Guantanamo Bay detainee denied entry to Canada while George Bush who vetoed the bill to stop the CIA from torturing prisoners is welcomed in as well as Dick Cheney who's company Haliburton made a killing from the invasion of Iraq based on a lie. This is so wrong.
Since Stephen Harper fired and slandered the whistle blower for leaking out the fact that Canada was knowingly handing over prisoners in Afghanistan to be tortured, perhaps he just doesn't want Moazzam Begg to tell us about the torturing going on in Libya that Canadian tax dollars are supporting.
"British Activist" my ass. Only admitted attending training camps for Jihad after being tortured. How convenient. Any idea why they were talking to this guy in the first place about that? Just picked him at random, right? You are aware that we know exactly who a lot of these guys are based on not only travel records but also actual camp records recovered in raids or from couriers and safe houses? Of course we don't publish all that on the front page, leaving dudes like this guy to claim what he's an innocent guy that we just decided to fuck with for no reason.
ReplyDeleteIt may come to you as a shock, but a lot of the guys who wound up in Guantanamo were released and later found dead on a battlefield after their release and repatriation to their home countries. Sorta makes it look like we had the right guys. But you know, all that political pressure to release detainees who were known terrorists but who claimed to be peaceful innocent civilians who were tortured into admitting it.... :rolleyes:
While I'm not denying that there are a couple of incidents of us getting the wrong guy, you just know the other side tries to cook that into us doing that all the time. Which is no more true than anyone saying we never made any mistakes at all.
I strongly recommend www.jihadwatch.org as a resource for yourself and others who may be interested in getting enough of the other side of the story to learn who you're dealing with, and what they're really all about.
I read through the article referenced, and one question jumped out at me...."Are their intelligence people above the law?"
ReplyDeleteThe answer is "Yes". You may not like it, but that that's how that game is played. There are very few rules. The first one is "Don't get caught".
True there is a potential downside to that lack of scruples and little oversight. The CIA ties to contra drug running would be a good example of that. But you cannot do what intelligence agencies do playing by the rules. You will lose. So, yeah that's the second rule, "don't lose".
You've seen what happens when those bound (theoretically anyway) by the rules, such as the Police, go up against those top opposition guys who are not, such as oh say, the Hell's Angels. The Police tend to lose. A lot. A walk through the Lower East End will illustrate that.
Now, imagine the police rounding up every known 1%'er and "rendering" them into fish food. They would thereby put the biggest dent anyone's ever seen in the problem. Can this happen by following the rules? Obviously not. You might as well be a one legged man at an ass kicking contest.
It may not be "right", or palatable, but it works. Not perfectly, but better than following the rules. In both law enforcement and in intelligence work, following the rules means means the bad guys always have the advantage.
And now we come to the hardest part of all. Having the judgement to know what rules to break, and when. It's exceedingly hard to find men with this level of judgement. By definition you will never hear about them. You will hear about the ones whose reach exceeded their grasp. You will hear about the ones that broke rule number one. Which by extension means they broke rule number two.
OK 2nd comment: “Are their intelligence people above the law?" The answer is "Yes" I completely disagree. That is absolutely absurd. It’s true in practice but is so wrong I don’t have time to list all the reasons. In a democratic nation the police are accountable to the law. Creating a police force that is not accountable to the law runs the risk of the creation of a Gestapo that searches and does surveillance without warrants, arrest suspects without a charge, hold prisoners without due process in a fair trial with legal representation. The list goes on. It is shall we say a huge red flag and is the very reason something like Operation Fast and Furious was allowed to continue for so long. In a democratic society no level of policing should ever be above the law and not accountable to the people. That is why the US Constitution was created.
ReplyDeleteComment #1: I oppose torture at all time under any circumstances because it is simply wrong. Also because I do not believe Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. I don’t believe his agents were able to sneak into the Twin Towers and the Third Tower ahead of time to plant enough thermite and explosives on the load bearing beams to make all three buildings collapse into their one blueprint at freefall speed. Torturing someone will get them to confess to anything you want them to confess to. Even to something they didn’t do. Operation Northwoods is a documented declassified Operation. Giving anyone who supported that evil plan the power to torture anyone is just plain wrong. A lot of the Jihad sites are fake and are really run by the CIA’s propaganda machine. The same one that ran Operation Mass Appeal and lied about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass destruction.
"The CIA’s propaganda machine.......lied about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass destruction."
ReplyDeleteActually, if you'll do some reading on that, you'll find out that we got suckered by one of the opposition's guys on that, who made up the whole story of mobile WMD factories built on tractor trailers and sold us on it...score one for the bad guys. Tell us what we were predisposed to believe anyway and we bought it.
My whole point with both posts was really just that this kind of work is by definition never going to be something where there's a whole lot of accountability. I didn't say it's right, but that's the way it is, always has been, and always will be. Human nature and all that.
Just to be clear, there's a difference between food/water/sleep/sensory deprivation, and the very effective water boarding, and what most people would consider torture. We get the results we need mostly with the former. The opposition are the ones who go mostly for the medieval end of this kind of stuff. You can't spell medieval without 'die' in the middle. Amazing that all these people we supposedly tortured still have all their fingers and toes.
