President is above the law........Follow

I can't believe how powerless you just made yourself sound. You sound like a child that needs to make their parents happy and should get a beating if you done what they consider is wrong.

Change this a bit and you will see how much of a complacent no di[/b]ck pus[b]sy you really sound like. If a terrorist has just planted a bomb in a vicinity where it was going to completly kill everyone you ever cared for in life, your whole family, extended family and friends. You had 1 hour to get that answer and pick up a red telephone to call in the bomb squad who could easily disarm it if they found it.

Would you:
1) Ask the terrorist nicely for the information
2) Tourture him until he was on his last thread of life, using smelling salts to make sure he stayed concious until he either died or gave up the info

If I had this option, I would pour HCL up the guys di[/b]ck hole if I had to to get the information. If I succeeded, I would expect to be hailed a hero, not tried and put in jail. If I falied then, then I would turn his nearly lifeless waste of a life over to the military police so that he could rott for the rest of his days.

FOR FU[b]CK SAKES people, you preach about human fuc[/b]king rights, yet you cry when 1 person's rights are stomped on when they are trying to take away the rights of tens-of-thousands of other people. That is what your military is there for - to preserve your rights so pus[b]sys like you don't have to.

Now, that said, the reason the guards in Abu Graid really DO need to be court marshalled is because none of there actions helped anyone's rights. There have been many arguments that the US should not even been there anymore. Bush has a hidden agenda that involves copious amounts of 'look at us we are not bad guys' propiganda. Dumb a[/b]ss rogue military personnel are hampering the efforts. Look at the big picture and it will be clear. Those guards are not torturing the POW's for critical information. That is called INTEROGATION. Please note how having sex with a female prisoner has no place in interogation, and therefore is not a 'for the good of the country' kind of thing.

In summary, get your head on straight, understand that it is the goal that matters not the pawns being played. If the goal is one of TRUE National security, I am 100% certain that the military has a specialy trained group of 'special interogators' who have the balls to get the job done AND will NEVER be a spotlight in the media because the pansy a[b]ss public can't handle the truth. Regular enlisted folk have no business torturing anyone, only killing who they are told to kill.

Edit: Fixed quote boxes

Edited, Mon Jan 10 14:19:09 2005 by ElderonXI

Actually, I would say that I am a realist. I do not look at morals the same way you do. Morals means that there has to be a well defined 'right' and a well defined 'wrong'.

In my life I used to think there was such a thing, then I got off my high horse and realized it does not exist. Everything is grey as opposed to black and white.

If a serial killer breaks into your house, rapes your wife and shoots her in the head, and you manage to kill the fu[/b]cker, should you go to jail for it? It was self-defence he was about to kill you, and you had proof. I think that you have commited no crime if you kill a man like that. I believe in balance and justice, not right and wrong.

In a nutshell, I beleive in one principal. If everyone believed it there would be world-peace and there would be no true crime.
If people did not instigate agressive actions agains others for personal gain, there would be no murder, no rape, nothing. But the heart of man is extremly greedy, and therefore there is an imbalance. If we work by your standards, everyone would be dead or in jail, because the criminals would do their deeds, the innocent folk would defend themselves and get put in jail.

On another note, who is it to decide what is right an wrong? Certainly not you or I, and certainly not the government.

Did you know that in Canada it is legal to fu[b]ck a 14yo boy or girl, where in the US the law is 18? Who decides which one is right? Who's code of morals/ethics? Opinions are like as[b][/b]sholes, everyone has them, but no one can say who is right or wrong. Ponder that.

Edit: sp

Edited, Mon Jan 10 14:39:34 2005 by ElderonXI

I brought this up because I am Canadian and self-defencive killing is still considered a crime. Albiet, you will probably only get 10 years for manslaughter (as opposed to life for murder), the point is this judicial system decrees that you should go to jail whereas you and I agree that one should not. But is killing a man under any circumstance OK? Hmm circumstancial ethics...



I do not condemn the torture of any high ranking military personnel of any army for the explicit means of interogation related to national security in a time of war. Torture of any other persons is a very large offence IMO. My justification? The high-ranking official has waived his or her rights when they are the strategic points of attack againt another nation, just as the serial killer does when he attacks the wife in the example above.

I am drawing parallels here, I am not trying to make sweeping statements even though they are clearly being understood as such.
Another example would be war in itself, again, is the invading country a parallel to the serial killer, and the defending country the defender? How does that work? In the case of 9/11, the US was hands down the defender IMO. The Al Queda attacked civilians for a politcal cause. Completly unnaceptable. Had he blown up a US army base because he felt his people were oppressed by the US, that is a totally different matter. Again, you sign up for the army, you are trained to deal with such matters.

I hope I am making sense here, you call it situational ethics, I call it ethics with a self-defence clause. It does not mean that you are by any means allowed to go postal on a whole country because a small group has attacked you.



When it comes down to it, the reallity is very similar to the following microcausm.

