''DONT MENTION THE WAR''

[helicopterjim R.I.P.]

And, Dave Laing, WTF are you doing spelling "behavior" like our 'cross the pond friends?

77006[/snapback]

 

You 'humour' us backwards Canucks when you say things like that!!

[Ouiji Veck]

You've got to be kidding! Stop subscribing to Hillary Clintons newsletter, shes force feeding you lies.

waspp

77004[/snapback]

Right...the leftist press.

Thats why I've known about Tom Delay and Abnemoff for a year and a half.

And don't forget about that leftist America hatting Scott Ritter decorated

Green Beret wepons inspector that had the un-patrotic gall to say there were

no weapons of mass distruction. Bill O'Riley and Rush Linblob are the only

true Patriotic News people there are.

Patriotic News....thats what we need....Like Tass

Then we can bring freedom to the rest of the world.

Especially the places with oil.

All we need to do is cut out all the social programs like health care for the elderly

and school lunches...bunch of free loaders.

Project for a New American Century.

Read it. Read who wrote it.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/

myself....I like the America I grew up in....this ain't it.

Installing a theocrtic democracy in Iraq is not a great leap.

The x-govenor of texas thought he knew more about military operations than

the Army Chief of Staff (Shinseki) or the Marine Chief of Staff (Zini)

I don't read what Hillary (wipping post of the uninformed ditto heads) has to say..

I read what they have to say. But I guess you and Rush think THE"RE UnAmerican.

[Van]

but i can't ride today as i'm toooo sick. and it's those damn scotts fault and there patients of waiting all those years before bottling there devil water.

77012[/snapback]

 

och eye, ya shoulda sayed afore.........demon drrink is it now that youve had a skin full of, whell, at list it wern't thet WACKY TO'BACCY l see...... ........now it all kinda makes sense

Cheers

van

[g.forrest]

nothing to dp with topic..as i won't mention that! this was just one victim of the t500 suzuki. [cobra or titan ] when they came onto market in early 70s. one of two fellows i knew at time who came seriously undone. they were very fast for that time. this one crested hill at 90 mph in 35 mph zone 11.30 at night. the car was doing u turn.

[grossohc]

but i can't ride today as i'm toooo sick. and it's those damn scotts fault and there patients of waiting all those years before bottling there devil water.

77012[/snapback]

What did someone force you to drink it.

[dlaing]

Gotta go with waspp here.

 

And, Dave Laing, WTF are you doing spelling "behavior" like our 'cross the pond friends?

 

In the words of PJ O'Rourke,k "Give War a Chance..."

 

Sheez...

77006[/snapback]

I lived in Canada for maybe three years, had British step siblings for a year or so, visited Canada often, along time ago...and my Dad is Canadian.

Is Canada any better at avoiding unjust wars, not really, they are just smaller in terms of people, money, and world policeman factor.

I don't read Hilary. She reads my postings here.

Unlike Hilary, I am so much further to the left that I am not sure there has ever been a just war.

Maybe the Indians defending America, although that was more of a massacre than a war.

WWII if the cause was to liberate the death camps, but that was not the cause....but we certainly had a right to defend ourselves and retaliate for Pearl Harbor.

Invading Iraq would be justified, if the purpose to bring human rights to Iraq....sorry, that was not the purpose.

Vietnam and Korea, if the goal was to make the Communists more humanitarian...sorry, that was not the goal.

On torture, I dream of and perhaps naively believed in an America that prohibited torture.

That apparently leftist ideal is what seperates us from the barbarians that burn bodies and hang them from bridges, as TX posted.

There is plent of evidence that the Bush Administration condones torture.

Is it enough to convict them in court? Not likely.

 

 

Human Rights Watch World Report 2006

    Human Rights Watch

 

    Wednesday 18 January 2006

 

    US Policy of abuse undermines rights worldwide.

 

    New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration's counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2006.

 

    The evidence showed that abusive interrogation cannot be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, but was a conscious policy choice by senior US government officials. The policy has hampered Washington's ability to cajole or pressure other states into respecting international law, said the 532-page volume's introductory essay.

 

    "Fighting terrorism is central to the human rights cause," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "But using illegal tactics against alleged terrorists is both wrong and counterproductive."

 

    Roth said the illegal tactics were fueling terrorist recruitment, discouraging public assistance of counterterrorism efforts and creating a pool of unprosecutable detainees.

 

    US partners such as Britain and Canada compounded the lack of human rights leadership by trying to undermine critical international protections. Britain sought to send suspects to governments likely to torture them based on meaningless assurances of good treatment. Canada sought to dilute a new treaty outlawing enforced disappearances. The European Union continued to subordinate human rights in its relationships with others deemed useful in fighting terrorism, such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

 

    Many countries - Uzbekistan, Russia and China among them - used the "war on terrorism" to attack their political opponents, branding them as "Islamic terrorists."

 

    Human Rights Watch documented many serious abuses outside the fight against terrorism. In May, the government of Uzbekistan massacred hundreds of demonstrators in Andijan, the Sudanese government consolidated "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur, western Sudan, and persistent atrocities were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chechnya. Severe repression continued in Burma, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Tibet and Xinjiang in China, while Syria and Vietnam maintained tight restrictions on civil society and Zimbabwe conducted massive, politically motivated forced evictions.

 

    There were bright spots in efforts to uphold human rights by the Western powers in Burma and North Korea. Developing nations also played a positive role: India suspended most military aid to Nepal after the king's coup, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations forced Burma to relinquish its 2006 chairmanship because of its appalling human rights record. Mexico took the lead in convincing the United Nations to maintain a special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism. Kyrgyzstan withstood intense pressure from Uzbekistan to rescue all but four of 443 refugees from the Andijan massacre, and Romania gave them temporary refuge.

