DEATH BY BLOOD ATONEMENT FOR ALL LIBERAL APOSTATES!

[_antishock8]

From Hally's link: "Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership."

Wow. That says a lot about that man.

[Guest]

You need me to substantiate that all people on Earth are children of our God and that they dwelled in his presence and possessed glory before the world was using scriptural references?

No, I need you to doctrinally substantiate the following claim:

They are Children of God who if you saw in their true form you would be tempted to bow down and worship.[/i]

What is our "true form" Nehor? And what is, perhaps more importantly, our true nature, at a given point in time?

Yeah, your scripture shows that you can tell a tree by it's fruit. I believe in the parable that God reserved the right to burn the tares. He did not delegate it to us. You're also using hyperbole and dehumanizing people. How do you know those people are terrorists? How do you know they can murder without a thought? You don't. You see them as barbarians beyond the dignity of being seen as human. Why?

This is callow, adolescentized gobbledigook, and I'm not going to respond to it because it will set me off if I do.

As you're apparently having one of your episodes tonight Nehor, I'll let it go for now.

Our true nature is to be a God. When angels visit mortals the first thing they often have to do is tell the person they're visiting not to worship them. Many angels are premortal beings. The same beings you want to strip humanity from.

Be very careful of what you worship. Worship of conservative politics is a form of idolatry.

If loving my fellow men and believing in the dignity of humanity is callow, adolescentized gobbledigook as you put it, are you sure the Standard Works shouldn't end up characterized the same way? The Law of Moses (the lesser Law) has strict limits on what can be done to anyone. You can kill them or punish them with some pain. There is no provision anywhere for breaking them for any reason whatsoever.

"Forty stripes he may give him and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee." -Deuteronomy 25:3

You can argue that the lesser law has been done away but if you're trying to argue that the higher law lets us demean others and treat them as vile then I think you're in spiritual danger.

[_The Nehor]

I am actually. Yet what did his tactics accomplish? Nothing except for the fallout of his abuse of governmental power. Please tell me you are not going to try to show that McCarthy saved the western world from anything. The Cold War did little but cost us a fortune and bankrupt the Soviet Union. That, and give the world a ton of bastards running tinpot dictatorships throughout the world and we put them there.

This incoherent rant is below you Nehor. Well below.

Incoherent? What part did you not understand?

[_Hally McIlrath]

Hear, Hear!!! Nehor is absolutely right.

No need to let Conservatism erode your Humanity.

I roundly second this statement by the cute penguin.

Thank you for your excellent vision of what God's love is supposed to look like, Mr. Nehor.

[_Bond...James Bond]

Hally,

Would you be kind enough to explain to the board who, in fact, was providing guidance to these soldiers in an official capacity? In fact, you may want to start with Donald Rumsfeld's memo detailing interrogation tactics, and then provide a hierarchical overview of the interrogation of US detainees in Abu G.

Too true. The documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib laid out the whole thing quite nicely I think (in addition to showing all the torture pics).

[_antishock8]

Just so I'm clear on the matter, I *personally* have no issues with stressing people who attempt to kill US citizens either on the battlefiled or in a civilian setting. By stress, though, I mean simply providing a Spartan existence, the denial of personal and religious comfort items, and regular interrogation sans physical and psychological abuse.

There is NO question detainess, in the past, and currently, are being tortured. I'm not sure if our resident fascist has had the pleasure of experiencing a SERE course or being waterboarded, but there is not a doubt in my mind that stress positions, denial of sleep, body slaps, psychological pressure, and waterboarding are, indeed, torture. Are they in the same category as getting a drillbit through the knee? No. A hot iron to the genitalia? No. A white hot poker to the rectum? No. Regular beatings? No.

We're not as bad as the Muslims we're engaing in combat. I'm not sure anyone, in an official capacity, has advocated that position, but if they have they're wrong. Regardless, we have higher standards and codes of conduct that we must embrace, or we risk becoming what we despise. We have to accept that some people just won't give us what we want through imprisonment and interrogation. Others will. It won't stop this massive combat and operative machine that we have to disable and destroy any network we choose to attack. We simply have to have the confidence that we are this generation's Rome, and we do carry a light to a dark world. However, we don't have to bring the bad side of Rome to the world, either. We are better than that.

[_The Nehor]

Just so I'm clear on the matter, I *personally* have no issues with stressing people who attempt to kill US citizens either on the battlefiled or in a civilian setting. By stress, though, I mean simply providing a Spartan existence, the denial of personal and religious comfort items, and regular interrogation sans physical and psychological abuse.

Just so I'm clear, I do.

[_Hally McIlrath]

Just so I'm clear on the matter, I *personally* have no issues with stressing people who attempt to kill US citizens either on the battlefiled or in a civilian setting. By stress, though, I mean simply providing a Spartan existence, the denial of personal and religious comfort items, and regular interrogation sans physical and psychological abuse.

