Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[Adder]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I found this website for "new libertarianism" and thought many of you might be interested: I had no idea what new libertarians believed until I read the site, but here is a quick primer:

• When given a set of policy choices,
  
  The choice that maximizes personal liberty is the best choice.
  
  The policy choice that offers the least amount of necessary government intervention or regulation is the best choice.
  
  The policy choice that provides rational, market-based incentives is the best choice.
  
  
  In foreign policy, neolibertartianism would be characterized by,
  
  A policy of diplomacy that promotes consensual government and human rights and opposes dictatorship.
  
  A policy of using US military force solely at the discretion of the US, but only in circumstances where American interests are directly affected.

http://www.neolibertarian.net/blogs/

I saw the same set of platitudes on the new communist website.

Ad(howdy, comrade)der

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
There is no way we can condone an orchestrated or tolerated campaign of misconduct against enemy soldiers, particularly outside of the battlefield arena where split-second decisions and unpremeditated actions have to be made.

Its one thing for the poor Captain to get courtmartialed for mercifully shooting Sadr's dying driver. They better not convict this guy of anything serious, particularly after today's reported testimony by the medic.

Its another thing entirely for the commanding twit at Abu Ghraib to say that she didn't really know who was in charge....

Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of this stuff was overblown. But a good deal of it isn't really being blown out of proportion. And for us to condone the murder or torture of combatants or civilians, outside of truly extraordinary circumstances, is for us to provide justification to our opponents when it is directed against us.

That is not a deal I'd ever agree to.

Again though, I'm not second guessing split second decisions made on the field. Just the stuff that's done in controlled situations.

It is quite disconcerting to agree with you completely.

There are elements of 2 of Not Bob's 3 possible scenarios. There is a large dash of Club's concern about units (reserves and active duty) performing missions for which they are not trained.

It is somewhat disheartening, because almost nothing will be done to address these issues (except to punish some individual miscreants who are too obvious, or go a bit too far, or who come to the attention of a superior (or a subordinate with lots of guts) who cares). It is almost random. Lord knows there is no political will to deal with it systemically.

Perhaps 5-10 years down the road, internal to the military, when officers who care take stock of the campaigns and draw "lessons learned" -- there will be chapters on the treatment of POWs and civilian detainees.

S_A_M

[Adder]

Originally posted by bilmore
And, how much worse would it have been for Iraqis to have SH continue in place?

This has obviously been covered before, but not anywhere near as bad is you seem to think.

Which is not to say it wouldn't be bad, but you seem to have bought into some ridiculous doomsday conclusion to justify your position.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I'm exploring the moral dillema. The morality should be determined first. Rules can come later.

Morality in the abstract isn't.

S_A_M

[Adder]

Originally posted by sgtclub
If a women was known to have killed and had information that would prevent further killing, is raping her not a justifiable way to get the information? I don't see this moral delema (sp?) differently than if we substitute "beating" for "raping".

I don't say this lightly, 'cause you are mostly a good guy, but you are a pig.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Adder
This has obviously been covered before, but not anywhere near as bad is you seem to think.

Which is not to say it wouldn't be bad, but you seem to have bought into some ridiculous doomsday conclusion to justify your position.

Yeah, I think I got suckered by those damn whining Kurds.

Well, you know, the ones that are left.

. . . .

Love the rewrite efforts! I give you three months before you're arguing that Saddam was really the last Great Arab Hope for peace in the ME.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Spanky
Am I naive or is this not reasonable:

1) Rape of anyone is never acceptible in any circumstances.

2) Innocent people (non-combatants) should never be tortured.

3) Torture of prisoner combatants should be avoided whenever possible. The only possible excuse for torture is that the prisoner combatant has information that is needed immediately to prevent harm to fellow combatants or innocents and the information can only be obtained through torture.

4) If extrating information is necessary:

a) Drugs and trickory or other methods should be tried first. For example threatening to use violence or other stuff against their family. But under no circumstances should stuff like that ever happen.

b) If torture is used, the physical abuse should be kept to a minimum. In other words use sleep deprivation, ridicule and starvation.

These rules hold true no matter what the enemy is doing to our prisoners.

Understanding that (1) the circustances you describe in #3 are exceedingly rare and (2) any information you get from torture is almost certainly wrong, I don't disagree.

[Adder]

Originally posted by bilmore
Yeah, I think I got suckered by those damn whining Kurds.

Well, you know, the ones that are left.

. . . .

Love the rewrite efforts! I give you three months before you're arguing that Saddam was really the last Great Arab Hope for peace in the ME.

yeah.. I'm all about revisionist history. Saddam rulz!!

Let's see though... 3,000+ died on 9/11... there have been three more such years since, so that means we are up to 12,000 total American civilians dead, right?

Look. If you believe that abstract idea of freedom is worth all costs - a defensible position - just make the argument. Pretending that Saddam was just waiting to kill off half the population of the planet if we didn't intervene is almost as stupid as insisting that he had weapons of mass destruction.

