BS: Sorry I just don't get it

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: DougR
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 07:08 PM

Mick: for once I agree with you. Hope you are feeling better now.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:56 PM

I don't know, Don. I was willing to accept the "official" word that they were Jordanians and Saudi Arabians. However, since you're questioning the validity of that "information", I guess I can think of a lot of different groups who might have agendas that could be served by such acts, and not all of them are Middle Eastern, or even on the same side as Muslim extremists.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:55 PM

Well, first of all, what the Bush administration did in invading Iraq was set the CIA back decades in their ability to collect intellegence and intellegence, not force, is the only way to win a Wae on Terrorism.

With that said, I agree with Claymore (CarolC's post) that better intelllegence can be gained by not stooping to the level of the criminals who are doing these things. Force will only get you the answers that the detainees think you want to hear.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Big Mick
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:39 PM

While there is much to debate as to the morality of this whole operation, one thing is not debatable. Those that make a bound hostage beg for his life, parade him about, then decapitate him with a knife while he screams his life away, and publish the video's are animals. This is the very definition of barbarism. Anyone ... regardless of their cause or what country they come from .... that commits this type of act deserves no quarter. No matter the religion, there is a special place in hell for them. There simply is NO justification for it. Anyone that disagrees need only watch the Berg video.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: DonMeixner
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:32 PM

"Let us stop saying shat nationality prople are until we know what it is. Lets just call them terrorists, or murderers."

(Is my typing really this bad?)

OK Carol, How do we? If you had to guess, who would you say it is?

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:18 PM

Well, in that case, Don, how do we even know that they are Middle Eastern?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: DonMeixner
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:14 PM

I think that unless we have an inner line directly to the terrorists we can't say for certain exactly who beheaded who or whom.
   I understand those brave middle eastern Freedom Fighters always had their heads and faces covered and their victims hands and feet bound.
   Let us stop saying shat nationality prople are until we know what it is. Lets just call them terrorists, or murderers.

   Don ( just sneaking in a non-side taking comment)

And I must say that any thread is fair game for puns and jokes...
A middleaged curmudgeon's opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 06:03 PM

Good one there, jimmyT... :-)

I think it's the moral behaviour of one's own troops that one is required to regulate...since it is one's own troops that one is enabled to command and control. That is quite regardless of what the other guys are doing...specially when the other guys are guerilla fighters under little or no centralized command. How can one expect to control that? One can't.

As for "only respecting overwhelming force"...that describes EVERY participant in a war situation. No side gives in until it is overwhelmed by force. That's the definition of a fight or a war.

Still, one is well-advised to have some kind of moral code of conduct to aim for in how one carries out said warfare. Any game is played within a certain rulebook. For example, the Arab-Israeli conflict could be quickly ended by the USA simply nuking Israel and its neighbours and just killing them all, couldn't it? We don't contemplate doing that, partly because it would be insane, and partly because we would all consider it morally without justification to do so.

You have to draw the line somewhere. The US personnel crossed that line in their treatment of Iraqi prisoners. So did the fighters who beheaded Americans. The thing is, those fighters are not under our jurisdiction, but our own soldiers are. You discipline those who are under your own jurisdiction. That's just normal in running a military system or any other system.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:46 PM

Mudcatter, Norton1, a former Marine and Vietnam Veteran had this to say about abusive information gathering methods in another thread:

Torture does not obtain good intel. Fear either. It's an anachronistic procedure that is mainly myth (probably from the days of the Catholic purges). Put anyone in enough pain and they will tell you anything you want to hear. I'd suggest a reading of any of the American prisoners of the North Vietnamese if you doubt any soldiers ability to withstand pain.

To gain good intel requires treating prisoners with respect and dignity. One must be above what the prisoners are expecting and what they have received from their own folks. And intell is what gets people's lives saved, on both sides, by theoreticaly bringing (or at least hastens) the end of the conflict.

Gen Karpinski re Iraq prisoners

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:37 PM

not every topic/post should be fodder for puns & jokes....

just one old curmudgeon's opinion...

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Justa Picker
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:37 PM

If it were a perfect world, then sure turn the other cheek and show them all that we're a cut above them. (No pun intended.)
But in doing so you won't win the hearts and minds of insurgents. Point taken b.t.w. Carol).
The only thing they respect is overwhelming force [sic] The Powell Doctrine.

I do believe that to extract vital information that can potentially safeguard the security of the U.S. and their allies and/or potentially save American and coalition lives, ANY necessary measures to extract that information are just fine.

If through these "abusive" methods or lets say through the use of psychological or physical torture, they were able to glean intellgence that prevented a massive radioactive dirty bomb, or a major chemical or nuclear attack, etc.etc.etc. on main land America, would you not think the means to extract that intelligence more than justify the end?

There's no other way sometimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: jimmyt
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 05:30 PM

but two wrights made an airplane

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Peace
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:40 PM

Three lefts do.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Megan L
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:20 PM

Two wrongs don't make a right!

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:16 PM

what 'some' of our people did IS abuse, whether or not 'some' on the other side are cruel and inhumane. You don't win points OR wars by lowering yourself to their level. Didn't Ghandi and Martin Luther King teach us anything?

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: CarolC
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:12 PM

It should be noted, just in case anyone is confused- the people who did the beheading, have not, so far, been Iraqis or Palestinians. They have been Saudi Arabians and Jordanians.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:11 PM

And yes, Justapicker - everything IS backasswards these days. No argument there.

Subject: RE: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:09 PM

Aren't we trying to hold ourselves to a higher standard than a terrorist would ? You can judge a society by how it treats it's prisoners, older people, children, the infirm, ect.

Subject: BS: Sorry I just don't get it
From: Justa Picker
Date: 22 Jun 04 - 04:05 PM

So the U.S. is being probed over "abuse" of prisoners while the insurgents behead innocent civilians?

I think the U.S. needs to hire the same p.r firm that the Palestinians and the Iraqis are using.

Everything is just so ass backwards these days.