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Razor stopped beating up furries long enough to write:

We're treating them better than most of them lived in the Mideast.

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This is the worst sentence in the thread.

Zair fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 02:41 PM.

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Razor stopped beating up furries long enough to write:

Anyways, what's up with Mr. Dictator, signing 5 Executive Orders already and not even trying the legislative process?

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Bush signed 54 executive orders during his first year in office.

This is not out of the ordinary. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/wbush.html

I found this out with two minutes and google.

Zair fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 02:54 PM.

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A sleep deprived Zair stammered:
Bush signed 54 executive orders during his first year in office.

This is not out of the ordinary. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/wbush.html

I found this out with two minutes and google.

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54 averages out to 1.04 orders per week.

5 orders in one week (since Tuesday) averages out to 1.25 orders per day. At that rate, he'll have 352 orders in the first year. (I'm not including weekends in my calculation).

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Vernaltemptress had this to say about Optimus Prime:
54 averages out to 1.04 orders per week.

5 orders in one week (since Tuesday) averages out to 1.25 orders per day. At that rate, he'll have 352 orders in the first year. (I'm not including weekends in my calculation).

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Who cares.

Bush signed two in one day, during his first week. That didn't mean he signed two every day.

My point was that 5 executive orders isn't some alarming amount.
It hardly warrants the laughable "Mr. Dictator."

Zair fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 03:56 PM.

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A sleep deprived Vernaltemptress stammered:
54 averages out to 1.04 orders per week.

5 orders in one week (since Tuesday) averages out to 1.25 orders per day. At that rate, he'll have 352 orders in the first year. (I'm not including weekends in my calculation).

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Did you factor in logic to your calculation?

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Zair obviously shouldn't have said:
Who cares.

Bush signed two in one day, during his first week. That didn't mean he signed two every day.

My point was that 5 executive orders isn't some alarming amount.
It hardly warrants the laughable "Mr. Dictator."

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Also he signed 5, all in the same week the next month, and 4 out of those 5 were all on the same day, ha ha.

Steven Steve fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 03:58 PM.

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Razor wrote this stupid crap:
They were caught on the field of battle, or they were planning to shoot us/harm us (be it American troops or larger schemes against the USA) in some way.

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or they pissed off someone in the Middle East who reported them to the US to get them out of their hair (and a quick bounty, if I remember correctly)

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Quoth Zair:
At least two prisoners that we know of have died of hypothermia from the Cold Cell interrogation. They might have considered it torture

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That's stupid. I know more than a couple of people killed in training...does that mean running is torture just because some people die doing it?

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So quoth Bloodsage:
That's stupid. I know more than a couple of people killed in training...does that mean running is torture just because some people die doing it?

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Could you explain how running is at all equivalent to torture?

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Channeling the spirit of Sherlock Holmes, Blindy. absently fondled Watson and proclaimed:
I could give a shit less about torture. But intel has a shelf life, and a lot of people in gitmo have been there for 3-4 years and anything they do know would be out of date and non-actionable. The people who have been there for a few months should obviously stay in military captivity for interrogation until we are confident that they no longer have anything useful to provide. But the people who have been there for 5 years- I need to see a path forward for them, and I don't care if that path leads them to trial and prison or trial and death or trial and going home or to a third country.

My main concern is that we have prisoners in captivity with absolutely no path forward. We're just holding them. With prisoners of war, they're captive until the war is over or they are traded for our people who are being held on the other side.

So, how is this war going to end? We're not fighting a country, or even an alliance. There is no central figure or governing body to surrender. There is no peace treaty to sign. This war lasts as long as we say it lasts, and that's dangerous. The "war on terror" isn't like any war we've ever seen before, and I have trouble even considering it a war. It's just a series of peace keeping missions, missions that could take place in any country at any time for any reason anywhere in the world. There is no central front.

So if we don't have a war, we don't have "prisoners of war". We have criminals. And if they're criminals, then treat them like criminals. Process them and send them to jail. Give them a trial. I don't care.

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The ridiculosity of your misinformed rant comes with the fact that they themselves consider themselves at war with us, and the ruling council you say they don't have declared war on us in 1995.

You're also ignoring a rather large section of internatial law that says that you don't have to be a country to be at war...though to be fair the US isn't signatory to portions of those conventions.

So, basically, you're arguing pure emotion. The fact is you don't need to see jack shit in terms of trials, procedures, or anything eles. Your comfort level with the proceedings has nothing at all to do with their legality.

