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Senate panel releases scathing report on CIA interrogation...

cpwill said:
:lamo the UN!
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Impotent fluffy bunnies of the world...unite!

I want all the cute little fluffy bunnies that are outraged by the CIA actions on a plane TOMORROW to go combat ISIS.
 
VanceMack said:
Impotent fluffy bunnies of the world...unite!

I want all the cute little fluffy bunnies that are outraged by the CIA actions on a plane TOMORROW to go combat ISIS.
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ISIL will wilt (WILT I tell you) - before the power of the Care Bear Stare!!!


I'd like to buy the world a coke......
 
cpwill said:
ISIL will wilt (WILT I tell you) - before the power of the Care Bear Stare!!!


I'd like to buy the world a coke......
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A hug. What they really need is a hug.

I love cute little fluffy bunnies. They are cute...and cuddly...but have no real value otherwise.
 
VanceMack said:
A hug. What they really need is a hug.
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Maybe we should change the ROE. From now on, before our troops are allowed to shoot back, we should get on a bullhorn and explain that we realize this is all just misdirected anger at their father, and offer to sit down and talk to them about it in a safe, non-threatening environment.

I love cute little fluffy bunnies. They are cute...and cuddly...but have no real value otherwise.
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I myself have noted with interest that there seems to be a direct relationship between the build-up of hard-power, and the rise of foolish philosophies that say it is not necessary. Only those who are well protected can say that perhaps we shouldn't be strong.
 
cpwill said:
Maybe we should change the ROE. From now on, before our troops are allowed to shoot back, we should get on a bullhorn and explain that we realize this is all just misdirected anger at their father, and offer to sit down and talk to them about it in a safe, non-threatening environment.



I myself have noted with interest that there seems to be a direct relationship between the build-up of hard-power, and the rise of foolish philosophies that say it is not necessary. Only those who are well protected can say that perhaps we shouldn't be strong.
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What we are seeing is what we always see. As the combat ops dwindle, support for soldiers will dwindle as well. Partisan hacks will do what they have always done...ignore the facts and cling to the hysterics. Bush lied. Well...so did every democrat starting with Clinton 8 years before Bush was elected...but dont worry about that. Bush/Cheney lied about AIT. Well...except democrats were given over 300 briefings on AIT and given virtual tours of facilities and tactics and wanted to know if there wasnt MORE that could be done to extract data. But dont worry about the fact dems knew. CIA tactics were vetted and approved with judicial oversight...but lets ignore all the facts. Now that **** is winding down a bit, the cute fuzzy little bunnies are stepping to the plate.

Seriously...I want the cute fuzzy little bunnies on a plane tomorrow dealing with people that think nothing of rounding up children and methodically bashing their heads in with rocks. I want the cute fuzzy little bunnies over there dealing with people that rape and then butcher women and children in the name of their glorious cause. I want the cute fuzzy little bunnies over there combating people that slowly and methodically saw a mans head of chanting their praises to allah. And I want it all on film.

Go, cute little fuzzy bunnies...go! We will cheer you on.
 
Some of us are able to transcend thinking in the 2 party paradigm.
 
cpwill said:
Yes. We should. And only tactically. But that's why we have an intelligence community :)
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Which has done a piss poor job of it by the results.

On the contrary - the war between us and AQAA was launched by the other side.
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Only if you ignore all that happened before AQ launched their 'war.' We don't have to agree with what they did, or hate the U.S. or even disagree with our decades of involvement in the ME, to acknowledge that those attacks didn't come out of the blue or because they hated our freedoms or some other BS. There's a good reason they didn't attack Sweden.

Nate Silver: What is driving the increase in government spending

Hint: Defense is still at a post-war low as a portion of GDP. Our defense spending is sustainable. Our entitlements (and, possibly, if rates rise, interest payments) are not.
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It's a quarter of the budget, and roughly double what all other advanced countries spend. At the roughly EU average, it would cut maybe $500 billion off the deficit.

