Cheney in the Dock?Follow

Good luck. I don't see much sticking that can't be pardoned in the next 3 years.

Damn, I thought the topic was "Cheney is a Duck"

Now you're just being silly. Don't you know it takes 60 senators to break a filibuster? Even if we lose a few seats next year, the U.S. Senate will not allow Bush to be impeached and even if it happened, the House, a much more representative body (with a considerably higher margin of majority) would never hand down a guilty verdict.

That's a twisting of the Geneva Convention, actually. The Geneva Convention only recognizes 2 catagories of prisoners, Prisoners of War and Civilians. All references to additional groups of prisoners (read: enemy combatants) are arbitrary creations of the Bush White House. That catagory holds no legitimate International recognition and technically, we are in violation of the Geneva Convention.

That being said, I say draw and quarter the mother f'uckers if it'll help get information.

....that would imply that I was quoting an editoral comment from a writer at the BBC.

I wasn't "quoting the BBC" you ********* I linked to an interview the BBC did, with one of Cheneys ex bumboys.

and for the record, I am not a ******* liberal

Unlike you and your wingnut buddies, I reserve the right to think for myself, and choose not to follow one herd or another.

Rhetoric aside, if you're going to follow someone, make sure you understand what you're following, m'kay?

Terrorists are civilians according to the Geneva Convention. Thanks for playing.

I was ignoring your rhetorical statements.

Off the top of my head? Nope. But the convention only recognizes two types of prisoners, POWs and Civilians. If, as you so aptly proved earlier, they are not POWs, what does that leave?

Obtuse much?

So, if I'm reading the above comments correctly, I am led to believe that Varrus, and gbaji (who as usual, justifies his views with huge forays into the world of semantics) reckon its ok to torture people by shovin broomsticks up their ****** and piling them up in naked pyramids and settin dogs on them.

Well thanx for clearing it up. I hope you are smart enough to figure out why the rest of the world is sick to the teeth of Americans. gbaji probably is, Varrus is too busy scoring with his sister to care.

Luckily for MOST americans, the rest of the world knows that it ain't all of you, but dimwits like you fellas aint doing the rest of the country any favours by defending criminals like Bush and Cheney.

Congratulations achileez, as of this moument your average score is exactly 1.49

Sigh...



Ok. Read the part I bolded. Then read the part right after, where it claims that those things are in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture.

Ok. Let's read from The Convention againt Torture



There are two significant parts here, which are required for any treatment to be legally defined as "torture".

1. It must include "extreme pain or suffering, whether mental or physical".

Guess what? Having a hood placed over your head doesn't qualify as "extreme" by any measure. Being placed in a hot or cold environment isn't "extreme". Being deprived sleep (as long as it's not sustained to the point of actual physical or mental damage) is not "extreme". Exposing prisoners to loud noise is also not "extreme".

See the problem here? They're listing off a set of things that are in fact being used as interrogation methods, and which, in some cases *can* be considered torture (it's all about the degrees), but blanketly calling them *all* violations of the Convention against Torture. So. To the uninformed reader. He'll see the list of things. See the statement that follows implying that those things are all illegal and constitute torture, then he'll go read up on interrogation techniques being used and go "OMG! They are torturing prisoners...".

You have to show that these things are causing "extreme" pain and suffering. Not "moderate" pain and suffering". Not "just enough pain and suffering to get some information". It must be "extreme" pain and suffering in order to qualify as torture.

But wait, you say! What about those cases of prisoners being sodomized and beaten? Well, let's look at the other part:

2. It must be done under the consent or aquiesence of a someone officially in charge and specificaly for the purpose of obtaining information.


This is where the ol switcheroo is pulled. Because the cases of abuse of prisoners that have been verified (mostly Abu Ghraib cases, but a few from other locations) have *all* been shown to have been commited by people who were *not* in charge and who were acting on their own without the permission or knowledge of their commanding officers.

That's abuse, to be sure. It's illegal, to be sure. But it's *not* torture. Not by any legal definition. Those who commit such acts are subject to legal punishment for them. Note the dates on those cases of homicides you listed. The ones that were beaten? They're all from 2002 and 2003. Those are cases of individual soldiers, ill trained for guard work, getting a bit too overeager. Yeah. There were problems with that early on. But notice that the time frame after that point, you stop seeing those kinds of things? The only homicides listed are weapons related, or inflicted by other prisoners.

I only found *one* truely suspicious homicide in that list that doesn't mesh directly with a standard "abuse by guards" scenario. There's one that states "Questioning by OGA" (OGA meaning "other government agency", usually CIA). So there you go. Follow up on that one if you want, since it may be a legitimate case of torture.


But to argue that torture is rampant in these prisons? There's no evidence of that at all. In fact, even the rate of abuse and injury isn't particularly high among detainees. No higher then we see in any state penitentiary here in the states. You need to find more then that if you want to try to argue some kind of institutionalized policy coming from on high.





That's a bit of semantic word-playing as well though.

Let's be clear first. McCain's proposed ammendment does not simply "outlaw torture" as is commonly claimed. Let's see what it actually says:

Relevant portions:



and...




Here's the problem. This is not just an affirmation of the rules against "torture". It's a granting of constitutional rights that US citizens enjoy to foreign prisoners. It does not just prevent torture. It prevents *any* sort of interrogation or treatment that would not be allowed under domestic US law. That completely violates article 5 of the 4th Geneva Convention which states that civilians in occupied territories who violate their status as civilians by acting in a militaristic way towards the occupying power (already quoted this, read it for yourself) loose such protections. It doesn't just ensure that no one gets tortured, it prevents the holding of prisoners without due process. It prevents the questioning of prisoners without an attorney present. It gives the prisoners rights that they don't have now, are not granted under any UN resolution, and by implication in the Geneva Convention should not be allowed to have.