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We were all impressed when Bloodsage wrote:
That's stupid. I know more than a couple of people killed in training...does that mean running is torture just because some people die doing it?

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You are confusing voluntary and involuntary activities.

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Quoth Suddar:
Could you explain how running is at all equivalent to torture?

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That's the point. Zair's "logic" is that since people died doing it, it must be torture. Which is silly.

Uncomfortable != torture. Scary != torture. Uncomfortable and scary != torture.

Like I said, I've personally been through training that involves many of these techniques the media wants to call torture. It sucks, but it isn't torture.

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Steven Steve had this to say about Tron:
Did you factor in logic to your calculation?

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It's true that we can assume that Obama will not continue to execute orders at the current rate. But many people did not expect the speed and immediacy of his execution of orders on major issues.

Meanwhile, I'm buying stock in popcorn.

Vernaltemptress fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 04:22 PM.

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Zair startled the peaceful upland Gorillas, blurting:
You are confusing voluntary and involuntary activities.

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No I'm not. Whether someone does something voluntarily or involuntarily is irrelevant to the discussion.

Or are you trying to say that forcing someone to run a mile is torture...as long as they didn't want to do it? Now we're right back to the missing sprinkles on the latte.

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ACES! Another post by Zair:
You are confusing voluntary and involuntary activities.

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Even though I think Bloodsage's points are dumb in this thread, I kind of have to correct you on this. I'm pretty sure you don't get a choice if your drill saergent tells you 'RUN!'.

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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent nem-x is gay said:
Even though I think Bloodsage's points are dumb in this thread, I kind of have to correct you on this. I'm pretty sure you don't get a choice if your drill saergent tells you 'RUN!'.

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Except joining our modern military is 100% voluntary

Zair fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 04:33 PM.

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Bent over the coffee table, Blindy. squealed:
So how are we going to win the war on terror? Who will surrender to us?

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I'd think they'd surrender the same way they declared war, wouldn't you?

Failing that, there are any number of ways to determine the end of the war.

That said, it's not really our problem. These bozos started the war; it's up to them to call it quits and to make sure it sticks.

The one area where you have part of a point is that our government, at the outset when things were tense and confused, opted not to use established labels or procedures, but rather to create new processes so as not to legitimize the terrorist cause by granting them full rights as combatants. It was this misstep and the failure to make the case domestically and internationally in the heat of the ensuing several years, that has caused the angst. If we'd simply locked these folks up from the outset and accorded full Geneva Convention protections, we'd not have had the backlash, and no one would be crying about keeping them locked up indefinitely while the conflict continues. And we could still try them as war criminals in most cases.

Win-win, but the thought at the time was it was more important to emphasize the illegitimacy of their methods than to choose an established method of dealing with them.

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Blindy. had this to say about pies:
So how are we going to win the war on terror? Who will surrender to us?

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nem-x is gay fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 04:37 PM.

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Verily, the chocolate bunny rabbits doth run and play while Zair gently hums:
Except joining our modern military is 100% voluntary

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Again: so what?

What does voluntary have to do with torture?

You cry when they make your latte wrong, don't you?

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And now, we sprinkle Blindy. liberally with Old Spice!
So how are we going to win the war on terror? Who will surrender to us?

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Regardless of any action we take or do not now, we'll have the war won by 2040. 2050 at the latest.

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Quoth Karnaj:
Regardless of any action we take or do not now, we'll have the war won by 2040. 2050 at the latest.

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There are certainly precedents. I'd argue that the length of the conflict has nothing to do with it.

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Bloodsage got served! Bloodsage got served!
There are certainly precedents. I'd argue that the length of the conflict has nothing to do with it.

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Well, I was referring to that specific time as that when the world's oil will be largely depleted, and almost certainly entirely from the Middle East. At that point, we'll have no reason to bother with them (like we don't care about the bulk of Africa now) and they can all get fucked. No oil means no more money. Without money, they can't buy passports, visas, guns, nukes, any of it. At that point, no matter what happened in the interim, we'll have won.

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Verily, the chocolate bunny rabbits doth run and play while Karnaj gently hums:
Well, I was referring to that specific time as that when the world's oil will be largely depleted, and almost certainly entirely from the Middle East. At that point, we'll have no reason to bother with them (like we don't care about the bulk of Africa now) and they can all get fucked. No oil means no more money. Without money, they can't buy passports, visas, guns, nukes, any of it. At that point, no matter what happened in the interim, we'll have won.

