Taking you back…

I’m sure the folks voting @ the U.N. aren’t from China, Syria, Iran, or other such upstanding places where they knew the real definition of the word torture.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at, WF. Are you saying that if we’re accused of torture by other countries that are clearly guilty of it, their hypocrisy lets us off the hook? Or are you suggesting that their condemnation of us is doubly damning because of their expertise in the matter?

Like Homer once said, “They weren’t all Happy Days.”

There were four Star Wars movies. Wait, is this some sort of trap to weed out the geeks? But seriously, at Guantanamo, I bet Gigli is the only thing they get to watch. So your argument fails and we are left to conclude that torture is bad as is holding prisoners without charges. Who knew? I mean apart from everybody who’s not at the head of the country. Obviously.

Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes?? I must have missed something…

I would really like to see a serious discussion on 1)what exactly is “torture” and 2)are the detainees at Gitmo entitled to POW status. Both of these definitions are very important. I concede that the staus of each individual should be reviewed under some sort of framework. However, I do not concede that torture necessarily is used as an interrogation method as a matter of course.

Certain things are obviously torture - use of electricity on body parts, having dogs actually bite somebody, bamboo shoots under fingernails, etc. But the linked news report tells of “…harsh treatment, such as placing detainees in solitary confinement, stripping them naked, subjecting them to severe temperatures and threatening them with dogs could amount to torture …” It “could amount to torture”?

Scaring somebody, playing mind games, stripping someone naked, disorienting with lights and sound, changing the thermostat setting to make someone extremely uncomfortable, and force feeding somebody on a hunger strike is coercion, not torture.

POW status is given to individuals fighting for a nation-state in a uniform. Individuals running around intentionally targeting civilians do not meet this criteria.

I would be interested in reading how others define these two concepts.

Torture:

To put a person in a situation where they fear that their life is in danger in order to extract information. IE psychological torture.

AND

To put a person in a situation where they feel pain in order to extract information. IE physical torture.

–

The “Chinese Water Torture” (it must be bad because it has torture in its name…) wouldn’t be considered torture if actual physical harm had to be committed…

Further, POW’s get to go home when the “war” is over. When is the “war on terror” going to end? When do these people get to go home? The WH wants it both ways. They want them to be considered POW’s so they don’t have to send them home until the “war on terror” is over, but they don’t want to have to treat them like they were POW’s. IE no Geneva Convention.

I remember when we used to learn about how OTHER BAD countries used to do this stuff. Now it is us who have joined the BAD countries…

Troll, does forced sodomy count as torture? I realize that NPR caters to us left wing liberal nutcases (unbiased reporting is liberal, correct?), and the reported incident occurred at Abu Ghraib rather than Guantanamo, but I assume that American soldiers sodomizing prisoners might be construed as torture. Just something I was listening to this morning (the report, not the actual incident).

I am also assuming that as the sodomee was a prisoner, that it was not a consensual act. If someone can provide love letters from the prisoner(s) to the guards, requesting a right good buggering with various objects, I’ll drop my assumption that this was torture.

Nato,

True, that would meet my definition. However, besides being at Abu Gharib, that specific incident occured in 2003, was investigated by CID and tried in court. It was also addressed as part of the overall findings in the Taguba (spelling?) report as mentioned by NPR and the BBC last night.

I agree that the incident I referred to occurred a while back and in a different prison/detention center. I would argue that those actions are a relevant argument against Guantanamo, however. We still hold people prisoner without any determination of guilt or innocence and have no oversight on how we treat them. Before the Cheney, er, Rove, I mean Bush II presidency, we theoretically believed that this sort of thing was BAD.

Dammit, Adam! Why did you have to respond with a more reasoned response while I was still typing away at my last response. Now I look more ignorant than usual. Quit interjecting with sensible arguments!

Making the case that the Gitmo detainees are not being tortured is getting increasingly difficult. And the case that they’re really “the worst of the worst” has already been belied by the administration’s own behavior — they keep quitely letting people out, sending them home with a slap on the wrist.