Society:
Child does something wrong > parent disciplines
Child gets to be too much to handle:
- Does the parent have a support system to escalate the issue? (Police or child services)

On a (hypothetical) desserted island:
Child does something wrong > parent disciplines
Child gets to be too much to handle:
Parent has no where to turn to and the child takes over, or parent has to do what it takes to establish dominance.

At the world level, each country is not held back by ethics, it is more of a 'will we get our a[b][/b]ss kicked if we do this'.
The countries of the world have power such as trade embargos and military alliances to turn to to keep each other in line. Please do not be under the misconception that their 'agreed rules' are not broken on a daily basis every single day. The game is to not get caught, and judge each situation on a risk basis. Some we find out about, and some we do not.


I do not have an answer on what should be done, I just try to stay as informed as possible and understand the status of things.
I do not take the laws handed down to me from anyone as gospel, I try to understand my own truth to things and weigh them against what other established societies have come up with as guidelines to law/morality.

What I am trying to say here is there is a huge difference between what is law and what is moral. I think the answer for morality lies within ourselves not a law book, laws were made to control the masses and avoid anarchy, but were then completely bastardized over time to serve the world leaders and kings and queens.









Edited, Mon Jan 10 15:30:12 2005 by ElderonXI

Ok I am just going to go blah blah blah and let Gbaji talk now.. he got to the point a lot better. I spend too much time trying to convince people.

Elderon--I think I understand your position much better now, and agree with most of it. Thanks for the response.



I agree, but most ethical situations will fall within some sort of legal archetype of conduct. Where a once situational ethic has attained a position of permanence. A full situational ethics system wouldn't have any archetypes, and would decide each case based on the situation. Without any guidelines, any argument or justification would possibly be meritorious.



As you say though, we've established rules for conduct in order to narrow the situational and legal response to it. We can "best guess" an encounter and if anything seems skewed, work out the details in court. What I object to is a situational ethos that trumps all law or previous agreement.

I referred to World War II's Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and would also hold Dresden, the bombing of London, certainly mass genocide by the Japanese, Russians, and Germans, etc. to the same standard. There were international accords at the time which forbade indiscriminate killing of civilians, but they weren't followed. The excuse of it being total war (our excuse) or national protection/prerogative (their excuse) fails IMO when an objective standard for conduct had already been decided. It's find to justify one's actions, and certainly possible to pragmatically decide that following an international accord is impossible if you want your nation/fellows/soldiers to survive. But it's hypocritical to break an already-agreed to ethical standard and both a) not expect to be punished for it afterward, or b) after you break it, expect everyone else to follow it.

That's what I mean by situational ethics, when one ignores previous ethical standards (mostly supported by law) in favor of a "special" situation. Clearly, every human and nation on Earth has a different idea of what is special, what is required for any type of goal. Of course many nations and groups don't follow or even subscribe to any ethical standards or international law. But just because they don't doesn't mean those of a higher moral character should. As an American, I'm usually proud that my country does have higher moral standards and doesn't sully its ethics based on the situation.

When something like Abu Ghraib happens it disturbs me on a number of levels. First is the human component, no one should be tortured IMO. Second is the PR component--it's great propaganda fodder, and is true. Third is the government component, if it appears authorized a great deal of damage is done to our international cache re: being a spokesman for a moral standard. To give credit, those involved in Abu Ghraib are indeed being held accountable. I'm proud of my government for following the standard after the fact (even if I think the sentences are light, but that's another argument). But if this happened and the government said "it was a special situation, the torture was needed, the standards do not apply", and no one was held accountable, I'd be furious.

Kind of wandered there, but that's my position. There's a place for situational ethics, but only within an established system. Situational ethics as a system is chaotic and prone to great moral corruption.

EDIT: Totally mispelled Elderon's name. Sorry!

Edited, Mon Jan 10 16:18:40 2005 by Palpitus

Mmmmm... Pie. :)


I actually agree with you on that one Palpitus. The problem though is that we have to be aware that this digression from the norm can occur in both directions, not just one.

What we're also seeing is the "rules absolutists" for lack of a better term. There are segments of society that will take any action out of its context and apply the most stringent ethics regardless of circumstances, usually accompanied with nice soundling platitudes like: "The're *all* Prisoners of War and we're torturing them!!!".

These are the guys who'll insist that a cop should not ever be allowed to draw his gun cause "guns are bad", and a citizen can never harm someone while defending his home because "violence is never the answer", or a soldier can never return fire even in a battle situation cause "That's murder".

It's the attempt to misapply some very simplistic and naive (perhaps idealistic is the better word) rules to *all* situations that causes huge problems. And it also can easily muddy the ethical waters. Are our soldiers "wrong" for firing on civilian insurgents? Or are they acting correctly according to the situation they are in? Is it "wrong" to hold detainees in gitmo without access to counsel and with no communication with the outside world for 2 years at a time? Or is that simply a necessary act given the situation?


