Waterboarding saved lives - G Bush

[ridestrong 1]

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Bush is a war criminal and should be in prison. There is absolutely no justification for his crimes.

Seriously though, what do you know about it?

Have you been exposed to priveleged information?

Are you nuts? We invaded a defenseless country for no reason.

Apparently, you were not paying much attention to the news much after 10 Sep 01.

Iraq is connected to September 11th how?

It wasn't... Iraq posed it's own suspected security threats at the time. No need for any connection to 9-11.

*I am not afraid of dying... I am afraid of missing life.*
----Disclaimer: I don't know shit about skydiving.----

[idrankwhat 0]

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Bush is a war criminal and should be in prison. There is absolutely no justification for his crimes.

Seriously though, what do you know about it?

Have you been exposed to priveleged information?

Actually you don't need any privileged information. Waterboarding is torture when other people do it. Bush admitted that he supported it. Either we subscribe to a double standard or Bush and other members of his administration have admitted to war crimes.

Does that mean that they'll get prosecuted? I'm sure they will, right after those who committed the banking fraud that nearly threw our country into a depression.

[billvon 3,076]

>right after those who committed the banking fraud that nearly threw our
>country into a depression.

That's a few million homeowners you'd have to arrest. Not sure we have enough prisons.

[Coreece 190]

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>right after those who committed the banking fraud that nearly threw our
>country into a depression.

That's a few million homeowners you'd have to arrest. Not sure we have enough prisons.

Ya...they must have all been in kahoots and waited for the percise moment to execute thier assault on the banks all at the same time.

...um, as I recall, it was the bankers that made out, not the homeowners.

Your secrets are the true reflection of who you really are...

[billvon 3,076]

>Ya...they must have all been in kahoots and waited for the percise
>moment to execute thier assault on the banks all at the same time.

Nope. They just defaulted on their loans. Doesn't take much more than that.

>um, as I recall, it was the bankers that made out, not the homeowners.

Some homeowners made out great; I know half a dozen people who recently got screaming good deals on homes. Some bankers made out great as well. But most homeowners and most bankers got hit pretty hard.

[dks13827 3]

we do it to our own troops in training........
none of them claimed to have been tortured by our own guys.

[idrankwhat 0]

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>right after those who committed the banking fraud that nearly threw our
>country into a depression.

That's a few million homeowners you'd have to arrest. Not sure we have enough prisons.

Hmm....you're right. The homeowners would be the ones to go to jail, regardless of whether or not the bank could provide the actual note or clear title.

[nigel99 569]

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we do it to our own troops in training........
none of them claimed to have been tortured by our own guys.

Actually according the the BBC article the USA does consider waterboarding torture IF it is done to a US citizen. I believe from the audio clip that official policy is that they would seek the death penalty for such behaviour.

I am sure that most troops are subjected to varying degrees of torture to prepare them for their career. Just because the "good guys" don't use torture doesn't mean that the enemy won't and that the troops shouldn't be mentally prepared or trained. The USA is free to follow the enemies tactics as far as I am concerned Fox news can show US troops beheading people and parading bodies in the streets just like the enemy does. The only reason not to go down that route is if you truly believe and live by the principle that we are "civilised".

When we choose to go down the path of doing the moral or civilised thing, we lose the option to engage in certain activities EVEN if we believe they MIGHT yield results.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[muff528 3]

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............... The only reason not to go down that route is if you truly believe and live by the principle that we are "civilised".

When we choose to go down the path of doing the moral or civilised thing, we lose the option to engage in certain activities EVEN if we believe they MIGHT yield results.

............right up to the point where the conflict has existential consequences ....then all bets are off. You can remain righteous, moral and civil and die or you can do whatever it takes to continue to exist, personally or as a people. I would expect any group (except one led by that crackpot Gandhi ) to resist extermination. (just taking a concept to the extreme. I'm not suggesting that we are anywhere near that end ....yet. But we, the "free world", seem to be doing everything we can to get there).

