McCain And Ghraham Are Cowards

Senators McCain and Ghraham are cowards for refusing to define the standards of interrogation they want US interrogators of terrorists to follow. How quick they are to take a stand on the Sunday talk shows, but when it comes to doing their job, they are nowhere to be found.

The fact is Article 3 is ambiguous, especially so now that our pathetic Supreme Court has unconstitutionally placed it in position to be scrutinized by American courts of law - a place it was never intended to be interpreted. The entire convention was never even intended to be applied to terrorists for heavens sake. These poseurs we have as politicians and judges today are going to get us all killed.

All Bush is asking is for the legislature to do their job now that they have opened this can of worms. How South Carolina re-elects that idiot Ghraham and Arizona doesn't figure out the egomaniac McCain for the self-indulgent jerk he is, is beyond me. They are two of the most revolting politicians I've ever seen given their shallow opportunism in trying to develop power for themselves while failing the American people and their constitutional obligations as legislators. We could do quite well without them both. I'm so sick of seeing and hearing them, I could barf.

And here is what they don't want our interrogators to do to terrorists. My God, those feckless creeps have no shame.

The techniques sought by the CIA are: induced hypothermia; forcing suspects to stand for prolonged periods; sleep deprivation; a technique called "the attention grab" where a suspect's shirt is forcefully seized; the "attention slap" or open hand slapping that hurts but does not lead to physical damage; the "belly slap"; and sound and light manipulation.

Conservatives should challenge them both in their next primaries. At worst, we'd have another Democrat or two but, I'd rather have that than those two preening, all but liberal jerks. See here for more.

Well, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have the real scoop of the day. We obtained the real list while the Guardian obtained the official red herring list of silly things to get the leftists spun about™.

Comments

[Terry Gain]

John McCain is a good man, however it's obvious that his experiences as a POW in Nam have warped his judgement. His beliefs that American soldiers will be safer and that America's standing in the world will be enhanced by a laydown position on this issue is irrational. He should recuse himself.

As to Graham I have few prejudices but I am just a little put off and sceptical about an allegedly conservative man who is clearly effeminate and takes very liberal positions. Something is out of whack with this guy.

[Tom W]

"John McCain is a Good Man".

Define that, please.

If you mean that he doesn't go around raping and killing and doesn't cook meth in his garage (who'd ever suspect that?), then perhaps he's a good man.

If you mean that when the chips are down and a crises exists that requires a principled vote to do the right thing for this Nation and the people he is supposed to serve, then occaisonally he is a good man.

If you mean he has an inner character that leads him to do what is right, regardless of the fallout, consequences and political repercussions, then seldom is he a good man.

If you mean by 'good' he constantly challenges and undermines the legitimate authority of the President, constantly positions and compromises to do what he can to make hay with the media and to make himself look good, regardless of the messages it sends to our allies and enemies and the impact it has on our ability to defend this Nation..then I guess he must be very, very good.

I think he has the potential to be good but consistently chooses to be bad. Like all the other bad men in the world.

[Terry Gain]

Tom W

I said good, not great. At his point in its history America -and the world -need great men leading it.

[splashtc]

Aside from the slapping - some peoples' jobs reflect those conditions- construction workers, interns at a hospital... What's the big deal?

[Mark Sep]

Mccain is not a good man he is an opportunist. The Mccain Feingold act, the Gang of 14, the pandering to the liberal press for his nickname the Maverick. Here is more on this bufoon!!!

http://twominuteoffense.blogspot.com/2005/09/mccain-opportunist-and-fool.html

[rwilymz]

McCain is a centrist Republican, and it's among the Right Wing that "centrist" is a cuss word.

"I must follow my people for I am their leader." - Mao tse-Tung, circa 1940, during the Great Migration, or whatever it was called.

Y'know, folks, on matters of foreign policy, the Republicans are generally in the ballpark; I wouldn't give the average Democrat credit for having brains enough to shoot back when he's getting fired upon. ... as much of our foreign policy debate shows.

But these are polarizing times, and intransigence and inflexibility are the tools of tyrant wannabes. "Centrism" merely acknowledges that there are other perspectives besides your own in the country. So unless you're willing to declare "the other party" to be your first mortal enemy and get down in the weeds with another US civil war, knock it the hell off. We have pan-islamism to fight.

Which war shall it be? Republican-Democrat? or East-West? Can't be both; only enough bullets for one.

[xxx]

Common article 3 is 'ambiguous' for the reason that if it simply was a laundry list of prohibited procedures then people like you would find exceptions.

It is not difficult to know what is and what is not an outrage upon human dignity, period.

Induced hypothermia? OMG, yeah that sounds right in line with American values just like keeping prisoners naked.

Only the right wing fringe would have the nerve to call a man who WAS TORTURED for his country a coward...yup, I guess Colin Powell is just another know nothing dumb as a stump coward, traitor, too....

Um, yeah, whatever.

[rwilymz]

"Common article 3 is 'ambiguous' for the reason that if it simply was a laundry list of prohibited procedures then people like you would find exceptions."

That's incorrect.

Article 3 is ambiguous because there is no international enforcement mechanism in place to ensure its compliance, and if the world defined torture across the board, there'd be no means to back it up. It is up to each nation to define their own notion of "torture" and then enforce it on themselves.

How the definition is created is up to each nation. As we can tell, our defintions are made with public acrimony and name-calling and faux-moral posturing.

[Michaela]

Majority of Floridians are on McCain/Graham/Powell/Warner's side. Two polls done a week apart asked "Do you agree with Bush or McCain on the pending treatment of detainees act? First poll was 66% for McCain 32% for Bush. Second time it's 79% for McCain and 14% for Bush. I was surprised but we talked about it at work and you couldn't find anyone that thinks Bush is right. Alot of my colleagues have family fighting in Iraq and think Bush has lost his mind on this one. You'd be hard pressed to find 10 people besides myself that will vote republican. It's alot worse out there for the GOP than I thought.