There is NO question detainess, in the past, and currently, are being tortured. I'm not sure if our resident fascist has had the pleasure of experiencing a SERE course or being waterboarded, but there is not a doubt in my mind that stress positions, denial of sleep, body slaps, psychological pressure, and waterboarding are, indeed, torture. Are they in the same category as getting a drillbit through the knee? No. A hot iron to the genitalia? No. A white hot poker to the rectum? No. Regular beatings? No.

We're not as bad as the Muslims we're engaing in combat. I'm not sure anyone, in an official capacity, has advocated that position, but if they have they're wrong. Regardless, we have higher standards and codes of conduct that we must embrace, or we risk becoming what we despise. We have to accept that some people just won't give us what we want through imprisonment and interrogation. Others will. It won't stop this massive combat and operative machine that we have to disable and destroy any network we choose to attack. We simply have to have the confidence that we are this generation's Rome, and we do carry a light to a dark world. However, we don't have to bring the bad side of Rome to the world, either. We are better than that.

This is pretty much my stance as well, anti. You've articulated that quite well. Nice to see you again, by the way.

Nehor, I hear you -- I personally could never hurt anybody. But as a good friend of mine asked me when this subject came up, "What if your son was kidnapped by a known pedophile, and the police had in custody someone who knew where he was, but the only way they could get the information out of him was to torture him. Nothing else is making him talk. Time is running out. Would you want them to do it?"

And I had to admit to myself that, yes, most definitely, break the man's kneecaps and save my son. In that situation, I would not be standing around saying, "Well, I oppose violence, and so I think this is not the right solution."

Now, I don't know if you can take a hypothetical like that, and conflate it with our situation of being the target of terrorist attention. Maybe you can, and maybe you can't. How many broken kneecaps is a city of innocent civilians worth? Maybe it's worth a few broken kneecaps.

However, this Abu Ghraib level of rampant, intentional, Administration-condoned sexual humiliation is sickening, it's vile, and it's beneath us. I was sexually molested as a child; I can't condone or stomach that sort of thing happening to anyone, I don't care who they are, or what ideology they follow. It's horrific.

[_Droopy]

Our true nature is to be a God. When angels visit mortals the first thing they often have to do is tell the person they're visiting not to worship them. Many angels are premortal beings. The same beings you want to strip humanity from.

That's funny, and all this time I was under the distinct impression that these people had stripped their humanity from themselves.

Be very careful of what you worship. Worship of conservative politics is a form of idolatry.

Oh please...

More gobbledigook below, so no need to "torture" ourselves any further with it.

[Guest]

My two examples met in every way your stipulations as listed here:

No, they do not. You may call this abuse, you may call this maltreatment, but to call this (which was an isolated incident, by the way, having no relation to U.S. policy) torture is to deracinate the word of its substantive connotations and, quite frankly, mock those, from the Bataan death march to the Hanoi Hilton, to La Cabana, who have really undergone torture worthy of the name.

Much of this, ironically enough, are sexual desegregations that many people pay to see people do to each other on countless pornographic websites on a daily basis.


Droopy wrote:

As a side note, I'd like you to provide one, single, solitary example of anything remotely resembling what reasonable people would term "torture' being applied by U.S. personal on terrorists in the custody of the military.

They were:

1. terrorists.
2. in U.S. Military custody.
3. being tortured according to the definition of what reasonable people (not you) would define as torture.

By the way, thank Elvis they even took pictures OF THAT TORTURE, otherwise, you, Droopy, would deny it ever happened, no matter how many credible witnesses came forward to attest to its truth.

This is a fantastic example of just why it is plausible, with a critical enough mass of citizens like yourself, that we could conceivable lose the global war on Islamism. It is a textbook example of the decadent, effete, and feminized society we have become, focusing solely upon, and shedding crocodile tears for, the poor baby killing, head sawing, blood thirsting terrorists thugs in our captivity, while utterly ignoring their countless innocent victims, and the threat they actually pose to our freedom and safety. Indeed, its the exact corollary of the pro-criminal pity party we underwent in the sixties and seventies, while victims became invisible statistics.

John Lennon has had his way culturally; there is now, for many Americans (and even more Europeans) "nothing to kill or die for.

Nothing.

Do YOU understand that the U.S military let the large majority of these same people free, because they had not one, single, solitary shred of evidence to prove they were anything other than innocent civilians?