[nigel99 569]

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............... The only reason not to go down that route is if you truly believe and live by the principle that we are "civilised".

When we choose to go down the path of doing the moral or civilised thing, we lose the option to engage in certain activities EVEN if we believe they MIGHT yield results.

............right up to the point where the conflict has existential consequences ....then all bets are off. You can remain righteous, moral and civil and die or you can do whatever it takes to continue to exist, personally or as a people. I would expect any group (except one led by that crackpot Gandhi ) to resist extermination. (just taking a concept to the extreme. I'm not suggesting that we are anywhere near that end ....yet. But we, the "free world", seem to be doing everything we can to get there).

I agree with you. I think that the western world is schizophrenic. We have a belief system and a standard of life that we want everyone else to have - but it must not be at our expense. Everyone wants people in China to not work in sweat shops until it means that there TV set or Computer costs 5 times the current amount.

I have no problem in the west going to war to defend ourselves but we can't use the excuse that we are trying to impose freedom.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[muff528 3]

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............... The only reason not to go down that route is if you truly believe and live by the principle that we are "civilised".

When we choose to go down the path of doing the moral or civilised thing, we lose the option to engage in certain activities EVEN if we believe they MIGHT yield results.

............right up to the point where the conflict has existential consequences ....then all bets are off. You can remain righteous, moral and civil and die or you can do whatever it takes to continue to exist, personally or as a people. I would expect any group (except one led by that crackpot Gandhi ) to resist extermination. (just taking a concept to the extreme. I'm not suggesting that we are anywhere near that end ....yet. But we, the "free world", seem to be doing everything we can to get there).

I agree with you. I think that the western world is schizophrenic. We have a belief system and a standard of life that we want everyone else to have - but it must not be at our expense. Everyone wants people in China to not work in sweat shops until it means that there TV set or Computer costs 5 times the current amount.

I have no problem in the west going to war to defend ourselves but we can't use the excuse that we are trying to impose freedom.

Right. Freedom cannot be imposed anyway. But it is, in some ways, our obligation to aid (liberate) those who seek freedom. On the other hand, "peace" must be imposed. I am all for peace for everyone but some may not like or agree with my terms.

[loumeinhart 0]

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Iraq is connected to September 11th how?

Maybe it wasn't at all. Perhaps the 'political will' was leveraged to stop Iraq from potentially getting nuclear weapons.

My .03

[normiss 857]

Given they had already invaded another country, refused to allow nuke inspections, thumbed their nose at the rest of the planet while killing and torturing their own...it was an easy sell.
Now about China and Iran.....

[loumeinhart 0]

You mean Kuwait? and fucking with the UN inspectors? and torturing civilians?

We should have left them alone and focused our efforts on Haiti

[Amazon 7]

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Iraq is connected to September 11th how?

Maybe it wasn't at all. Perhaps the 'political will' was leveraged to stop Iraq from potentially getting nuclear weapons.

My .03

And perhaps all those PNAC guys who are heavily invested in "small oil" business with companies that control THOUSANDS of small low barrel per well production numbers knew that if a major oil producing state was attacked that it would destabilize world oil markets.

If you have a well that is producing under 50 barrels per day at $20 a barrel and you can manipulate foreign "policy" to create an excellent adventure in an oil producing state and all of a sudden... VOILA your oil from your marginal wells is worth 5 times as much... yeah.. no incentive there at all.

For those who have never driven across the American Intermountain west... there are MANY MANY thousands of those marginal wells.

I guess when you have actually worked on a well doing mud logs every hour on the hour for a 12 hour shift... you learn a few things aobut how the biz really works. Its also a good reason to make sure you never actually go to work for an oil exploration company again and end up being the only person with an education on a platform in the middle of nowhere with 60 or so of the worst slimebags on the planet.

[loumeinhart 0]

we have many small oil producing wells here in NEO. I'm not sure how much influence these small drilling companies have on the govmnt waging war in the middle east. Call me me dumb, uninformed, and simplistic but I believe that UN resolution 1441 gave more than enough reason to invade a nation thought to be harboring WMD's.