[xxx]

I think you are wrong on that...it was purposely made ambiguous for the reason I said, because it would be ridiculous to try and list hundreds? thousands? of potential interrogation techniques and put them in the 'okay' or the 'banned' box.

It appears to have worked well in the First World for almost 60 years, but oh well, wait, I forgot, a bunch of dirt poor, uneducated radical muslims are SOOOOOOOOO powerful and SOOOOO smart and SOOOO diabolical that unlike our previous enemies like the USSR or communist China we simply cannot abide by the GenCons and 'win' the war on terror.

Give me a break.

The Bush proposal is an embarassment to all Americans, an embarrasment to the history of this country and most importantly an embarrassment to the U.S. military and everything it stands for.

Oh yeah and FYI...please note the INNOCENT Canadian citizen that was spirited away to a Syrian gulag and tortured for 10 months, but, um, our government would never never never make that mistake..except it has already made that mistake numerous times.

Never in my life would I have believed that anyone in this country would take seriously the idea that we needed to re institute torture as an approved method of interrogation, let alone it would be coming from the white house.

[Scaramouche]

Do really believe that The entire convention was never even intended to be applied to terrorist or that it ignored the Nuremburg trials where the worst human atrocities were coldly committed in an efficient, industrialized manner?

I believe they wrote this to keep us human. To keep us from plunging to the depths of us being like them.

Even the worst people on earth do not deserve to be treated like animals. Not for their sake, but for ours.

We have laws that wouldn't allow you to do simillar harsh treatment to animals. Would you relegate these people to a status lower than that?

OK, maybe a detainee will cough info, any....thing you want to hear - to make it stop, while a dog will only cough up, what a dog coughs up after you mistreat it.

Lupus est homo homini Man is wolf to man.

Someday, these people who carried out torture techniuqes will come home and live next-door-to-you.

Please tell them and honor all that they did was in your name...

[PJ]

McCain reveals his naked political goals with a morally empty argument, that our soldiers would be exposed to torture if we didn't uphold the GC after upholding them since 1949. But what enemy since 1949 has treated our soldiers according to these conventions? Not North Korea! Not Vietnam! Or has McCain forgotten? Our enemies already torture our people; so let's do what is necessary to win the war.

When I see Al Quaeda lined up at a cemetery thumbing their noses at our guns, when I hear these vacuous politicians like McCain say "it's a matter of conscience," my blood boils. I don't know if he is warped from his own torture or because he 'confessed', but he should remove himself from this issue.

[xxx]

Since when is "they do it...so I can too" a defense outside of something a 9 year old says on the playground?

"They" also order the gang rape of women as punishment for their families, 'they' behead their captives, 'they' employ suicide bombs...does that mean we should too? 'They' put people in concentration camps, conducted medical experiments on them, tortured them, starved them...and on and on' but WE did not, in the past, stoop to 'their' level.

Should we start strapping explosives to our soliders backs and sending them into the enemy camp because 'they' do it?

What absolute RUBBISH of an argument. Truly, if people are this stupid in the alleged 'civilized' world we don't deserve to keep our place and our species doesn't deserve to exist either.

[rwilymz]

"it was purposely made ambiguous for the reason I said"

Have you read the history behind the GenCons?

They were started in the late 19th century when there was no international nuthin; just treaties and the voluntary efforts of signatories to enforce them.

"it would be ridiculous to try and list hundreds? thousands? of potential interrogation techniques and put them in the 'okay' or the 'banned' box"

Hardly. It's done all the time, and what we're demanding is that the US do that: list, individually, all the means and methods of human contact and determine whether each method rises to the level of "torture".

If it were done for us by some international organization, who would enforce it? Short answer: nobody. Nobody has the sovereign authority to do so.

"It appears to have worked well in the First World for almost 60 years"

hahahahahahahahahaha. It has never worked better than now, actually. The US, indeed all western nations, not to mention the "unincorporated" parts of the globe, have wallowed in "torture" for eons. What the US routinely did even as late as Korea would have caused you to ab.so.lutely shit your pants in self-righteous indignation.

"we simply cannot abide by the GenCons and 'win' the war on terror"

What we are doing now has always been considered "abiding by the GenCons".

The USSC simply demanded that our rules become clearer. And because historical dunces and military neophytes believe that their inexpert opinions are equivalent to someone who actually knows what he's talking about, and because our heretofore private governmental inner working are now being played out in public, the politicians are pandering to idiots who don't know squat about the subject.

...such as those who recite a completely fabricated history behind the GenCons.

"The Bush proposal is an embarassment to all Americans"

It is an "embarrassment" to those who don't know what they're talking about, who feel with their brains and think with their kneecaps, but that excludes me.

"...an embarrasment to the history of this country..."

It's actually quite in line with the "history of this country".

"...most importantly an embarrassment to the U.S. military and everything it stands for."

...quoth the one who never served.

"except it has already made that mistake numerous times."

You expected otherwise? Since when does anyone have a rational basis to expect perfection from governments?

Our government isn't perfect, therefore it is entirely corrupt. Therefore everything it attempts to do should be interfered with, because it's only an attempt to codify corruption.

Grow the hell up.

"Never in my life would I have believed that anyone in this country would take seriously the idea that we needed to re institute torture as an approved method of interrogation"

It is NOT "torture". Water boarding has never, ever, ever, ever been "torture". Induced hypothermia has never, ever, ever, ever been "torture". The more you say it the more you are wrong.