That's not the reason they were let free. Try something else on me other than the MoveOn.org/Code Pink propaganda Halle, you're discrediting yourself by the post. These people were, for the most part, taken prisoner on the battlefield, killing U.S. soldiers. If let free, they will return (and many have) to that battlefield. There is no "evidence" about it. A number of these people have, in fact, coughed up useful information. Sometimes that takes harsh interrogation measures. Its either that or more Marines dying in ambushes that could have been avoided or major military strikes that might have been thwarted before they began. That matters little to you, of course, as your sole focus is on the poor, oppressed, abused terrorists.

In any case, these are prisoners of war, not civilian criminals, and the Army needs no evidence, in a civilian legal sense, to hold them as long as they please. Secondly, they are not normal enemy combatants, but terrorists who fight in civilian cloths and use other civilians as human shields. The Geneva Convention does not even apply to them.

Oh, you didn't like that one? It wasn't explicit enough, with the blood and the terror and pain on the "terrorist's" face?

Again, our civilization, all of it; everything that has been built and created at such great cost and effort, you will sacrifice on the alter of the decadent and debased "morality" that is really nothing but the self doubt and self absorption of a morally exhausted civilization. You are a Dhimmi Halle, quite equal in your Dhimmitude to the many Europeans who now sit prostrate, jaws hanging, watching their democratic freedoms, liberty, and western civilizational patrimony erased by Muslim fanatics and their western leftist enablers in the intelligentsia and political class. Yet they won't lift a finger to stop it because this would involve, at some point, the cracking of heads, and the imposition of distinct and severe limits beyond which 12th century tribal barbarians would not be allowed to go. But of course, after having been morally and intellectually disarmed, as you, nehor, and some others here have been, by decades of immersion in the doctrines of multiculturalism, loathing and suspicion of America and its core values, and generations of peace, prosperity, and apparently open ended, limitless prospects of material ease and security, the will to preserve their western heritage and defend it from its avowed enemies has tricked from them and been taken up by the roots of those who's only response to democracy is fiendish hatred.

You are morally and intellectually disarmed, and have no defense against the Islamists. Your only option is surrender and capitulation, and when intellectual and moral pusillanimity (wearing the mask, as it many times does, of pacifism and morality) becomes wide spread enough (as it has in Europe and the U.K.), real dangers are afoot, as our progenitors discovered in 1939.

Answer me just one question, Droopy. If even ONE of our civilians, or military personnel (not 'personal' as you wrote it) were treated in this manner, would you call it torture? Would you?

No.

Anyway, I'm not all that impressed by the these photos (as a pre-exer, I'm much more impressed by detailed evidence presented in literate form by at least plausibly reliable sources. I'm not that much impressed by snapshots that show what appear to be some frankly brutal conditions, but do not provide context or explanation of the conditions obtaining when the photo was taken (think Kim Phuc).

Regardless of your finely honed sense of tightly wound, Oprahfied outrage at what these photos might appear to show, the incident at Abu Ghraib was an isolated one, and the jackasses that perpetrated it were summarily dealt with by military justice. No other plausible evidence of such abuse exists, let alone "torture". The conditions at "Club Gitmo" included prayer rugs, Korans, and better food than available to U.S. soldiers in the field.

As Jacob Laskin reported:

Of the camps currently in use, none come close to justifying the concerns of the Gitmo's critics, let alone Amnesty International's feverish judgment that it is the "gulag of our time." Visiting Camp 4, Gitmo's medium-security compound, one can see detainees walking about freely. And though the fact that many of the detainees wear unruly, Islamic beards is slightly disconcerting, it is consistent with the military's intention to make their detention as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

Toward that purpose, Camp 4 offers a number of diversions, courtesy of American taxpayers. There is an outdoor basketball court, and a 6,000-book library, from which detainees can check out everything from hobby magazines like Bird Watcher's Digest, to commentaries on Islam, to Agatha Christie thrillers. The latter come complete with white stickers blocking the author's photo, lest the detainees deem the grande dame of the mystery novel too much of a seductress. "By western standards it wouldn't be very offensive, but [the detainees] would have a problem with that," explains Julie, Gitmo's head librarian, somewhat apologetically. Detainees can also check out DVDs--nature documentaries and international soccer matches are particularly popular--and a flat-screen television is available at the camp for viewing. And, just as American troops stationed on the base can take academic and vocational courses, Camp 4 has a special classroom where detainees can learn English, Arabic, or Pashtu.

Special care is taken to allow detainees to practice their religion, which is invariably Islam. A kit of provisions issued to Camp 4 inmates includes not only bare necessities like a toothbrush and a uniform, as well as luxuries like prescription glasses and electric razors on selected days, but also prayer beads and oils, and a Koran that guards are under no circumstances permitted to handle. It is a measure of the deference--one might even say reverence--shown to the Muslim holy book that the military doesn't even provide a sample copy on a display table of representative items shown to journalists. "Out of respect," explains an officer in charge of Camp 4, who declines to be identified for security reasons.