And our entitlements are sustainable if we want them to be. They aren't sustainable at current levels of tax, but we've made a choice as a country that we want to have a relatively low taxed country versus many of our developed world. Furthermore, entitlements are at their core shifts of spending from households to government. If we cut 'entitlements' it would allow the government to spend more on other stuff at current levels of taxation, but would require roughly equal increases in private spending on the same items - healthcare mainly, since that's the only place where entitlements are an actually difficult problem.

When did we deliberately create a problem so that we have an excuse to stick around?
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I never used the word "deliberately." Otherwise, see, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan......

True story. It turns out there is no perfect solution, and each problem solved often means that another will rise in its stead. We defeated Hitler, and then had to face Stalin. We beat Communism, and then had to face Islamic Fundamentalism. After Islamic Fundamentalism, it will be something else.

But here's the trick on that: foreign policy isn't optional. There is a living example today of what happens when a country decides that it is. That country is North Korea. If we like our nice first-world lifestyle, then we have to protect the global supply chains and trade order that makes that possible.
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You've created a nice straw man - no one asserts that foreign policy is optional. But you can't ignore, for example, that going into Iraq and dismantling it has caused the problem of how to deal with a broken state in Iraq. Or that deposing an elected leader in Iran and then installing the Shah had no role in the anti-U.S. backlash in that country, or that establishing a permanent presence in the area will also inevitably lead to problems. I sometimes wonder how we'd view, say, China meddling in the affairs on this continent and if we'd gladly accept a permanent Chinese military base in Virginia, or two miles over the border in Mexico, etc.

I would disagree. It has been almost half a century now since Israel went to war against another nation-state, Afghanistan, for all it is problematic, is not being run by the Taliban and Iraq, for all that the North is a security nightmare, is still a (roughly) functioning representative government rather than a psycho-dictatorship with a history of attacking its neighbors.

As Hitchens pointed out - if the West doesn't interject itself, it doesn't mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.
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Of course if we remove ourselves it doesn't mean that nothing else happens. The point is simply that when we DO interject, those acts have sometimes predictable and sometimes unpredictable consequences and you can't point to the blowback without acknowledging what caused it.
 
MMC said:
Awww, aint that sweet. We can understand you not wanting to show those true colors.
therethere.gif


Now my lil affectionate one, you know Nana says that if you afraid to play the game. Then there is no reason for you to be in it.
werd.gif
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I think I have made my position on torture very clear in this and other posts on the matter.....that wasn't the point....the point still is YOUR acceptance of torture as a legitimate act by the state.
 
cpwill said:
I would concur. Instead we should seek to push hostile elements from the critical spaces that they currently control or influence.



:( Unfortunately, it does mean that we need to maintain a forward-leaning defense posture. For example, were you to pull the 5th Fleet from Bahrain, or the 7th Fleet out of the Pacific, you would create massive vacuums that belligerents would rush to fill.



:shrug: It's not us who decided to engage in a multi-generational war - it was them. War's don't end when one side gets' bored of the whole thing and decides to go home and watch movies instead, it requires both actors to cease hostilities.

And we can, in fact, sustain our defense spending pretty much indefinitely at this point - increase it, even. Defense isn't what's driving the deficit, our burgeoning entitlements are.



That is incorrect. We created space for ourselves and the possibility that later we could create vacuums by withdrawing precisely because we were trying to solve issues. For example, the U.S. has a fleet in Bahrain not least to keep the Iranians from holding the worlds' oil sea-lanes hostage (that's us solving an issue), and we stationed troops in the Middle East for decades in order to help keep Israel and Egypt from going to war again (that's us solving an issue), and we have troops helping the Iraqi's now so that they can more effectively combat a terrorist-state (that's us helping to solve an issue).

We don't deploy because something looks pretty on a map - we deploy explicitly to solve issues.



You cannot move around in a single area to engage other theaters. That's like saying that you are going to move around within your town in order to move to the next country.



A) we can and
B) to the extent that they are solvable, we can definitely be a part of the solution. Certainly our absence only makes these issues worse.
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Decades of intervention, decades of presence spotted with military presence, a current war that has lasted itself more than a decade and where are we? Are terrorists beaten? No? So we should continue intervening in this same manner, but it will totally be different this time?