It wasn’t a matter of being given bad intel. MI6 was caught red handed feeding the media false information under Operation Mass Appeal. It was a deliberate disinformation campaign. It was a malicious lie.
ReplyDeleteI agree that’s the way it is, IE intelligence agencies have absolutely no legal or public accountability whatsoever but that is so wrong it threatens our own liberty. Jesse Ventura claims water boarding is torture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqmH49VBC0
Regardless, what they were doing in Afghanistan was way worse than water boarding. It involved hoods and electrical wires. The whole concept of creating a prison camp on foreign soil so they can violate the US Constitution is inherently wrong. Sarah Airhead Palin claimed non Americans don’t deserve the same rights Americans do. Yet one Youtuber pointed out the bill of rights says people not citizens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3fm_IQ5Hco
"Sarah Airhead Palin claimed non Americans don’t deserve the same rights Americans do. Yet one Youtuber pointed out the bill of rights says people not citizens".
ReplyDelete1) Palin is a bit of an airhead.
2) They DON'T have the rights of American citizens under the constitution, because
3) "The people" (not "people" or "all people") refers to citizens, not everyone on the planet. Although that has in practice been expanded over time to in practice apply to anyone physically in America.
A citizen has both rights and obligations. This is firmly established in law. Non-citizens have neither, although the whole "human rights" thing has effectively neutered that in practice. Another fruit of the tree of socialism.
We agree Palin is an airhead. The intent of the US Constitution is to make all people equal. The intent is to take the elite rights won by the Nobles in the Magna Carta and give those same rights to all people regardless of race, colour or creed. Creating off shore prison camps with the intent of violating a person’s civil liberties because they aren’t covered by the Constitution is just plain wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe intent of the US Constitution was no such thing. Originally you had to be a citizen to have the rights guaranteed under it. How do you think they got away with slavery? Just ignored it? It was LEGAL, slaves did NOT have the rights of US citizens because they were not citizens. Not saying it's right, but that's how it was.
ReplyDeleteModern revisionism WANTS everyone to have those rights guaranteed under the Constitution but that's not how it was written, that's NOT the original intent and only activist judges who legislate from the bench have changed that in practice.
All that said, we are not in complete disagreement on how things should be done, but as I've previously observed, binding ones self to a noble code of conduct puts one at serious disadvantage when dealing with those who do not.
For example, an illegal immigrant has broken the law and is therefor a criminal by virtue of illegal entry; it should be all downhill from there for them. Conferring all the rights that a citizen has on such folks cheapens the value of that citizenship. Such a person has already, as their first act effectively said, "I don't care about the law, I'm going to take what I want". Such a person is hardly a worthy addition to the fabric of society. We have enough thieves already.
I disagree. The intent of the constitution was to do away with slavery and make all people equal. Martin Luther King’s dream was that the Constitution would be more than a nice piece of paper hanging on the wall. His dream was that one day the Constitution would actually be lived and followed. Torture is wrong. Equality and civil liberty is good. Those aren’t socialist values.
ReplyDeleteRe: Torture
ReplyDelete"Wrong?" Maybe. Bad news for you, wrong shit happens to innocent people everyday. Kids get cancer, all that. But some days you can make bad shit happen to people who deserve it. The latter is better than the former.
"Pressuring" captured opposition for information is as old as warfare. It DOES work, that's why it's done. On a long enough timeline, with the right tools/techniques, everyone breaks. Just ask John McCain. The exception may exist, nothing is perfect, but you're not going to discard the option for the single digit percentage that prove the exception to the rule. Too much to be gained from those who don't.
Do you have any idea how bad sleep deprivation alone screws with a human being? After a week without any, (and I mean none at all) people will cut their mother's heart out with a dull spoon if you'll just let them sleep, never mind answer a few questions. Would you be willing to do that to a guy who has no compunction about detonating a car bomb in crowded public area, slap him around a bit? Easy to judge until you're at the table and those are the stakes you're playing for. Tell me who truly loves his fellow man, who truly protects the weak and the innocent, someone willing to accept that burden, or some "principled" individual who will let those people die or live what remains of their lives disfigured and crippled. Some innocent child gets to live their life as an amputee, etc. Because after all, torture is wrong.
The process of enhanced interrogation is so refined these days that it bears little resemblance to what you probably think of as torture. Which is why this guys story of being tortured is probably bullshit, especially if he says Americans did it. If he'd been someone important, he would not be out walking around, and if we interrogated every asshole who'd been been in a training camp at the level of our capabilities as far as how much time/effort we were willing to invest in the process, we'd be at it 'till the end of the next century.
Someday we will be able to capture a dude, treat him well, and wire his brain into a computer with an electrode equipped skull cap and just read his mind. At that point, we won't need to water board anyone. Until then, "surf's up".
At the end of the day, you should be glad there are people who are willing, who are set up to go in harms way and make hard choices they will have to live with. And do hard things to bad people to protect the innocent.
There is no higher calling.
There is no higher calling? Sure there is. Next you’re gonna tell me there’s no Santa cause.
ReplyDelete