Dahlia Lithwick has the full run-down of the mind-boggling blight on that Bush has inflected on the honor of our nation.

This may sound unbelievably naive, but are we basically holding detainees at Gitmo because THEY FOUGHT BACK when we invaded? I don’t mean that the Taliban are good guys, but we certainly can’t claim that they were ALL involved in the Sept. 11 atrocities. Surely many of them are just the Afghan equivalent of grunts, with no real alternative to joining and fighting. I have this notion that when the Taliban says “Join,” you join.

JCT makes two statements:
1. “POW status is given to individuals fighting for a nation-state in a uniform. Individuals running around intentionally targeting civilians do not meet this criteria.”

So the problem is that the Taliban didn’t issue uniforms?? Because it was certainly the government! What evidence do you have that the detainees intentionally targeted civilians? Weren’t they captured in Afghanistan? Are we holding them for some crimes against Afghan civilians? That seems unlikely. (Also it’s “criterion,” but now I’m just being rude.)

2. “Let’s assume the individual is legitimately a terrorist, caught on the battlefield or in the process of creating a bomb…”

That’s a huge assumption that seems to be completely unsupported. Being caught on the battlefield is certainly NOT evidence of being a terrorist! Being caught while creating a bomb is incriminating, but why not follow established legal procedures for that circumstance? People have actually been making explosive devices for centuries now—this is NOT a new situation.

I’m particularly irritated by all those people who immediately started whining that “the world has changed post-9/11.” Bullshit. Terrorism was around way before this—we just weren’t the victims. For most of the world, nothing changed at all…except for the changes WE imposed. Wingers complain about the “culture of victimhood,” but they seem to have it perfected!

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…and those fearmongers who use it as an excuse to trample the values our country was founded upon.” Paraphrasing a little there.

Yay Ann!

I’m particularly irritated by all those people who immediately started whining that “the world has changed post-9/11.” Bullshit. Terrorism was around way before this—we just weren’t the victims. For most of the world, nothing changed at all…

A-fucking-men, Ann, a-fucking-men.

Also,

Humane versus inhumane and reliable versus unreliable define the issue for me. If what we’ve seen pictures of and descriptions we’ve gotten from a variety of sources isn’t torture, what the fuck is? Are not Robert Scheer and Sy Hersh responsible journalists providing legitimate insight into what we’re doing? And why in hell did the FBI object to what we were doing in Gitmo? Two reasons - it was neither ok nor likely to produce good intelligence. But then there is also no good intelligence in this administration, beginning at the top, so I guess it’s a good fit.

I am more inclined toward abject national repentance than I am toward a debate at this point. Sorry, Adam. We are in a surrealist neocon painting.

29-34, I’m with you guys and gals. It’s Salvador Dali time.

OK, just heard this on NPR and I think it relates. They were talking about scraping large carrier ships. The statement was made: “It is hard to do in Western Nations, partly because the ships are full of hazardous materials. So the ships are sent to India to be dismantled by hand.” How does this relate you ask? Why is it that we are wiling to send ships so full of hazardous materials that we don’t want to have anything to do with them off to India so some one can take them apart by hand? Is it not hazardous to them as well?
Since we are obviously more important than everyone else, of course we can torture when they can’t. Heck, it probably doesn’t even hurt them. After all they can handle hazardous material by hand…

As far as the “War on Terror.” You all seem more up on this than me. Did we ever actually declare war? On anybody?

He’s flying from Tampa to Orlando today. I hope Heir Farce One doesn’t leave a trail of the bastard’s karma to settle to over the landscape as it passes near the Green Swamp.

I think some kind of ecological exorcism is in order. Please send virtue vibes.

I found a very frightening website this morning. Up until now, I didn’t want to believe just how organized the “Christian nation” movement really is. I grew up in Texas, and I’ve seen a few mega-churches, but they were mostly independent fundamentalist evangelicals–how would they ever be able to agree enough to get organized? Then I read about the Texas Republican Party platform. See also the pages on Women, Biblical Law, and Satan. Read about Justice Scalia’s views on the inseparability of church and state.