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What does oil have to do with anything. The stated goal of the terrorists is to reinstate the former boundaries of the Caliphate that was...and then to expand it.

That's the problem with discussions like this: so few people have done any reading beyond what's spoon-fed them by CNN. If more people knew why these people were fighting, and if more people would put aside their comfortably rose-tinted middle class perceptions to see the world as the extremists do, we'd be halfway to winning. As it is, too many people think their either just ordinary criminals or simply misunderstood people trying to be heard in the only way they can.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

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How.... Zair.... uughhhhhh:
This is the worst sentence in the thread.

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What else did you expect, from the worst poster on the forums?

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Bloodsage had this to say about dark elf butts:
Like I said, I've personally been through training that involves many of these techniques the media wants to call torture. It sucks, but it isn't torture.

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This is an argument of semantics. Do you consider waterboarding torture? What do you consider "enhanced interrogation"? Where do you draw the line between interrogation and torture?

I just can't agree with your point here. You can call it whatever you want, but being isolated in a cold cell is going to have an affect on you. Being strapped down and doused with water is going to have an affect on you. Just because we can do these things doesn't mean we should, and most of the world sees eye-to-eye on this. It's selfish of us, as a nation, to do it just because we can and because we know that nobody else in the world can really stop us.

Edit: So, out of curiosity, was this training you went through by any chance torture resistance training?

Suddar fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 05:23 PM.

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Bloodsage stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
What does oil have to do with anything. The stated goal of the terrorists is to reinstate the former boundaries of the Caliphate that was...and then to expand it.

That's the problem with discussions like this: so few people have done any reading beyond what's spoon-fed them by CNN. If more people knew why these people were fighting, and if more people would put aside their comfortably rose-tinted middle class perceptions to see the world as the extremists do, we'd be halfway to winning. As it is, too many people think their either just ordinary criminals or simply misunderstood people trying to be heard in the only way they can.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

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Karnaj is saying the lack of oil will make them irrelevant... and poor. They have no endgame; they have to succeed by 2050ish or they "lose."

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It almost sounds like you're dehumanizing them. I guess that makes it easier to lock them up indefinitely on secret or nonexistent evidence.

Regardless, if the government wants to hold them they need to provide some evidence and also prove some sort of criminal case. I'll admit I don't know what kind of timeline is appropriate but there is evidence that some of the people we are holding are not criminals or anything more than bystanders.

Unfortunately speculation as to their guilt or affiliations is all we can do right now, but hopefully in the future we'll have more information.

I know you're going to get all indignant and claim no one knows anything about this kind of threat etc., but I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of government.

All the power of government (and thereby your military) is derived from civilians. When you want additional powers (the power to hold someone indefinitely) you have to make a compelling case to be granted it. For the most part it seems the military has not made a compelling case and it looks like they will be losing at least some of the power.

In other words, civilians are not going to just take your word and give you carte blanche to expand military and police powers.

Furthermore, legality isn't the only question here. Is it moral to hold humans with no recourse. I would say that generally the answer is a resounding no.

Noxhil2 fucked around with this message on 01-24-2009 at 06:35 PM.

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Aw, geez, I have Bloodsage all over myself!
What does oil have to do with anything. The stated goal of the terrorists is to reinstate the former boundaries of the Caliphate that was...and then to expand it.

That's the problem with discussions like this: so few people have done any reading beyond what's spoon-fed them by CNN. If more people knew why these people were fighting, and if more people would put aside their comfortably rose-tinted middle class perceptions to see the world as the extremists do, we'd be halfway to winning. As it is, too many people think their either just ordinary criminals or simply misunderstood people trying to be heard in the only way they can.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

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Alright, I'll bite. How are they going to do that? Without a modern economy, they have no recourse except to use oil revenue to accomplish their goals. They lack the technical expertise, heavy manufacturing base, and the raw materials to create the requisite, army, navy, and air force with which to launch an invasion against the West. The only possible way for them to do it is to buy the required items with their oil money. And frankly, if(and big if) it comes to that, I have every confidence in the superior military of the West.

Or, the oil runs out, the money runs out shortly thereafter, and...they can have their 13th-century Caliphate, again, complete with no cars, industry, or clean water. Congratulations?

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How.... nem-x is gay.... uughhhhhh:

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My ex guildmate in EQ once resisted his Death Touch back before Kunark. A screenshot of it was floating around the internet. It was pretty funny. All we saw was, "Cazic-Thule shouts, 'SNAGGLE!'" and we thought we were fucked because he's the main tank and we were fighting that skeletal dragon, and then you see, "Snaggle shouts, 'WHAT!'"

