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Amnesty International Wants Bush Prosecuted for Admitted Waterboarding

Conservative said:
I have not seen many here with such passion over an issue and yet so ignorant of the issue that they are passionate about. you have selective outrage as you totally ignore the enemy we have that doesn't represent any nation, beheads people, flies planes into buildings, straps bombs on their backs to blow up market places and yet you want to give them the same rights as soldiers of sovereign nations. With all due respect how old are you?
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So with you it's the end that justifies the means? The term American Exceptionalism means nothing to you? We torture because they do it? We are no better than they are? We have gone through the most perilous times where nukes were pointed at our cities and as far as I know not one person was tortured.

I don't think you know a damn thing about the 'enemy.' When we pull **** like this, they recruit more people to their cause.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Some court isn't the one declaring that it has the authority, generations of international legal scholars have decided that.
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And from whence do they derive their authority?

And more to the point, in the United States the controlling opinion of Justice Brown in the Ambrose Light case agrees with them.
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By all means, I'd love to see your explanation for how that opinion gives the Hague authority to prosecute Americans.

The fact that you are not a sovereign nation is what keeps you from declaring yourself a competent tribunal. Do you have any other ridiculous questions?
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Ah, so that's the relevant factor? So you're saying that if Iran decided tomorrow that it was going to do what I just suggested, you'd be okay with it? You'd hop on a plane to fly to Iran if they decided to prosecute you?
 
pbrauer said:
So with you it's the end that justifies the means? The term American Exceptionalism means nothing to you? We torture because they do it? We are no better than they are? We have gone through the most perilous times where nukes were pointed at our cities and as far as I know not one person was tortured.

I don't think you know a damn thing about the 'enemy.' When we pull **** like this, they recruit more people to their cause.
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Explain to me why Obama had to issue an executive order against waterboarding if it was already considered torturn and against international law?
 
Conservative said:
Explain to me why Obama had to issue an executive order against waterboarding if it was already considered torturn and against international law?
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To show the world waterboarding is NOT something we do as a nation. It's an affirmation!!! Get it?
 
Jurisdiction be damned.


They don't have enough fighters, carriers, tanks and infantry to force us to let them exercise it, and in international relations that is what counts the most.
 
pbrauer said:
To show the world waterboarding is NOT something we do as a nation. It's an affirmation!!! Get it?
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Apparently you don't get it, it is the responsibility of the President to keep us safe and to do whatever is necessary. Since Waterboarding wasn't considered torture, Bush did his job and saved a lot of Americans. Get it?
 
Guy Incognito
I disagree. It doesn't go that far. Lying to bolster support for a war is a different issue than torture. I think there is a much slimmer case for the war crime of aggression.
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That makes the case rather murky because there is no evidence that he lied.

But you're right, lots of people are involved, from Bush and Cheney to the individuals in the CIA who actually committed the torture.
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Actually a majority in the government at the time would also have to be charged because if Bush lied, they all lied. That would include former President Clinton also, as well as his VP.


I disagree that terrorists remain the main threat to the world. There are lots of threats to the world. Despotism and erosion of civil rights is one of the main threats in the world, perhaps more pressing even than terrorism.
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Well whether you disagree or not, the facts are quite clear. And civil rights have grown in the world, especially since the fall of communism and the rise of the Internet.

But like I said, terrorists a scum and should be dealt with by our military according to due process and the laws of war.
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Terrorists should be stopped by whatever means necessary. We can't fiddle when so many lives are at stake.
 
Grant said:
Terrorists should be stopped by whatever means necessary. We can't fiddle when so many lives are at stake.
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This is the talk of fascists. Due process isn't "fiddling."
 
zimmer said:
Has Michael Dukakis entered the forum?
Waterboarding isn't torture. Just because Obama signs a bill stating so doesn't mean it is so. As we all know, Obama has been tragically wrong on pretty much everything.
That's why the Dems got their cans kicked.


I don't know whether to laugh or scream. Let's see... they've been terrorizing us for decades, and what have we done exactly to antagonize them?
Live lives that disagree with their 7th century way of life?
They fly planes into buildings and we did what to antagonize them?

You know, these cum stains passing for humans deserve to be antagonized. They deserve to feel our wrath. They should live in fear of us. They brought it on... now it's time for us to finish them off, no matter how long it takes.

So, we take an interrogation technique off the table that isn't torture, is effective, has saved scores of lives and could save hundreds of thousand in the future.

Sheer insanity.

And had they not broke Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Cumstain, and attacks had been successful, all the Libs here would be screaming about Bush's inability to do what was necessary to protect the homeland.

.
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I couldn't even get through your entire post.. It's so full of crap and judgement..

You jumped into a conversation I had with somebody else.. the question was if my kid was kidnapped would I torture. I don't see how anything you said is relevant given the circumstance...

