media doesn't use the term "police agent" to describe cops nor do they call State Department consular officers "consular agents." The media, if they are interested in accuracy ought to start by getting the simple stuff correct. If someone is giving a talk at a conference about RAM and they keep saying ROM, perhaps you'd doubt their understanding of the subject. That's my point, the media loses credibility when they maintain use of innaccurate terminology yet they want to be perceived as an expert on the subject.

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prestige hit and vulnerability to "letting down the troops" criticisms will ensure this doesn't happen.

The real reason is that they were carrying out the official policy of the US government. Just calling it CIA torture is minimizing how far up this went. Bush ordered it. DOD knew. DOJ not only knew, it crafted the governments tortured definition of torture. Congress knew. This isn't some off the books CIA wet team opp. It was planned and signed off at the highest levels. John Yoo, who wrote the torture memos, is a pr…

Do you have proof Bush ordered it? I love theories, but I also love facts. I'm not sure I see equal outrage in te denial of due process to Americans killed by Obama's drone strikes. Let's be consistent in our outrage. Shouldn't Obama be brought up on murder charges since he ordered the execution of Americans, bypassing the Constitution, the courts and the law?

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#78
post #6

It would actually be in the U.S.'s own interests to prosecute these CIA agents and their superiors. First, this would show support for international laws against torture and help put the lid back on Pandora's box. This would directly reduce the probability of captured U.S. citizens being tortured. No, that probably does not include those captured by ISIL, but are rogue terrorist organizations all U.S. citizens will n…

The CIA coined the term "plausible deniability", if their superiors didn't know it's possibly because they didn't want to. I think this is less of a surprise than people let on, which is why I doubt the US will prosecute them.

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#79
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is that they were carrying out the official policy of the US government. Just calling it CIA torture is minimizing how far up this went. Bush ordered it. DOD knew. DOJ not only knew, it crafted the governments tortured definition of torture. Congress knew. This isn't some off the books CIA wet team opp. It was planned and signed off at the highest levels. John Yoo, who wrote the torture memos, is a pr…

> "Just following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg because we were trying the people who gave the orders too. The only reason the Nuremberg trails happened at all, was that Germany lost. No-one was indited over fire-bombing Dresden, or nuking Hiroshima. People didn't go to prison over atrocities committed in Vietnam. While there should be prosecution over this, it seems unlikely to happen in the current US system. I'…

There were trials for crimes committed in Vietnam, and the commanding officer was found guilty:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

Re: CIA agents who tortured are vulnerable to prosecution in any country

#80

One huge peave of mine reflects a general level of ignorance about CIA by both media and commentators; they aren't CIA 'Agents' they are CIA 'officers.' It might sound like a nitpick, but if the news media repeatedly gets such a fundamental detail wrong, how can they be even remotely viewed as credible in the bigger issues? It would be like a reporter referring to RAM as ROM; hard to to have any faith that they even…

> It might sound like a nitpick, but if the news media repeatedly gets such a fundamental detail wrong, how can they be even remotely viewed as credible in the bigger issues?

Well you probably have noticed that news articles tend to sound believable when they're about any subject matter except the one you have first-hand experience with. Hacker News is a good illustration of this phenomenon, since it seems that for every other article there's a person here who is, or knows someone who is involved in the situation described, and comments to correct many misconceptions in said article.

So no, it doesn't seem like a nitpick - it seems only rational to assume that most of the time news sites have no fucking clue what they're writing about. That, or they're deliberately lying to spin something.

Post reply on HN