Obsess much?

How does one answer an illogical question based on your “Jack Bauer” fictional scenario?

The rules and laws exist to enforce standards, help ensure your paranoid fiction does not become a reality, and punish any who try to make it a reality. Why even have the UCMJ, Laws of Land Warfare, ethics, or laws at all if Soldiers “with an American Flag patch on his shoulder” are going to do it anyways according to your assertion? What is the point of rules and regulations or laws in general then? Why even have civilian laws if reality follows the logical fallacy you posed?

As for Bin Laden, or any of his dwindling number of henchmen and wannabes, using your fiction as a “recruiting poster”: These barbarians do not need real actions for their “posters”. If they cannot photo-shop or cherry pick something to twist for their goals, they simply make it up. Numerous examples exist of these actions by them. No matter WHAT we do, they will always have recuiting posters claiming we eat kids, drink blood, rape women, that our NVGs see through clothes, that we dance with demons, etc. What they do not show is that we punish those who break the rules why their side turns their own demons into ‘martys’.

People in Iraq and Afghanistan (and now Algeria and other places) are slowly awakening to AQ’s (and the Shia’s also) lies and manipulations. Enforcing standards and regulations combats exactly what your fiction portrays happening.

Because pointing to all the rulebooks will not matter one bit when some budding Jack Bauer decides to save the world with an American Flag patch on his shoulder. And Osama bn Laden will have another grand recruiting poster.

Why should I answer a slanted and loaded question which only presents part of an issue and ignores the legal and procedural regulations and safeguards?

I predict you will somehow think this vindicates your holier than thou ‘predictions’ and feeds more into your ‘conservative this/that” BS.

My further question was,

“Regardless of the punishment that is meted out to those at the lowest level who perpetrated torture, if torture of innocents did occur in the climate of “torture is OK” that Spectator Magazine promulgates, would you admit that the damage to the image of the United States as standing for something slightly above that of the torturers of the world (Saudi Arabia) would be massive and take decades to repair?”

That is my question. I made a prediction as to your answer. Go ahead and prove me wrong by answering it.

You are truly a paranoid projectionist unworthy of much “debate”. Your “conservative this” and Conservative that” diatrabe is moronic and wrong. Again, your “debate” style, if not based in wild fantasies, is akin to “so when did you stop beating your wife”.

What do your masters feed you to come up with this crap?

IF someone is wrongfully treated as a protected person or POW, THEN those who mistreated that person must face trial under applicable regulations and laws.

In fact, they have. So the “guarantee” is that IF something is done wrong, the defendents are investigated and if guilty, punished.

However.

I have had many years of the Bush Administration revealing only sufficient information to make their case, and the Conservative media filtering it for Bush-favorable spin.

My point is, and remains, that torture is wrong, and we darned-well better be able to justify it. And speeches from Conervative thought-leaders such as Spectator magazine will, in my opinion, lead to the renegade actions that will take decades to repair. Conservatives pretend these things will never happen because they declare they don’t want them to happen. That is the Ivory Tower Conservative philosophy that may exist in the “we create our own reality” White house, but leads to strings of disasters.

Your unwillingness to even acknowledge that such “bad apple” actions can ever take place, or admit what a terrible price the US would pay if (when) they do happen, indicates that you too are living in a fantasy world where “torture works”. That is why I cite the TV movie “24″, because it is just as fanciful, but taken as reality, as my reference to Spectator indicated.

But, neither you, nor any other Conservative, will ever admit that not everything goes perfectly according to your Ivory Tower Plans. Not every Blackwater contractor will hold back until the need is “ironclad”. Becasue you say so.

P.S. Spectator is a civilian magazine. And I would trust the military to follow the Uniform Code. However recall that the Bush Administration wanted everyone else: The CIA, Blackwater contractors, exempt. The world will not make those “nice” distinctions when they judge America. To pretend otherwise is to live in the White Hose Bubble of word parsing.

P.P.S. You have just promised me that torture of “non-evil” people will NEVER HAPPEN. Is that an absolute promise? If, someday, it is revealed that innocents were tortured, would you admit you were wrong? I admitted in my opening sentense that I would change my mind if your standards were guaranteed to always be met. If my nightmare scenario came to pass, would you change?

Of course not. You are a Conservative. You can never change, nor can you ever be wrong. We would just hear a string of alibis as to why you “can’t be held accountable because….”

Along with more streams of venom against those of us who warned you of the risk

Ok, you topped the asinine statement!

For the last damn time, stop with the moronic, infantile “24″ references. The only one propagating that BS is YOU!!!!!!!!!

And for the rest of your idiocy, THESE EXTREME MEASURES WERE ONLY USED ON MAYBE 3 CASES AND ONLY AFTER ALL OTHER METHODS HAD FAILED AND ONLY AFTER COMPELLING EVIDENCE INDICATED AN IMMANENT THREAT OF ATTACK.

Congress was informed through oversight briefings and gave permission. Congress also witnessed some of the interrogations and had no problems with them until certain members of congress thought to use them as a knife in the back. Accountability was maintained and these seldom used tactics were employed as a last resort, not the first course of action. At no time would this fantasy you have of “torturing children” EVER be used as Children (A) are “protected persons” under the CG and US Law of Land Warfare and (B) require caring and love to defeat these fascists we fight.

