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Another point that dawned on me is that if you torture 100 people, you might get information from 1 guilty person but you will be left with 99 disgruntled. innocent people who will pass on their anger to all their friends and relatives. That scenario is most dangerous in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where winning hearts and minds should have been a priority. Alienating the locals can have fatal consequences.
Bush was saying again yesterday that the war in Iraq was vital to stop the terrorists attacking America. The man has no shame. He’s a lying sack of sh1t. It’s bad enough that a few thousand US soldiers died in his needless war and that he totally screwed up the post-war strategy, but to continue to propagate the bare-faced lie that support for the war and the government was and still is necessary to prevent America being attacked is utterly obscene. Why more Americans don’t seem to realize this is beyond me.
If he just played his best team as often as possible and stopped his tinkering then their league results would be a lot better. Every single game it’s a mystery about what the starting line-up will be and who will play where. As long as Liverpool keep winning trophies then his job will be safe even if they do poorly in the league.
Bring out the guillotine, that would stop all this cobblers about the monarchy and their role in the C of E. It’s all a load of balls anyway.
FYI American Woman, Ruby posted the lyrics of “American Idiot” by the band Green Day. They’re one of those popular beat combos that the kids listen to these days, playing that new fangled rock and roll music.
What you fail to realize American Woman is that the authorities do make mistakes. It’s not as if every single person accused of being a terrorist has a vast case-file against them proving their involvement in terrorist activity. Take the case of Tom Kubbany for example, an ordinary American citizen of Eastern origin who suddenly found out that he was on a terrorist watch list and was therefore banned from carrying out big financial transactions. US treasury officials claimed that he was actually the dead son of Saddam Hussein. You can read the full story here:
http://cbs5.com/investigates/local_story_291012007.html
That’s how wrong the authorities can be sometimes. There was also a mistaken raid on a home in East London where a suspect was accidentally shot and of course the Brazilian who was mistaken for a suicide bomber. Taking into consideration that sometimes the authorities get their facts completely wrong, why then would you approve of getting rid of all the checks and balances on the governments power? There would be no protection for innocents and would lead to a flood of miscarriages of justice.
You might assume that allowing a government carte blanche to fight terrorism would close the door on the terrorist threat but it would also close the door on civil liberty and human rights while opening the door for state-terror. You might think the government will protect you from the terrorists but who will protect you from the government once you give them power to bypass the judiciary?
When US soldiers were being dragged through the streets in Somalia or being tortured in Vietnam or being hacked to bits in Iraq did you say, “Well it’s a war. These things happen”? My point being that if you don’t place any value on human rights or the rights of prisoners then why expect anyboy else to?
There is also the fact that people will say anything when they are being tortured and so the evidence they give could be bogus. They could implicate innocent people just to stop the torture.
Is it paranoid to assume a government might abuse its power? McCarthyism, Watergate, Irangate ring any bells? In fact anyone who doesn’t think a government will abuse its power given the chance is a certifiable idiot. The fact that governments are capable of acting barbarically and unethically to accomplish their goals goes without saying. If you get in their way then it’s too bad for you because they won’t give a sh1t. Just look at all the covert CIA and FBI operations during the cold war.
Hoover was spying on Martin Luther King during the civil rights era and he considered leaking taped conversations about MLK’s infidelity in order to discredit him. The CIA carried out acts of terrorism in Nicaragua in order to try to destabilize the country. There were countless other coups and terrorist acts sponsored by the US government because they believed that the ends justified the means. Who do you think was installing and keeping in power all those military juntas in Latin America? US presidents were willing to sacrifice a few american citizens here and there in order to achieve their objectives including Charles Horman in Chile.
No rational citizen would allow their government to suspend the Geneva conventions and the powers of the judiciary. I’m also sure that the modus operandi of the Bush administration is unconstitutional. Yet, you see no problem with this? The vice president was saying today that holding people’s heads under water while they were being questioned was acceptable behaviour. Is that the sort of America you want to live in?
American Woman and Drivel give us this facile response that “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to be afraid of”. Would they say this if they were held without charge for a few months, losing their homes and their jobs? Would they say this after being held in stress positions for a few hours followed by a brutal beating and interrogation? You can be sure that those 2 would be screaming from the roof-tops about how their rights had been violated and then they would try to sue their respective governments. They’re the sort of people who are prepared to look the other way when it comes to human rights abuses but will complain loudest when their liberty is abused. I pity them.
It’s a cliche but it’s appropriate for this theme, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
Drivel if everyone thought like you then there would be no such thing as a free country. It astounds me that anyone can be so nonchalant when it comes to the state abusing its power. Egypt, Syria, Libya and others have to fend off the threat from islamic extremists too. Would you like to be governed like those countries are run? That’s what we are heading towards.
Quite frankly, if you’re not concerned about politicians doing away with your human rights then you’re an absolute fool. In essence, what you are saying by condoning these draconian measures is that you believe politicians and secret agents can always be trusted to behave in an impeccably honest, just and infallible manner. What sort of idiot would think like that? We don’t believe politicians 99% of the time but we’re supposed to give them carte blanche when it comes to torturing and detaining people? You must have lost your mind! The phrase “useful idiot” springs to mind when it comes to people like you. You’re just gullible plebs who are too dim to realize when you’re being shafted.
