The torture tape fingering Bush as a war criminal

GrGr

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2003
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The torture tape fingering Bush as a war criminal
Andrew Sullivan
The Times

Almost all of the time, the Washington I know and live in is utterly unrelated to the Washington you see in the movies. The government is far more incompetent and amateur than the masterminds of Hollywood darkness.

There are no rogue CIA agents engaging in illegal black ops and destroying evidence to protect their political bosses. The kinds of scenario cooked up in Matt Damon?s riveting Bourne series are fantasy compared with the mundane, bureaucratic torpor of the Brussels on the Potomac.

And then you read about the case of Abu Zubaydah. He is a seriously bad guy ? someone we should all be glad is in custody. A man deeply involved in Al-Qaeda, he was captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002 and whisked off to a secret interrogation, allegedly in Thailand.

President George Bush claimed Zubaydah was critical in identifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9/11. The president also conceded that at some point the CIA, believing Zubaydah was withholding information, ?used an alternative set of procedures?, which were ?safe and lawful and necessary?.

Zubaydah was waterboarded. That much we know - it was confirmed recently by a former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who even used the plain English word ?torture? to describe what was done. But we know little else for sure. We do know there was deep division within the American government about Zubaydah?s interrogation, and considerable debate about his reliability.

Ron Suskind?s masterful 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine recorded FBI sources as saying that Zubaydah was in fact mentally unstable and tangential to Al-Qaeda?s plots, and that he gave reams of unfounded information under torture - information that led law-enforcement bodies in the US to raise terror alert levels, rushing marshals and police to shopping malls, bridges and other alleged targets as Zubaydah tried to get the torture to stop. No one disputes that Zubaydah wrote a diary - and that it was written in the words of three personalities, none of them his own.

A former FBI agent who was involved in the interrogation, Daniel Coleman, said last week that the CIA knew Al-Qaeda?s leaders all believed Zubaydah ?was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone. You think they?re going to tell him anything?? Even though preliminary, legal interrogation gave the US good ? though not unique ? information, the CIA still asked for and received permission to torture him in pursuit of more data and leads.

The Washington Post reported that ?current and former officials? said the torture lasted weeks and even, according to some, months, and that the techniques included hypothermia, long periods of standing, sleep deprivation and multiple sessions of waterboarding. All these ?alternative procedures?, as Bush described them, are illegal under US law and the Geneva conventions. They are, in fact, war crimes.And they were once all treated by the US as war crimes when they were perpetrated by the Nazis. Waterboarding has been found to be a form of torture in various American legal cases.

And that is where the story becomes interesting. The Bush administration denies any illegality at all, insists it does not ?torture? but refuses to say whether it believes waterboarding is torture or not. But hundreds of hours of videotape were recorded of Zubaydah?s incarceration and torture. That evidence would settle the dispute over the extremely serious question of whether the president of the United States authorised war crimes.

And now we have found out that all the tapes have been destroyed.

See what I mean by Hollywood? We know about the destruction because someone in the government told The New York Times. We also know the 9/11 Commission had asked the administration to furnish every piece of relevant evidence with respect to Zubaydah?s interrogation and was not told about the tapes. We know also that four senior aides to Bush and Dick Cheney, the vice-president, discussed the destruction of the tapes - including David Addington, Cheney?s right-hand man and the chief legal architect of the administration?s detention and interrogation policies.

At a press conference last Thursday the president gave an equivocal response to what he knew about the tapes and when he knew it: ?The first recollection is when CIA director Mike Hayden briefed me.? That briefing was earlier this month. The president is saying he cannot recall something - not that it didn?t happen. That?s the formulation all lawyers tell their clients to use when they need to avoid an exposable lie.

This is not, of course, the first big scandal to have emerged over the administration?s interrogation policies. You can fill a book with the sometimes sickening details that have come out of Guantanamo Bay, Bagram in Afghanistan, Camp Cropper in Iraq and, of course, Abu Ghraib.