We've been doing both for generations. Never once has it ever been backbitten by the self-righteous panty-wetters ... until this past few years when the absolute blockheaded, slabminded fixation some people have on Bush has compelled knee-jerk denunciation of everything he does, stands for, says, or thinks. If Bush were to say 2+2=4, most of you retarded fucks would argue that it was 5, just out of principle.

But what principle allows you to take an intellectually vacant position and still claim the moral highroad is beyond me. You can't be "moral" if you are factually inaccurate, and you are factually inaccurate.

[xxx]

Blah, blah, blah.

Our OWN MILITARY are against the Bush proposals. NOt me. Not the libs. Not the dems.

The military. The current military and the retired military...so, if this is NOT a big deal then why aren't the armed forces in lock step behind Bushie????????? So does that mean that the military's most senior lawyers are 'military neophytes'? soft on terror? liberal democrats that have been waiting until now to come out of the closet? self righteous panty wetter...is that what Colin Powell is?

Your position has no merit and you know it.

[xxx]

My recollection is that with few exceptions, most notably the regretatble steps taken during the civil war....the history of the United States does not include torturing prisoners, does not include holding people without any due process.

As I remember, George Washington accorded the Brits POW status even though they DID NOT give his troops the same privilege.

I don't remember any Battan Death March of Japanese soldiers.

I don't remember that scores of Nazi POW's died in allied prisons like they did in Russian prisons.

[rwilymz]

"the history of the United States does not include torturing prisoners, does not include holding people without any due process."

Summary execution of German soldiers captured out of uniform on Long Island. What we did in Panama in '89 -- to the whole city surrounding the entrenched Noriega and his elite forces -- would have been considered "torture" among the quibbledicks now wetting their panties en masse. "Torture" ... "non-lethal warfare" ... what's in a name?

Tarring and feathering was common practice in the Revolution. Tar is gummy at room temperature and will not easily pour onto someone unless it's heated up to around 140-150F. Then it pours real nice. Dip some dipwad in 150F tar, roll him in feathers to keep the 150F in ... you slowly cook him. Dies after slow lingering pain from massive organ failure.

Internment of Japanese civilians during WWII. Uniform deprivation of German nationals' civil rights during WWI. I don't think I need to tell you what the Indian Wars and forced resettlement did to Due Process.

"George Washington accorded the Brits POW status ..."

That's what you get for learning your history through made-for-TV. There was no "POW treatment" during the American Revolution. "POW" as a defined concept with specific expectations apart from "gentlemen's agreements" arose from the GenCons.

"I don't remember any Battan Death March of Japanese soldiers"

Do you remember the Trail of Tears? The forced marching of German and Italian troops across long stretches of the Sahara? Because it wasn't *deliberately* designed to kill prisoners does not mean we actively avoided it.

And we didn't.

"I don't remember that scores of Nazi POW's died in allied prisons like they did in Russian prisons."

Scores of Germans died in US POW camps. Often from accidents, although many from, um, "suicide" imposed upon them by the Waffen SS surrogate commandants, allowed by US guards to maintain order and discipline among the POWs.

...using standard Nazi methods.

[xxx]

What's in a name, that's your fundamental problem since you've already said that if the government passes a law saying, for example, that gouging out the eyes of prisoners is NOT torture, then it is, in reality, NOT torture, that there exists no basic, bottom line standard for what is and what is not humane treatment..

You still haven't answered whether the current military brass are panty wetters...is Colin Powell a panty wetter? a traitor? is the top current military lawyer a panty wetter? soft on terror? a coward?

[rwilymz]

"I believe they wrote this to keep us human."

And scaramouche? You can believe what you like, but it won't make it true.

The GenCons were written for the sole, and express, purpose of making wars more civilized **for those not fighting it**.

It started with the convention for the "amelioration" of soldiers wounded in battle -- they can no longer fight, so they get *these* special considerations.

It then went on to soldiers [and others] captured during hostile action, the special treatment accorded *them*, and who qualified for the treatment. And specifically excluded were those who fought as civilian and who deliberately concealed their war-fighting status. ...which includes what we have come to call "terrorists".

In wars past, these people were called "saboteurs" and we were allowed to do anything we wanted with them -- as everyone was. And we, and everyone else, did.

They are now called "terrorists" and they have been elevated to "legitimate war-fighter" in the eyes of the current generation who believes that war is, or should be, sanitary and who are self-righteous pampered imbeciles in general.

The oft-cited "common article 3" lists the basic safeguards accorded to those qualifying under the GenCons, but "common article 4" -- usually completely ignored by the brain-dead, the "civil libertarians of warfare" and the USSC -- lists those who qualify.

"Terrorists", like the saboteurs they would have been called before them, do not qualify.

Saboteurs were excluded as a way of discouraging civilians from playing war and then hiding behind civilian trappings when caught, as well as to discourage soldiers from dressing as civilians to wage war. If soldiers get to wage war as civilians and get treated like soldiers, and civilians get to wage war and hide as civilians, then we have have reverted to the old paradigm in which warfare was one group of people against the whole civilization -- men who aren't fighting, women and children included.

That is: square one.

Which is the reason that those who do not follow the rules when fighting are allowed -- BY THE RULES -- to have those rules ignored when it comes to their disposition.

So you can take your "plunging to the depths of us being like them" and your "laws that wouldn't allow you to do simillar harsh treatment to animals" and your "Lupus est homo homini" and tell some other cranio-rectally impacted drip -- say, your local Political Science professor.

[xxx]

I am still waiting.

Is Colin Powell a panty wetter?

Are the current top military lawyers panty wetters?

Are all the military personnel who are against redefining Common Article 3 panty wetters?

