Just vote for Bert. Lots of people jailed fired/fired/fired, fired fired fired/next in the detention cell, fired jail/prison, firedfiredfiredfired AND fired. But wait, there's more! Then, we're goin' after the MONEY....hehehehehehehe....

Hey People,

I don't think that most americans know that ALL our pilots, when they go through escape & evasion training, are WATER BOARDED..!! And what happened at the prison in Iraq was NOT torture... Haveing there picture taken naked..? Give me a break, having a woman rub her boobs on them.. it is laughable..!!
Now in Vietmnam, they would take 4 VC up in a chopper, throw the lowest ranking prisinor out the door, and ask for info, by the time they got to the last VC, he was talking up a storm, now that was torture..

BIll

Hey Justin,

I don't think you are very informed, in regaurds to soldiers in combat..! The geneva conv. ONLY aplies to soldiers in UNIFORM.. By the rules of warfare, if and enemy is caught WITHOUT a uniform, he may be SHOT on sight as a spy..!! Did you know that..?
And, as far as i know, the US Constitution ONLY applies to american sitizens in our country or protectorates (id. Guam, etc) If you think the constitution applies to EVEN american citizens, try gonig to mexico and getting thrown in jail.. HAHAHA

Bill

Hey Christian,

I think you were given the updated version "1960" Geneva Convention... HAHAHA , what a bunh of crap..! I showed this to a WWII & Korean War vereran who came to my office a few minutes ago. He thinks that this "Updated" version was written by a commie..? He told me that NEVER in teh History of warefare was a Partisan considered a soldier. If they had no uniform and were activaly in combat, they were a spy, and therefore Shot on sight.!!!

Bill

And don't try to give this war some weight by siting that a WWII and Korean War veteran thinks the new Conventions were written by commies. Both of these wars represented the links between exploited communities abroad, as well as domestically. We tell these people we're bringing liberty, read privatized institutions and rigged elections, while we are there, read extracting all possible resources. In WWII and Korea we fought for the liberty of non-Americans while non-whites in the US were citizens only in name, as if that has changed much. The warmachine and torture in Iraq and Cuba are no different than the domestic war waged on non-whites and the poor.

Bill continues to reveal his ignorance. Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relates to the treatment of prisoners. Specific privileges are spelled out for uniformed combatants, who are clearly defined under four categories. The enemy in Iraq does not meet those four conditions and are thus considered illegal combatants. However, this does not mean that they are then subject to torture or summary execution. The article clearly states that while unlawful combatants may be subject to interrogation and prosecution on the laws of the nation that detains them, they are still entitled to humane treatment. So under both our domestic laws and under the Geneva Convention, torturing our detainees is wrong.

I very much resent the implication that as an Army officer and leader of American soldiers I was subjected to some sort of "commie" training. I would like to think that a veteran would receive a bit more respect, but perhaps that's the kind of "support" that some Americans are giving the troops these days. I went overseas and defended your freedom Bill, and I am fortunate to say I did it without resorting to illegal tactics or discrediting my nation, my unit, or myself. You're welcome.

After watching Frontline's "Bush's war" and thinking about 30 years in Private industry, Bush clearly was the weakest leader, incapable of dealing with complex issues. Others selected a bunch of egomaniacs for the cabinet. Not one damn exercise they thought up worked because to a man they lacked knowledge. The rest of the story was simply letting the dogs out or desperately putting square
pegs in round holes. Surrounding ones self with smart people is an American tradition. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. It is a governmental process out of control. What is 4000 dead? Count less Iraqui's? The French were right. They and the German's deserve to win the oil rights as a result.
Who can claim innocence over lost civilian deaths? We should bury our dead, care for our wounded and try nation building at home for a while. What a
mess. Bush and his pals should be banished. Why should and how much longer should the "Prairie Justice mentality" of the U.S. drive our cattle anywhere we want and have enough guns to pull it
off ?

Not just the names of the CIA--we need the names of the contractors who were neck-deep in this. These men had absolutely no military chain of command and no oversight.

If you are suggesting that we reduce our conduct to the level of the terrorists we are fighting, I utterly reject that idea. Americans are civilized people and we can win wars without resorting to atrocity. We've done it in the past. There is a difference between fighting hard and fighting like a barbarian.

Most of the comments are actually DEFENDING the torture with comments such as "our boys are in trouble and we therefore need to torture..". This is sickening!
Why did you send 'your boys' there? (think a bit before answering 9/11). Did the Iraqi's invite you and are now treating you as bad hosts? Or did you break down their door, destroyed their homes and raped and tortured their people?
Seriously America, what do they feed you to keep you so dumb?
You seem to have lost all sense of humanity and civilization! I can now completely understand your racial segregation, your economic disaster and your "New Orleans"!
I bet McCain will be the new president! The last two elections, we (the rest of the world) gave you the benefit of the doubt and made a difference between your fascist government and the populace. Don't expect any sympathy when you choose yourself Hitler-version 2008 as president this time! It actually IS your fault this time.
Please America, realize that the world does not consist of 300 million humans and 6.3 billion sub-humans. We are all stuck together on this spec of cosmic dust and need to respect each other (including those 6.3 billion sub-humans)!

http://www.indypendent.org/2008/03/ 17/america%e2%80%99s-imperialist-agenda/

“I am saddened…to…acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” announced former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 2007. It has become fashionable to blame the war on oil, or on a handful of warmongering neo-conservatives in the Bush administration.