The Christian Dominionist platform on torture could be probably be summed up thusly: “Who gives a fuck whether or not it’s torture? They’re not Christians. They’re doomed to suffer far worse than that for all Eternity.”

Except for W’s little faux pas at the start of the so-called war on terror, the word “crusade” has not been uttered by anyone in the Administration that I can recall. But make no mistake, that’s what it is to them. Sure, it’s about oil and maintaining the God-given American lifestyle, too, but even Texans aren’t so heartless as to send their boys and girls out to die for their right to drive SUVs. But they sure as hell would do it for a religious cause.

Like David, I am “more inclined toward abject national repentance than I am toward a debate at this point.” And like Ice Weasel, I long for the days when the idea of the US and torture was simply unthinkable.

It isn’t the details that hold me up. It’s that we have sunk to such depths that a serious discussion of the “appropriate level of torture” can take place at all. I never know whether to weep first, then vomit, or reverse the order. I can’t discuss it rationally.

Goddammit, Fanny, there’s nothing wrong with this post, knock it off…

If you have ever listened to John McCain tell his Vietnam stories, you hear him tell about how they used to “torture” him by insisting that he will never go home. They told him he would never see his family again. All he had was hope that the US wouldn’t abandon him. He had that to keep him going. What do the prisoners in Gitmo have? Do they have any hope that they’ll return home? Do they feel that they will never see their families again? Wouldn’t this be torture in the same way John McCain was tortured? Simply locking someone up for FOUR years without any recourse IS TORTURE! Even more so if there is absolutely NO HOPE of going home EVER!

So, the arguments over what is and isn’t torture at this point is moot. The individuals in GITMO are constantly being tortured with the not knowing if they will ever see their families again.

Four years in, there is no information that any of these people have that will be of any value. They are four years removed from Afghanistan. All the information that they have to give is useless. So, when do they get to go home?

Thanks, Stephen. It is deeply appreciated.

…Sudan…North Korea…Libya…

“…Sudan…North Korea…Libya… ”

wf, where are we going to get the troops to invade all those countries? Are you advocating a return to the draft? Or will the cuts in funding for higher education loans take care of the shortfall?

…Sudan…North Korea…Libya…United States…

Not a club to which I want to belong.

In all this talk about what torture (however you define it) does to the torturee, there’s not been a lot of talk about what it does to the torturer. For some insight, I recommend JoAnn Wypijewski’s article “Judgement Days:Lessons from the Abu Gharib Courts-Martial” in the February Harper’s.

I can’t imagine that any individual can participate in these activities and not be affected. And if he or she can just turn it off when the shift is over, I worry that this is the kind of person the all-volunteer army attracts.

We will be paying for this for a long time, both at home and abroad. God help us.

lj, and anyone else concerned about Nazi collusion, check out this article about W.’s grandaddy’s war profiteering ways.
http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catal ogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2

This is especially for you, RRRRyan, if you’re still with us and you still believe the consequences of global warming a millenium off:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0217-22.htm

Saudi Arabia…Vietnam…Cuba…

BTW, did anyone catch Battlestar Gallactica on SciFi last night? There was an abortion theme woven in that I found thought provoking.

“This thread is mostly talking about torture and apparently the consensus is any punishment is torture and it doesn’t much matter who we’re punishing or what for.”

Please point out to us the person or persons who said anything even remotely like this. I suspect they’ll be surprised by your assessment of their position.

“Saudi Arabia…Vietnam…Cuba…at least we’re not as bad as they are!” –America’s new motto

I envision all sorts of places where this could be used. We could start by replacing Emma Lazarus’s poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

How about post #45 “Simply locking someone up for FOUR years without any recourse IS TORTURE!”

Four years? What about a lifetime sentence in prison? If FOUR years is too long what is not “too long”?

