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Post by navyseals on Mar 24, 2014 12:07:28 GMT -5
I'll say I respect your opinion and this has been a very good back and forth on the topic. We disagree but without being disagreeable, and while our world views on this are, in some ways, literal planets apart? It's not so much in other ways.
I would leave you with a final thought on this though. You mention the top levels of political and military command, which is fair to mention as an ideal to hold accountable for what has already been done and may well be happening in places with no names and no map reference we'll ever see, today. It won't be them, at this stage, who would fall and be ruined by it though. It would be the normal enlisted and NCO level or civilian grade equivalent, who did what they were both told to do and thought was right in some cases.....with the full and proper belief that what they were doing was 100% legal.
Remember...Bush's AG and that crew came up with what stood as the legal interpretation for quite some time on what was and was not allowed. I'd love to see the people who did that and made that determination held accountable. I don't necessarily support going after the lower guys who likely live with far more than any court could do to them now. How to do one without the other, in that sense, would be the trick. At least for those who care to distinguish.
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Post by platinumblonde on Mar 24, 2014 12:33:09 GMT -5
Got bad news teddy,we use SAS for wet stuff.Including torture (when the mission calls for it)I would imagine JSOC uses it to. I have bounced a fellow soldier around once for almost killing me ,that is torture.
Warfare is not to be done,torture is a lesser crime. Elect LEADERS so we don't have to go kill them anymore for secrets and lies.
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TheMarkFrost
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Uncovering The Inconvenient Truth
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Post by TheMarkFrost on Mar 24, 2014 14:55:59 GMT -5
Agreed.
As would I...more than you know...they must be brought to justice, and hopefully they will be. But we will have to force them to...they don't have the willpower it seems to execute the responsibilities of their positions required by law.
I disagree...we know who they are...there is no mystery here. We simply force our government to actually do what the law requires. The rest takes care of itself.
It has been a pleasure...and I will leave you with this....
The same argument you just made was brought up at the Nuremburg Trials.....trials of Nazi war criminals as you'll surely recall.
After great debate...it was decided that the defence of "I was only following orders" was an insufficient excuse for committing war crimes and they were prosecuted for their part in those attrocities.
The law must apply to everyone...or it is meaningless.
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Post by flipthecoin on Mar 25, 2014 1:44:44 GMT -5
No.. It absolutely wasn't. I added one critical and key thing to what I said, in having a pretty good idea of the mindset and recalling quite well the times of the early years of the war. Some saw through it (or now claim to have) much sooner than others, but for a majority of the nation, the first couple years especially were in a defensive mindset with legitimate threats.
What I added there was that, at least in some cases, the guys who would have done some of this believed it was the right thing to do. "Just following orders" is a very different thing as a weak deflection and excuse. There are people, myself included as you've seen, who do feel there are legitimate, albeit rare conditions where this is not only acceptable, but a duty and requirement for the safety of the public. Rare...but real.
So..not Nuremberg. Definitely, absolutely, no comparison. On that, we may just agree to disagree.
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Post by poisonivy on Mar 25, 2014 1:52:03 GMT -5
You can imagine those situations all you want, but you will never hear the truth about the situation so why bother supporting it?
All scum since the beginning of time have used it against one another , and are now in an upswing it seems of doing it more and more.
TV shows are using it all to often to sway the public to the good of it, yet no one will ever know truly if it worked.
Torture will never be used against the highest levels of scum because they are the ones ordering it to be done to others so it never happens to them.
When is someone going to come up with a way to smoke out the real problems behind all these powerplays, and stop talking about these games that go on, torture is used all too often for FUN flat out.
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TheMarkFrost
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Uncovering The Inconvenient Truth
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Post by TheMarkFrost on Mar 25, 2014 1:59:04 GMT -5
I'm sorry FlipTheCoin...agree to disagree for sure... and with all due respect...what they did or didn't believe is irrelevant....and they cannot claim they were just following orders...the Nuremburg comparison is a fair one my friend....the Nazis also believed that what they did was the right thing to do. Hitler also fervently claimed the legality of his endeavours..
In the end FlipTheCoin, it was not what they believed that got them hanged.....it was what they did. Even the US UCMJ states clearly that a soldier has the obligation not to carry out an illegal order. The Nuremburg Principals are the basis for this.
Torture ... is also illegal under American Law, despite the secret legal justifications that supposedly make it legal somehow. But perhaps you're right in that there may be some salvation for the lower ranks in that somewhere...but I'm not sure that their should be.
As for the officers and politicians who were responsible for this...they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law without question. Dare to dream eh?
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Post by onefinegirl on Mar 25, 2014 2:04:09 GMT -5
Torture is still practiced world wide and it effectiveness has nothing to do with physically or mentally harming someone. In the Reich from 1938 on the 'threat' of torture was all they needed. They had gained such a reputation for brutally person could not wait to spill it. Same thing here.
The problem with al-qedia was the operatives spent countless hours, days and months in Counter-Interrogation procedures.
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Post by flipthecoin on Mar 25, 2014 2:57:01 GMT -5
Funny you should mention that on the training some of the 'mainline' (as I'd think of them) Al Qaeda people got. The ones who actually went through the camps and the training pipeline, back when it was intact or to whatever has now replaced it.
A guy who went through it before 9/11 happened in Afghanistan and reporting back to German and French intelligence after coming out the other end described some of that. They don't simulate torture, but DO it for the training. More so, depending on what is intended for the shahid being trained. They're no less hard core than our own 'elite' training in how far they take some specific aspects, that's for sure.
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Post by Apollo_18 on Mar 25, 2014 3:03:15 GMT -5
Where do you get your information?
Have you ever had to deal with these Muslum extremists? No, obviously not. And it obvious you side with them. Another Obama supporter in drag.
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TheMarkFrost
Administrator
Uncovering The Inconvenient Truth
Posts: 241
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Post by TheMarkFrost on Mar 25, 2014 3:05:32 GMT -5
Where do you get your information? Have you ever had to deal with these Muslum extremists? No, obviously not. And it obvious you side with them. Another Obama supporter in drag. Apollox69, are you talking to me? If you are, you must have me confused with somebody else...I wouldn't cross the street to pee on Obama's teeth if his gums were on fire. Where do I get my information? I think the question on everyones mind at this point is....where do YOU get your information?
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