On this day, let us all be proud of America

Buzzsaw writes:1. I go with the science on that one. Though I'd rather have a good Christian black daughter-in-law than an atheist or even a secularist one, the science seems to be that the majority tendency is to prefer one's own color and race. All one need do is go in the churches and neighborhoods, of the world to come to that conclusion. History attests to it.2. I would advise a single son to marry into his own race since God created the races but if my son came home with a black bride I and wifie would go out of our way to make the new bride feel welcome and treat her as we would a white one.3. Imo, vanilla/chocolate swirl is cool with ice cream, but not as cool with races.

And I'm beginning to question your intelligence and fair mindedness, DA.

My knowledge of what is scientific reality concerning the races and what is observed and whether I practice racism is apples and oranges. I assumed sensible and intelligent folks could figure that out.

Whether one is a creationist or evolutionist the fact is that the races have been separated/segregated since history has been recorded for one reason or another and that is the natural phenomenon of reality.

oh yea, i agree with petro. he is horribly liberal and unqualified. i wouldn't fret suprise if we found out this country was ran from over seas.

Undermind writes:well, yea, i think a large number of people did vote for obama. he had the support of obviously most democrats, which consequently happen to be a majority of Atheist evolutionists, then he had majority vote from blacks, other minorities, women and off culture subjectives, like homosexuals. together, and inexhaustibly active, they compare in number to normal conservative Americans. thanks!

I believe that if the African American votes for McCain and Obama were switched so that all Obama got went to McCain and vise versa, the election would have went to McCain. I haven't done the math, however. What do you think?

I'm glad Asian Americans, Polynesian Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, European Americans, African Americans (yes, there are more than blacks in Africa, wow!), Canadian Americans, Mediterranean Americans, Australian Americans and Caribbean Americans aren't educated or normal. I think you should keep your racist thoughts to yourself, buddy. I'm not talking about just white people. you had no reason to assume I was only talking about white people being "normal". for reference to my point, see "to the point". oh yea, BTW, I'm Japanese. thanks.

well, yea, i think a large number of people did vote for obama. he had the support of obviously most democrats, which consequently happen to be a majority of Atheist evolutionists, then he had majority vote from blacks, other minorities, women and off culture subjectives, like homosexuals.; together, and inexhaustibly active, they compare in number to normal conservative Americans. thanks!

I never slammed them, i said the majority of those groups voted for obama. If you think it is derogatory to vote for obama, I'm really sorry you feel that way.
on an honest note, I'm not ignorant and I never intended to slander anyone. it was set to illustrate divisive issues, that everyone should have already been aware of. yes, i am conservative, consequently placing me on the opposite end of the moral/principle bracket as liberals. that's the only politically charged thing i said. I only mentioned my national origin to demonstrate my not being white and my distance from 'American racism'.

1. In fact a whole lot of black racists did so.

It reminds me of OJ's black jury. The only thing that mattered to the majority of black (racist) voters, including conservatives like Armstrong Williams and former Congressman, J C Watts.

Colin Powell was not a conservative but he switched parties to vote black. Unlike the alleged racism of Buzsaw, the racism of these blacks is for real.

Colin Powell writes:Because of (Obama's) ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of this campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities - we have to take that into account - as well as his substance - he has both style and substance - he has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president.

Powell writes:I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years. It has moved more to the right than I would like to see it. But that’s a choice the party makes.

Powell writes:In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems we're having.

Powell writes:She's a very distinguished woman and she's to be admired, but at the same time now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she's ready to be President of the United States, which is the job of the Vice President. And so, that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

2. Speaking of the black supremacists: You mean like the church of choice for our stealth president, Obama and his family, where he hung out, their mentors, and which President Obama supported liberally with his money for 20 long years. The church in bed with black supremacists and awarded their black supremacist leader, Farrakhan the highest honors.

2. Water boarding is not torture. It causes no long lasting ill effects and is not life threatening. These people are the people who would torture, if given the opportunity......real torture, like gouging out eyes, cutting off limbs, cutting out the tongue, crucifixion, and what ever else one can imagine, all of which either permanently maims or kills.

