They Walk Among Us ...

I've been wasting my time over at "Celestial Junk" today, trying to make "Paul" and his readers understand that the moronic Condoleeza Rice didn't really trash the fine, upstanding individual who confronted her about her past regime's torture policies (a "moonbat" in bushlovers' parlance). Not only did Condi fail to make the young man look like an idiot, every single word out of her mouth showed her to be an absolute cretin. The bulk of my contributions are reproduced below in case they get deleted, though to his great good credit, "Paul" has not resorted to that so far.


1. You know, it's funny. Guys like me on the left think that people like you are all drooling idiots, but you people on the right say the same stuff about us.

Wouldn't it be great if we could dispense with the insults and have a mature, intelligent debate on the facts?

That'd be awesome. The only thing standing in the way is that you people really are drooling idiots for whom facts are meaningless. You're incapable of intelligent debate because you were all born stupid and it's simply too much work for your tiny brains to achieve.

You took this film clip of the super-incompetent Condoleeza Rice as something to cheer about? It's sad, it's sick, it's pathetic, that you find yourselves vindicated in that ridiculous performance.

I'm going to tell you why and then I'm going to watch your responses. You're either going to delete my post, or you're going to type something stupid, incoherent and irrelevant. Or you're going to go "Gee. He's right. Condi does look pretty stupid there. Maybe I should give up blogging, shut my mouth, and stay out of politics for the rest of my life. I won't even vote because I'm just not up to the job of not picking somebody evil, stupid and corrupt."

(I suspect it's going to be either the first or second option you'll all go for.)

First off, I read last night that Condi said somewhere that Nazi Germany never attacked the continental United States.

WRONG.

In 1942, Nazi U-boats attacked ships in harbours off the US Atlantic Coast sinking more tonnage of ships than the Japanese did between Pearl Harbour and Midway.

Furthermore, what is the relevance of the 9-11 attack to the enormity of the danger represented by Nazi Germany? Nazi Germany was by far a more powerful threat than Al Qaeda can ever hope to be.

She's asked about "Indefinite Detention" and she says that the Supreme Court is preventing the Guantanamo detainees from receiving trials under the Military Commissions Act. The SCOTUS is "holding up" those "trials" because they've been condemned both inside and out as kangaroo courts dedicated only to achieving convictions. They're a disgrace. I don't blame the guy for not being able to answer her question given the bizarre way that she framed it.

She points to the ICRC as saying there's no torture at Guantanamo. Here's the ICRC's actual position:

"The contents of the ICRC's representations and reports are confidential and for the exclusive attention of the relevant detaining authorities. Therefore, in accordance with its usual policy, the organization will not publicly confirm or deny whether the quotations in the article entitled "Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo", which appeared in the New York Times of 30 November, reflect findings reported by the ICRC to the United States authorities regarding the conditions of detention and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

So, in order to continue to have access to the prisoners so that they can be able to communicate with their families outside, the ICRC refrains from public condemnation of the jailers.

What else do they do?

"its policy of direct and confidential representations to the detaining authorities"

So they bring their concerns to the torturers in private. Occasionally though, stuff leaks out, like this article in the pinko-commie-terrorist lovin' National Post:

"Health workers violated medical ethics when they helped interrogate terrorism suspects who were tortured at secret CIA prisons overseas, the International Committee of the Red Cross said."

http://www.nationalpost.com/news...html? id=1474333

The OSCE visits that she cites are pretty dubious. An unaffiliated "expert" accompanied their mission to Guantanamo and said conditions there were better than in Belgian prisons, but the OSCE took pains to point out that he did not represent them. Two reports, one in 2005, the other in 2007 both urged that the facility be closed.

Maybe she didn't read that while she was casting about desperately for sources of exoneration. Maybe one doesn't have to know about every scrap of paper Dick Cheney pulls out of his ass to rationalize his policies before speaking out against them. Condi was particularly slimey in that part of the exchange.

Her last bit about water-boarding is actually amazingly bad. Listen to what she says. She says that the president told her that they were not to do anything that violated the USA's legal obligations. Then she says (in typical, gutless bushie fashion) that she didn't authorize anything anyway, she just conveyed the authorization of the president/justice department.

Note: Those Justice Department memos are now the subject of possible legal action because everything from John Yoo's green-lighting crushing the testicles of a suspect's child to the drivel about locking people up in coffins with caterpillars, is legal garbage. Those memos were describing actiosn that were clearly illegal.