Finally, please mention one documented “appalling stuff” that did not get prosecuted? No, flushing the Koran does not count and is not formally documented [afaik] either. Neither do the Danish cartoons.

Weasel, for some of us a statement like “this is actually 100% pure ryan logic. No one here would make such an assinine comparison” is insulting, especially when you waste most of the post with such an unproductive statement. Unless I’m to take this as a complement since 51+% of the country tends toward my positions more so than the consensus of this forum. Again, Abu Ghraib was criminal in MOST everyone’s eyes including mine and the President’s which may well be one-and-the-same.

Maximum Bob, my statement stands, your’s falls. At least one person said it in so many words, and a lot of people elude to it, especially when they keep referring to the holding of prisoners of war as torture in itself. Trying to argue that we should let them go and get back to their work of killing Americans. By supporting Al Gore’s statements you also align yourself with the same opinion. You attempt to connect a criminal offense committed by a handful of misfits with this administrations policy. Cleverly disguised straw man you have there.

Some of us do read between the lines too, it is an inexact science, I’ll admit.

Since the word asinine did come up, this line of thinking, Al Gore’s, some of the posts here, are nearing the asinine Alec Baldwin with his recent statements about Cheney’s shooting accident. They are quite similar.

1. Some misfits do something illegal so this administration supports torture.

2. Dick Cheney accidentally shoots his friend so he’s a murderer in the habit of covering his tracks.

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but the fundamental difference between locking someone up for a life sentence and a prisoner at Guantanamo is that the lifer presumably received *due process* as specified by the U. S. Constitution and refined by over 200 years of precedent that has established what the term “due process” means in practical terms.

Hey, I didn’t get A’s in Con Law for nothing.

Sharon, J.D., but not practicing

David, I agree 100% that solitary can become torture in the way that you describe. I’d actually started with a longer post with more caveats, exceptions, etc., then pared it down in the interest of getting to my point.

How about post #45 “Simply locking someone up for FOUR years without any recourse IS TORTURE!”

Uh, locked up for four years without formal charges, and no clear legal path of redress, ever, is the same as being locked up for life after being convicted of a crime by a court? If there’s no difference, what purpose does our legal system serve? Why not just lock up anyone whom we think has committed a crime?

And if it’s not mental torture, what is it, exactly? Why are some of these guys trying to commit suicide, then? Just to make us look bad? And if it were to happen to you, what would you call it? What do you think John McCain would call it?

Sorry, RRRRyan, but you’ll have to do better.

Maximum Bob, my only burden was to show where posters were pushing the bounds of the definition of torture to an unreasonable level. That burden was placed on me by you because of my comparison to my childhood. You have now taken the between-the-lines out of the equation by apparently agreeing with this logic? Using your new definition of torture you are quite right our current administration as well as every administration that has ever run this country since it’s founding, and any country ever (afaik) have all been torturers.

No wonder we don’t agree on much, the target is as mobile as the arguments supporting it.

“So to most of you does that justify an important political figure from our country going to an Arab nation and accepting money to spew claims of crimes against their people by our people?”

I’m not up on Gore’s most recent activities, but I think the speech he gave on MLK Jr. Day ROCKED. Which part of the above quoted sentence offended you most? Surely not the part about accepting Arab money?

RRRRyan, RRRRyan, RRRRyan -

Boy, oh, boy, buddy, what are we going to do?

First off, I have no idea what your childhood has to do with any response I made to you, so I’m not sure what’s up with that.

Second, I never created a “new” definition of torture. I asked if you were able to see the difference between incarceration after a trial and incarceration with no trial, no redress, etc. I asked if the latter might be considered torture. I asked if John McCain would consider that torture. You chose not to respond to those specific questions.

At this point, I have to wonder why I try to reason to someone who is so resistant to rational argument. What it comes down to is this: I’m afraid that letting mistruths stand unchallenged gives those mistruths credence.