The administration has admitted that several prisoners have been killed in interrogation, and dozens more have died in the secret network of interrogation sites the US has set up across the world. The policy of rendition has sent countless suspects into torture cells in Uzbekistan, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere to feed the West?s intelligence on jihadist terrorism.

But this case is more ominous for the administration because it presents a core example of what seems to be a cover-up, obstruction of justice and a direct connection between torture and the president, the vice-president and their closest aides.

Because several courts had pending cases in which testimony from Zubaydah?s interrogation was salient, the destruction of such evidence triggers a legal process that is hard for the executive branch to stymie or stall - and its first attempt was flatly rebuffed by a judge last week.

Its key argument is a weakly technical one: that the interrogation took place outside US territory - and therefore the courts do not have jurisdiction over it. It?s the same rationale for imprisoning hundreds of suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba - a legal no man?s land. But Congress can get involved - especially if it believes that what we have here is a cover-up.

What are the odds that a legal effective interrogation of a key Al-Qaeda operative would have led many highly respected professionals in the US intelligence community to risk their careers by leaking top-secret details to the press?

What are the odds that the CIA would have sought to destroy tapes that could prove it had legally prevented serious and dangerous attacks against innocent civilians? What are the odds that a president who had never authorised waterboarding would be unable to say whether such waterboarding was torture?

What are the odds that, under congressional grilling, the new attorney-general would also refuse to say whether he believed waterboarding was illegal, if there was any doubt that the president had authorised it? The odds are beyond minimal.

Any reasonable person examining all the evidence we have - without any bias - would conclude that the overwhelming likelihood is that the president of the United States authorised illegal torture of a prisoner and that the evidence of the crime was subsequently illegally destroyed.

Congresswoman Jane Harman, the respected top Democrat on the House intelligence committee in 2003-06, put it as simply as she could: ?I am worried. It smells like the cover-up of the cover-up.?

It?s a potential Watergate. But this time the crime is not a two-bit domestic burglary. It?s a war crime that reaches into the very heart of the Oval Office.


Yes, it is Hollywood time. And the ending of this movie is as yet unwritten.

-------------------------------

This administration, the CIA and the Justice Department are rotten. In fact, there is a putrid stench coming out of Washington DC. As the article points out this makes Watergate pale into insignificance in comparison.
 

NoStateofMind

Diamond Member
Oct 14, 2005
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marked for later. If the title is true, we need to impeach and charge this administration with crimes against humanity immediately.
 

TheSlamma

Diamond Member
Sep 6, 2005
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Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
marked for later. If the title is true, we need to impeach and charge this administration with crimes against humanity immediately.
That would require the Democrats getting spines. :(

 

NoStateofMind

Diamond Member
Oct 14, 2005
9,711
6
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Originally posted by: TheSlamma
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
marked for later. If the title is true, we need to impeach and charge this administration with crimes against humanity immediately.
That would require the Democrats getting spines. :(

No, it requires the American people to get off of their asses and demand justice! In any event, spines are definitely needed.
 

thraashman

Lifer
Apr 10, 2000
11,063
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Unfortunately right now an impeachment isn't possible. No matter how bad this is, you won't be able to get all Democrats to vote for impeachment and criminal proceedings. And since Republicans are far more concerned with staying loyal to the party than they are with what's best for the nation, I doubt that more than 3 would vote to make the President be held accountable.

The reason there's such a division in Congress is because the Democrats are all concerned with their own individual definitions of what's right or what's best for the country. And the Republicans care only about themselves and their party.

This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.
 

1EZduzit

Lifer
Feb 4, 2002
11,834
1
0
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
Originally posted by: TheSlamma
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
marked for later. If the title is true, we need to impeach and charge this administration with crimes against humanity immediately.
That would require the Democrats getting spines. :(

No, it requires the American people to get off of their asses and demand justice! In any event, spines are definitely needed.

