" I mean the McCain amendment specifically prohibiting torture. Cheney was actively lobbying to exempt the CIA "
The big problem here is what is defined as torture which includes "anything that makes one uncomfortable". Putting them in confinement would probably make them uncomfortable.
"Cheney was obsessed with Joe Wilson, and he and "Scooter" followed his every move. "
Wow! You actually followed them around and know all this for a fact! Then you knew all about this Valerie Plame business then? And didn't leak her name? MORE BS.
Well, it's been fun bandying words with you all, and hope we could all still have a friendly chat over a cold one if we ever met. I confess I still don't understand the new conservatism. Maybe the conservatives that raised me were just different. They valued personal responsibility, always take the high road - the end never justified the means, stayed out of debt, and above all, didn't trust the government regardless of who is in the office - keep them on a short leash and throw them out the second they looked like they were abusing their office.
If we could agree on the exact behavior that consistutes "torture", I'd be all for it. The problem is that the current language precludes even making people feel bad. By that definition, making them listen to Barbara Streisand recordings qualifies.
I have no idea and I'd like to know: a) If this is true, and b) Why it is so, if it is so.
Oh, and as to the "forged yellowcake..." tell that to the soldiers who just carted out tons of uranium from Iraq over the past year. That particular document may well have been bogus, but the material was certainly in country somehow ...
This is supported by what? A New York Times editorial? Al Franken drooling all over himself? National Whiner Public Radio commentary? I'm not saying you're wrong, only that I've seen no credible proof of such accusations.
It is NOT the federal government's job (no Constitutional authority) to:
1) Be first responder in a natural disaster
2) Override the instructions of the local major/governor
3) Rebuild cities at the taxpayers expense.
First you bitched that the Cheney "botched" the reconstruction of NO. Now you don't like the *way* he handed out money. Don't you get it? The problem is his (and the Feds) being involved *at all*
No, but they've told us that the targets were people making international phone calls to known/suspected terror operatives. It's a reasonable deduction.
I agree with that completely. Too bad we didn't enforce that (thereby setting precedent) with Johnson and Clinton (to name just two) first.
Cheney's not the problem. You can replace him in a minute and nothing changes. So long as the Sheeple act as they do, government is:
1) Going to have way too much power
2) Be so large as to be incompetent most of the time
3) Be slow to fix real problems
4) Be bogged down in stupid minutae not in its actual charter
The way to fix this is to slim the Federal government back to its Constitutionally mandated charter: Run the courts, defend the borders, regulate *inter* state commerce (only), and, of course, run the Post Office.
I've enough of your insults. FWIW, I have a minor in history. You clearly don't listen to people who disagree with your opinions (and they are opinions, not :truth:, any more than my opinions are :truth:).
Actually, I don't watch much TV news, but I've never heard of Ms Kouric saying it might be "fun" to nuke a country.
Coulter is a spasmodic nitwit who thinks she's brighter than other people, who apparently delights in shock value instead of information value. If you find that an attractive feature in commentators, I feel sorry for you.
You didn't read what I posted very closely. The point is that he has had direct experience (as he later posted through his parents helping other escape the iron curtain) with the kind of society that the left thinks hasn't worked yet just because it hasn't been tried correctly. That viewpoint is rampant in our society with the various class warfare politics espoused by the left (usually from those who could lead by example and sell all they have and give to the poor, but would rather take from the rest of us for that purpose), as well as a decidedly "hate America first" rhetoric. That political viewpoint espouses implementation of an egalitarian society with guaranteed equality of results (usually for all but themselves, who will be the leaders of that society and therefore justly entitled to the associated material benefits befitting of such caring, gracious leaders) for all of society. It is the left that views that as a utopian society -- the society the USSR, the PRC, the Cubans, and others have attempted to implement. Each of those countries have had to put up walls to keep their people in, not to keep others out. Speaks volumes for the results that come from attempting to implement such societies. On the other hand, this evil country, responsible for all of the world's ills(according to the left) has to put up walls and fences to keep the people wanting to come in to a manageable level.
You know Tom, you are a very talented writer as I and others have attested to based upon various contributions you have made here. I'm sure you are a darned fine woodworker and are well experienced in that area. Your politics on the other hand, are a different matter. To post your viewpoints is one thing, all of us who have participated in this and other threads have shared our own views. The problem is that you are now elevating your voice above a crescendo and attempting to replace with volume what you are not contributing in substance. ... and that's too bad.
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Dunno if it was common practice but the summary execution of spies by American Armed Forces was prohibitted by an Act of the Continental Congress in 1775, if not befor, and to my knowledge has never been legalized. To be precise, the Act specified that spies were subject to execution *after trial*. That stipulation makes it clear that summary execution was not permissible.