So let me tell you what I’ve gleaned from the comments posted here:

- While it’s difficult to say exactly where the dividing line is between torture and non-torture, many of us think that the US is so far over the line as makes no difference. Not that it isn’t a good idea to have an ongoing discussion of just where that line is.

- Many of us think that we can’t justify our nation’s bad behavior by pointing out the even worse behavior of other countries. “Everyone else is doing it” is an argument unbefitting an adult.

One other thing, RRRRyan, and then I’ll leave you to misinterpret my comments as you please. We are not a great nation by divine fiat. We are a great nation only as long as we act like one. If enough of us forget this, then we will join the long list of failed nations that have made the same mistake.

Finally, a crack in the facade of Republican unity. NYTimes requires registration (sorry!), but I’m sure it’s been picked up elsewhere. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Senate Chairman Splits With Bush on Spy Program
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that he wanted the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program brought under the authority of a special intelligence court, a move President Bush has argued is not necessary.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up with the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to see those details worked out.

Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from the purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “would be met with much support” on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly the approach the Bush administration is pursuing.

“I think it should come before the FISA court, but I don’t know how it works,” Mr. Roberts said. “You don’t want to have a situation where you have capability that doesn’t work well with the FISA court, in terms of speed and agility and hot pursuit. So we have to solve that problem.”

Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview a day after announcing that the White House, in a turnabout, had agreed to open discussions about changing surveillance law. By Friday, with Mr. Roberts apparently stung by accusations that he had caved to White House pressure not to investigate the eavesdropping without warrants, it appeared the talks could put the White House and Congress on a collision course.

“collision course” It warms the heart, doesn’t it?

No, Pete, I don’t think that question has been asked yet. But of course those people don’t feel pain the way we do, because they’re not Christians. And even if they do feel pain, well…see previous sentence. It’s “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” y’know?

What’s that? We’ve already killed anywhere from 10x to 30x as many Iraqis as were killed by the atacks on 9/11? Well, once again, you do not understand that one Iraqi life is not worth as much as one American life. (sarcasm off)

Re-reading Adam’s post… One other thing in early ‘02 was that Bush’s approval rating was still in the upper 80% range, if I recall. Think of the good that he could have done with that.

Bob, your post #62 was in response to my post that said: “This thread is mostly talking about torture and apparently the consensus is any punishment is torture and it doesn’t much matter who we’re punishing or what for.” and went on to say that using those definitions for torture put no limit on it, even my parent’s could be construed as having tortured me.

Your posts only furthered my point as you have now said that 4 year imprisonment is torture regardless of the conditions. That’s one broad definition.

I don’t often do this, but conversation with you is similar to that of a lone mason on the job site. So please accept that I won’t be responding to you again.

Pete, what prison anywhere “amounts to cattle pens”? Did you make that up or is there some actual way for you to substantiate that? Lets not make this into a debate on what is a cattle pen, it would at minimum require no roof, no walls, and very close quarters with others who all wallow in their own excrement. So since I am so often misread let me say my question in caps (but not yelling). WHAT PRISON ANYWHERE “amounts to cattle pens”?

A “4 year imprisonment” without any *due process*, without any hope of resolution, YES, could be –and has been– construed as a form of torture by objective outside observers. Haven’t you been paying attention? I think you must have been doing some very selective reading. It is not valid to compare someone who has been duly sentenced by a court of criminal law to 4 years in prison, to someone who has been in Guantanmo for 4 years. You do know what I mean by “due process,” right? Perhaps your reading has not yet progressed beyond Amendment 2.

Pete, these are all unsubstantiated. The inspections at Gitmo have all revealed a different scenario than you describe. Who was bent over a metal bed frame for 10 days?

RRRRyan said, “So please accept that I won’t be responding to you again.”

So, Maximum Bob, what’s your secret? What can I say that gets the same result? Come on, be a pal, share your technique with the group.

I’m not sure, cooper. Maybe it’s because I kept insisting that he respond to what I said, and not what he thought I said. Perhaps this is considered rude in some circles.