And again, don't get me wrong. I think there was a case to be made for invading Iraq. But I think the administration did the worst job imaginable of (1) making its case to our allies and (2) making a credible case.

[chad87655]

Originally posted by sgtclub
If a women was known to have killed and had information that would prevent further killing, is raping her not a justifiable way to get the information? I don't see this moral delema (sp?) differently than if we substitute "beating" for "raping".

I found an old VHS tape from 2001 under my couch the other day. It had a bunch of shows from FoxNews on it. In one episode of Hannity & [his embalmed looking psyco-liberal freak co-host], Annie Coulter was on and said the following:

God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it! It's yours.

Right on Anne!

By the way, is it just me or would Hannity's ratings jump through the roof if he ditched that liberal dirtbag?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Adder
yeah.. I'm all about revisionist history. Saddam rulz!!

Let's see though... 3,000+ died on 9/11... there have been three more such years since, so that means we are up to 12,000 total American civilians dead, right?

Look. If you believe that abstract idea of freedom is worth all costs - a defensible position - just make the argument. Pretending that Saddam was just waiting to kill off half the population of the planet if we didn't intervene is almost as stupid as insisting that he had weapons of mass destruction.

And again, don't get me wrong. I think there was a case to be made for invading Iraq. But I think the administration did the worst job imaginable of (1) making its case to our allies and (2) making a credible case.

Hmmm.

I said, how bad would it have been for Iraqis had SH continued on doing his thing.

You said "not anywhere near as bad is you seem to think. Which is not to say it wouldn't be bad, but you seem to have bought into some ridiculous doomsday conclusion to justify your position. "

Saddam was the prime motivating force behind about three million deaths in the past twenty years.

I'm trying to see where you could derive the logic to argue what you seem to be arguing, and I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's not working.

[chad87655]

Originally posted by bilmore

You said "not anywhere near as bad is you seem to think. Which is not to say it wouldn't be bad, but you seem to have bought into some ridiculous doomsday conclusion to justify your position. "

Saddam was the prime motivating force behind about three million deaths in the past twenty years.

I'm trying to see where you could derive the logic to argue what you seem to be arguing, and I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's not working.

Perhaps you should try sticking your head up your ass to get the benefit of the typical liberal's world view.

I have frequently said that there are only 2 sorts of persons who support or supported the commies.

First there are those who have never experienced the brutal ravages of communism. Second there are those who have never experienced the brutal ravages of communism.

In the first category you have the leaders of any communist nation. In the second you have the candy-assed elitists of America and W.Europe’s left wing.

I recently made this assertion to a naïve young associate at my firm, who replied, “well, how about Elian’s dad?”, which made realize that there is a third sort of person who supports communism. The guy with the communist leader’s jackboot in his back and gun to his head.

All of which served to remind me that I am constantly awestruck at the stupidity of the urban elite leftist masses, brain washed into stupification by CBSNews and all the Chardonnay and Brie that they consume. These people couldn’t muster a whisper of dissent when Clinton and Reno used federal forces to kidnap a innocent young boy at gunpoint and facilitate the death of his freedom and yet they vehemently cry out against the use of federal or state executive power to rescue a beautiful young woman’s life from being tortured to death. That is some twisted amoral compass.

Reminds me of what Annie Coulter said in her best selling tome, Slander:

Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now. She should have added, they hate life and they hate freedom.

[Colonel_Nathan_Jessup]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Proponents of torture always say, well what if you needed to torture a terrorist to figure out where he had stashed a nuclear bomb that was about to kill thousands of people? The suggestion is that if torture is OK in those hypothetical circumstances, then the rest of the conversation is just a difficult exercise in line-drawing, but that the question of principle has been answered.

The thing is, people get tortured because we -- "we" in the sense of the people in whose name others are getting tortured in Iraq and around the world -- don't know enough, not because we have certainty that we'll learn something specific and necessary. Most of the people in Abu Ghraib were innocent, according to military sources. The torture happens because we don't know much about the insurgency (e.g.) and we're desperate to learn. These hypotheticals make for interesting recollections of the first year of law school (speaking of torture...), but they get the basic situation wrong.

What the revisionist pussies love to forget that this country was built upon the backbone of young men. Young men who were violently tortured and who bled the RED of our Red, White and Blue.

Do you think the patriots of Boston and Philly and weren't tortured and starved by the Boddy redcoats back in 1777? They raped the women and left injured Minutemen to starve in stocks, while bleeding from infected, gaping wounds from primative musket fire. Same thing in the War of 1812, except this time we had the French and the Redskins piling on with the torture.

In the Spanish-American war, US soldiers, when caught, would be left to die of thirst in a hole. Unlike this Schiavo chick, these boys were awake.

And do we really need to talk about WWII? Baatan? Those slope savages slaughtered ever injured soldier they could find. If they weren't deliberately maimed first. Many were beheaded and their heads were taked as trophies. Two more words: Iwo Jima.