Then, the idiot says, "by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

That's akin to Nixon's claim that if the president orders something then it's not illegal. Which is a way of saying that the president is above the law. Which is a dangerous thing if you think about it. Imagine, dears, if presidents were above the law. Imagine if president Obama could make any action he thought of become legal. Ooooh! Wouldn't you guys be scared! But you're fine with listening to a 10th-rate moron like Condi Rice justify the president's ordering of torture with that justification!

She yammers on and on about how terrible it would have been to have 3,000 more Americans die in a second attack, and it's quite revolting, given how the first 3,000 Americans died because of the supreme incompetence and laziness of the administration she served AND because nothing, but nothing, was gained with all of her torture.

In short, what Rice offered there was an extended string of falsehoods, irrelevancies, mistakes and evasions that do nothing to erase the fact that she's both a war criminal and an incompetent.

What say you folks now???

2. Actually Paul, I don't know anything about the imbecile who writes the "barton bulletin" and all his stupid, insulting garbage about liberal softies and their raggedy ann dolls.

I don't particularly care about what the dingbat has to say about anything when he spouts garbage like that.

Idiots like him make the world LESS safe, for all their chest-beating about how much we owe them.

Stress positions are torture. Water-boarding is torture. Sleep deprivation is torture. Locking people in coffins is torture.

Perhaps Mr. Barton's brain got screwed up when he was water-boarded?

Regarding your ignorance about the Geneva Conventions:

The ICRC (of which Ms. Rice was so eager to manipulate) says this:

"Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention states: "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy," belong to any of the categories for POWs, "such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

In 1987, Ronald Reagan's Deputy Legal Advisor to the State Department said the following:

"We [the United States] do support the principle that, should any doubt arise as to whether a person is entitled to combatant status, he be so treated until his status has been determined by a competent tribunal, as well as the principle that if a person who has fallen into the power of an adversary is not held as a prisoner of war and is to be tried for an offense arising out of the hostilities, he should have the right to assert his entitlement before a judicial tribunal and to have that question adjudicated."

Face it Paul, Condi is an idiot. And your rationalizations for your sadism are wearing thin.


3. Paul,

Let's review: You started off with the insults. According to your own logic you lost before you started. And that's the first correct thing you've said here.

(For the record, I really don't care about the name-calling. What infuriates me about you people is how you think you've got the right to toss insults about when it's you who are so lamentably stupid.)

Condi defends Guantanamo by stating that the ICRC hasn't criticized them, when the facts are:

1. The ICRC's policy is to not criticize governments publicly but to express its concerns privately.

2. Very strong ICRC criticism about torture at Guantanamo was leaked to the media, including the National Post.

Condi mentions the OSCE as saying that Guanatanamo is on par with a typical medium-security prison in Europe.

The facts are:

1. The person who wrote that was not a member of the OSCE but an academic who accompanied an OSCE delegation to Guantanamo

2. The OSCE condemnend Guantanamo in two reports, said it lowered the USA's moral standing in the world and called for it to close.

Condi said that indefinite detentions were a problem, and that the bush II regime tried to bring that to an end with their invention of the Military Tribunals.

The fact is that the Military Tribunals have been almost universally condemned as illegitimate kangaroo courts, with military lawyers resigning in order to not have to participate in a legal sham.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/12/nation/na-gitmo12

As Condi tells her interviewer, the SCOTUS itself (a very conservative body dominated by Republican nominees!) condemned it. It must have been pretty bad for that SCOTUS to have to have done that.

Condi says that water-boarding is not torture and therefore is not illegal by simply insisting that this is so because the president said they could do it.

That's it. Read that again. Listen to her say that. Then stop and try really, really hard to grasp the significance of that.

I'll wait Paul. Scruntch up your eyes and furrow your brows and use that little brain of yours and THINK!!

COME ON PAUL!!! You can do it!!! THINK!!!

...

Okay? Hopefully you've figured out that stating that the president's okay is all that's needed to make something legal is a very dangerous precedent. Why, Obama could make his FEMA re-education camps legal if presidents had that power, couldn't he?

Now, Condi justified all of this torture by stating that terrorism constitutes the greatest threat the USA has ever faced. The terrorists are apparently scarier than the Nazis and the Soviets. This is due to the fact that only the terrorists attacked the homeland of the United States.