Less hospitable conditions might be expected in camps 5 and 6, Gitmo's maximum-security complexes. To some extent, that is the case. With a narrow bed, a metal sink, and a small slit for a window, the cells in Camp 5 are no one's idea of paradise. Within those confines, however, the detainees are granted substantial privileges. Climate controlled, the cells come equipped with a communications system that allows detainees to talk to the guards. Beneath the beds, one finds stenciled arrows pointing to Mecca, and detainees can elect their own imams, or prayer leaders--a concession that may well favor more extreme elements in the detainee population but which the military is nonetheless determined to grant.

Perhaps the most curious room at Camp 5 is furnished with a plush blue couch for the detainees. Were it not for the leg restraints at its foot, one might never guess that this is where interrogations take place. Of the steel-floored cells were detainees are alleged to be beaten for information there is not a trace of violence. Those who consider Gitmo an affront to international law might also be surprised to learn that Camp 5's recreation yard not only has news bulletins from the Middle East but also a prominently displayed copy of the Geneva Conventions. While Gitmo is not officially governed by the treaties, the military makes every effort to make sure that detainees are treated in accordance with them. There is even a so-called "habeas room" for detainees to meet with their counsel. A gulag, plainly, this is not.

Even Camp 6, home to the most dangerous of Gitmo's approximately 275 detainees, confounds the image of excessive confinement and ubiquitous brutality with which the naval base has come to be identified. True, the recreation facilities here are smaller and indoors, and the two-hour (minimum) exercise time less generous, but it would take a willful disregard of the evidence to see it as a U.S.-run "concentration camp." Not the least of the reasons for that is that the military guards on duty here, as in other Gitmo camps, go out of their way to minimize the use of force. Trained to contain a mass riot, the guards actually spend most of their time trying to diffuse confrontation. "It doesn't have to get physical," insists Shawn Johnson, a guard at Camp 6.

Indeed, it doesn't even have to get loud. Out of consideration for the detainees' religious practices, interrogations cease and Gitmo's guards honor a silence throughout the camps during prayer times. "We still walk the pods and observe the detainees but we don't talk to each other and we try to be quiet on our feet. There's no antagonizing [the detainees]," Johnson explains.

If the idea of Gitmo's guards laboring to avoid giving offense to terrorist suspects is surprising, the medical facilities here are another revelation. Staffed by dentists, internal medicine practitioners, psychiatrists, nurses, and even special translators that do not interact with guards, the detainee hospital provides top-level care 24 hours a day. That includes access to a pharmacy, which distributes some 400 medications daily, as well as a state-of-the-art radiology room, complete with CAT scan capabilities. (Images are transferred to the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in Virginia, and can be analyzed within 24 hours.) In 2006, when a detainee needed a complex neurological procedure called a laminectomy, an expert was brought in to perform it. The operation was completed within 30 hours.

About the only way that detainees can be denied medical care is if they refuse it. It's a choice few of them make, though there are some problem cases. One detainee is currently refusing to take a blood test in protest over his treatment. "He wants warmed bottled water instead of room temperature or cold bottled water," the hospital's senior medical officer explains. Such are the injustices with which detainees must contend.

This is not to deny that abuse is a problem Gitmo. It's just that most of it is done by the detainees. "The only mistreatment that goes on inside the camps is detainees on guards, and the guards absorb it without retribution," says Army Brigadier General Greg Zanetti, Gitmo's deputy commander. Zanetti notes that while many of the detainees have been here for five to six years, more than enough time to discover the best way to harass their captors, many of the guards are just weeks or months into their post. "For a while there, it's an unfair match," Zanetti says.

Underscoring the general's point are some disturbing figures. In 2006, for instance, there were over 3,000 recorded incidents of detainee misconduct, instances which included 432 assaults with bodily fluids, 227 physical assaults, and 99 efforts "to incite a disturbance or riot." That certainly suggests that Gitmo is a dangerous place, just not in the way its detractors imagine.

Both the use of nudity, humiliation, and vicious dogs to scare prisoners was cleared for use in Gitmo and other detainee centers. These mild interrogation techniques (again, used on people who would saw the head off of you, your children, and your loved ones as you watch without the slightest compunction, or blow up, nuke, or let loose a bioweapon on thousands, tens, or hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens without a second thought) are the least of what we should expect our soldiers to do in an attempt to extract information that would save American lives on the battlefield and civilian lives on our own shores. That this does not seem important to you is disconcerting if not frightening. But then, what is to be expected from a Dhimmi?


Tammy Bruce has weighed in as well with a perspective on the matter that pretty much sums up the issue for Americans actually interested with being educated on the issue and a more realistic understanding of human nature and the real world in which we find ourselves (sans Nehor's self righteous adolescent fantasies of the world as one big 12 step meeting)

http://frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.a ... BD720CFAE3