You, on the other hand, have some delusional fanatasy where “evil conservatives in the Military (which with voting patterns would be 92-95% of us) and the CIA” love to hurt children and gleefully torture anyone and everyone.

Get some help before your paranoia makes you go postal!!!!!!!!

NO ONE advocates what your fragile grasp of reality calls ‘torture’ as the first, second, third or for most cases last resort. Your desperate need to vilify conservatives so that you can have some sort of made up enemy is disgusting and indicitive of serious mental issues.

Honestly, I do not care what your family thinks of you or what you think of them. I do not care if someone beat you up on the playground and you need ‘revenge’. Do not come here and project your delusional, paranoid fantasies on us.

Especially in the movies and Conservative fantasy situations.

Again, let me make a prediction. One of the days, some Jack Bauer-wannab, will decide to torture some civilians who “a contact’ declared “knew something”. These people will turn out to be children or other innocents and this information will become public, just like Abu Graibe.

From that point on, Osama bin laden (still free, of course) will be turning recruits away for want of room to fit them in. America will be fully classed along with Saudi Arabia as a torture advocate.

And Conservatives, who love to hold Liberals to account for the actions of people who are “inspired” by Liberal commentary, wiss disavow any personal accountability for what they have said here, because personal accountability is anathama to Conservatives, always.

There are certain standards that a country stands for. Once upon a time torture was one of them for America. We might excuse extreme conduct in crisis situatins. But those crises had Darned-well better be real and provable to one and all.

Now Conservatives want to torture on rumours, innuendo and stray comments, just as long as a “cover story” is available.

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12300

Again we have receive nothing from you but typical hate and projectionism directed at conservatives. Enough with the idiotic “24″ references. I have never even watched the damn show and have NO idea what you are talking about. I am to busy dealing in reality. You want “independent”? Read Mike’s references to the PDB above.

As for accountability, congress stated they oversaw these VERY few interrogations and approved of the measures.

It’s not just that invading Iraq could have, from the word go, been called “bumbling.” It’s not even that it was illegal both under the UN charter and the bill authorizing the use of force. It’s that we’ve spent a lot of money that we didn’t have hunting an enemy that wasn’t there and now we’re stuck in it. And in the meantime the enemy is regrouping in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, while we create a new enemy in Iraq and are trying very hard to start something new in Iran, which is, despite everything that’s gone on there for the last fifty-some years, one of the most pro-American countries in the region.

Here is my response.

http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/10/26/why-iraq/

I also take A LOT of issue with the “bumbling” line of pure BS. I also take issue with your misconceptions about the enemy “not being there”. They were. Saddam may not have loved AQ, but he was working with them.

As for your statement of “And in the meantime the enemy is regrouping in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, while we create a new enemy in Iraq and are trying very hard to start something new in Iran, which is, despite everything that’s gone on there for the last fifty-some years, one of the most pro-American countries in the region”

First: AQ in Afganistan is suffering defeat after defeat and dealing with one of the coldest winters in history for the area. Their “regrouping” consisted of bombing civilains (and making MORE enemies), supporting drug dealers for cash, and conducting frontal attacks on FOBs in the open (and being gunned down). In pakistan, the Pak armed forces are now forced to fight them and are taking the fight into the mountains (something never done in Pakistan before).

Second: Iran a “pro-US” country????? Achmenajad, the mullahs, and Hezbollah must have missed that in their daily calls for the destruction of America. I must have missed that when we found Iranian 50 CAL sniper rifles in Bagdad that Iran bought from Austria in 2007. We must have missed that all through the 1980s and 1990s also. Finally, there is that little mess with our embassy when the Shaw was deposed. Now, IF you mean Iran BEFORE the Islamic theo-dictatorship took over, then you might be correct, but not Iran AFTER.

The Iranian People want to be free, but are disarmed and under close watch by the Iranian internal security. I’d love to go free them, but then I would also love to end slavery in Sudan, the Islamic Courts in Somolia, piracy in the Straits of Malaka and Somolia, free North Korea from the evil “Kim Dynasty” and many others.

Now if you get your information ONLY from the media, I can see how you have been misled. However, your memory is shallow if you forget the true fear mongering in the 90s that led to the “Assault Weapon’s Ban”, attacks and unwarranted actions against so-called right winged “militias” (noticed that they dissapeared in 2000?), illegal use of FBI/IRS files/audits on Clinton political opponents, the “need” for domestic electronic intercepts (echelon) which the NYTs thought was a great idea under Clinton, and many others.

This decade, we have protests allowed all over, even though they declare their support openly for the terrorists and call for the deaths of US Soldiers. They can even protest IN congress. Some “police state”…..

I have seen picutres of buildings that Conservatgives claim were saved. I want to see the proof, from people independent of the torturers backing those claims up.

I want to see proof that some Conservative-inspired Jack Bauer is not going to torture people who had no knowledge, based on rumours and encourage ment from Conservatives to ‘torture as you please: because it works n TV.

Conservatives here have posted quotes from Bill Clinton saying what the circumstances where even he wold have allowed torture. They always omit the accountabilty part (Conservatives always omit accountability, especially when it appies to them or their allies).

That is what I want to see, but have received nothing but typical Conservative venom and insults. But then that appears to be the only way Conservatives can communicate, via hate and screams. When I see reasoned discourse, then I will engage, othewise I will expect the usual stream of invective that defines both this, and most other Conservative forums.