Off target. Africa may end up not being the hot zone for H5N1. This from Pro-Med - “the total number of confirmed Indonesian human cases of H5N1 virus infection (has risen) to 27 — 8 of those who have had the disease have survived. Of Indonesia’s confirmed fatalities, 8 have been in 2006, making Indonesia the country with the most bird flu deaths so far in 2006. Controlling the virus is a huge, if not impossible, task in Indonesia, an archipelago of about 17 000 islands and 220 million people. The government has resisted the mass culling of fowl seen in some other nations, citing the expense and the impracticality in a country where the keeping of a few chickens or ducks in backyards of homes is widely practiced in cities as well as the countryside.”

A very high kill rate. Plus, the government is not culling fowl, since MOST FAMILIES have chickens or ducks. Now, I don’t know about you, but that makes a chill go down my spine.

ps - Cooper, not to minimize your point about culling. It’s likely that most of this could have been avoided if China had taken action immediately a few years ago when it first turned up. Apparently, they didn’t learn anything from SARS and let it fester rather than deal with it. What’s a worldwide pandemic compared to saving face, right?

Siobhan, your point is valid about reported cases in Indonesia. People there probably do not run to the doctor at the first sign of the sniffles, like we do here. Also, 19 deaths out of 27 cases is a very low sample size. Time will tell on that one. What really concerns me is the number of people in Indonesia who have regular contact with birds, in light of how this disease spreads.

Pro-Med is a newsletter of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. These are health care workers in the trenches, reporting what they see. http://www.promedmail.org/pls/promed/f?p=2400:1000

Cooper, thanks for the link. Lotsa interesting stuff.

“What’s a worldwide pandemic compared to saving face, right?”

Actually, I believe that’s the underlying philosophy of the Chinese government.

And Pete, (sorry, I can’t help it); it’s déjà.

See, Pete (#107). See it’s not just me.

cooper! How dare you! Nothing Ben Affleck of Will Farrell has done will ever compare to this.

seattletammy here:

my favorite recent bumper-sticker:

Where are we going?

And, why am I in this handbasket?

my recent fears are formed from the report on NPR that mercy killings were discussed on the 7th floor of Memorial General in New Orleans as doctors and nurses prepared to evacuate, and probably did occur. I knew early on ( a customer of mine had her son down doing animal rescue for PAWS) that animals were euthinized….

are you going to a hospital suffering with the bird flu?

Birds start migrating over the next few weeks.

does anyone think we are prepared?

PS: I really wanted to get a coupla chickens this year and have a cool hutch and organic poop for my garden and some good eggs… oh well back to tomatoes….

*seattletammy

Way back from comment #36:

I heard one story a couple years ago of a 14 year old Afghan shepherd who was picked up in a sweep and ended up in Gitmo for, in effect, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Scanning along in order to catch up on things round here, I picked up the phrase “Afghan shepherd” and briefly thought “Oh, that poor dog! How cruel!”

Realized what was what eventually. It’s still cruel, though.

dee/SeattleDan, no disrespect intended. I haven’t seen the movies you’ve listed. I did see several “adventures” of McHale’s Navy, plus The Poseidon Adventure and trailers for Super Fuzz and Willard. I know we all have to eat, but we don’t all have to watch. I’ll give the movies you mentioned a look, however and attempt to keep an open mind. Thanks.

“See? Like your president and military, I can make shit up, too. Trouble is, my storytelling is at least partly believable. ”

Pete, I may not be following you, are you saying that you made the story up? You’re talking about the bed frame story right?

With all the spew about the torture policy of this administration no one can cite one example?

Pete IVDL,

Ain’t no cure. Best you can hope for is acceptable management of the malady.