And Republicans finding their consicense.
 

heyheybooboo

Diamond Member
Jun 29, 2007
6,278
0
0
Originally posted by: TheSlamma
Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
marked for later. If the title is true, we need to impeach and charge this administration with crimes against humanity immediately.
That would require the Democrats getting spines. :(


OMG! A Pansycrat with a spine. :D

That most definitely is an oxymoron.
 

Deudalus

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2005
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Originally posted by: thraashman
This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.

Oh wow, that just convinced me where do I sign up?
 

thraashman

Lifer
Apr 10, 2000
11,063
1,464
126
Originally posted by: Deudalus
Originally posted by: thraashman
This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.

Oh wow, that just convinced me where do I sign up?

Hey, when you know someone who you've argued politics with for almost 10 years constantly. And the President is bad enough to make that person reverse their political standpoints after 58 years, it comes as a surprise. Now I understand, this is ATP&N and it's almost a requirement to be a jackass, and in that you've succeeded greatly. In fact it's a bigger success than anything out President has yet accomplished. Maybe you should run.
 

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,052
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Originally posted by: PC Surgeon
If the title is true, we need to impeach and charge this administration with crimes against humanity immediately.

QFT!
 

jonks

Lifer
Feb 7, 2005
13,918
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To add another question to all the torture threads I haven't seen addressed: even if you support waterboarding or other forms of torture as a necessary evil to gather intelligence, for how long is it appropriate to apply these techniques to a prisoner? Can you conduct waterboarding every day for months on end? Hypothermia and sleep deprivation off and on for weeks? When you conduct such methods over an extensive period of time and eventually jeopardize a prisoner's sanity even if not his physical body, is that all acceptable as a means to potentially keep us safe?
 

Deudalus

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2005
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Originally posted by: thraashman
Hey, when you know someone who you've argued politics with for almost 10 years constantly. And the President is bad enough to make that person reverse their political standpoints after 58 years, it comes as a surprise. Now I understand, this is ATP&N and it's almost a requirement to be a jackass, and in that you've succeeded greatly. In fact it's a bigger success than anything out President has yet accomplished. Maybe you should run.

Oh really, well my daddy likes person xyz because they are abc!

I understand a lot of people don't like Bush, I don't particularly like his ass either.

But the few Bush supporters on here don't come into threads and say, "oh contrare you should like El Busho because over Christmas dinner my dad said he was a bad ass."

How your dad feels about him means absolutely, positively, nothing and its such a common fallacy of the left to do what you did to be honest. Create a strawman saying "oh well I know a person IRL that has always been a Republican and hates Bush so there!"

There is then a big circle jerk because some mythical person that none of us even know exists was converted to be a Democrat or is a now a confirmed Bush hater.

Who cares.
 

Deudalus

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2005
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Originally posted by: sirjonk
When you conduct such methods over an extensive period of time and eventually jeopardize a prisoner's sanity even if not his physical body, is that all acceptable as a means to potentially keep us safe?

Anyone who would blow themselves up for the promise of heaps of virgin poontang in the afterlife (or even worse convinces others to blow themselves up for such a reason) has already lost their sanity long ago.
 

Tab

Lifer
Sep 15, 2002
12,145
0
71
Originally posted by: Deudalus
Originally posted by: sirjonk
When you conduct such methods over an extensive period of time and eventually jeopardize a prisoner's sanity even if not his physical body, is that all acceptable as a means to potentially keep us safe?

Anyone who would blow themselves up for the promise of heaps of virgin poontang in the afterlife (or even worse convinces others to blow themselves up for such a reason) has already lost their sanity long ago.

So, then the use of these methods is alright with you?
 

Deudalus

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2005
1,090
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Originally posted by: Tab


So, then the use of these methods is alright with you?

Depends on who, when, where, and why I suppose.

I was simply disputing the argument of "what if we drive them insane" because quite obviously they already are.....

