Since where is this torture?

http://news.search.yahoo.com/news/search?p...0&c=news_photos

Our enemies behead our soldiers, innocent AID workers, and anyone else they can get their hands on - yet we are beating ourselves up over human pyramids, girsl underwear, and mild abuse....


The West will lose because we don't like to face reality.

I agree with you here Mike, ( I think we were wrong in going to war) but once in war you must fight to win and the most treachourous will be the victor ( so far the US has ALWYS proved to be that)

except in Vietnam and well to put it bluntly we all know how that went.

how does the saying go?

war is .......hell! so you better be the devil if you are gonna rule in hell!

I don't know why I'm replying since this is just more mindless trolling from Mike. You would honestly think he had better things to do.

But in a nutshell - we don't behead people on camera because we're not animals.

If you want to sink to their level Mike, be my guest. I can only guess what your imagination dreams up. ;)

And I don't pretend that the "west" (a slightly broad generalization) has it's hands clean. Sometimes there's dirty work in such circumstances. But reason dictates you do it a very long way away from cameras and make sure it's very deniable.

If the US thinks it stands for what's "Good and Right", it only hurts itself getting into such circumstances. Unless the US has decided it's no better than those it fights?

And the US may be fairly new to foreign policy (only really got a proper one after WW2) but many other countries have been dealing with similar situations for at least a century, if not much, much longer. These types of situations are nothing new. Par for the course in global affairs really.

If it's not Muslim extremists, it's guerillas, Maoists, communists... the fighting doesn't stop. This is nothing new, and many countries have dealt with this for a long time without losing their "civilization" in the process.

Jay, I am not advocating beheadings. I was merely making the point that, even the "torture" we are prosecuting soldiers for is extremely MINOR compaired to what our enemies do.

The problem I see is the media has a bigger field day pounding this kind of information down our throats, but shows minimum attentnion and outrage with beheadings of female aid workers.

We are above that, and the people who took photos and dressed the guys up in womens clothing should be punished. ( even if its just for being STUPID)

Damn.

Starting to see "it's the media's fault" an awful lot. Maybe the situation is worse in Iraq than I thought.

I agree that calling most of what happened in the Iraqi prison "torture" is an overstatement. Still in all, that kind of bullshit being done by Westerners is far more "newsworthy" than actual torture & beheadings by terrorists.

We all know that they act that way. We aren't supposed to act that way.

Happens in jails across this country everyday!!!

What is or is not torture is defined fairly clearly in the Geneva Convention crap.

Since we are a signatory to the Geneva Convention (meaning we said we agreed to it dammit) then we MUST follow it.

If we want to circumvent the Geneva Convention then we MUST withdraw from it.

It is pretty much that simple.

<_<

To be frank, I don't actually watch much TV news since it is so repetitive. I do a fair bit of headline scanning every day to keep up to date, and deliberately and generally avoid opinion pieces since that's exactly what they are - opinion.

FYI - I generally check BBC & FT online every day. Occasionally wn.com

The media is sensationalist. Negativity gets viewers. As harsh as it sounds, I'm sure the media loves disasters in a sense since it means more eyeballs.

I'm in the UK so I don't actually know what US news is like. We get ABC news at around 2am but I can't really see the point in watching it.

I would say the BBC nightly news is pretty balanced and very international compared to some. Channel 4 news gets a bit repetitive and does somewhat obsess about George Bush. But this probably won't mean much to you if you're not in the UK... ;)

Anyway, I see your point, and that's one reason I don't really like TV news. But on the other hand, TV news stations are commercial mediums and I assume they do what they feel is best to keep their business viable...

Happens in jails across this country everyday!!! [/b][/quote]
Yes, it does. And if you watch newspapers around the country, you'll see that jail guards are remprimanded, fired, and/or charged with criminal conduct someplace about once a month for it.

What's your point?

If you think that we lost in Vietnam because we were less willing to fight "down and dirty" than the other guy, you know very little about the Vietnam war.