Don't buy it. All our wars, all our bombings, all our military campaigns, all our political pressure decade after decade has solved nothing. Doing more of the same will do nothing.
 
Gimmesometruth said:
I think I have made my position on torture very clear in this and other posts on the matter.....that wasn't the point....the point still is YOUR acceptance of torture as a legitimate act by the state.
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Yeah me and most of the Country.

What did this accomplish? It may fire up the lefty base and sate ideologues' political bloodlust after a brutal election, but this issue isn't a major advantage to posturing Democrats. Why? Americans overwhelmingly believe that "torture" is sometimes justified:

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Imagine that!
 
JasperL said:
Poe's Law example - can't tell if this is serious or not. If it is serious, then it's a shame you have so little regard for your country.
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little regard? I served 20 years as a Marine so please don't question my patriotism.

When confronted by aggression the only real way to answer is with overwhelming force. That's how we beat the Nazis and the Japanese. That's why we didn't win in Korea and Vietnam. We denied the warriors that sacrificed there the political will to do what was necessary to win, regardless of international politics.

You don't win a war by limited engagement. You have to be "all in". 100% committed to the task at hand.

The people who conceived and executed the attacks on 9/11 only understand one thing. Force!! If we want to defeat them then we have to make total war on them. Find them and catch or kill them. Kill their replacements and eventually we will eradicate them.
 
cpwill said:
that's an interesting claim. Can you demonstrate that drone strikes create more VEO members than they kill?
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VEO?
Well, causation is difficult to prove, even when it's just common sense, but we've been killing suspected terrorists with drones for some time now. Are there more or fewer terrorists now than there were before we started the "war on terror"?
 
Boo Radley said:
You're just factually wrong. Waterboarding has always been torture. We've considered it that and so does the rest of the world.

And I did wear those wings, which means I'm more than a weaker minded lacky. I think. I ask questions. I think critically. I can read and know our past. I listen when the military itself reports this is a bad idea. A true solider knows war is to be avoided when possible, that it is a saddness and not something to be cheered. Soldiers go to war reluctantly because they no the cost. And they know tortue us wrong, especially when we torture innocent people. And we did torture innocent people, not to mention that many had nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq did not help with that attack. Too many speak in mindlessly generalized terms as you did above.

One more thing, if you live long enough, you may learn that your bluster is not convincing. Such blood lust is not justice, and others won't react in fear, but instead intensify their efforts. I pray you live long enough to learn better.
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I have lived long enough to retire from the Marine Corps after 20 years of service. I have also been around long enough to question the integrity of individuals who portray themselves as former warriors who question their country.

It's not "bloodlust" I do understand that war is a horrible thing, however, if you are going to commit to war, then commit. It must be all in, total warfare, to hell with international politics. It is no other countries right to dictate to us how we defend ourselves, especially the Russians, the French and the Germans.
 
j-mac said:
LOL...Bingo, gottcha there ditto...See, I know that when you get all snarky and sarcastic, you've lost the debate at that moment so I will leave it at that.
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Snarky and sarcastic is just the way I roll when someone is making absurd claims.
 
JasperL said:
I guess I got you confused with the other "Uncensored2008" who said this:



My apologies!
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Nope, I stand by that.

The democrats view Republicans and all non-democrats as the enemy. They do not view radical Islam as the enemy. They indeed align themselves with radical Islam as an "enemy of their enemy" against the foe they seek to defeat.

And all you've done so far is assert without the slightest explanation that she's committed treason. It's really not enough to assert it - generally if you're going to lob an incendiary charge like that, you'd tell us the basis for it.



I don't agree. There is no practical gain in burying the sins of our past, which is what you seem to think is the only legitimate option, and anyone who doesn't agree is committing treason.

Besides, the report has been in process for years, begun when the democrats had control of the WH, the House and Senate. Did you think they'd spend 6 years and then bury the report. If not, and you expected a release, then how in the hell do you conclude that the release that's been in process for a year or so is related to the losses in November? It's a rhetorical question - you're a blind partisan so see all things through that lens...
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Read for content.
 