But if you can somehow explain to me how someone can advocating blowing themselves, their friends, or their families up to kill innocent civilians is sane then I'm all ears.
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
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Well there is another thread on the immediate subject that turns on the credibility of Hose Rodreguez who was the author of the destruction of some of the evidence. But traditionally one only becomes a war criminal if they are on the losing side of a war or are out of office. While the USA is unlikely to totally lose in Iraq, the fate of being out of office for GWB&co. is only a little more than a year away. And its somewhat been a pet fantasy of mine that the international community might demand Bush and Cheney be turned over to the Hague as a down payment price for bailing the USA's butt out on Iraq.

However, its a matter of getting descent proof, I think it already exists, I think Rodreguez may not be alone in having that possible evidence in the form of a retained get out of jail free card, but its going to take some hard evidence to prove the charges.

Some ten months ago I was pretty sure congressional investigation would have found far more than they have found yet, I was confident the GOP would have deserted GWB&co
by now, and I see I have underestimated how well GWB&co has insulated themselves from being totally discredited. I am still confident both things will happen, its just taking longer than expected.

And I fully expect they are reserving jail house suites for GWB&co at the Hague Hilton. It may not remind Bush of his ranch when seen on google earth, but that could end up being his future home. And at least the Hague does not use torture and allows for due process of law.
 

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
33,981
3,318
126
Originally posted by: thraashman
Unfortunately right now an impeachment isn't possible. No matter how bad this is, you won't be able to get all Democrats to vote for impeachment and criminal proceedings. And since Republicans are far more concerned with staying loyal to the party than they are with what's best for the nation, I doubt that more than 3 would vote to make the President be held accountable.

The reason there's such a division in Congress is because the Democrats are all concerned with their own individual definitions of what's right or what's best for the country. And the Republicans care only about themselves and their party.

This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.

Tell us oh educated one how trying Bush for War crimes would benefit this nation in any way?


You morons who want Bush tried for war crimes I bet are the same ones who spit on our troops when they came home from Vietnam!!
Of course it wouldn`t suprise me at all if most of you can`t even vote!

Don`t get me wrong we should not be in Iraq at all...but...but it`s people like you that bother those of us who see the bigger picture!!
 

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,717
47,406
136
Originally posted by: Deudalus

Oh really, well my daddy likes person xyz because they are abc!

I understand a lot of people don't like Bush, I don't particularly like his ass either.

But the few Bush supporters on here don't come into threads and say, "oh contrare you should like El Busho because over Christmas dinner my dad said he was a bad ass."

How your dad feels about him means absolutely, positively, nothing and its such a common fallacy of the left to do what you did to be honest. Create a strawman saying "oh well I know a person IRL that has always been a Republican and hates Bush so there!"

There is then a big circle jerk because some mythical person that none of us even know exists was converted to be a Democrat or is a now a confirmed Bush hater.

Who cares.

I don't think you know what a straw man is. A straw man is when you deliberately present a false picture of the other side's argument so you can easily defeat it.

Saying that his dad was a lifelong Republican who now hates Bush has nothing to do with it. All he did was share a personal anecdote because he thought that it was worth mentioning that even lifelong Republicans have realized what a catastrophe Bush has been as a president. I like how it's a tool of the 'left' all of a sudden too.

What possible reason would you have to think that you or anyone else is making up their mind based on what someone you don't know's dad is saying at dinner?
 

heyheybooboo

Diamond Member
Jun 29, 2007
6,278
0
0
With hyperbolic invective as such, cloth-coat conservatives must wonder wtf they can do to restore their credibility.

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda

You morons who want Bush tried for war crimes I bet are the same ones who spit on our troops when they came home from Vietnam!!
Of course it wouldn`t suprise me at all if most of you can`t even vote!


Don`t get me wrong we should not be in Iraq at all...but...but it`s people like you that bother those of us who see the bigger picture!!