 

    The lack of leadership by Western powers sometimes ceded the field to Russia and China, which built economic, social and political alliances without regard to human rights.

 

    In his introductory essay to the World Report, Roth writes that it became clear in 2005 that US mistreatment of detainees could not be reduced to a failure of training, discipline or oversight, or reduced to "a few bad apples," but reflected a deliberate policy choice embraced by the top leadership.

 

    Evidence of that deliberate policy included the threat by President George W. Bush to veto a bill opposing "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," Roth writes, and Vice President @#$$#! Cheney's attempt to exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from the law. In addition, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed that the United States can mistreat detainees so long as they are non-Americans held abroad, while CIA Director Porter Goss asserted that "water boarding," a torture method dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, was simply a "professional interrogation technique."

 

    "Responsibility for the use of torture and mistreatment can no longer credibly be passed off to misadventures by low-ranking soldiers on the nightshift," said Roth. "The Bush administration must appoint a special prosecutor to examine these abuses, and Congress should set up an independent, bipartisan panel to investigate."

 

    The Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 contains survey information on human rights developments in more than 70 countries in 2005. In addition to the introductory essay on torture, the volume contains two essays: "Private Companies and the Public Interest: Why Corporations Should Welcome Global Human Rights Rules" and "Preventing the Further Spread of HIV/AIDS: The Essential Role of Human Rights."

 

 

On invasion of privacy:

Specialists Doubt Legality of Wiretaps

    By Charlie Savage

    The Boston Globe

 

    Thursday 02 February 2006

 

    Many rebut assertion of presidential powers.

 

    Washington - Legal specialists yesterday questioned the accuracy of President Bush's sweeping contentions about the legality of his domestic spying program, particularly his assertion in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday that "previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have."

 

    Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush authorized the National Security Agency to intercept overseas calls from the United States without first seeking a warrant, asserting he had the right to do so under his wartime powers. On Tuesday night, he defended his program by saying past presidents have exerted the same powers.

 

    But legal specialists said yesterday that wiretaps ordered by previous presidents were put in place before warrants were required for investigations involving national security. Since Congress passed the law requiring warrants in 1978, no president but Bush has defied it, specialists said.

 

    Bush's contention that past presidents did the same thing as he has done "is either intentionally misleading or downright false," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor. Only Bush has made the assertion that his wartime powers should supersede an act of Congress, Cole said.

 

    Bush repeated his assertions about the legality of his spying program at a speech yesterday in Nashville. The president has been seeking to build public support for the program in advance of Senate hearings into the matter next week.

 

    But Bush's comments in the State of the Union, which highlighted a week of election-style campaigning to defend the program, were almost entirely disputed yesterday by legal specialists across the ideological spectrum.

 

    For example, Bush strongly implied that if his program had been in place before the terrorist attacks, the government would have identified two of the hijackers who were placing international calls from inside the United States.

 

    But the 9/11 Commission found that the government had already grown suspicious about both of the hijackers in question before the attacks took place. Bureaucratic failures to share information about the hijackers, not ignorance of their existence, was the problem, the commission said.

 

    Moreover, Bush said in his address that "appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed" about the program. But Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said that under law Bush was required to brief all members of the intelligence committees - not just their leaders, as he did.

 

    Bush's assertion that his program was legal prompted a group of 14 prominent law professors, including both liberals and conservatives, to pen a joint letter objecting to his arguments. An expanded version of their letter rebutting Bush's assertions will be released today, the professors said.

 

    Richard Epstein, a University of Chicago law professor and a member of the group, said he believes the Supreme Court would reject Bush's assertions that his wartime powers authorized him to override the law.

 

    "I find every bit of this legal argument disingenuous," Epstein said. "The president's position is essentially that Congress is not doing the right thing, so I'm going to act on my own."

 

    The White House referred all questions about the spying section of Bush's speech to the Justice Department, where spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos acknowledged yesterday that all of the surveillance programs approved by past presidents pre-dated the warrant requirement.

 

    But, she said, no court has said the 1978 the law changes the president's inherent constitutional power to conduct surveillance for national security purposes. And she said a 2002 opinion by a secret federal court acknowledged that the president had sweeping surveillance powers.

 

    But Cole, the Georgetown professor, said the Bush administration is misstating the ruling in the 2002 case, including its requirement that the Justice Department seek warrants in national security cases. Cole said the case supported the notion that Congress could regulate the president's use of his surveillance powers.

 

    Scolinos said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the program on Monday, would offer a more detailed defense of the administration's legal theories.

 

    Yesterday, some of Bush's defenders pointed out on conservative websites that the Clinton administration had authorized a search of the home of Aldrich Ames, a suspected Soviet spy, without a warrant in 1993.

 

    But legal specialists said the Ames case is irrelevant because it involved a physical search of Ames's home, and the 1978 law did not require warrants for physical searches. The year after the Ames search, 1994, the law was amended to require warrants for physical searches and wiretaps.

 

    Philip Heymann, a Harvard law professor who was then the deputy US attorney general and helped oversee the Ames investigation, said the Clinton administration began seeking warrants for physical searches as soon as the new law went into effect.

 

    "The bottom line is, I know of no electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes since [the 1978 warrant law] was passed that was not done under the . . . statute," Heymann said.

 

[dlaing]

Simple solution. Give Ratchet and dlaing their own forum just to argue in.

76997[/snapback]

Hey, Ratchet and I never start arguments....except for maybe the K&N one, and maybe one of the ECU spin off threads....

I almost miss Jaap's censorship...

[Baldini]

You lot are gonna be in so much trouble when the man gets in & sees the mess you made again....

 

KB

[Admin Jaap]

I almost miss Jaap's censorship...

 

Here to serve!