But. Everyone loves to simplify McCain's ammedment to just say that it makes it illegal to torture prisoners. That is absolutely false. It goes well beyond torture in terms of what it restricts the government from doing. So when the Bush administration opposes it, it's not because they want to torture prisoners. It's because they want to be able to hold prisoners that are believed to be actively involved in plots against the security of the region, without having anyone know they've captured this guy (becuase they might change their plans) and perhaps be able to get information from him that might prevent some serious attacks.

All of which is nullified if you apply the rules as written in McCain's ammendment.


But it's soooo much easier to just say that it's about the administration wanting to torture people, right? That's why it's called rhetoric. You're twisting the facts around, ignoring some, highlighting others, and mixing and matching conditions, in order to make it *appear* like something is something it's not.




Not a single instance shown in the photograph from Abu Ghraib have been determined to actually be torture as defined in the UN convention against torture. But you'd prefer to just make up your own definition I suppose...?






Lovely ad hominum attack there. So because I insist that we look at the actual laws, their actual meanings, the actual reasons they exist, and how they apply to the actual situations occuring around us, I'm "evil". But someone who reacts to a set of half truths and vague innuendo and assumption is "good".

Got it. Um... No I don't. I'm sorry. You're just plain wrong. Unfortunately, it's easier in this world to be ignorant and sure of yourself then just about anything else. Saying something over and over and as loudly as possible doesn't actually make it true. Believing something simply because it's been said over and over and as loudly as possible isn't a good thing either. Looking up the facts, doing the research, and then analysing it yourself tend to work much better. Again though, most people would rather just allow others to do that last bit for them, prefering to just find some source that tells them what to think. How about you actually look at the definitions of torture and then look at each confirmed case of abuse and make your own decision?


Heck. The fact that despite all of this talk about torture, there isn't a single case of legal action arising from an incident of torture should be pretty telling. Why is it that every article or website on the subject is really strong on words, but really short on details? Think about that for a minute...

Hah! Love the Rhetoric there. And another switcheroo!


You showed three pictures of soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq (although the second and third pictures were pretty crappy examples, since one looks like a soldier trying to figure out how to clear sh[/b]it off a prisoner, and the other looks like a couple guys giving medical aid to another prisoner, but whatever).

Um. No one has said that the incidents of abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib was "right". Of course that's "wrong". No one's said otherwise at all. Those who did such things are currently serving time in prison. What exactly is your issue here? There were soldiers who abused prisoners. They were caught. They were charged. They are currently serving time for their actions. How exactly does that make statements about torture incorrect?

You also ignored the second part of the definition of torture. Those incidents at Abu Ghraib were *not* at the direction of officials in charge. They were done by enlisted men and women who took advantage of their positions and have since been punished.


You then show an article about Bush saying "we don't torture". But he's being asked about allegations of secret CIA prisons, not Abu Ghraib. That statement was made nearly a year and a half *after* the abuses that occured at Abu Ghraib. How exactly, other then for rhetoric purposes, do you connect those two? They are completely different cases, occuring at different times, and covering different topics.


But somehow you equate the pictures of abuses at Abu Ghraib to be a valid refutation of Bush saying we aren't transfering prisoners around Europe and Asia and torturing them.


A more accurate second link would have been this one.

Oh look! There's Bush acknowledging the abuses that took place in Abu Ghraib prison. There's Bush denouncing those abuses. There's Bush promising to punish those responsible. Hmmmm... Why on earth did you choose to pull out a completely unrelated story in order to imply that Bush is denying that those incidents ever happened?


That's why it's called Rhetoric. You aren't looking at the facts. You're presenting bits of information in a way to make them look like something they aren't. That's about a half step away from lying blatantly. But you go ahead and think that what you're saying makes sense...

She was also not the only person involved, and not the only person charged with a crime. Um... Someone was holding the camera, right? It wasn't like she went off one night on her own and stacked prisoners into a pyrimid or something.

There have been dozens of arrests and convictions of US soldiers relating to abuses of Iraqi prisoners. It's not like we just singled out a couple people. However, every investigation into those abuses has shown that they were conducted purely by those relatively low ranking members involved.



I don't. But in our system of criminal justice, we can't assume that they did just because it seems like it might have happened.


My point is that you don't know that they were anymore then I know that they weren't. And in the absense of proof, we have to assume innocence, right? What I find happening alot here is that some people will assume that there was a command chain involved, not because of any significant evidence that there was, but purely because they'd rather be able to find someone farther up the chain at fault, then some relatively low level people. It's not politically valuable for a bunch of enlisted and low ranked officers to get canned for mistreating prisoners. There's a whole lot of political value to even just implying that this abuse was approved of at a higher level. And hey! If we can get people to think it must have travelled all the way up to the VP or president, well... that's worth even more.


The accusations are pretty political motivated IMO. Was there possibly some higher ranking folks "looking the other way"? Yeah. Probably was. But without evidence, we can't do any more then wonder. Did it reach all the way to the White House? Pretty darn unlikely. It's not like the White House gives orders directly to base commanders in a theatre. It just doesn't happen that way. So unless you're prepared to argue that the Joint Chiefs were all in on this plot, including a complete line of command from them down through the ranks to the guys actually performing the abuse, then I think it's a bit ridiculous to target someone like Cheney or Bush.