I was talking about antagonizing the people who maybe holding my child hostage. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to anger somebody who had more power than me? I wouldn't want to put my child's safety in danger..

You either negotiate or you don't.. but you don't antagonize, by trying to hurt them. That is just stupid.
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Grant said:
SheWolf




We are dealing with terorists here, not ''soldiers' who fall under the terms of the Geneva Agreements. And these terrorists are prepared to murder as many people as possible and to create as much carnage as possible. They must be stopped at all costs.
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Then it was OK for Saddam to torture Kurds.. because they weren't soldiers either.. They are stateless people. If you are going to play by those rules, then how can you argue for people like Kurds or Chechens should have civil rights and not be tortured by oppressive governments?
 
SheWolf said:
Then it was OK for Saddam to torture Kurds.. because they weren't soldiers either.. They are stateless people. If you are going to play by those rules, then how can you argue for people like Kurds or Chechens should have civil rights and not be tortured by oppressive governments?
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Seems I cannot get an answer to the question I and others have raised,if waterboarding is torture, why did Barack Obama have to sign an executive order making waterboarding illegal? Seems to me that if it was illegal then there was no need for that executive order.
 
Le Marteau said:
I don't even know how to form a good response to such blatant and hateful bigotry.
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That's because you're a Liberal and one must be able to think clearly and not as a liberal to form a cogent thought.

By the way only Liberals are hateful their damn liars too, or don't you listen to Obama.
 
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Conservative said:
Apparently you don't get it, it is the responsibility of the President to keep us safe and to do whatever is necessary. Since Waterboarding wasn't considered torture, Bush did his job and saved a lot of Americans. Get it?
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He doesn't "get it", nor will he ever. He is incapable of "getting it"!


Tim-
 
Grant said:
But of course we are not just dealing with a former presient here. The US President lacks the power to go to war, if that's what you want President Bush tried for, on his own.

This would mean that everyone who voted for the war, who supported the President in his decision, must also be tried. It could get quite messy.

As you know, Islamic terroists remain a threat to the entire world so if you are truly interested in hunting down international criminals I suggest you start with those who commit, and advocate, terrorism. What do you propose we do with Islamic terrorusts?
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I don't think anything is going to happen to Bush.. nothing happened to Clinton for lying under oath and that is a crime. Politicians aren't held accountable for anything.. not even by the voters. American voters can be horrendously stupid people.

But I don't see how people who supported the war are an accessory to torture..

The problem I am seeing with a lot of arguments for torture is they are all attacking the terrorists.. they are scum, they don't deserve rights; think what they want to do to you.. they are evil, they deserve torture.

I don't disagree with that. They deserve torture, but I am also coming from the POV that we are held by our constitutional principles and, as a people, we don't really know the abuses at Gitmo.. There are allegations that people are and were being tortured there and they were denied trials. We don't know who was being tortured. We don't know everything.

I remember those disgusting humiliating photos of the prisoner.. in homosexual poses and being attacked by dogs. That is sick and that was unacceptable.

We don't even know who was being held there and why.. their names and accusations..

I don't understand why it is controversial for us all to ask wtf is really going on.. I remember that memo that Limbaugh and the right got so upset over, saying conservatives were being labeled terrorists. We have people on the terrorist watch list and they don't even know why or how they are on it. They can't get off it either.

This is all ridiculous considering the conservatives who don't trust government, trust government to play politics with wiretapping us and torturing suspected terrorists.

None of it sounds like a good system to keep pursuing IMO. Something needs to change.. there needs to be openness. We can't hold people without trials and be waterboarding them and using other suspected torture techniques on them. We even gave the Nazis trails...
 
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Conservative said:
Seems I cannot get an answer to the question I and others have raised,if waterboarding is torture, why did Barack Obama have to sign an executive order making waterboarding illegal? Seems to me that if it was illegal then there was no need for that executive order.
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You're also jumping in the conversation..

I have been having conversations with others here who support "torture." They even use the words torture.. so they aren't opposed to torturing terrorists. Now if you think torture is wrong and waterboarding is acceptable, then you can argue with them yourself.

As for your question.. I don't know why Obama had to do that considering people in Bush's former Admin have admitted waterboarding was illegal

US official admits waterboarding presently illegal | World news | guardian.co.uk


and waterboarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in Vietnam

History of an Interrogation Technique: Water Boarding - ABC News

Waterboarding is Illegal - Washington University Law Review
 
SheWolf said:
You're also jumping in the conversation..

I have been having conversations with others here who support "torture." They even use the words torture.. so they aren't opposed to torturing terrorists. Now if you think torture is wrong and waterboarding is acceptable, then you can argue with them yourself.

