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What should we do with the Guantanamo prisoners?

What should we do with the Guantanamo prisoners?


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Since these people are not within the USA's borders i don't believe that the U.S. constitution applies to them.

But we should still either try and convict them or turn them loose.

The United States owns/leases the land that they are held on, therefore they are on American land.
 
I have a fairly large library. There's a Bible, the Gospel, the Koran, the Book of Changes, the Mahabharata.
However, the translation. I do not speak Arabic.

Fair enough. Just hate people that reiterate that which they hear on Fox (or whatever)..... I have heard this allegation as I have heard many allegations that it is taken out of context. I do know how often the Bible is taken out of context, so my default opinion is that the notion that Muslins want all non-Muslims converted or killed, I believe is misunderstood. I confess, however, that I do not know, as I have not read the Quran myself (though I have read parts).

Your retort, however, is you have an extensive library. You did not say you actually read the Quran. I also have the Quran (translated) in my library, as I do the Book of Mormon, the Torah, the Wisdom of Laotse, a two shelves of nothing by philosophy books and a multitude of Bibles of various translations. Just because I have all of those books in my library, I can't say I could speak authoritatively or even knowledgeably about any except maybe the Bible and the Torah (which, of course is a subset of the Bible).
 
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Perfectly relevant. Keep in context.

On the contrary - you are refusing to answer the point: is Civil Disobedience, such as that used by Martin Luther King, unjustified because it is illegal, or does the fact that something is illegal not disqualify it from being justifiable?

When you do something illegal and / or immoral, you can't say it was proper because of the ends. When you do something illegal, go to jail, you are not claiming it legal and proper, even if it fits the moral standard. That's why you willingly go to jail. When you do something illegal and or immoral and say you can because if the ends, that is when when use the common phrase "the ends don't justify the means."

Now I know you're just playing a game here, to avoid a proper judgement in the issue at hand, but try to stay within the framework of the discussion.

Referencing context or framework which you are unwilling to describe is simply a spin move, Boo. You didn't answer the question.

You stated that Illegal and Immoral Means are Not Justified by the Ends.

Did you mean to say that means are unjustified when they are:

A: Immoral
B: Illegal
C: Both Immoral and Illegal

?

I predict you will be unwilling to answer this question because no matter what you choose, it leaves you with problems.
 
:shrug: well you were free to your opinion, and I for one and glad that you turned out to be incorrect. 2007/2008 were wildly successful years for OIF.

I think you are conflating "domestic political support" for "winning a war".

Wildly successful? Have you seen Iraq lately? So, basically, what you're saying is we should still be there with our "wildly successful" surge.
 
That was when McCain was running for president and needed someone to throw under the bus in regard to what had become an unpopular war. :lol:
McCain has a reputation of throwing a lot of people in his own party under the bus. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he is a Progressive or a Republican. Or maybe both!

You dodged the question last time. So, I'll ask again. Do you consider the job Rummy did in Iraq a success? And is so, can you support that assertion with any links?
 
Wildly successful? Have you seen Iraq lately?

After our naif child-president-administration failed to negotiate a simple SOFA treaty and we had to pull out, thereby putting in danger (if not choosing to lose) all our hard-won gains?

Yeah, I'm fairly aware of what's going on in Iraq lately. Which changes the history of the Surge not a whit.

So, basically, what you're saying is we should still be there with our "wildly successful" surge.

Meh, sort of. The drawdown should have been contingent upon realities on the ground in Iraq rather than political preferences in Washington. A similar story is being played out now in Afghanistan, where the President ordered our military to go in and take casualties to clear the areas that with his next breath he announced he intends to abandon - effectively choosing the worst of both worlds.
 
Rumsfelds' "Light Footprint" strategy (what today we call "Drones and Special Forces", and is suddenly popular with many on both sides who want to limit our presence overseas) was indeed incredibly ill-suited to counterinsurgency in the context of a collapsed nation-state. His refusal to accept discordant analysis on items such as necessary force allocations from senior military leadership, including JCS Shinseki is rightfully a classic case of low-complexity, confirmation-seeking decision-making. However it wasn't his decision to send home the Iraqi Army - that was a casualty of the lack of unity of command and division between Bremer and Franks. Nor was it the Bush Administrations' fault that we lacked armored vehicles and the kinds of body armor we ended up wearing - those were produced by the Clinton Administrations' reductions in R&D and Procurement in the 90s. Rumsfeld was derided for the "you go to war with the army you have" comment, but he was also correct; just as he was with the "Known Unknowns" schtick.

Just saying, the man deserves credit for what he got right, and blame for what he got wrong, rather than to have anything that happened that was bad or good thrown randomly on him.