[Amazon 7]

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we have many small oil producing wells here in NEO. I'm not sure how much influence these small drilling companies have on the govmnt waging war in the middle east. Call me me dumb, uninformed, and simplistic but I believe that UN resolution 1441 gave more than enough reason to invade a nation thought to be harboring WMD's.

Go read the PNAC documents from the 1990's... and get back to me on that.

It would be interesting to get some new numbers on the Bush and Cheney family fortunes and the numbers for 100 of their best friends.

[loumeinhart 0]

Ok I just read the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance ?

It talks about the US maintaing it's superpower status and addresses regions that have potential conflicts (Iraq and N Korea)

[Amazon 7]

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Ok I just read the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance ?

It talks about the US maintaing it's superpower status and addresses regions that have potential conflicts (Iraq and N Korea)

Try this one...

Nope nothing to do with oil at all

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a neo-conservative think tank with strong ties to the American Enterprise Institute. PNAC's web site says it was "established in the spring of 1997" as "a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership."
PNAC's policy document, "Rebuilding America's Defences," openly advocates for total global military domination. Many PNAC members hold highest-level positions in the George W. Bush administration. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project (501c3).
In 2009 two of PNAC's founders, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, began what some termed "PNAC 2.0," The Foreign Policy Initiative.


History

The PNAC was co-founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1997, with roots in the 1992 Pentagon. PNAC's original 25 signatories were an eclectic mix of academics and conservative politicians, several of whom have subsequently found positions in the presidential administration of George Walker Bush. PNAC is noteworthy for its focus on Iraq, a preoccupation that began before Bush became president and predates the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In 1998, the group wrote a letter to President Bill Clinton, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott (then Senate Majority Leader) and Newt Gingrich (then Speaker of the House of Representatives), demanding a harder line against Iraq. By then, the group had grown in numbers, adding individuals such as former Reagan-era U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, and long-time Washington cold warrior/pro-LikudRichard N. Perle.
According to William Rivers Pitt, "Two events brought PNAC into the mainstream of American government: the disputed election of George W. Bush and the attacks of September 11th. When Bush assumed the Presidency, the men who created and nurtured the imperial dreams of PNAC became the men who run the Pentagon, the Defense Department and the White House. When the Towers came down, these men saw, at long last, their chance to turn their White Papers into substantive policy."[1]
Several original PNAC members, including Cheney, Khalilzad and the Bush family, have ties to the oil industry. Many other members have been long-time fixtures in the U.S. military establishment or Cold War "strategic studies," including Elliott Abrams, Dick Cheney, Paula Dobriansky, Aaron Friedberg, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald H. Rumsfeld, John R. Bolton, Vin Weber, and Paul Dundes Wolfowitz. It should not be surprising, therefore, that while the group devotes inordinate attention to Iraq, its most general focus has been on a need to "re-arm America." The prospect of mining oil riches may explain part of the group's focus on Iraq, but this motivation has been buried under the rhetoric of national security and the need for strong national defense.
To justify a need to "rearm" the country, however, reasons must be found. In the more peaceable world of the late 1990s, with no rival super-power in sight, Iraq and "ballistic missile defense" against "rogue states" were the main games in town. The group's links to advocacy for ballistic missile defense came through Donald Rumsfeld, who in 1998 chaired a bi-partisan commission on the "US Ballistic Missile Threat" and Vin Weber, a registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and other Fortune 500 companies.
According to a February 27, 2003, editorial by William Rivers Pitt, PNAC
has been agitating since its inception for a war with Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The names of every prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to President Clinton in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the Act by driving troops into Baghdad. PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress, and to Iraq's heir-apparent, Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud. Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put them in power in Iraq. Most recently, PNAC created a new group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee has set out to "educate" Americans via cable news connections about the need for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of this education. ... The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of the wars.[2]