The clusterfuck was a loser before we allowed advisors to become combatants.

If you think that we lost in Vietnam because we were less willing to fight "down and dirty" than the other guy, you know very little about the Vietnam war.

The clusterfuck was a loser before we allowed advisors to become combatants. [/b][/quote]
why would you say that? i would say that for the most part, it was a "loser" for the similar reasons to what mike and joe are pointing out... there was no public will and political will to fight it, much less win it. do we need to discuss the rules of engagement for vietnam?

you can say that nasty things happened... but nasty things were the exception and not the rule. they were not approved and accepted tactics and an integral part of a strategy to win the war. i know a few people who still tell me about lining up captured soldiers and seeing how many heads a .223 round would go through. his words "those fuckers would try to kill you, run out of ammo and then surrender and expect you to treat them like gold. we usually killed every fucking one of them"

the fact is that they were outgunned in every sense of the word and that AK-47's, rpg's and booby traps were proven to be a very shitty defense against jet fighters, napalm, carpet bombing and systematically burning villages. they fought well and did really kick some ass and no one can take credit away from them for repelling the US... but at the same time, no one can claim that they faced the full brunt of a determined US military force with a "win or die trying attitude"

just my opinion.

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us. "

why would you say that? i would say that for the most part, it was a "loser" for the similar reasons to what mike and joe are pointing out... there was no public will and political will to fight it, much less win it. do we need to discuss the rules of engagement for vietnam?

you can say that nasty things happened... but nasty things were the exception and not the rule. they were not approved and accepted tactics and an integral part of a strategy to win the war. i know a few people who still tell me about lining up captured soldiers and seeing how many heads a .223 round would go through. his words "those fuckers would try to kill you, run out of ammo and then surrender and expect you to treat them like gold. we usually killed every fucking one of them"

the fact is that they were outgunned in every sense of the word and that AK-47's, rpg's and booby traps were proven to be a very shitty defense against jet fighters, napalm, carpet bombing and systematically burning villages. they fought well and did really kick some ass and no one can take credit away from them for repelling the US... but at the same time, no one can claim that they faced the full brunt of a determined US military force with a "win or die trying attitude"

just my opinion. [/b][/quote]


Come now, we had Kerry over there!!!

Was there more we could do as a Nation??

Sent bush with an 8 ball and a business plan...

The North woulda fallen in days.

Sent bush with an 8 ball and a business plan...

The North woulda fallen in days. [/b][/quote]


And been more developed then S. Korea!!!

:lol: :lol:

Why would I say Vietnam was a loser before our advisors became combatants?

How about we backed a loser from the start?

How about a "government" we were supporting that was really nothing more than a bunch of carpet-bagging Northern Catholics, many (but not all) of whom were former French lackeys, who fled south as the communists took control in the north? (Millions of Vietnamese fled in both directions in 55/56(+/-), much as they had when India & Pakistan came into being).

How about the fact that long before the problem of anti-war activism began to sap the will of the Americans to fight the war, there was NEVER any will on the part of the majority of Vietnamese people to fight the war?

How about the fact that many of the same steps that were necessary for us to score even partial or temporary victories drove more Vietnamese into the hands of the Communists?

The troops on the ground did not fail in Vietnam. The peace movement did not cause us to lose the war in Vietnam.

American policy failed in Vietnam - pure and simple. It was doomed before it started.

The western way has always been to be extremely self-critical. In ancient Athens, after winning the Battle of Arginusae, some of the generals were put to death for not rescuing enough of the soldiers from drowning. I think it's healthy.

The west won in 480 BC, once and for all.

Mike,

THEY knock down our buildings and a few years later women line up in Afghanistan to vote. I have no doubts which is the superior civilization. ;-)

I blame the French - their poorly manged their colonies after WWII. They should have been stripped of them....

Bush has done an awesome job. who else could have united Germany and France?

Hitler?

geneva convention. doesnt make much sense to stoop to their level. hope they get hard time.

wannabe neocon;)

Hitler? [/b][/quote]
Ah-haha.