But the problem is far deeper than the quest for oil, or the desires of a few rogue politicians in Washington. The broader problem is that of imperialism, which is rooted in protecting “free markets” at whatever cost, and is justified under the false pretenses of spreading “freedom and democracy.”

Hey Bill, did you actually fight in WWII? Did you personally save any of the oppressed Dutch or other Europeans from the Nazis? If not, then you're just taking credit for the good work that other good men did. Moreover, you are trivializing their sacrifice by claiming their struggle as a kind of free pass for Americans to do whatever we want forever.

That's ridiculous, of course. American soldiers did indeed save oppressed peoples around the world by fighting and dying in WWII. My grandfather was one of them--my decision to serve in the military was in part inspired by his example. But we did not tarnish our victory by reducing our conduct to barbarism. In fact, we upheld the standards of justice and democracy by giving even the Nazi leaders fair trials. We did not torture them for evidence, nor did we summarily execute them.

Your attitude is shameful and un-American. You have no right to claim credit for the work of my grandfather and other veterans, nor do you have the right to call for torture of our prisoners in this current war.

A honest president would sign the U.S. back into the International Criminal Court, retroactive, and see that everyone on the chart was prosecuted.

I have not forgotten 9/11. But after serving in Iraq I have to ask if the administration forgot about 9/11, or even if they really cared about it in the first place. So much of administration policy has been counter productive and harmful to the efforts of counter terrorism we'd almost be better off if we'd done nothing.

Consider the fact that we invaded Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks--a Pentagon intelligence study recently confirmed this fact again. Yet there we are, stuck in civil war with too many sides to count, while Al Qaeda uses our invasion of Iraq as a global rallying cry to sign up Islamic terrorists everywhere. We tortured and in some cases even murdered prisoners in our custody because "the rules had changed" and yet we gained very little actionable intelligence from these procedures. Meanwhile, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and other US prisons have tarnished our global reputation and provided more fodder for the radicals trying to take us down. All this while we let Osama Bin Laden slip away, face a rising incidence of terrorism in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, and our neglect allows the Taliban and Al Qaeda rejunvinate their movement in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When we consider the question of torture, it is not enough to ask if it is right. Clearly it is not. We must also ask if it is practical. Here again, the results are not good. Even the information gained by the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed at the hands of the CIA had already been extracted from him by the FBI, using rapport-based approaches. Interrogators I have worked with have told me that one reason torture is not reliable is that the subject under torture is likely to say anything you wish to hear. The information gained in this way is not accurate, and could be dangerous to future operations. So why do we continue to risk our safety, our reputation and throw propaganda points to our enemies by using a technique that doesn't work?

Torture isn't about effectiveness. It is all about punishment. The 3000 souls who died on 9/11 deserve better than short-term revenge. If we're in this fight for the long haul, we'd do better to return to methods that have served our nation in the past. We have faced more dangerous enemies in the past, and we beat them without sacrificing our principles. We can surely keep our democratic ideals without losing to a group of rag-tag terrorists.

If by "Old School" you mean WWII, let me refer you to the example of Major Sherwood F. Moran, USMC, who led Marine Corps interrogation and translation teams that dealt with Japanese prisoners during WWII. In particular his teams were known for extracting the truth from the hardened Japanese troops in Okinawa, who had fully expected to die in place. This is not so different from the suicide bombers of today. Major Moran has stated, in writing, that the best interrogation approaches are rapport-based. Or perhaps you mean Vietnam. There are several accounts of SOG operators who captured VC soldiers and used rapport-based approaches not only to extract information, but to turn the VC to our side.

You seem to be living in this fantasy world wherein Americans did whatever they wanted and paved the way to victory. I am certainly not naive enough to argue that US soldiers have never tortured anyone or commited atrocity, but history shows that we win wars in spite of atrocity, not because of it.

I honestly have no fear that we will eventually defeat Al Qaeda and their ilk, but it will not be because we tortured them until they squealed. We will win as we have always done, through a combination of right principles, on-the-ground innovation, and sacrifice. Perhaps your fear is what makes you so keen to torture our enemies, but your fear is of no use to the troops on the battlefield.

Bill
What is lacking in your pschye to make you lash out at everyone with hate? Do you think your comments pass for witty?
Torture does not work. Torture gets people to say what you want them to say. Torture did not work for the Japanese or the Nazis, so why do you think we Americans can make it work.
It only takes a small amount of imagination to see that torture is about feeding the egos of torturer and not about information.
-ron