[rwilymz]

"if the government passes a law saying, for example, that gouging out the eyes of prisoners is NOT torture"

Our government already has a definition of torture that would include that. Essentially, anything which causes permanent debilitating pain or disfugurement is torture.

Annoying someone -- loud music at all hours -- is not.

Frustrating someone -- sleep deprivation -- is not.

Discomforting someone -- extremes of temperature -- is not.

Embarrassing someone -- forced nudity -- is not.

Making them **think** they are being tortured -- water boarding -- is not.

Offending their cultural sensibilities -- placing their holy books on an "unclean" object, making them eat left-handed, making them wipe their ass right-handed, using "unclean" interrogators [i.e., women] to interrogate them -- is not.

Using standard detention methods -- shackles and manicles -- is not.

Causing "mere" pain -- slaps and whatnot -- is not.

Pain which permanently disfigures or debilitates? ...is.

"there exists no basic, bottom line standard for what is and what is not humane treatment"

Welcome to reality.

Whose definition would you use? Yours? The ICRC's? Amnesty International's?

Great.

Next step, get the **sovereign** nations to agree to it -- uniformly.

You can't IMPOSE it because the governments are **sovereign**. You can only put it out there for governments to volunteer to.

You'll get some willing to do it: Iceland, Andorra, Canada probably, Japan, maybe New Zealand, Sweden [they're good for that sort of thing], and a half a hundred others.

You may even see nations like Cuba and Venezuela and North Korea signing on -- with their fingers crossed, naturally -- just for the PR scoop they'd get. Of course, they'd never abide by it, but their signatures don't mean much more than a waste of ink historically anyway.

Russia? France? China? any of the middle eastern countries now in the news? Not a chance in hell. Oh, they'll talk a good game -- particularly France -- when it comes to the American outrages they love to hate, but France knows that as a quasi-super power, they'll stand only to get ankle-bitten if they're ever caught backsliding on it, so they'll never sign it. Beside, it would impart their **current** policies in West Africa too much.

But of course, only the US will be the bad guy for not signing it, just like the US is the only bad guy for not signing Kyoto. Because if there weren't the US in the world today, everybody else would live in group-hug harmony and peace. Not to mention environmental cleanliness and uniform semi-tropical climate.

Right?

[rwilymz]

"Are all the military personnel who are against redefining Common Article 3 panty wetters?"

Nobody is talking about "redefining common article 3" you insufferably incompetent and illiterate fuck.

It's only HALF the fucking applicable law.

Nobody is talking about removing legitimate humane treatment from those who qualify; it's just that those who qualify have been expanded in violation of the other half of the law.

Learn.To.Fucking.Read.

[xxx]

Frustrating someone -- sleep deprivation -- is not.
-----------------------------
For how long? Two days? Ten days? At some point it does become torture.

Discomforting someone -- extremes of temperature -- is not.
-----------------------------
How hot? How cold? Putting some prisoner outside in zero degree weather with no clothes on is torture.

Embarrassing someone -- forced nudity -- is not.
-----------------
It isn't torture but its degrading and dehumanizing and should not be allowed, period. Forced nakedness isn't going to get any terrorist to confess just to get his clothes back and forced nakedness contributes greatly to viewing prisoners as less than human, once the clothes come off its only a matter of time before sexual abuse and sexualized torture gets started {please refer to Abu Girad for how this spiral occures in the real world outside of polysci rhetoric]

Making them **think** they are being tortured -- water boarding -- is not.
-----------
And how do you get trained in 'pretending' to drown someone? And when you inevitable f**c up and DO drown someone, what's that? murder? a mistake? a regretable training error?

As far as Kyoto we are the largest consumer of energy on the planet and by the time global warming and human contributions to global warming can be viewed as incontrovertible, where 100 out of 100 people would agree on the conclusions it WILL BE TOO LATE...and we could very well be looking at a global temperature increase of 4 or 5 degrees which would decimate life on the planet, not to mention screw Europe and a good portion of the US as well.

[xxx]

Nobody is talking about "redefining common article 3" you insufferably incompetent and illiterate fuck.
----------------------------------------

You say "clarify" others say "redefine" may be you need to learn to fucking read, or rather maybe you need a READING COMPREHENSION class so you can understand what it is you are reading. Dumb fuck.

[rwilymz]

"Putting some prisoner outside in zero degree weather with no clothes on is torture."

According to whom?

You? You have no legal authority, just pious demagoguery.

"its degrading and dehumanizing and should not be allowed, period"

Ahhhh. "Period". The dictatorship of the soft-headed left.

"once the clothes come off its only a matter of time before sexual abuse and sexualized torture "

Can you name one instance of "sexualized torture"?

The answer would be -- if it to be accurate -- "no you cannot".

"please refer to Abu Girad for how this spiral occures in the real world ..."

Which real world is this? The one you're inventing on the fly to accomodate your instant history of the GenCons?

For your information, what occured in Abu GHRAIB was not "torture" but "mistreatment". We've had pretty much this exact discussion before, and you haven't learned to cease equivocating terminology. I cannot understand how you expect to be taken seriously, with an academically sustainable position, if you can't understand that one term is not interchangeable for another in a legal setting.

"when you inevitable f**c up and DO drown someone, what's that? murder? a mistake? a regretable training error?"

Again, welcome to reality.

Shit happens. It is only in the fantasy world of hair-shirted American self-loathers that only the US is never allowed to "inevitably fuck up" but that others, who often do not even pretend to ffollow the rules, are exempted from guilt or even suspicion.