The government wanted to pass legislation that allowed terrorist suspects to be held for questioning for 90 days without charge. Fortunately, they had to back down due to opposition. Think about it, if you’re detained for 3 months and you’re innocent is your employer going to wait for you to be released? Would your bank or other creditors wait 3 months for you to make your next payment? Would the government compensate you? I doubt it. So rather than attacking people who want to defend the rights of citizens in a free society you should be thankful that people wiser than you are defending your freedom.
Nobody is saying the government shouldn’t combat terrorism. However, there need to be checks and balances in place to protect the innocent and to prevent the executive from abusing its power. If you allow the government to remove those protections then nobody is safe and you will have laid the foundations for a dictatorship.
American woman, you’ve got it all wrong. First of all the fact that there hasn’t been another attack inside America doesn’t mean that the methods used are effective. In case you forgot, British intelligence recently foiled a plot to blow up 10 US airliners over the Atlantic. It would have been a disaster on the same scale as september 11 2001. So clearly the threat hasn’t been reduced at all. In fact it has increased.
Secondly, Bush was saying today that Democratic opposition to wiretaps without a court order was a threat to America’s security. Where does it end? Once you say it’s ok for the government to listen to people’s phonecalls and read their emails without a court order then what’s to stop the government from saying that they need to read your mail, search your house, access your bank and credit card accounts, etc. whenever they want and without court approval all in the name of national security?
Lastly, I challenge you to justify the rendition of a Canadian citizen by US authorities to Syria where he was interrogated and tortured. An innocent man was effectively kidnapped and tortured. How is that justifiable? This is how screwed up America is becoming under Bush when US citizens start making excuses for torture and other human rights abuses. It seems like you don’t care about innocent people being caught up in the net. I’m reminded of the scene in the The Road To Guantanamo where a CIA agent accuses a man from Tipton of meeting Bin Laden in Afghanistan. The man then points out to the CIA agent that he was actually working at Currys (an electrical retailer) at the time of the supposed meeting. His employers were able to verify his story. That is an example of just how wrong the evidence against suspects can be. So your cavalier attitude towards people being tortured is irrational. Who knows, one day they could come knocking at your door accusing you of being a terrorist.
What would the founders of the US constitution say if they could see US citizens condoning state-sanctioned torture?
Don’t you see? It’s just like McCarthyism. Back then people tried to defend the rights of ordinary citizens and were denounced as communist sympathizers. Even then, people didn’t understand that defending human rights wasn’t about defending communism it was about defending the rights of ordinary people, rights that protect us from our servants in government. The government works for the people not vice versa.
American Woman, let’s say that based on the flimisiest of evidence or just a pure coincidence you are mistakenly arrested by the police on suspicion of having some kind of connection to terrorism, what rights do you think you’ll have? US citizens probably have better protection than non-US citizens but if you take the example of those in Cuba, you won’t be able to speak to your lawyer, you want be able to speak to or see your family members, you won’t be able to challenge your detention and you probably won’t be told exactly why you are being detained or see whatever evidence there is against you. You also won’t get a fair trial.
So as you can see, there is no protection against miscarriages of justice or abuse of power by the state. You might think that people don’t get detained unless there is compelling evidence but you’d be wrong. As I already mentioned, Canadian, German and British citizens have been mistakenly detained by US authorities, an Afghan who fought against the Taliban ended up in Cuba and there have been many other cases. There was a case in Buffalo where 3 arab men were detained and charged with terrorism based on the false testimony of a prisoner who was trying to cut a deal to shorten his sentence. The authorities found a home-video of a trip to Disneyland and decided that the men were planning to blow the place up. Eventually the truth came out and the authorities realized they had made a mistake. There was another case elsewhere in America where some Eastern men were involved in paintball trips and the authorities decided that they were preparing for terrorist attacks. Then of course there was the incident where Cat Stevens was denied entry to America because he was suspected of having links to terrorism.
If you’re not bothered about the government rounding up people willy-nilly and torturing them then there must be something wrong with your head. Surely America shouldn’t be a country where the secret police take you away in the dead of night and torture you. If you tolerate this then don’t complain when more and more of your rights start disappearing.
Drivel it’s a shame that people like you are able to vote. Anyone who is willing to surrender all their rights to the government and thinks everyone else should be willing to do the same should have no part in the democratic process.
This “war” has no visible end in sight and so to say that we should gladly give away our rights so that the government can protect us reminds me a lot of the story 1984. It’s almost as if you’re saying that we don’t need to worry about our rights because Big Brother will take care of us.
The fact that you don’t care about innocents being subjected to inhumane treatment is also disturbing. Once you start thinking that the ends justify the means and innocents don’t matter then you become no better than the terrorists that you condemn.
Drivel are you really that blind? Theoretically, the US government could accuse you of terrorism and then strip you of all your rights without a shred of evidence. For example there was a Canadian man who was arrested by US authorities, flown to syria and then tortured. When they realized he wasn’t actually a terrorist they let him go. The same thing happened to a German man who was tortured under supervision by the CIA. Then of course there were those men from Tipton who spent a few years in Guantanamo before the US officials realized they weren’t terrorists.
What you can’t seem to understand is that, as things stand, the US government can call anybody a terrorist, lock them up, torture them and then throw away the key. They don’t have to justify the detention, they don’t have to explain to the prisoner why they are being detained and they don’t have to provide any proof to substantiate the accusation of terrorism. Anyone who is eventually charged with an offence at Guantanamo will not be able to get a fair trial because everyone involved in the trial will be a member of the US military. They can also deny the defence from access to evidence by claiming national security is at stake. Now tell me how that’s any different from China or Syria or Saudi Arabia?