He did a good job storming through Iraq and killing the Husseins. He sucked at keeping the peace and rebuilding Iraq. Sad thing is he was too arrogant to change his strategy, and the Right had thier noses too far up the Bush Administration's ass to force change.

I left the GOP in 2004 for that very reason. The Right quit being true to itself and became sycophants.
 
After our naif child-president-administration failed to negotiate a simple SOFA treaty and we had to pull out, thereby putting in danger (if not choosing to lose) all our hard-won gains?

Yeah, I'm fairly aware of what's going on in Iraq lately.



Meh, sort of. The drawdown should have been contingent upon realities on the ground in Iraq rather than political preferences in Washington. A similar story is being played out now in Afghanistan, where the President ordered our military to go in and take casualties to clear the areas that with his next breath he announced he intends to abandon - effectively choosing the worst of both worlds.

I seem to recall we were already in the process of leaving Iraq due to a agreement negotiated by the previous administration. The Iraqis just asked us to leave sooner.
 
After our naif child-president-administration failed to negotiate a simple SOFA treaty and we had to pull out, thereby putting in danger (if not choosing to lose) all our hard-won gains?

Yeah, I'm fairly aware of what's going on in Iraq lately. Which changes the history of the Surge not a whit.



Meh, sort of. The drawdown should have been contingent upon realities on the ground in Iraq rather than political preferences in Washington. A similar story is being played out now in Afghanistan, where the President ordered our military to go in and take casualties to clear the areas that with his next breath he announced he intends to abandon - effectively choosing the worst of both worlds.

Bull. We should have left Iraq in 2004, once Saddam was found. Staying one day longer was a huge mistake. Ditto Afghanistan. Staying in that ****hole one day longer than OBL's miserable life is a huge mistake.
 
Bull. We should have left Iraq in 2004, once Saddam was found. Staying one day longer was a huge mistake. Ditto Afghanistan. Staying in that ****hole one day longer than OBL's miserable life is a huge mistake.

:shrug: again, whether you think it was a strategic mistake or not is irrelevant to the success of the Surge.
 
:shrug: again, whether you think it was a strategic mistake or not is irrelevant to the success of the Surge.
Define success. Hell, Nixon bombing Cambodia was a "success", until it wasn't.
 
I seem to recall we were already in the process of leaving Iraq due to a agreement negotiated by the previous administration. The Iraqis just asked us to leave sooner.

Sort of - we failed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement, and so we had to leave earlier, regardless of whether or not conditions on the ground warranted it.

Calamity said:
He did a good job storming through Iraq and killing the Husseins. He sucked at keeping the peace and rebuilding Iraq. Sad thing is he was too arrogant to change his strategy, and the Right had thier noses too far up the Bush Administration's ass to force change

Meh. The military did indeed do an excellent job of taking out the Republican Guard, and trying to conduct Shock and Awe with a bias towards minimum necessary destruction. But yes, the original post-invasion stabilization strategy pursued by Rumsfeld, General Franks, and Paul Bremer was disastrous. Arrogant? I would say heavily prone to Confirmation Bias.

As for forcing change - forcing change came from the Bush Administration, in one of the best traditions of American Warfare.
 
On the contrary - you are refusing to answer the point: is Civil Disobedience, such as that used by Martin Luther King, unjustified because it is illegal, or does the fact that something is illegal not disqualify it from being justifiable?



Referencing context or framework which you are unwilling to describe is simply a spin move, Boo. You didn't answer the question.

You stated that Illegal and Immoral Means are Not Justified by the Ends.

Did you mean to say that means are unjustified when they are:

A: Immoral
B: Illegal
C: Both Immoral and Illegal

?

I predict you will be unwilling to answer this question because no matter what you choose, it leaves you with problems.

Because the question is deceptive. It's not what we're talking about. Because they knew it was illegal, and accepted the consequences, they fall under a different category.

And yes, I know the trick of using something different and pretending it's the same thing. We've play this game before. If you're honest, either show they are the same or pick something that is the same.

But I gave answered your question fully.
 
Define success.

Well, for example, where I was in Fallujah, AQI and associates were pretty much driven out, attacks dropped from about 200 a month to 1 every two months (and were poorly conducted and ineffective at that), the local populace completely lost their fear of the M&I campaign and began to stand up for themselves (I remember knowing that we had won when I read a report about local shop owners beating an AQI operative with broomsticks for trying to dig a hole for IED's near their shops), local government became responsive to the needs of the populace and began to effectively coordinate public resources towards those ends, and the infrastructure of modern life (schools, trash disposal, power) were back up and running. Parents could send their kids to school without fear of violence on the streets.