Yours is the exact opposite of "my country can do no wrong"; yours is "my country is always wrong". You slant your recollection of History to back-date your arguments, you issue predictable knee-jerk denunciations of programs and policies you HAVE NO CLUE about, but "must be wrong" simply because the guy is charge is someone you've got your panties in a wad about. And then you regurgitate, as authoritative, your opinions which you picked up wholesale from some other like-minded ignoramus simpleton. And this phrase-for-phrase identity in argument shows you are somehow "independent" and "free-thinnking".

No; you are classic teen-aged rebels, all adopting identical dress, mannerisms, tastes and thoughts. You couldn't be more conformist if you tried. You wouldn't know "independent" if it bit you on the ass. If it did, you'd accuse it of being whichever boogeyman you're uniformly rebelling against.

[xxx]

No, its you who are of the opinion that my country can do no wrong therefore my country can do whatever 'it' says is necessary.

I want checks and balances and ACCOUNTABILITY so that when something does go wrong it can be found out and corrected.

If the government is accountable to no one and all it has to do is say in a whiny, hysterical voice 'national security' and its case closed then that invites abuse, it virtually guarantees abuse when people know they are accountable to no one they are not going to follow the non existant, non eforcable rules.

Thus, if the government doesn't have to show evidence against those it accues of terrorism there is nothing stopping them from accusing people of terrorists when there is NO EVIDENCE, there is also nothing to prevent or even mitigate the idea of mistaken intelligence [note, please refer to WMD all over Iraq and Iraq nukes program all based on wrong innteligence].

I'm still waiting on whether or not Colin Powell is a panty wetter or whether the former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is simply like me, he just don't understand the GenCons and he just don't understand what Bushie is proposing......

[mylena]

well as long it isn't you where they made the 'mistake' thinking you are a terroist.... In any event you would think the 'terroist' are trained to deal with these 'torture', i do find it double standard, when some one is targeted a "terroist" you can do these kind of torture, but not when someone killed or raped a 3 year old, because then the killer/raper does has rights? I seriously do not understand these double standards

[rwilymz]

"we are the largest consumer of energy on the planet"

The most efficient, too. Do the math. %25 of the energy consumption, 40% of the world's economic productivity.

CO2 is the result of efficient combustion of hydrocarbon fuels; soot is the result of inefficient combustion of hydrocarbons. You want we should go back to making soot?

Or go back to subsistence? Because there ain't a policy recommendation yet that doesn't devolve, ultimately, back to one of them.

*I've* got the gardens and the livestock; I could survive subsistence. Could you?

"by the time global warming and human contributions to global warming can be viewed as incontrovertible"

It's [pretty much incontrovertible right now: humans have an impact on their environment. Not really much of a quibble.

Only question is: how much?

"it WILL BE TOO LATE..."

Ahhh, yes. The the armageddonism of the Left. Why let the religious right and all the various cultural eschatologies have all the fun, eh? Why not predict your own "end of the world"? Some sort of new age-y Velikovsky-meets-Star-Trek thing, what say?

"we could very well be looking at a global temperature increase of 4 or 5 degrees which would decimate life on the planet"

If the geological record is anything to go by, that is preposterous. It would *alter* human existence, but it wouldn't "decimate" anything.

"not to mention screw Europe and a good portion of the US as well."

That ought to fit in well with your "my country is always wrong" philosophy quite well. Imagine, Gaia gets so pissed at our current politics that she dooms us to -- what did Cayce predict? the inundation of Florida, the reduction of the west coast to Platte Nebraska [serves them Californians right, I'd say], emptying the Great Lakes down the Mississippi...? Izzat close?

Answer me this, Captain Planet... why is it that the earth, which could stand, literally, cosmic battering for eons without anything more damaging than a sneeze and a periodic cold cannot tolerate 200 years of capitalistic industrialism without dying?

[rwilymz]

"No, its you who are of the opinion that my country can do no wrong"

Hardly, and you know better than to suggest it. I've given my [partial] litany of wrong things many times.

You really do need to stop altering your local reality to fit the needs of your current rhetorical pickle.

"therefore my country can do whatever 'it' says is necessary."

My country should be expected to follow the rules my country has set up to abide by under circumstances that are similar to those we're currently in.

And we are.

"I want checks and balances and ACCOUNTABILITY"

MARVElous. We've had them and are operating under them. And those checks-n-balances and ACCOUNTABILITY have said E.V.E.R.Y T.I.M.E right up until present that in times of war, the prez gets to do X, Y and Z all on his own authority because that's what the Constitution meant when it named him the CinC.

Thus has sayethed the USSC from the begining.

So all your "thuses" are self-indulgent fart gas.

"so that when something does go wrong it can be found out and corrected."

And what do you think has "gone wrong"?

[xxx]

If the geological record is anything to go by, that is preposterous. It would *alter* human existence, but it wouldn't "decimate" anything.
-----------------------------------------

BULLSHIT. A rise of 5 degrees would result in the extinction of 50% of the species on the planet, a rise of 10 degrees would result in the extinction of 90% of the species on the planet....this is from the geological record of the planet in the past, you know, when the temperature went up 5 and 10 degrees......

The earth has gone through several cycles of mass exstinction before so it is nothing new...

[rwilymz]

"I seriously do not understand these double standards"

One is a crime subject to US civil law, the other is war subject to international law.

We have no business imposing US civil law on others not subject to US jurisdiction; we have no business imposing our civil jurisdiction in others' territory. Hence, we are subject to -- and subject those we capture to -- international law.

It's not difficult.

[xxx]

PS...

Cayce will be proven right in time if we continue on our present path and nothing is done to avert global warming...the polar ice caps are melting, migration patterns are starting to change...the seas are starting to rise..if all this continues unabated then, yeah, in 100 years NYC will be under water and so will much of the rest of the U.S. East coast.