1. It's false to say that the Nazis never attacked the U.S. homeland. full stop.

2. It's irrelevant to the question. Do you need to torture someone, is that person so ruthless that torture is needed to protect the USA, simply because they managed to conduct one attack on the U.S. mainland? Were the Nazi's not a ruthless, evil organization controlling one of the world's major industrial nations? Did not the Soviets have ICBMs that targeted the USA and were they not inspired by a powerful, fanatical ideology?

If torture was not required to be official state policy in either WWII or the Cold War, then it isn't required against Al Qaeda.

Now, I'll bother to watch that Holder video, but I was turned off by the stupid rhetoric at the site hosting it and I honestly don't give a shit about Obama's opinion because I've never been very impressed with him.

But I'd like to see some acknowledgement of my case against Condi's blithering besides your usual off-topic drivel.

4. Paul,

Did I say that a leak from an ICRC proved that there was torture going on?

No. No I did not.

What it does do is demolish Condi's claim that the ICRC has no complaints about Gitmo. It demolishes that completely.

For the record though, you must admit that the ICRC is a respectable organization and that their allegations must be given at least some weight, right?

Suspected terrorists have the rights to:

1. Have their status determined by a competent tribunal

and

2. Have the right to either a civil court or to be tried by a military tribunal consistent with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (That's what your "needed to parallel regular military tribunals" string of words mean. The UCMJ already has an internationally recognized, legitimate process for deciding these questions and bush II's tribunals failed to meet that level.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062900928_2.html

These are not simply prisoners of war, as your team admits when categorizing them with the made-up term "illegal combatants." Many of the men held at Guantanamo were innocent. Some of them were handed over by Afghan warlords seeking to collect bounties. Condi, bush II, et. al. were basically saying that they've scooped up some men, accused them of being terrorists, and want to hold them as prisoners in an unending war, and they want to put them on trials tailor-made to guarantee convictions.

That's pretty chilling when you think about it.

It is an opinion that the Military Tribunals were kangaroo courts. It was the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States. Deal With It.

And when military prosecutors resign in disgust rather than participate in legal shams, that isn't just something to roll your eyes over. It means something. It means we have to take this issue SERIOUSLY.

Condi is WRONG. "Enhanced interrogation methods" ARE torture. It's a FACT. To take but one example, stress positions:

"In 1956, the CIA commissioned two Cornell Medical Center researchers to study Soviet interrogation techniques, including standing for extended periods of time. They concluded, "The KGB simply made victims stand for eighteen to twenty-four hoursproducing 'excruciating pain' as ankles double in size, skin becomes 'tense and intensely painful,' blisters erupt oozing 'watery serum,' heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen."

http://www.slate.com/features/whatistorture/Taxonomy.html

Also at the site you can see that the Israeli Supreme Court declared stress positions to be a form of torture.

Let's remember that the legal opinion you're relying on to exonerate these practices was the Gonzales Justice Department. You're relying on John Yoo who believes that the president can have the testicles of a terrorist SUSPECT'S child smashed in order to obtain testimony. The madman actually believes that there is no national or international statute that prevents the president from doing that.

Those legal opinions are garbage. The United States is bound by the Geneva Conventions to respect the humanity of all individuals it captures. If there is any question as to the legal status of a detainee this must be decided by a competent tribunal. Not only is inflicting bodily pain illegal, so too is degrading and humiliating treatment.

You keep trying to bring up Obama and his replicating some of the actions of the bush II regime as if it means anything to me.

These things are illegal and to the extent that Obama does them he should be condemned as well.

Finally, you're right about the past evidence of torture and summary executions in the past. That's why I was careful to say that it was not "official state policy" rather than to simply state that it never happened. I mentioned how Ronald Reagan had said that torture was never justified under any circumstances when the fact is that US-backed death squads were killing and torturing with impunity throughout Central America during the 1980s and the School of the Americas was found to have been teaching torture methods to them:

http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=98

It might be understandable that somebody resorts to torture under extreme circumstances. It might be understandable, but it is hardly ever justified and it should NEVER become official policy.

I would understand it if someone killed a person who murdered someone's loved one but was released on a legal technicality. I would hesitate to say that person was justified. And I would certainly not want such individual justice to be legalized. And I would especially not want the agents of the state (police, military) to be able to decide who is innocent and who should be tortured until they confess their guilt before they're executed.

These are not complex questions. This is whether we have Western conceptions of justice and the rule of law or whether we embrace the legal standards of the People's Republic of China.

I know where I stand. You appear to be of the "guilty until proven innocent" standard.

[for the record, i've pushed "publish" twice now and it hasn't posted and it hasn't told me what the problem is. If this shows up three times, my apologies.]