Rentoc said:
I have lived long enough to retire from the Marine Corps after 20 years of service. I have also been around long enough to question the integrity of individuals who portray themselves as former warriors who question their country.

It's not "bloodlust" I do understand that war is a horrible thing, however, if you are going to commit to war, then commit. It must be all in, total warfare, to hell with international politics. It is no other countries right to dictate to us how we defend ourselves, especially the Russians, the French and the Germans.
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Agreed. You don't go to war unless you're in it to win.

WWII, the enemy attacked the homeland, the Congress declared war on the perpetrators, and the entire country was on war footing. In four years, the enemy was defeated.

Iraq, an enemy that was not allied with Iraq attacked the homeland, no war was declared, we went in to try to remake the country into a democracy, and 13 years later the enemy is stronger than ever. That's not the way to conduct a war.
 
Rentoc said:
little regard? I served 20 years as a Marine so please don't question my patriotism.
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I guess we have a little different opinion about what the basic ideals of the country you fought for. If this is what my country stands for, then I'm ashamed: "We should have tortured them. We should have executed them on live TV and showed the world that we are not playing around anymore."

That's the kind of place that the people we're fighting would applaud. Stalin, Hitler, and our enemies in the ME would approve. We're better than that.
 
Getting back to torture and the report that the government was engaging in torture all along (what a surprise!) let's see what else it can be called other than what it is. Let's see... we've heard "enhanced interrogation", "rough interrogation", how about "intensified interrogation", or perhaps "sharpened interrogation"?

I like "sharpened". That has a nice ring to it, don't you agree?

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court.

link
 
Dittohead not! said:
Snarky and sarcastic is just the way I roll when someone is making absurd claims.
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Yeah sure...Or when you lost the debate....Look Ditto, you know me. I think Honorable men can have differences on what Waterboarding constitutes to them in context. But, when you have a report that was politically motivated, worked with a final conclusion and worked backward from that to compile, never interviewed ONE person involved, and released regardless of the calls of many on her own side of the isle asking her NOT to do it, it is political crap and a lie.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Getting back to torture and the report that the government was engaging in torture all along (what a surprise!) let's see what else it can be called other than what it is. Let's see... we've heard "enhanced interrogation", "rough interrogation", how about "intensified interrogation", or perhaps "sharpened interrogation"?

I like "sharpened". That has a nice ring to it, don't you agree?

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court.

link
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Call it whatever you want as long as someone else has to do it.
 
Uncensored2008 said:
Nope, I stand by that.
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You said I made it up, which was wrong. I guess you can't remember what you wrote from one moment to the other. That's fine, but don't call people liars just because you've got the memory of a goldfish.

The democrats view Republicans and all non-democrats as the enemy. They do not view radical Islam as the enemy. They indeed align themselves with radical Islam as an "enemy of their enemy" against the foe they seek to defeat.
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Well, that's false, and I'm always amazed that people equate "disagree with me on some issues" with evil. Surely, if you think about it for about 1 second, you'd realize that "The democrats" represents about half the country and pretty much the gamut of opinions on just about every important issue. One of my best friends is a democrat, as is his son, and the democratic son spent six years in the ME killing radical Islamists, his dad the last 30 in active service or the Guard, and all of the time post 9/11 training others to kill them...

Read for content.
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?????
 
j-mac said:
Yeah sure...Or when you lost the debate....Look Ditto, you know me. I think Honorable men can have differences on what Waterboarding constitutes to them in context. But, when you have a report that was politically motivated, worked with a final conclusion and worked backward from that to compile, never interviewed ONE person involved, and released regardless of the calls of many on her own side of the isle asking her NOT to do it, it is political crap and a lie.
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Oh, the timing of the release was political, sure. That doesn't mean that the report itself is not credible.

And, there was more to it than waterboarding, and more to it than just Democrats trying to make Republicans look bad. What did the Republicans' 2008 pick to run for the WH have to say on the issue, for example?

Saying that the report is false, that tor.. I mean sharp interrogation (see post above for that one) didn't happen is just politics as well.
 
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