Politics As Usual

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Last I checked, Indians didn't constitute 85% of the population of the US, and it was possible to support your family in the US without access to farmland.

Otherwise, excellent analogy. You sure you're not Fluffy?

what % of the US population were they when they cut the deal? And no Indians starved from the land grabs? Fuck, even the shit I DID learn in HS history is wrong?

[sgtclub]

Paris to ban SUVs

http://www.reuters.com/printerFriend...toryID=5382586

[Atticus Grinch]

The full impact of this little tidbit went over my head when it happened: John Lindh's 2002 plea agreement forbids him from discussing the conditions under which he was held following his capture. A Navy admiral told the intelligence officer interrogating Lindh in late 2001 that "the secretary of defense's counsel has authorized him to 'take the gloves off' and ask whatever he wanted." So the officer propped up Lindh naked and tied to a stretcher in sessions that went on for days, while his responses were cabled to Washington hourly.

Does any intelligent person persist in a belief that Abu Ghraib was the frolic of some inbred prison guards, acting against orders, and the Yoo memo was just academic curiosity?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Not Me
Africa and other parts of the third world will continue to be unstable unless something is done to unconcentrate the wealth/land/resources. Too much is concentrated in the hands of too few.

I don't endorse what Mugabe is doing by nationalizing the land, that won't work for the long term. But some government enforced redistribution of resources/wealth has to happen in the the third world if there is ever any hope for them to have healthy economies, a viable middle class, and stable governments.

We can argue about what needs to be done and how it needs to be done, but there is no good argument against the fact that it needs to be done or most of Africa will continue to be the wasteland that it is.

Who are you, and how did you steal Not Me's log in?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Who are you, and how did you steal Not Me's log in?

The rules that I would apply in the third world to try to turn around these failed states are different from the rules I would apply in this country. The disasterous conditions of many third world countries calls for drastic solutions. The rules that govern a modern, industrialized capitalist, representive republic with a large middle class and a viable market economy won't work where there are oppressive governments, tribalism, and extremely concentrated wealth that resulted not from market forces, but from political events of the past.

[Not Me]

It looks like almost the entire 9/11 commission's report is going to be about the failure of communications between intelligence agencies. So is Gorelick recusing herself from working on the report? JFC, what a fucking joke that she is still on the commission.

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/1110/6-...054502_12.html

• One example of the FBI's troubles was seen in the case of Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were linked by the CIA to al-Qaida and were found to have entered the United States in summer 2001. FBI agents involved in the criminal probe couldn't track the men down because intelligence officials weren't allowed to share information on the case.*
  
  The two would later board American Airlines Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon.
  
  "The restrictions on the FBI after Watergate prohibiting them from modernizing and computerizing their data systems (and) from keeping track of watchlists and investigations" were among the biggest obstacles to terror prevention, Lehman said. "It made it impossible for the FBI to share information even within the bureau."

*Who the fuck prevented them from communicating? Anyone care to take a guess?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Not Me
The rules that I would apply in the third world to try to turn around these failed states are different from the rules I would apply in this country. The disasterous conditions of many third world countries calls for drastic solutions. The rules that govern a modern, industrialized capitalist, representive republic with a large middle class and a viable market economy won't work where there are oppressive governments, tribalism, and extremely concentrated wealth that resulted not from market forces, but from political events of the past.

I agree entirely.

Which leads back to my earlier question.....

[SlaveNoMore]

Atticus Grinch
Does any intelligent person persist in a belief that Abu Ghraib was the frolic of some inbred prison guards, acting against orders, and the Yoo memo was just academic curiosity?

Yoo argued in his memo the distinction between what was allowable in Afghanistan and what was allowable in Iraq. He persists in this distinction in the numerous articles he's written since.

Lindh, as I recall, was acting as a Taliban fighter and was caught in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

So I guess I'm saying that I'm missing your point

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Not Me
JFC, what a fucking joke that she is still on the commission.

I'll give you the same advice I gave my uncle who is still screaming about Smarty Jones:

You lost the bet. Get over it.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Yoo argued in his memo the distinction between what was allowable in Afghanistan and what was allowable in Iraq. He persists in this distinction in the numerous articles he's written since.