Politics has nothing to do with it. If the ocean currents change then the current that makes Europe warmer than it would otherwise be will go bye bye...global warming will make the corn belt move north..out of the US and up in to Canada. Half of the fucking country is practically a desert anyway if it wasn't for the ridiculous Hoover Dam there wouldn't be millions of people living in a part of the country with NO WATER, none, zero, no water at all outside of a few paltry springs.

[rwilymz]

"A rise of 5 degrees would result in the extinction of 50% of the species on the planet, a rise of 10 degrees would result in the extinction of 90% of the species on the planet....this is from the geological record of the planet in the past, you know, when the temperature went up 5 and 10 degrees......"

Um... The geological record is not so fine as to be able to make that conclusion, Doctor Mendels. When mass extinctions are recorded as "between 55 and 65 million years ago ..." then assigning a cause to it, particularly one as fleeting as temperature [which is only a fraction of the "climate" puzzle] is inappropriate.

One could as easily conclude that the temperature increases spawned the resultant re-speciation.

Yeah, I think I'll do that. Global warming is a good thing! We'll re-speciate the planet! SUVs all around!!!

[xxx]

Well, isn't that convenient then....so, like I said, by the time the proof is incontrovertible it will be too late. It won't do any good to say I told you so when the temperature rises by 5 degrees and 50% of the species on the planet become extinct just like the experts predicted.

We can't know what we can't know so since we can't know it, why worry...maybe the dinosaurs committed mass suicide, maybe the geological records that indicate massive temperature changes have been wrongly interpreted, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Whatever happened to better safe than sorry...I guess that just goes for restrictions of civil liberties and torturing terrorists, when it comes to something as silly as changing the face of the earth...who cares, bring on the Lincoln Navigator and the subzero fridge

[rwilymz]

"...just like the experts predicted"

Are these the same "experts" who predicted, in the 60s and 70s, that the world was getting cooler? that we were facing a new ice age?

Why ... yes they are!

They are certainly learning more about their infant science for which they should be praised, but they aren't the "experts" they'd like you to believe they are -- and which you apparently do already.

They have yet to make a prediction that
1] has come true, or
2] that hasn't been altered and altered again, and re-altered again in the face of "new findings".

I'm all for them continuing, and I'm all for them telling us what they know. But to the extent that they -- or others on their behalf -- use their current speculations as "definitive" and "authoritative" predictions of anything so therefore here is the multi-trillion dollar policy changes that -- coincidentally -- are mostly incumbent upon the US to implement ... sorry.

Hit the books some more before you hit my wallet.

Besides, the current "expert" theory is that the earth will warm "only" about 1C by 2100, down from the headline-grabbing 5C so many like to quote.

The current "expert" theory also holds that the "global warming phenomenon" which inspires polar icecap melt is not the open-ended closed-system phenomenon you'd see in a limited-variable lab or limited-variable computer model. Because it would affect the salinity of the upper latitudes' oceans, inhibit tropical ocean currents, and create the ice-age.

More ice, more glaciers, less warming ... in other words, same-old-same-old. Geological patterns. Whoda thunk.

... revenge of the embarrassed 70s scientists perhaps?

Europe would actually freeze and the wehat belt would come south from Canuckia into ... the US wheat belt.

"Whatever happened to better safe than sorry"

It is anti-intellectual. It is the pragmatism of the paranoiac.

If this were a philosophy class, "better safe than sorry" would be the classic Pascal's Wager ... long understood to be faulty, indeed "sophist", reasoning. Textbook rhetorical fallacy.

God either exists or he doesn't. If he doesn't and I believe in him, then I'll die and nothing will happen; if he doesn't and I don't believe in him, then I'll die and nothing will happen. If he DOES exist and I believe in him, then I'll die and go to heaven; if he DOES exist and I DON'T believe in him, then I'll die and go to hell.

Believing in god will either get me heaven or, at worst, nothing; NOT believing in god will either get me hell or, at BEST, nothing.

It is therefore better to believe in god.

The current formulation of the "global warming" predicament is slightly more complex, but not by a lot. Global warming will either spell doom for the planet or it won't. We can either do something about it or not.

If it isn't a doom-speller then no matter what we do it won't affect anthing. If it IS a doom-speller, and we don't do anything: doom; if we DO do something: no doom.

Therefore, let's do something.

Pascal's Wager.

[xxx]

Besides, the current "expert" theory is that the earth will warm "only" about 1C by 2100, down from the headline-grabbing 5C so many like to quote
-----------

Actually the 'experts' give a range of between 1.8 and 5 degrees by 2100....but yes, most people who want to do something to avert the potential catastrophe of a 5 degree rise in a single century cite the high end figure.

How can polar ice melting create the ice age? Are you talking about the lack of sun reflecting back on the ice which would make it 'warmer' not 'cooler' vs. no reflection from the water?

I never said it was certain, no one knows, that I know if what caused the cold snap that occured in Europe during the Middle Ages which some experts believe gave rise to famine/migration, etc. etc....what I do say is that we're fiddling while Rome burns and spending all of our [US] capital on figuring out how to squeeze more oil out of places we shouldn't be going like the deep ocean [yeah, nothing like letting all that natural gas loose to further fuck up the climate] or drilling in Alaska for a very questionable amount of real oil but we should be spending it on increasing efficiencies and alternate sources of energy.

We should not be in the RIDICULOUS position where the CEO's of two of the planet's largest oil companies have admitted global warming and have admitted burning of fossil fuels is a contributing factor while the President of the US has nothing to say but he needs more research, pathetic and embarassing...

[rwilymz]

"How can polar ice melting create the ice age?"

By altering the thermohaline circulation.