 

thraashman

Lifer
Apr 10, 2000
11,063
1,464
126
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Originally posted by: thraashman
Unfortunately right now an impeachment isn't possible. No matter how bad this is, you won't be able to get all Democrats to vote for impeachment and criminal proceedings. And since Republicans are far more concerned with staying loyal to the party than they are with what's best for the nation, I doubt that more than 3 would vote to make the President be held accountable.

The reason there's such a division in Congress is because the Democrats are all concerned with their own individual definitions of what's right or what's best for the country. And the Republicans care only about themselves and their party.

This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.

Tell us oh educated one how trying Bush for War crimes would benefit this nation in any way?


You morons who want Bush tried for war crimes I bet are the same ones who spit on our troops when they came home from Vietnam!!
Of course it wouldn`t suprise me at all if most of you can`t even vote!

Don`t get me wrong we should not be in Iraq at all...but...but it`s people like you that bother those of us who see the bigger picture!!

Well ... I wasn't yet born when the Vietnam war occurred. That proceeded me by a few years. But it sounds to me like you're the type of person who defended the actions of the military for the My Lai Massacre, including the cover up and the fact that the longest sentence received for this murder was 4½ months. I'd be willing to bet you also defended Nixon's incursions into Cambodia which helped spark the future rise of the Khmer Rouge.

My point is that when we fail to hold the government and military accountable for their actions, it feeds into future events. And we have a history in this country of allowing the military to commit atrocious acts without repurcusion.. This type of behavior is what's led to our current state of ignoring torture and human rights violations.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
38,548
348
126
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Originally posted by: thraashman
Unfortunately right now an impeachment isn't possible. No matter how bad this is, you won't be able to get all Democrats to vote for impeachment and criminal proceedings. And since Republicans are far more concerned with staying loyal to the party than they are with what's best for the nation, I doubt that more than 3 would vote to make the President be held accountable.

The reason there's such a division in Congress is because the Democrats are all concerned with their own individual definitions of what's right or what's best for the country. And the Republicans care only about themselves and their party.

This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.

Tell us oh educated one how trying Bush for War crimes would benefit this nation in any way?


You morons who want Bush tried for war crimes I bet are the same ones who spit on our troops when they came home from Vietnam!!
Of course it wouldn`t suprise me at all if most of you can`t even vote!

Don`t get me wrong we should not be in Iraq at all...but...but it`s people like you that bother those of us who see the bigger picture!!

First, they're not the morons, you are.

Second, you need an education on the rule of law. Why 'war crimes' exist in the rule of law. You obviously are ignorant of its benefits.

Third, you obviously lack the moral development to understand why there are moral issues for the soldiers who went to Vietnam, insofar as they were part of the killing machine that opposed the liberty of the Vietnamese people from colonization by killing millions of them, dumping Agent Orange and Napalm across their country. There's plenty of room for condemning the misguided 'patriotism' or other motives leading the troops to kill those Vietnamese. Having said that, there are only very few anecdoted of 'spitting on troops'.

That's a right-wing lie for the most part to propagandize, to distract from the wrong of the war and make the troops the sympathetic figures, not the war opponents.

You probably have no idea what the benefit was of forcing Nixon to resign, either.
 

palehorse

Lifer
Dec 21, 2005
11,521
0
76
Originally posted by: Lemon law
And its somewhat been a pet fantasy of mine that the international community might demand Bush and Cheney be turned over to the Hague as a down payment price for bailing the USA's butt out on Iraq.
That would only work if the "international community" actually got off of their collective asses to "bail the USA's butt out of Iraq." As it stands, most of the world hasn't done jack sh*t, so there won't be any need for a "down payment" or trials at the Hague.

It's crazy that our fantasies are so different from one another. Mine involve the defeat of America's foreign enemies, while yours involve targets much closer to home - other Americans.