RRRRyan,

Check with the CIA, if you have an inside track and someone there will come clean. Otherwise, just enjoy denial of the obvious, kind of like smokers did back in the glory days of any number of other kinds of denial. Granted, the torture at Abu Ghraib is far worse, but the guy in charge at Gitmo who then went to Abu Ghraib to Gitmoize practices there, simply went to a bigger operation to impose CIA torture techniques there, because apparently there were American officers not inclined toward torture.

Also, check out Al Gore’s presentation on global warming, and then get back on whether or not you still consider him an embarrassment.

I think it’s interesting that administration has expended so much political capital and effort in getting torture approved. One could only wonder, why?

Of course, laws have certainly never held this administration from doing anything they wished, the NSA scandal proves that.

(hoping to hear ry-ry use the phrase “hanging up on al-qaeda” like a good troll)

So not one single citable case of torture and the rant (or should I say mantra) continues.

At least Pete admits he made his up. Bravo.

David, I looked for Al Gore on Global Warming and see nothing recent. When did he speak on it?

I’m ashamed of his unsubstantiated claims that our administration is committing crimes against POWs to the Arabs. That can only serve to extend the war and the hate of western civilization. Perhaps he should join Alec Baldwin and move out of the country.

Again, not one case of actual torture by just about everyone’s definition except a few of the Planters® club for politics. AKA: The Peanut Gallery.

Finally, David, why no response on the credibility problem for Jim Hansen? A concession would be in order or at least a round of “It ain’t easy being green”.

RRRRRRRRRRyouserious - “I’m ashamed of his unsubstantiated claims that our administration is committing crimes against POWs to the Arabs.”

I’m ashamed that there is anyone in America who can see the photos from Abu Ghraib, read reports of prisoners killed in custody during interrogation and contemplate the idea of people held indefinitely without charges AND still think that we’re not doing anything wrong.

You’re doing some pretty fine-hairspliting to convince yourself that no one has done anything wrong. If anything is going to extend the war, it is this sort of denial of reality.

Nothing more to say to you, since you don’t listen anyway.

Sharon, he’s an assistant professor at MIT, and even if someone can prove he is director of anything at NASA that does not make him “one of NASA’s top scientists”. The guy is like 25. There are probably about 1000 people at director level at NASA so that hardly makes him a “Top scientist” and especially not as the article claims “The Bush administration’s top climate modeller” … Finally, if he did author that article himself I have real question as to whether he should even be an assistant professor. The article is ridden with typos.

RRRyan, I’m shocked - POWs? Prisoners Of W? Even His Imperial Smugness, G.W. Bush, doesn’t call ‘em that - in fact, that’s what stirred up this whole damn mess in the first place!.

I was gonna get all explicit on yo’ ass, but - much as I love this blog and all the people in/on/around it - I just didn’t have the time nor inclination to catalogue for you what is freely available everywhere in the world. Try doing a Google search for “prisoner abuse”, or “Abu Ghraib” or “Guantanamo Bay” or “Major Taguba”, and see which country gets mentioned most often next to the words “torture”, “abuse”, and “human rights” (but not “justified”, “legal” or “humane”)…

It’s not really what you think, a few of us annoying nutjobs out here moaning into the dark, happy to see our words appear magically on a computer screen; it’s the whole free world thinking “what a Lobster-damned cockup of an opportunity to fix things up”.

I’m delighted to say, I’m “Proud, Paid-up, and Peanutty”!)

RRRRyan,

I got beaten to the punch by fellow commenters. Al Gore is going around the country on his own dime, no charge for admission, to give his Global Warning presentation. It is heavy on substantiation, but in a very engaging way. I saw the excerpts on Link TV, which my satellite provider carries. I’m pretty cyber-incompetent, but there might be some way to go to Link TV and get more on it. Gotta admit I wish we could watch it together and compare notes afterword.

Maybe somebody else out there knows how to link to Gore’s Global Warning presentation.

David, are there actually two of you? Your response doesn’t sound the same as the self-sexual-gratification quotes on the other post.

If there are two Davids that would explain the apparent personality conflicts.