If the ice cap melts, the cold fresh water will stay on top of the denser salt water, and it will drive the Gulf Stream into a different pattern. The reason northern Europe is so temperate today -- and indeed why the Norwegian Vikings were able to raid and plunder for 600 years a millenium ago -- is because of the Gulf Stream bringing warm water to the North Sea.

Without it, northern Europe freezes.

In other words, that which you fear will bring about the opposite of that which you fear.

Chaos Theory practicum. Each mechanical system sows the seeds of its own destruction.

The Little Ice Age extended from the end of the Viking Age until the late 1800s. We are, in fact, just *now* approaching post-Roman "average" as far as temperature. If we get another 1 or 2C warmer, ... average.

"we should be spending it on increasing efficiencies and alternate sources of energy"

1] Increased efficiency in burning hydrocarbons increases CO2. Soot is short-chain hydrocarbons -- effectively fuel that was not burned and converted into energy. The places that need to increase efficiency are the "developing" economies, and they don't want to because it eats into their profits to spend huge bucks to get fractional return.

2] more alternatives? I'm with you. Now ... how to get 100 million Americans to leave their suburbs and move back to the crowded cities, plow under their suburban, subdivision homes and convert it back into pasture and cropland so that we can grow more soybeans and corn [or, in the tropics, sugar cane] from which we can make ethanol or biodeisel. Not to mention making all those suburbs do without the property taxes that come with rezoning ag acreage residential and commercial.

Wind? not a major player. Coast lines, mostly, if you want electricity year-round. Otherwise, too intermittent.

Solar? Not a major player. American southwest, mostly. Too cloudy too often the rest of the country.

Nuke? Too greenpeace-y. Not a smidge of polution or greenhouse gases, but there's all the three-headed cats and whatnot from all the nuclear accidents we've had ... which amount to ... um, zero.

Coal? the US is the Saudi Arabia of known coal reserves. And we have the technology to use coal as cleanly as a backyard gas grill. Only ... there's the CO2.

"We should not be in the RIDICULOUS position where the CEO's of two of the planet's largest oil companies have admitted global warming "

There's nothing to admit. Gobal warming is there. Wupti-frigging-ding. Anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 is <3% of all that's produced annually. We're talking about reducing human production by, what? 10%? in 20 years?

Okay, so by 2026 human CO2 production will be 2.7% of the annual production. And that helps ... how?

It doesn't. The math doesn't work that way.

You're better off figuring out ways to exploit the natural feedback mechanisms -- you know, all those things that Kyoto wouldn't allow the US to do because the rest of the world was more interested in punishing the US for being the preeminent economic power and fine the US for it. So other nations can use their forest reserves as a carbon sink, but the US can't. What the rest of the world wants is US market share or, failing that, US money for free. Out of guilt. "We're so sorry; here, take a couple $$trillion$$."

International welfare under the guise of New Age Armageddon.

IF global warming is this huge problem caused solely by human factors -- which is not indicated by any research yet, just that it exists -- then it's not going away by a fractional reduction of CO2 by a few nations. It will have to addressed by all -- in massive ways, not on the fringes. Failing to impose uniform restrictions has the net effect of punishing the most efficient users of energy and rewarding the least efficient.

I.e., we all revert to subsistence, or none of us do.

Expanding inefficient energy use and restricing efficient energy use will make fractionally less CO2, yes, but it will make leagues more soot and particulates and aerosols. And with the 3rd world's track record of other environmental policy, boatloads more heavy metals as well. Hello lung problems and poisoning, and we won't even materially affect global warming.

BUT, on the plus side, America will be poorer. And that will make the world such a better place.

Less American money means consigning technologic advancements to others ... such as Pakistan. We all know how cutting edge they are. Other people will also have to defend themselves, because we don't have the money to base our troops in their countries to protect them from their historical enemies which, frankly, I personally believe they've forgotten how to do. They're now the ripe suck for the first concerted effort to swamp their borders.

Farfetched? France is, today, 10% west-African muslim immigrant, first or second generation.

In two generations, France is 10% muslim. Do the math.

In the same ways you can claim that US profligate oil usage furthers pan-islamist militancy, I can claim that US profligate oil use is the best protection from same. ...from the technology we have and are able to increase, and the profits they generate. Can't buy a defense budget without profits; can't fund environmental goody-goodies without profits either.

[xxx]

So basically, we're fucked without some kind of massive technology breakthrough....

If the newer models are right, even half right about the speed of climate change and the consequences [what I get is that Europe gets colder due to the Gulf Stream change up but most of the rest of the world gets warmer from the get-go]...in fact, if ALL that happens is the gulf stream changes and Europe freezes over, we're fucked, as much as you all like to bash Europe, what is the alternative? China? Russia--good luck with that country of thugs, South America...ya right, Africa, HA.

I never said China or any third world country should be exempt from environmental laws..I am not about first world guilt, despite what you think, for my money, the world would be a better place of the horrible European colonizers had been able to hold onto their colonies for another 20 or 30 years at least...instead of basically abandoning them all post WWII when nobody had any resources or stomach for managing hostile populations and bringing them kicking and screaming into the modern world. I mean what was a better place to live Rhodesia or Zaire? India improved by leaps and bounds under the British Raj.

There is also no doubt that Europe is starting to pay for their namby pamby immigration policies...for their failure to keep illegal immigrants from Africa out and for their failure to pay attention to muslim immigrants or bother to acclimate them to European standards of culture, instead, you got the Swedes apologizing because muslim men just don't get western women and it isn't their fault if they think all those leggy blondes are there for the taking...of course we aren't learning any of these lessons and we aren't going to learn any lessons until Spanish becomes the dominant language and then everyone will wake up..but it will be too late by then.