As for your question.. I don't know why Obama had to do that considering people in Bush's former Admin have admitted waterboarding was illegal

US official admits waterboarding presently illegal | World news | guardian.co.uk


and waterboarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in Vietnam

History of an Interrogation Technique: Water Boarding - ABC News

Waterboarding is Illegal - Washington University Law Review
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Didn't know this was a private forum. As for the comments of officials of the Bush Administration I am sure that you believed everything the Bush Administration officials told you thus the justification for going to war.

There are a lot of people who believed that Waterboarding was illegal just like there were a lot of people who didn't including members of the Justice Dept and there wasn't a law against it. Opinions regardless of where they came from don't make it the truth. The fact is Obama wouldn't have had to issue an executive order to make waterboarding illegal if it was that cut and dry as you claim or as other stated.
 
Conservative said:
Didn't know this was a private forum. As for the comments of officials of the Bush Administration I am sure that you believed everything the Bush Administration officials told you thus the justification for going to war.

There are a lot of people who believed that Waterboarding was illegal just like there were a lot of people who didn't including members of the Justice Dept and there wasn't a law against it. Opinions regardless of where they came from don't make it the truth. The fact is Obama wouldn't have had to issue an executive order to make waterboarding illegal if it was that cut and dry as you claim or as other stated.
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Of course people have discerning opinions and views.. They don't like the laws, so they try to get out of them and weasel around them. However, the facts are pretty cut and dry..

Water boarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in the Vietnam War. On January 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial photograph of an American soldier supervising the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang. The article described the practice as "fairly common." The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was thrown out of the army. Another waterboarding photograph of the same scene is also exhibited in the War Remnants Museum at Ho Chi Minh City.
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Waterboarding IS TORTURE - Page 1

I don't expect any president to know everything.. and I don't expect every single person on their legal teams to not be corrupt either. However, I am sure that somebody on Bush's team knew the history and still gave the go head. That is why they tried to argue that it worked, played semantics, and tried to argue the UN should be disbanned.. The smart people on his team knew it wasn't so simple to waterboard.
On July 20, 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush signed an executive order banning torture during interrogation of terror suspects. While the guidelines for interrogation do not specifically ban waterboarding, the executive order refers to torture as defined by 18 USC 2340, which includes "the threat of imminent death," as well as the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Reaction to the order was mixed, with the CIA satisfied that it "clearly defined" the agency's authorities, but Human Rights Watch saying that answer about what specific techniques had been banned lay in the classified companion document and that "the people in charge of interpreting [that] document don't have a particularly good track record of reasonable legal analysis."
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Waterboarding causes the victim to feel and believe they are in threat of imminent death, and it can cause death.

Bush tried to cover his own ass and did that out of convenience, not political honesty.. Obama played the same game. The difference IMO is Bush thinks he has a moral obligation, and Obama thinks he has obligations through moral and legal principle.
 
SheWolf said:
Of course people have discerning opinions and views.. They don't like the laws, so they try to get out of them and weasel around them. However, the facts are pretty cut and dry..


Waterboarding IS*TORTURE - Page 1

I don't expect any president to know everything.. and I don't expect every single person on their legal teams to not be corrupt either. However, I am sure that somebody on Bush's team knew the history and still gave the go head. That is why they tried to argue that it worked, played semantics, and tried to argue the UN should be disbanned.. The smart people on his team knew it wasn't so simple to waterboard.


Waterboarding causes the victim to feel and believe they are in threat of imminent death, and it can cause death.

Bush tried to cover his own ass and did that out of convenience, not political honesty.. Obama played the same game. The difference IMO is Bush thinks he has a moral obligation, and Obama thinks he has obligations through moral and legal principle.
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Look, you can continue to post article after article but none of them matter at all since it remained a very subjective issue until Obama outlawed it by his executive order. Waterboarding does not include the "threat of imminent death" as apparently you don't grasp exactly what waterboarding does. No physical harm comes to anyone waterboarded so what they perceive is irrelevant.

Now what exactly do you want? With all the problems facing this country today why is there such passion arguing an issue that isn't going anywhere. Waterboarding was open to interpretation prior to the Executive Order. If it were cut and dry there wouldn't have been a need for that order. Apparently that is a hard concept for you to understand.
 
Conservative said:
Look, you can continue to post article after article but none of them matter at all since it remained a very subjective issue until Obama outlawed it by his executive order. Waterboarding does not include the "threat of imminent death" as apparently you don't grasp exactly what waterboarding does. No physical harm comes to anyone waterboarded so what they perceive is irrelevant.

Now what exactly do you want? With all the problems facing this country today why is there such passion arguing an issue that isn't going anywhere. Waterboarding was open to interpretation prior to the Executive Order. If it were cut and dry there wouldn't have been a need for that order. Apparently that is a hard concept for you to understand.
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With all the problems facing this country... seriously?