Internationally the execution of spies without trial has been prohibitted since at least the early years of the 2oth Century, see the Hague Conventions.
During war, internatonal 'law' is enforceable only through the law of reprisals. Crudely stated, a party may violate the laws of war that the opposing party has already violated, but only to the same degree. Thus when the British violated the St Petersburg protocols by using incindiery ammunition, but only against aircraft, the Germans chose to do the same, but also only against aircraft.
Certainly the summary execution by Germans of partisans (e.g. insurgents or guerillas) in the Balkans was addressed as a war crime after the war. Former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was in the chain of command responsible for one such crime. His role was only to pass the order on from one party to another, and did so only after refusing twice and then being threatened with court martial for the capital offense of refusing a direct order. IMHO, an adequate defense.
I'm surprised because up until now I had thought you would have considered pretty much all Greens, Democrats, and more than a few Republicans to be 'left'. But now you make it clear that pretty much none of those folks are, in your opinion, left.
Indeed only a minority of card carrying American Socialists would consider the USSR, PRC or Castro to be any kind of role model so it would seem that when you refer to the left, you mean only an insignificant number of people.
Thanks for clearing that up. I'll try to remember that.
How about holding someone's head underwater until they pass out? How about hanging them by their dislocated shoulders and breaking their legs?
How about if we enforce our own laws?
Non sequitor. The transgression was not the highly publicized though hardly significant statement in the SOTU message. It was submitting the forged documents to the IAEA as if they were genuine. That was a clear, deliberate obstruction of the inspection program.
As you your use of 'may', I assume that was a manner of speech and you do not consider the authenticity of the documents to be in dispute.
That certainly pegs my bullshit detector. Please refer us to where we can find that 'current languge'.
Somehow? Did you only develop an interest in the subject earlier today?
With French assistance, Iraq had an active nuclear power reactor program up until about
1980 when Israeli saboteurs destroyed the unfueled reactor in an attack coordinated with an aerial bombardment.
As part of that program Iraq had imported several tonnes of 2.7% enriched Uranium from Italy, (basic light water reactor fuel) and at least 330 (or was it 530-- when you check up on this. let me know, OK?) tonnes of yellowcake form Portugal and elsewhere.
under IAEA supervison at Tuwaitha. At some point during the middle 1990s or therabout Iraq applied for and received permisson to use some portion (30 tonnes perhaps?) of the yellowcake. I do not recall what Iraq did with it, perhaps it was sold.
The 2003 inspections showed that those materials, indeed all of the nuclear materials in Iraq, were accounted for and still stored under IAEA seal.
After the fall of Baghdad the Iraqi guards abandoned Tuwaitha and the center, by far the largest nuclear site in Iraq, was left unguarded by the US which declined to even visit the site for several weeks while attending to more important matters such as securing the oil ministry building. That selection of priorities should have been enough to put to rest any lingering suspicians that the Bush Administration thought Iraq might have had WMD materials.
When the US did visit the site it had been looted. The barrels in which the yellowcake had been stored had been stolen and the yellowcake dumped out on the ground. The US called in the IAEA to clean up the mess. The IAEA did so and reinventoried the materials. All of the reactor fuels, all of the other materials, and all but an insignificant amount of Yellowcake was accounted for in the cleanup.
A year later, the US removed the (highly valuable) reactor fuel. Shortly afterwards Carl Limbaugher (and others) ran a false story claiming that those materials (which as we know had been monitored by the IAEA for the previous quarter century) had recently been discovered in Iraq.
I am not willing to extend the same charity of thought to Mr Limbaugher as I am to you. Not only is it very hard to believe that he was unaware of the well-publicized history of those materials, but also, though he has been informed of the truth of the matter and referred to the supporting IAEA documents, he has not, to my knowledge issued a retraction and in all probablilty the false story remains online.
There were a lot of good reasons to depose Saddam Hussein. But no good reason to fabricate outright lies after the fact.
Aside from that, are you sure that yellowcake has been removed from Iraq by the US. That would be quite a substantial endeavor indeed.
If they peed on your head and told you it was raining would you believe them?
But for crying out loud please read up on the Iraqi nuclear program befor commenting on it. For almost thirty years now Iraq has been sitting on a stockpile of yellowcake sufficient for (depending on efficiency of separation and designed yield) somewhere around 150 atomic bombs.
... and of course a bit of hyperbole is beyond you.
As long as you include in that list academics like Noam Chomsky, elitists like Jane Fonda, and numerous college professors.
You do the same.
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