John McCain writes:That is why I fought for passage of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which applied the Army Field Manual on interrogation to all military detainees and barred cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of any detainee held by any agency. In 2006, I insisted that the Military Commissions Act (MCA) preserve the undiluted protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions for our personnel in the field. And I have expressed repeatedly my view that the controversial technique known as “waterboarding” constitutes nothing less than illegal torture.

Senior Chief Nance writes:In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn't know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat," Nance testified yesterday at a House oversight hearing on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques. "It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."

Evan Wallach in the 'Columbia Journal of Transnational Law' writes:All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators

Evan Wallach in 'Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime' in the Washington Post writes:As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is,the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle,
panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals. As a general rule, the testimony was similar to Nielsen's. Consider this account from a Filipino waterboarding victim:Q: Was it painful?A: Not so painful, but one becomes unconscious. Like drowning in the water.Q: Like you were drowning?A: Drowning -- you could hardly breathe.Here's the testimony of two Americans imprisoned by the Japanese:They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.And from the second prisoner: They laid me out on a stretcher and strapped me on. The stretcher was then stood on end with my head almost touching the floor and my feet in the air. . . . They then began pouring water over my face and at times it was almost impossible for me to breathe without sucking in water.As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison. We know that U.S. military tribunals and U.S. judges have examined certain types of water-based interrogation and found that they constituted torture. That's a lesson worth learning. The study of law is, after all, largely the study of history. The law of war is no different. This history should be of value to those who seek to understand what the law is -- as well as what it ought to be.

Answer me honestly Buz. Do you think the military are overly concerned with justice? Do you think that they care if 95% of Gitmo detainees are innocent?

Do you think that the military honestly detained people on the basis of concrete evidence? Or do you think that people were rounded up on a "capture now question later" basis?

straggler writes:I don't doubt that. But how much effect do the views of individual soldiers have on military policy?

It is as an institution and at the command level that I mean when I refer to "the military". But even then things are not so clear-cut.

To some extent I don't entirely blame the military for this attitude. A soldier cannot do his job if he questions the morality of everything he is told to do at every opportunity. But somewhere along the line somebody has to decide what exactly it is that the military is protecting and where the line is drawn in terms of innocent victims and the compromise of principle.

But when the methods of protecting the safety of the nation come into conflict with with the very principles upon which the nation is founded it requires someone outside, someone from above, someone with a different perspective than "safety at all costs" to step in and provide the checks and balances. It requires someone to draw the line that divides "safety at all costs" with "justice and principle at all costs".In short the military cannot just be allowed to apply it's narrow perspective unfettered.

Gitmo is an example of what happens when the narrow military perspective is allowed to override the wider perspective of principle and justice.

But in no way am I suggesting that every individual member of the army, people such as yourself, are either blind to this or necessarily in agreement with all of the politicised decisions made in the name of military necessity.

Straggler writes:Hey DA
I hope I have successfully cleared things up regarding the remarks I made that you found offensive.
I am quite a fan of your contributions here at EvC in general and paricularly respect your comments in this topic as someone with direct experience of the military.It seems that we agree on much regarding the necessity of principled leadership, the need for a perspective that is wider than "maximum security and all costs" and on the practicalities that on the ground troops inevitably face.

As a general principle I find that if one needs to refer to lawyers definitions of what is or is not technically legal in the face of morally questionable actions - Then 9 times out of 10 those actions are going to be morally lacking regardless of legality.Such legal technicalities are just a mask used to justify the morally unjustifiable.The spirit of the Geneva convention has been breached regardless of whether or not specific actions are technically legal.

Benjamin Franklin writes:They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

Thomas Jefferson writes:All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Thomas Jefferson writes:Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

I have dimly heard of Koolaid but never actually had the stuff.
I have heard of Amnesty International but am not sure why Buz keeps mentioning them in response to me. I claim to have no major insights or knowledge into what they do and have made no references to that organisation myself.So his derogatory references are somewhat wasted on me........