You are sitting here arguing the issue just like I am.. I am not advocating anything be done or a trial of Bush. I am just more entertained by some of the arguments here, so I am here arguing too..

I can and will post article after article.. while you post none. The fact is, it was only subjective to Bush and a few of his neocon cronies. As I said before, I'll give Bush the benefit of the doubt. He isn't expected to know everything about the law and history. That is what his advisors and legal teams are for, and he was probably more misguided than anything.. so he alone isn't to blame or take all the responsibility.

But the facts remain.. Before Bush took office, the US had a history of regarding waterboarding as a crime, and it was considered torture and illegal by the US State Dept (2005) and by war generals since Vietnam. So waterboarding being wrong and a crime wasn't a foreign concept or new territory, and when the Supreme Court ruled against Bush and Dick complained and kept arguing for it.

see
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Boumediene v. Bush
 
SheWolf said:
With all the problems facing this country... seriously?

You are sitting here arguing the issue just like I am.. I am not advocating anything be done or a trial of Bush. I am just more entertained by some of the arguments here, so I am here arguing too..

I can and will post article after article.. while you post none. The fact is, it was only subjective to Bush and a few of his neocon cronies. As I said before, I'll give Bush the benefit of the doubt. He isn't expected to know everything about the law and history. That is what his advisors and legal teams are for, and he was probably more misguided than anything.. so he alone isn't to blame or take all the responsibility.

But the facts remain.. Before Bush took office, the US had a history of regarding waterboarding as a crime, and it was considered torture and illegal by the US State Dept (2005) and by war generals since Vietnam. So waterboarding being wrong and a crime wasn't a foreign concept or new territory, and when the Supreme Court ruled against Bush and Dick complained and kept arguing for it.

see
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
Boumediene v. Bush
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That being the case there would have been no need for an Executive Order so apparently there was a gray area that had to be defined. Waterboarding was part of our own military training and provided no physical damage to anyone.

I don't see a problem with it and support Bush 100%. The terrorists are religious fanatics who don't believe they are breaking any laws and do not play by international law. they are not representing any country, aren't in uniform, and thus are not subject to the Geneva Convention. You are right, this isn't going anywhere but I do find those that continue to make an issue of it to be very naive as to the enemy we face.
 
Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

U.S. may expand use of its prison in Afghanistan - Los Angeles Times
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No brainer: Just smoke 'em. :blastem:
 
Conservative said:
That being the case there would have been no need for an Executive Order so apparently there was a gray area that had to be defined. Waterboarding was part of our own military training and provided no physical damage to anyone.

I don't see a problem with it and support Bush 100%. The terrorists are religious fanatics who don't believe they are breaking any laws and do not play by international law. they are not representing any country, aren't in uniform, and thus are not subject to the Geneva Convention. You are right, this isn't going anywhere but I do find those that continue to make an issue of it to be very naive as to the enemy we face.
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The supreme court disagrees with you.

See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

And your argument for torturing and waterboarding people is disgusting, despicable, and problematic.

They aren't in uniforms and don't represent any country. :2sick1::shocked2:

Do you realize all the people who stood up for their rights in the USSR weren't in uniform and didn't represent a country and were run over by Soviet tanks, shot to death, spied on, sent to gulag? Do you realize that that is the case for people standing up to oppressive governments all over the world, being marginalized and tortured, raped, etc? Does Nelson Mandela ring a bell?

Utterly disgusting.
 
SheWolf said:
The supreme court disagrees with you.

See Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

And your argument for torturing and waterboarding people is disgusting, despicable, and problematic.

They aren't in uniforms and don't represent any country. :2sick1::shocked2:

Do you realize all the people who stood up for their rights in the USSR weren't in uniform and didn't represent a country and were run over by Soviet tanks, shot to death, spied on, sent to gulag? Do you realize that that is the case for people standing up to oppressive governments all over the world, being marginalized and tortured, raped, etc? Does Nelson Mandela ring a bell?

Utterly disgusting.
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Thank you, unfortunately the terrorists don't choose their victims better. If Bush broke the law then why wasn't he prosecuted by the Congress which was under the control of Democrats from 2007-2008? Bush did absolutely nothing wrong and kept Americans safe. You find that disgusting? Says a lot about you. I totally disagree as did the Congress or they would have impeached him for violating the law.
 
megaprogman said:
Amnesty International Calls to Prosecute Bush for Admitted Waterboarding



I support this and basically feel that these activities constitute a war crime.
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Shamnesty International can go **** itself. If Al Gore was president and actually had the balls to retaliated against terrorist who attacked us and ordered to have some simulated water drowning(NOT TORTURE) on terrorists for some info. I bet you, shamnesty international and every die hard Bush lied to get us into war for oil, went awol, stole the election, is a dictator bush basher wouldn't be saying a damn thing about water boarding .
 
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