I will look for his presentation, specifically the “substantiation” part. I would love to compare notes, but then you’d see all the doodles of Al Gore with smoke coming out of his ears as he exclaims “I invented the internet”. I really despise the guy. I’ll admit that. There was a period during the debates that I admired his “strength”, it went away by election time though.

I’ll admit it will be hard for me to take much of anything he says seriously because I dislike him so much, but I’ll really try to review the Global Warming thing for intellectual merit. It’s tough to do. Maybe I’m getting a taste of what the Bush-haters must be going through. Cause I’m clearly a Gore-hater.

Gosh, I guess that means I’m really not better than everyone else here. (J/K)

RRRRyan,

Same David. You might have noticed in one of my posts my reference to my various selves. I don’t see anything that someone hasn’t responded to in the same way I would.

You’ll find intellectual merit, even if you still disagree with his conclusions. That’s why I said I would enjoy comparing notes on his presentation.

The other Davids are the other david and lower case david. I also have to deal with being possessed at times by Loosely Raptmasta Beta. I have no qualms about insulting ideas. I’ve never actually liked insulting people, however, because I really do believe we all have our moments when we fall short.

Oh, and there’s also a New Yorker article out showing that (to quote Eric Umansky): the Navy’s top lawyer, a Bush appointee, not only objected to approved interrogation techniques as “at a minimum cruel and unusual treatment, and at worst, torture” but, along with other Pentagon lawyers, was misled about the secret conclusions of a detainee policy memo they themselves had originally helped author.

Maintaining a belief that there is question about whether the US is engaged in torture, and whether top administration officials sanctioned that torture (at least up to Rumsfeld, and almost certainly up to Cheney and Bush — who have loudly proclaimed executive authority to ignore Congress’s anti-torture laws) requires mental and linguistic gymnastics on a truly breathtaking scale.

Amen, Auros. The requisite mental gymnastics are truly breathtaking (and possibly neck breaking).

Yeah, Jim, how ’bout them Steelers. Hope Mrs. Heinz Kerry threw a serious party. She is such a cool lady. I honestly thought that torture at Gitmo bordered on common knowledge, but then I live on the edge (of the Green Swamp).

Um RRRRyan,

Coupla links: From Nasa…go to the bottom of the page and look at the resource materials in re global warming debate.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/

And from the Congressional site:
http://www.house.gov/science/press/109/109-184.htm

Shortly after Representative Boehlert sent this letter, George Deutsch the 25 year old public affairs officer for NASA (Who was appointed by the Bush administration after working on the 2004 reelection campaign) who was accused of stifling Dr. Hansen’s report, resigned after it was revealed that he lied on his resume and did not, in fact, actually graduate from Texas A&M.

Would you mind doing your own fact-checking from here on out? I’m busy debunking the conservative blogsters.

Thanks

Thanks Jim, there still is no substantiations of this statement:

“Jim Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is President George Bush’s top climate modeller.”

.5 degrees in 40 years? 1 degree in a hundred? Well, it appears the current cycle is increasing, but considering we went 2 straight weeks with record lows where I live I still don’t buy the fuss. In fact in 1990 the average temperature dropped about .4 degrees and didn’t recover again until 1995. That chart was fascinating. There is some serious extrapolation going on, specifically the idea that the observed pattern shows a .5 degree increase in 40 years but he is predicting up to a full 1 degree increase in the next 20 most of which appears to be justified by the steep climb during the 1990-1995 recovery. I’ll concede, if the temperature does increase 1 degree by 2019 I may give this credence.

Ooops. apparently he is THE director. Okay, then now the question is who at NASA gags THE director? Something is really fishy here and I’m determined to get to the bottom of it. So the claim that the Bush administration tried to gag him started with a public affairs guy who talked to Hansen after he presented. How is that THE Bush administration? Wow, … something really fishy here.

I promise this is my last post on this tangent. It seems okay though since this is now an old thread.

He was the “guy” who tried to “gag” Hansen right?

LOL, yep on the second half.