I remember being out at night and we ran across a group of people out on the street outside a shop playing some game or another, talking, laughing. It was odd because there was still technically a curfew, but nobody enforced it because it wasn't needed anymore, but also because people used to be terrified to be out at night. The interpreter was going back and forth with a couple of the leading men of the group and turned back to us with an odd look and told us that it was all very odd - he hadn't seen it before: the people were hippy. "They're hippies, Mike?" (to help protect identities, interpreters were given American nicknames). "No, no no, they are hippy. You know (he cavorts around for a second, grinning). Hippy." "Happy, Mike?" "Yes, yes, Happy, happy happy, people are finally happy."

I had a friend roll through Fallujah a year and a half or so after that - he said there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken right on top of an old Tier One IED Site where we used to get blown up all the time. (shakes head) Never woulda thunk it when we first got there.
 
Because the question is deceptive. It's not what we're talking about. Because they knew it was illegal, and accepted the consequences, they fall under a different category.

I agree that they knew it was illegal and accepted the consequences. I asked you if their actions were justified.

It's a yes/no question, Boo. Easy-peasy.

But I gave answered your question fully.

No, you have explicitly refused to do so. A, B, or C, Boo - again, not difficult. Which one were you referring to?

Again, I predict you are going to refuse to answer the question, because you either recognize or unconsciously understand that once you do so, you will be forced to come to face with counterexamples of how the rule you have argued for (that illegal and immoral means are never justified by ends) is not, in fact, defensible. That is why you have also been ignoring the points against each of them that have already been raised.
 
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I agree that they knew it was illegal and accepted the consequences. I asked you if their actions were justified.

It's a yes/no question, Boo. Easy-peasy.



No, you have explicitly refused to do so. A, B, or C, Boo - again, not difficult. Which one were you referring to?

Again, I predict you are going to refuse to answer the question, because you either recognize or unconsciously understand that once you do so, you will be forced to come to face with counterexamples of how the rule you have argued for (that illegal and immoral means are never justified by ends) is not, in fact, defensible. That is why you have also been ignoring the points against each of them that have already been raised.

Only deceptive people deal in yes and no questions. They are used to hide behind.

I have answered the question by showing that it doesn't fit in our discussion.
 
Only deceptive people deal in yes and no questions. They are used to hide behind.

I have answered the question by showing that it doesn't fit in our discussion.

No you didn't. You were asked if their actions were justified (as the standard you had proposed seemed to suggest that they were not), and you replied that they expected to go to jail, as though that had any impact on justification of illegality. You continue to attempt to avoid hard questions because it turned out you proposed a stupid (though, you defend, common) standard.
 
No you didn't. You were asked if their actions were justified (as the standard you had proposed seemed to suggest that they were not), and you replied that they expected to go to jail, as though that had any impact on justification of illegality. You continue to attempt to avoid hard questions because it turned out you proposed a stupid (though, you defend, common) standard.

And I should you how they were differ, which should have informed you pick an example more in keeping. You need an example like torture. One that the immoral try to justify. One where no one accepts responsibility. One that fits the common understanding of the phrase. You try to bend it to fit something it doesn't. I know your tactic, as I've said. I stopped playing it with you years ago. Either stay within the context, or move on.
 
At the rate we are going they will live out the rest of their natural lives doing the Guantanamo limbo and we will not have to do anything, they will just all die out over time :roll:
 
And I should you how they were differ, which should have informed you pick an example more in keeping. You need an example like torture. One that the immoral try to justify

Wait - so are you now arguing that the standard of Illegal and/or Immoral is not the standard for justification of means? But rather than illegal or immoral means may or may not be justified by ends?

Alright, I'll add an option.


Boo, you stated that Illegal and Immoral Means were Never Justified by the Ends. Later you waffled on the "illegal" standard.

Did you mean:

A. Either Illegality or Immorality of the means is enough to disqualify a means from being justified, regardless of the ends

B. Immorality alone disqualifies a means from being justified, regardless of the ends

C. Only if a Means is both Immoral and Illegal is it disqualified from being justified, regardless of the ends

or

D. You mis-spoke, and would in reality only argue that certain ends do not justify certain means, such as (you offer) torture for potentially life-saving intelligence.
 
At the rate we are going they will live out the rest of their natural lives doing the Guantanamo limbo and we will not have to do anything, they will just all die out over time :roll
:




I agree that right now that looks like the most likely outcome.

And it might be why some of the detainees have gone on hunger strikes.
 
You dodged the question last time. So, I'll ask again. Do you consider the job Rummy did in Iraq a success? And is so, can you support that assertion with any links?