I just think that sometimes we try to hard to find the wrongdoing on our own part and lose sight of the fact that in many cases the "bad guys" aren't following those same rules, and that requires that we sometimes change our actions. In "the rules", a person is not allowed to come into my house and take my stuff. Also, "the rules" say I can't shoot people. But if someone breaks the first rule, I'm allowed to break the second. That's the way rule sets work. Waaaaay too many people seem to think that rules are just sets of things you have to do 100% of the time. In actual fact though, rules are sets of agreements. Think of them as contracts. If party A follows Rule 1, then party B will follow Rule 2. But a violation means that the other side gets to break out of their side of the agreement as well.


Usually, there are also rules for what you can do when someone breaks the rules. In actual fact, the GC has an entire article on exactly that. Unfortunately, many of those absolutists don't bother to learn that part of the rules. They see the first part (POWs recive X treatment), and they don't see that the treatment is contingent on the other guy following his side of the rules. In exactly the same way that I can reasonable expect not to get shot at walking down the street, but I'm taking my own life in my hands if I break into someone's home.


I agree with you that the abuses in the prison were wrong. However, I don't believe, nor have I heard or seen any evidence to indicate that this was institutional in nature. "WE" (the US government) did not break the rules. A small number of bored soldiers did. In exactly the same way that small percentages of our general population break the rules and do things that are wrong all the time. We don't hold all of society to blame for the actions of criminals. We punish them. We don't punish everyone else. Why not apply the same "rules" in this case? Why insist that the President of the US is somehow breaking the rules becaus a handful of elisted soldiers in the military did some things they weren't supposed to? Isn't that a bit extreme?

I think so.

I've got no problem with that Tarv. My issue is with all the people who keep repeating "They're POWs!!!", and "We're violating the GC!!!". As long as we keep muddying the waters with irrelevant (or in some cases completely inaccurate) arguments, then we will end up missing the important issues (like whether or not someone's actually being tortured).

What's really amusing is the following: Have you heard of a single reliable instance of gitmo detainees actually being tortured as defined in that Convention? I haven't. But I've heard literally *hundreds* of "guesses" about it. The "logic" goes something like this:

1. The AG made a mention of torture in a document. Whether he meant it in the terms outlawed in the Convention against Torture or not is unclear, but the word is used.

2. Some people during the Afghani conflict were detained and specifically defined as "illegal combatants" instead of POWs.

3. GC rules for POWs specifically prohibits torture.

4. GV rules for illegal combatants is unknown to the general populace, but they are aware that the restriction on treatment are not as stringent as those for POWs.

5. Therefore we conclude that the gitmo detainees are being tortured.

6. Furthermore, we conclude that *all* prisoners of the Afghani conflict are being denied their GC rights.

7. Even more, we conclude that this same status is applied to all prisoners in the Iraqi conflict as well.

8. Even more more, we conect the abuses at the prison in Iraq to this very spotting set of logic and conclude that there's some sort of conspiracy to torture prisoners in Iraq. Apparently, stacking up naked prisoners in a pyrimid is a new and super effective interrogation proceedure that a handful of enlisted soldiers knew about, but no one in any of the best intelligence agencies ever caught on to...


That's what I have a problem with. The incredible leaps of illogic involved with this entire issue. There's a lot of smoke here but very little fire. I just have a problem when people take random unconnected bits of information and go to great lengths to string them together to "proove" something. And a lot of people, conditioned by similar innuendo and illogic in their news seem to buy it hook line and sinker.

How about we actually find instances of abuse and deal with them on a case by case basis? How about we see if there actually has been *any* incidents of actual torture at gitmo? I know that to many people facts aren't nearly as fun as innuendo, but I just find it ridiculous that we put so much stock in what amounts to a whole lot of nothing.


I agree with you in principle. If there are instances of torture, then those responsible should be held accountable. But let's not take a few bits of information out of context and assume that torture is taking place. We've gotten so caught up in arguing about what torture is, and whether X rules of the GC apply to Y group of prisoners, that we've forgotten to actually bother to find out if any violations of *any* laws have occured. And that's just silly IMO...

you f___ing moron retards do democrats not only show their veiw as correct yet expect the Republicans to support YOUR veiws? your double retoric is what's killing the country! not BUSH!!! your morons with an absurd double standard stand up and take the blame for your actions! you say there have been too many deaths in the war, this war has had the least deaths of any war in history, you say it shouldn't take so long this war has liberated an entire country from a terrorist dictator you try and minimize saddam huisseins danger your now not what you speak of! be the patriot and INFORM YOURSELF!

any of the warhawk republicans here to help out asurunredmage? i think this person is off their meds. that, and after reading that post, this cant be the guy you want representing you, is it?

No thats genocide and Dictatorship, Terrorists work from the shadows and not with large military attacks with Airforces and tanks.

You cite where there is proof that Saddam supported Al Queda, show me evidence that the most heavily survaillanced country on the planet had Terrorists training inside it.

The onus of proof is on you to show me that it did happen, not on me to show that it didn't. Innocent untill proven guilty works both for those you like and those you dispise.

The fact that at no point did the Bush administration accused Saddam of supporting Al Queda should tell you how much of a remote possibility it was.

If you think that Israel is considered an Innocent party by any middle east country then Sir, you know nothing at all about the middle east.

Great so you admit your arguement has more holes in it than a sieve, good it's nice to know.