To each their own, I guess... we all have our own missions in life. Perhaps we'll just have to wait and see whose missions get better results!

good luck! ;)
 

palehorse

Lifer
Dec 21, 2005
11,521
0
76
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
Originally posted by: thraashman
Unfortunately right now an impeachment isn't possible. No matter how bad this is, you won't be able to get all Democrats to vote for impeachment and criminal proceedings. And since Republicans are far more concerned with staying loyal to the party than they are with what's best for the nation, I doubt that more than 3 would vote to make the President be held accountable.

The reason there's such a division in Congress is because the Democrats are all concerned with their own individual definitions of what's right or what's best for the country. And the Republicans care only about themselves and their party.

This has gotten so bad that my father, a staunch and lifelong Republican, last night at xmas dinner said Bush will go down in history as the worst President this country has ever had.

Tell us oh educated one how trying Bush for War crimes would benefit this nation in any way?

You morons who want Bush tried for war crimes I bet are the same ones who spit on our troops when they came home from Vietnam!!
Of course it wouldn`t suprise me at all if most of you can`t even vote!

Don`t get me wrong we should not be in Iraq at all...but...but it`s people like you that bother those of us who see the bigger picture!!

First, they're not the morons, you are.

Second, you need an education on the rule of law. Why 'war crimes' exist in the rule of law. You obviously are ignorant of its benefits.

Third, you obviously lack the moral development to understand why there are moral issues for the soldiers who went to Vietnam, insofar as they were part of the killing machine that opposed the liberty of the Vietnamese people from colonization by killing millions of them, dumping Agent Orange and Napalm across their country. There's plenty of room for condemning the misguided 'patriotism' or other motives leading the troops to kill those Vietnamese. Having said that, there are only very few anecdoted of 'spitting on troops'.

That's a right-wing lie for the most part to propagandize, to distract from the wrong of the war and make the troops the sympathetic figures, not the war opponents.

You probably have no idea what the benefit was of forcing Nixon to resign, either.
Did you just try to justify the hostility wrought against the troops who returned from Vietnam?

It's amazing that, even after more than 30 years, so many people still don't understand anything about the mistakes made during the Vietnam War - very few of which were made by the troops themselves, or Nixon.

look inward young grasshopper... only then will you find the real cancer. :cool:
 

RightIsWrong

Diamond Member
Apr 29, 2005
5,649
0
0
Originally posted by: palehorse74
Originally posted by: Lemon law
And its somewhat been a pet fantasy of mine that the international community might demand Bush and Cheney be turned over to the Hague as a down payment price for bailing the USA's butt out on Iraq.

It's crazy that our fantasies are so different from one another. Mine involve the defeat of America's foreign enemies, while yours involve targets much closer to home - other Americans.

It's crazy that our fantasies are so different from one another. Mine involves the downfall of America's enemies FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC while yours involves complete ignorance towards the rule of law and the principles of the Constitution of this country.

But hey, you have shown time and time again that you value team victory (Repub or American) over doing what is just (doing things in a legal ethical and humane manner).
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
Originally posted by: RightIsWrong
Originally posted by: palehorse74
Originally posted by: Lemon law
And its somewhat been a pet fantasy of mine that the international community might demand Bush and Cheney be turned over to the Hague as a down payment price for bailing the USA's butt out on Iraq.

It's crazy that our fantasies are so different from one another. Mine involve the defeat of America's foreign enemies, while yours involve targets much closer to home - other Americans.

It's crazy that our fantasies are so different from one another. Mine involves the downfall of America's enemies FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC while yours involves complete ignorance towards the rule of law and the principles of the Constitution of this country.

But hey, you have shown time and time again that you value team victory (Repub or American) over doing what is just (doing things in a legal ethical and humane manner).

:thumbsup:


Originally posted by: palehorse74
It's amazing that, even after more than 30 years, so many people still don't understand anything about the mistakes made during the Vietnam War.

The first mistake was going there in the first place.