Lindh, as I recall, was acting as a Taliban fighter and was caught in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

So I guess I'm saying that I'm missing your point

Unfortunately, no one conveyed that distinction to the intelligence officers that went from Afghanistan to Iraq. Maybe that's his point?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The full impact of this little tidbit went over my head when it happened: John Lindh's 2002 plea agreement forbids him from discussing the conditions under which he was held following his capture. A Navy admiral told the intelligence officer interrogating Lindh in late 2001 that "the secretary of defense's counsel has authorized him to 'take the gloves off' and ask whatever he wanted." So the officer propped up Lindh naked and tied to a stretcher in sessions that went on for days, while his responses were cabled to Washington hourly.

Does any intelligent person persist in a belief that Abu Ghraib was the frolic of some inbred prison guards, acting against orders, and the Yoo memo was just academic curiosity?

Intensive interrogation of guys who without question were in a decent position to have information makes sense to me. Especially late 2001, it would have made sense. I know you think everything you hear from the Executive branch is bullshit, but they claim to have gathered information that stopped dozens of plots, and maybe broke up a cell or two.

Hardened terrorist aren't giving up information playing truth or dare you know.

I don't see what that has to do with Abu Ghraib, and humiliating people who probably didn't know anything. I mean SS and I use to beat up faggy guys like GGG all the time in school for fun. That doesn't mean that bilmore was similarly wrong when he punched notme after she took her dress off on their date.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Unfortunately, no one conveyed that distinction to the intelligence officers that went from Afghanistan to Iraq. Maybe that's his point?

Well, if you're under direct orders to shove things up Afghani butts, when you turn around and cornhole the Iraqis it's clearly a frolic, even if for the 24 previous years back home you referred to both as towelheads without understanding the finer ethnic distinctions between them. You may have developed a taste for it while under orders, but being unable to shift gears is your own damn fault, like it was Lee Harvey Oswald's.

Slave, are you saying Yoo's memo got distributed down the ranks? Waiver of the privilege?

[Not Me]

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0609041love1.html

• Courtney Love Charged With Felony Assault
  
  JUNE 9--Courtney Love has been charged with felony assault for allegedly battering a fellow female rock singer with a liquor bottle and metal flashlight during an April attack at the same Los Angeles home where the troubled performer was arrested last October.
  
  According to the below June 2 criminal complaint--which charges Love with assault with a deadly weapon--the performer attacked Kristin King, a 28-year-old singer/guitarist who fronts an L.A. rock trio. King, pictured at right, is a singer/guitarist who is a favorite of Eric Erlandson, the 39-year-old Love's former guitar man in the band Hole. A spokesperson for the L.A. district attorney said the April 25 confrontation occurred at the home of Jim Barber, Love's ex-boyfriend (that's where she was arrested last fall for breaking windows, the first of several busts involving drugs and smacking people).

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Intensive interrogation of guys who without question were in a decent position to have information makes sense to me. Especially late 2001, it would have made sense.

Question --- if we should be proud of it, why did the AUSA negotiate for Lindh's silence on the conditions under which he was interrogated? And is it just a huge coincidence that Abu Ghraib also happened under the same DoD's watch --- that's what you're saying, right?

If we're a country now thinking, contrary to 200 years of tradition distinguishing us from the rest of the barbaric world, that torture is occasionally justified under certain circumstances, I'D LIKE TO HAVE THAT FUCKING DEBATE BEFORE WE ACTUALLY START TORTURING PEOPLE. Not after. Before.

And then, if we torture people for "justifiable" intelligence reasons, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE A MOCKERY OF OUR DOMESTIC CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM BY USING THOSE CONFESSIONS TO SECURE CONVICTIONS. Are we clear? Get this to your boys in D.C.

[Alex_de_Large]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Well, if you're under direct orders to shove things up Afghani butts, when you turn around and cornhole the Iraqis it's clearly a frolic, even if for the 24 previous years back home you referred to both as towelheads without understanding the finer ethnic distinctions between them. You may have developed a taste for it while under orders, but being unable to shift gears is your own damn fault, like it was Lee Harvey Oswald's.

Has it been established conclusively that the AG guards were NOT under orders to cornhole the Iraqis? It seems to me that if orders were given to so cornhole, regardless of the Yoo memo, there's still a huge problem.