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Bricktop's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
My ex guildmate in EQ once resisted his Death Touch back before Kunark. A screenshot of it was floating around the internet. It was pretty funny. All we saw was, "Cazic-Thule shouts, 'SNAGGLE!'" and we thought we were fucked because he's the main tank and we were fighting that skeletal dragon, and then you see, "Snaggle shouts, 'WHAT!'"

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And that was the last time I pulled in Fear.

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Nina had this to say about Cuba:

And that was the last time I pulled in Fear.

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Haha, Wuut. I forgot we played EQ together. I think we played together on Zebuxoruk, though, and Snaggle quit before the server split.

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Bricktop had this to say about Captain Planet:
My ex guildmate in EQ once resisted his Death Touch back before Kunark. A screenshot of it was floating around the internet. It was pretty funny. All we saw was, "Cazic-Thule shouts, 'SNAGGLE!'" and we thought we were fucked because he's the main tank and we were fighting that skeletal dragon, and then you see, "Snaggle shouts, 'WHAT!'"

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Soloed him a few weeks ago.... and I'm a wizard

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Noxhil2 stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
Furthermore, legality isn't the only question here. Is it moral to hold humans with no recourse. I would say that generally the answer is a resounding no.

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Based on this statement, I would then ask you, and in all seriousness at that, do you consider a life sentence in prison with no possiblity of parole to be immoral? If not, why not?

Callalron fucked around with this message on 01-25-2009 at 01:38 AM.

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Callalron thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
Based on this statement, I would then ask you, and in all seriousness at that, do you consider a life sentence in prison with no possiblity of parole to be immoral? If not, why not?

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Well there are two issues here. The first is the possibility of recourse. Someone who has been sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. has been given "due process" in that after (s)he was arrested they were charged with a crime. The government then presented some evidence that a jury of 12 people found compelling enough to unanimously decide that s(he) is guilty of that crime. Even after conviction if there were improprieties in the trial or new evidence comes to light or any of the other reasons that might apply, they can appeal their conviction.

The second (parole) touches on whether the criminal justice system should exist to punish or rehabilitate those who enter it. It's complicated argument, but my personal take on it is that I'm not wise enough to fully comprehend what effect time has on crimes. Is a person who commits one terrible act still terrible 20 years later? 50? 100? Do they still need to be punished when they're 80 years old after they did something awful at 22? (though I strongly suspect it is different for everyone) I can't say that I know, and it's difficult to predict how much the lessened threat of a sentence will affect the incentive for crime.

Noxhil2 fucked around with this message on 01-25-2009 at 02:05 AM.

What's fun is that those that were not guilty that were released are far more likely to pursue terrorism than they were before

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Kegwen wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
The thing that's most striking is how many people seem to trust that everyone placed in Gitmo and other such detention facilities is guilty

What's fun is that those that were not guilty that were released are far more likely to pursue terrorism than they were before

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Please to provide data to back claim.

Some of them even went right back to it! Though it's uncertain whether or not people like these were real terrorists before or if being detained under false pretenses drove them to it

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Quoth Steven Steve:
Torture resistance training is actually part of SERE which I doubt Bloodsage bothered with for some reason

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All aircrew do SERE. Some folks with more interesting jobs do an advanced version afterwards.

And, to be brutally honest, many run-of-the-mill training programes for elite units inflict as bad or worse on those going through them.

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Suddar startled the peaceful upland Gorillas, blurting:
This is an argument of semantics. Do you consider waterboarding torture? What do you consider "enhanced interrogation"? Where do you draw the line between interrogation and torture?

I just can't agree with your point here. You can call it whatever you want, but being isolated in a cold cell is going to have an affect on you. Being strapped down and doused with water is going to have an affect on you. Just because we can do these things doesn't mean we should, and most of the world sees eye-to-eye on this. It's selfish of us, as a nation, to do it just because we can and because we know that nobody else in the world can really stop us.

Edit: So, out of curiosity, was this training you went through by any chance torture resistance training?

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No, waterboarding isn't torture.

See, this--sorry, dude--is exactly what I was talking about earlier with the latte comment. Your idea seems to be that anything with the effect of making someone uncomfortable or scared is torture. That's bullshit, pure and simple. Hell, you've gone so far as to say that anything that "has an effect" on someone is right out. Shit, I guess we're no longer allowed to shoot the people setting up bombs, or imprison people captured on the battlefield, lest we "have an effect" on them.

WTFO?