[mylena]

US treats its killers/criminals better then people who are maybe terroists or should I say aliens ?... You are very comfortable with 'torturing' techniques on suspected aliens, but under US criminal that would be a crime?

In my eyes double standard.

[rwilymz]

"You are very comfortable with 'torturing' techniques on suspected aliens"

You are equivocating "torture". You can call a chair an Alvarez guitar, but it doesn't make it so.

You are either simply wrong or deliberately lying about whom these equivocated "torture techniques" are being used one. You say "suspected aliens". An alien is someone who has arrived in the country but who legally belongs someplace else. I.e., tourists, visiting students, immigrant wannabes who don't feel like filling out the paperwork.

None of these things are being used on them. None of anything is being used on 99.9% of them -- and that seems to be the problem. There's 10-12 million of them and only a few hundred are being deported at any given time. Do the math.

These equivocated "torture techniques" are being used on combatants captured in a war zone, and to whom international law is applicable.

To bring us criminal law into the subject of treatment of captured combatants is ridiculous.

You can claim double standard all day long but it only advertises you as ignorant of the subject all day long.

Look at it this way. You're a parent; you have an 8PM bedtime for your kids. You go to visit your spouse's brother [or sister]; they have kids. What do you think will happen if you start applying your house rules to your in-laws' kids?

At the very least you'll get offended in-laws who won't invite you back -- which maybe you want, who knows.

The US has laws; the rest of the world has laws. What do you think will happen if the US starts applying its laws to the rest of the world?

At the very least you'll get parts of the world declaring that the US is imposing an empire on the rest of the world and shooting at us for it ... oh, wait, we've already got that, don't we...

[Althor]

People have often called McCain a "Maverick" for his political Shennanigans, but all I see in the man, wether as the traumatizing results of his experiences as a P.O.W., or because it is inherent in his personality and psychological make-up, is a raging egomaniac, that will risk the security of our nation, betray his Party, and will do almost anything in order to put his unwarranted "two-cents worth in" on every issue, and be constantly in the limelight with his insufferable meddling!!!

McCain has thwarted so many Republican victories at the Senate with his self-centered meddling in the last eight years, from the fiasco with dismantling the Democrat's Filibusters, to his dismal Immigration legislation, to the present coercive interrogation debacle which he is fanning and presiding at the expense of our national security, that tragically one has to ask if this narcissistic, egomaniac, Viet Nam "Hero" with serious psychological aberrations, would not have done a far, far, greater service to our country had he perchance permanently remained in Viet Nam...under a tombstone!!!

It is a brutal thing to say, but sadly it is true!

As much as we may respect McCain's service to our country, and how much we may empathize with all he suffered as a P.O.W., at this point the man is simply hurting the country!

It almost seem pathological! He has to compulsively stick his little foot in all the battles on the Capitol, meddle with everything, and put his "two cents worth" into every argument! And unfortunately, not to the advantage, but to the detriment of America! He's almost as bad about "basking in the limelight" as Beth Holloway Twitty for God's sake!!!

And the worst part, is that he's doing it to satisfy his "ego", be counted as "indsipensible" in all debates, and to buttress his presidential aspirations, his narcissism, and his huge egocentrism!!!

Now, notwithstanding his service to our country and all he endured, that is dangerous!!!

The man is just an Egomaniac!

Althor

[mylena]

Ignorant you are about the procedure to become an American citizen (which will give you the rights you are talking about). First to get a permanent residence card (that can take up to 3 years) and then depending on what your situation is you need to wait 3-5 years before you can apply for Amerian citizenship and that procedure can take up to 2 years. So maximum for 7-10 years you are in limbo land.

[xxx]

I don't know Mylena, so what? Should becoming a citizen of the world's only superpower be like getting a charge card at Old Navy? No inconvenience, just a couple extra minutes? Is that supposed to be some kind of excuse for why there are millions of illegal aliens in the country...cause citizenship is too darn hard to get? I'm not buying that, nor do I believe another amesty is anything but a total cop out an official signal that we don't care about illegal immigrants and aren't going to do anything to stop it...which in the longrun, we as a socity and culture are going to pay for, and pay and pay and pay.

[mylena]

to xxx if you had followed my conversation with rwilyz, you understand why I'm mentioning this. I'm saying it is double standards, torturing techniques for terroists (according to him international law) and the internal US criminal law which would forbid that. There is a whole group out here in the States who do not have a status as a US citizen yet (he claims these aliens are people who are NOT doing their paperwork) I'm saying even IF you do the paperwork the procedure will take up to 10 years. In the meantime these people are subject to be treated as the government likes.

[mylena]

just for more explanation, rwilyz thinks thats okay, because apparenly aliens do not deserve it (for some reason he finds that the US law can not apply for them altough they can be legal they do not have the citizenship yet). it was just one of the examples im trying to say, that i do not understand how someone doesnt care about torturing techniques to deal with maybe terroists but in the same time thinks it is okay that US citizens who killed/raped someone cannot be dealt with that way. In my eyes double standards.

[mylena]

xxx thats my point you can be legal in this country (residence ship, so you can live here and work here) but not have citizenship (which comes with rights)

[xxx]

Ah, I get it.

Rwilyz thinks its okay to torture terrorists as long as it isn't
"officially" labeled torture, e.g. if the gov. says it isn't torture then it isn't...he also thinks that terrorists don't deserve any protections whatsoever and that our all knowing all good governmnet has the right to do whatever we want to them.

I agree its ridiculous that a straight up child raping killer has more rights than someone who is only ALLEGED to have conspired to commit a political crime with secret evidence that no one but the judge and jury are privy to.

I also agree that if you treated a dog the way they want to treat those suspected of terrorism you would end up in jail for animal cruelty.

[mylena]

Yes I totally agree with you.