And what was that quagmire in the 60's? You know, the one where the commie pigs tortured and kept our boys in pens for tens of years. Too bad the Geneva Convention was around to prevent it.

And you dare to talk about torture.

[chad87655]

Originally posted by Col_Nathan_Jessup
What the revisionist pussies love to forget that this country was built upon the backbone of young men. Young men who were violently tortured and who bled the RED of our Red, White and Blue.

Do you think the patriots of Boston and Philly and weren't tortured and starved by the Boddy redcoats back in 1777? They raped the women and left injured Minutemen to starve in stocks, while bleeding from infected, gaping wounds from primative musket fire. Same thing in the War of 1812, except this time we had the French and the Redskins piling on with the torture.

In the Spanish-American war, US soldiers, when caught, would be left to die of thirst in a hole. Unlike this Schiavo chick, these boys were awake.

And do we really need to talk about WWII? Baatan? Those slope savages slaughtered ever injured soldier they could find. If they weren't deliberately maimed first. Many were beheaded and their heads were taked as trophies. Two more words: Iwo Jima.

And what was that quagmire in the 60's? You know, the one where the commie pigs tortured and kept our boys in pens for tens of years. Too bad the Geneva Convention was around to prevent it.

And you dare to talk about torture.

Verily! God bless you, you red, white and blue bleeding minuteman patriot mutherfucker you!

LET'S ROLL!

BRING EM ON!

DEAD OR ALIVE!

[chad87655]

For all the doofi here who love the leftwing socialist blogsters so much, try this from Mr. pat Sajak, christian, American, patriot, and all around man of the Right! It couldn't be said better.

Why I've Stopped Arguing with Liberals

by Pat Sajak
Posted Mar 28, 2005

Every time I argue with a Liberal, I’m reminded of quarrels I used to have with my parents. The battles never seemed fair because my folks decided what the rules were and what was out of bounds. In addition, because they were parents, they could threaten me in ways I couldn’t threaten them, and they could say things I could never say.

Recently, for example, I was discussing the United Sates Supreme Court with one of my many Liberal friends out in Los Angeles when she said, without any discernable embarrassment, that Justice Anton Scalia was “worse than Hitler.” Realizing she wasn’t alive during World War II and perhaps she may have been absent on those days when her schoolmates were studying Nazism, I reminded her of some of Hitler’s more egregious crimes against humanity, suggesting she may have overstated the case. She had not; Scalia was worse. As I often did when my parents threatened to send me to my room, I let the conversation die.

Aside from being rhetorically hysterical -- and demeaning to the memory of those who suffered so terribly as a result of Hitler and the Nazis -- it served to remind me of how difficult it is to have serious discussions about politics or social issues with committed members of the Left. They tend to do things like accusing members of the Right of sowing the seeds of hatred while, at the same time, comparing them to mass murderers. And they do this while completely missing the irony.

The moral superiority they bring to the table allows them to alter the playing field and the rules in their favor. They can say and do things the other side can’t because, after all, they have the greater good on their side. If a Conservative -- one of the bad guys -- complains about the content of music, films or television shows aimed at children, he is being a prude who wants to tell other people what to read or listen to or watch; he is a censor determined to legislate morality. If, however, a Liberal complains about speech and, in fact, supports laws against certain kinds of speech, it is right and good because we must be protected from this “hate speech” or “politically incorrect” speech. (Of course, they -- being the good guys -- will decide exactly what that is.)

Protests about Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor and self-proclaimed Native American, who, among other things, likened some Sept. 11 victims to Adolf Eichmann (there go those pesky Nazis again), were characterized by much of the Left as an effort to stifle academic freedom. But, when Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers’ job is put in jeopardy over a caveat-filled musing about science and gender, it’s okay, because what he said was sooo wrong (even if it has to be mis-characterized to make the point).

When Liberals want to legislate what you’re allowed to drive or what you should eat or how much support you can give to a political candidate or what you can or can’t say, they are doing it for altruistic reasons. The excesses of the Left are to be excused because these folks operate from the higher moral ground and the benefit of the greater wisdom and intelligence gained from that perspective.

In a different West Coast conversation, I complained to another Liberal friend about some of the Left’s tone concerning the 2004 elections. I thought it insulting to hear those “red state” voters caricatured as red-necked rubes. My friend asked, “Well, don’t you think that people who live in large urban areas, who travel and read and speak other languages are better able to make informed choices?” It turns out it is superiority, not familiarity, which breeds contempt.

The rhetoric has become so super-heated that, sadly, I find myself having fewer and fewer political discussions these days. And while I miss the spirited give-and-take, when Supreme Court Justices become worse than Hitler and when those who vote a certain way do so because they’re idiots, it’s time to talk about the weather.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Adder
Understanding that (1) the circustances you describe in #3 are exceedingly rare and (2) any information you get from torture is almost certainly wrong, I don't disagree.

I can go along with that.