What he was commissioned to do I think there are several things he should be accredited. I find it hard for folks with any credibility to deny his successes in Afghanistan by which the Taliban regime was efficiently dispatched. Afghan elections in which women comprised forty percent of the voters, is testament to Rumsfeld's success where other military powers have failed. Rumsfeld was victorious in the Iraqi campaign, toppling the Baathist party of Saddam Hussein which led to American soldiers capturing Hussein where he was tried for his crimes against the people under their new found government. I think it was these two main successes that led to the "get Rummy" campaign because they feared Iraq could be a success. And that would be political suicide for the left. I also think Rumsfeld was a victim of some bureaucratic power plays going on in the Bush administration . While in some of your posts you seem to be under the impression that Rumsfeld's head was up Bush's butt. That just isn't so. They didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. It was Rumsfeld that put a monkey wrench into Bush extending a more transparent relationship with Putin. I'm sure glad Rumsfeld was there to slow that one down. Too bad there isn't someone like a Rumsfeld in the current administration. You claim the reconstruction failures are Rumsfeld's when the first year of reconstruction was under Bremer. Bremer wrote a book about his year in Iraq and claims he was neither Powell's man nor Rumsfeld's man but Bush's man. Before Rumsfeld was forced to resign by the Bush administration, he had already successfully laid the groundwork for keeping the bureaucratic peace among the different tribes. Bremer also wrote in his book that he didn't take the advice of Rumsfeld, maybe he should have.
 
I seem to recall we were already in the process of leaving Iraq due to a agreement negotiated by the previous administration. The Iraqis just asked us to leave sooner.

just to be clear on the 2 SOFA's. Iraq would not give "immunity" to US troops; both al_Sadr and al_Malaki said that if we stayed we would be under Iraqi law.
Not 100% sure on the timeline, but that was the deal breaker, so we left.
Those who claim we "should have stayed" would surely be complaining about US residuals under Iraqi law.

Afg.'s Loya Jirga has approved "immunity" ( US troops would not be under Afg. law),
but Karzai refuses to sign the BSA (Bilateral Security Agreement), saying he won't until April 2014.

He is trying to drag it out for more concessions - putting it off 'till after the Afg elections , even though Karzai will be out of office.
(Term limited)

Karzai is trying to cement some kind of legacy, or is just being his usual parasitic pain in the ass. Why he will not sign the BSA.

Karzai’s Irresponsible Politics | The Diplomat
Empathizing with Karzai isn’t hard to do; a frictionless path to the BSA might have made Karzai appear too eager to accept a continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan, making him appear weak.
Instead, Karzai stirs up a bit of a struggle for the United States, appearing to his countrymen as a strong leader, focused on protecting the dignity of the Afghan people.
Indeed, Karzai demanded that the United States provide guarantees that its troops would not conduct operations in which they would enter Afghan homes under any circumstances as part of the conditions for the BSA.

NATO is now in negotiations with Afg, on the SOFA agreeement/ contingent on the ultimate signing fo the BSA with the U.S.

NATO Begins Negotiations With Afghanistan For Post-2014 Security Agreement | The Diplomat
Against the backdrop of the stalled Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began negotiations with the government of Afghanistan for a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that would provide a legal basis for international troops’ continued presence in Afghanistan beyond next year.
 
What he was commissioned to do I think there are several things he should be accredited. I find it hard for folks with any credibility to deny his successes in Afghanistan by which the Taliban regime was efficiently dispatched. Afghan elections in which women comprised forty percent of the voters, is testament to Rumsfeld's success where other military powers have failed. Rumsfeld was victorious in the Iraqi campaign, toppling the Baathist party of Saddam Hussein which led to American soldiers capturing Hussein where he was tried for his crimes against the people under their new found government. I think it was these two main successes that led to the "get Rummy" campaign because they feared Iraq could be a success. And that would be political suicide for the left. I also think Rumsfeld was a victim of some bureaucratic power plays going on in the Bush administration . While in some of your posts you seem to be under the impression that Rumsfeld's head was up Bush's butt. That just isn't so. They didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. It was Rumsfeld that put a monkey wrench into Bush extending a more transparent relationship with Putin. I'm sure glad Rumsfeld was there to slow that one down. Too bad there isn't someone like a Rumsfeld in the current administration. You claim the reconstruction failures are Rumsfeld's when the first year of reconstruction was under Bremer. Bremer wrote a book about his year in Iraq and claims he was neither Powell's man nor Rumsfeld's man but Bush's man. Before Rumsfeld was forced to resign by the Bush administration, he had already successfully laid the groundwork for keeping the bureaucratic peace among the different tribes. Bremer also wrote in his book that he didn't take the advice of Rumsfeld, maybe he should have.
Fair enough. Bremer was probably the one player even more incompetent than Rummy.
 
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