Oh, how I wish they would! Asked last night worst places for his "book tour", one pundit said Italy and Spain, in that they take human rights very serio..."/>
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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
Bush could be arrested in Great Britain
Saturday, November 20, 2010 7:20 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:George Bush could face arrest abroad after his frank admissions on waterboarding, a leading human rights lawyers has claimed. Geoffrey Robertson said the former President was now at risk of being detained having sanctioned the controversial interrogation technique. ‘Ignorance of the law is no defence,’ he said. ‘There are countries where proceedings might be instituted against him.’ Security chiefs have already denounced his defence of so-called 'waterboarding' and disputed his claim that information obtained through it had thwarted Al Qaeda plots to blow up Canary Wharf and Heathrow airport. Mr Bush launched his memoirs with the admission that he gave the CIA the green light to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, with the words: ‘Damn right.’ He added that a team of U.S. lawyers had said the practice was not illegal. ‘Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States,’ Mr Bush said. ‘Using those techniques saved lives.’ Tony Blair sent tanks to Heathrow in February 2003 after intelligence warnings that terrorists were plotting to bring down aircraft with rocket propelled grenades. And in 2004 the Daily Mail revealed claims that an air attack on three towers at Canary Wharf in London was planned. It is these two incidents Mr Bush is thought to be referring to. But his claims that waterboarding saved the day were dismissed by a series of senior officials familiar with counter-terrorism activities at the time. Mr Bush insists that he knew an interrogation programme ‘this sensitive and controversial would one day become public’ and that ‘when it did, we would open ourselves up to criticism that America had compromised our moral values’. Mr Bush has defended its use, saying: ‘Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives.’ He even claims that Zubayda urged the Americans to use it on his captured ‘brothers’. Zubaydah later told interrogators that ‘his understanding of Islam was that he had to resist interrogation only up to a certain point’. Mr Bush adds: ‘Waterboarding was the technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfill his religious duty, and then co-operate. “You must do this for all the brothers”, he said.’ Although they conceded that some U.S. intelligence had been important in the fight aganst terror they believed that the President was exaggerating. Kim Howells, who was chairman of the Commons intelligence and security committee, said: ‘I doubt torture actually produced information which was instrumental in preventing those plots coming to fruition. I’m not convinced of that.’ Lord MacDonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said: ‘These stories about waterboarding thwarting attacks on Canary Wharf and Heathrow – I’ve never seen anything to substantiate these claims. These claims are to be treated with a great deal of scepticism.’ However, security sources conceded that information passed by the Americans in the years after 9/11 did help prevent some Al Qaeda attacks in the UK. A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘We stand firmly against torture and the cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. We don’t condone it or ask others to do it on our behalf.’
Saturday, November 20, 2010 7:46 AM
GEEZER
Keep the Shiny side up
Quote:UN rights investigator warns US drone attacks may violate international law Amelia Mathias at 9:02 AM ET UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said Tuesday that the use of unmanned warplanes by the US to carry out attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan may be illegal. Alston criticized the US policy in a report to the UN General Assembly's human rights committee and then elaborated at a press conference: "My concern is that these drones, these predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons. The response of the US is simply untenable, and that is that the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly by definition have no role in relation to killings that take place in relations to an armed conflict. that would remove the great majority of issues that come before these bodies right now."
Saturday, November 20, 2010 7:49 AM
Saturday, November 20, 2010 9:59 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Hee, hee, hee; I JUST put up a story about Pakistan denying the US' desire to widen their use of drone attacks... In my opinion, that's not the equivalent of deliberately breaking US and international law regarding torture, but point well taken that I wish they'd STOP!
Saturday, November 20, 2010 10:44 PM
ANTHONYT
Freedom is Important because People are Important
Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:14 AM
KWICKO
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)
Quote:Originally posted by Geezer: Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Hee, hee, hee; I JUST put up a story about Pakistan denying the US' desire to widen their use of drone attacks... In my opinion, that's not the equivalent of deliberately breaking US and international law regarding torture, but point well taken that I wish they'd STOP! So you consider the extrajudicial executions of scores of people, and the collateral damage deaths of scores more who were innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, to be less serious than the waterboarding of three people, all of whom survived it? Could the party affiliations of the Presidents in office during these actions have anything to do with this interesting outlook? "Keep the Shiny side up"
Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:21 AM
Quote:Originally posted by AnthonyT: Hello, I'm sure if Bush was still in office, some people would be calling for impeachment, war crimes trials, and rope. Obama has found many ways to disappoint me, but those disappointments have been trivial compared to my disappointment at people who once railed ceaselessly against the wars, and now scarcely manage an occasional whimper. It suggests that much of the opposition was not against the war. It was against the man. With a new man in office, the anti-war protests, propaganda, and political outrage has largely vaporized. It has become a kind of lukewarm discontent, without the power to imprint a chad. I sometimes tell myself that the sudden drop-off of vociferous discontent is because the new man is perceived to be not-as-bad as his predecessor. However, I can't completely convince myself of that. Obama has a very different demeanor than Bush, but the actual conduct of our nation is only slightly different under his hand. We should all be holding his feet to the fire a lot more than we are. --Anthony Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.
Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:53 AM
CANTTAKESKY
Quote:Originally posted by AnthonyT: Obama has found many ways to disappoint me, but those disappointments have been trivial compared to my disappointment at people who once railed ceaselessly against the wars, and now scarcely manage an occasional whimper. ...Obama has a very different demeanor than Bush, but the actual conduct of our nation is only slightly different under his hand. We should all be holding his feet to the fire a lot more than we are.
Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:00 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: I would certainly explain why you never mentioned taking such actions while Bush was in office.
Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:03 AM
KPO
Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.
Quote:So you consider the extrajudicial executions of scores of people
Quote:and the collateral damage deaths
Quote:Could the party affiliations of the Presidents in office during these actions have anything to do with this interesting outlook?
Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:04 AM
KANEMAN
Quote:Originally posted by Geezer: Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: I would certainly explain why you never mentioned taking such actions while Bush was in office. Okay. Go ahead and explain. "Keep the Shiny side up"
Sunday, November 21, 2010 8:42 AM
Quote:So you consider the extrajudicial executions of scores of people, and the collateral damage deaths of scores more who were innocent of anything but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, to be less serious than the waterboarding of three people, all of whom survived it? Could the party affiliations of the Presidents in office during these actions have anything to do with this interesting outlook/
Quote:On March 20, 2010, thousands marched by the White House in Washington, DC, to protest the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The event was organized by A.N.S.W.E.R. and other groups. The scheduling of the event ties it to the seventh anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Participants prepared model coffins draped in various flags to symbolize fatalities of the wars.
Quote:Minnesota peace activists focused their attention on U.S. Senator Al Franken during a Thursday, April 8 protest urging Franken to vote against a supplemental funding bill for the war in Afghanistan.
Quote:April 15, 2010: Des Moines, IA Peace Activist Faces Trespassing Charge for Antiwar Protest at Offices of Sen. Harkin Frankie Hughes refused to leave Senator Tom Harkin’s office during a protest of the war funding in the current appropriations bill.
Quote:May 18, 2010: Multiple peace organizations held an anti-war protest at Representative McCollum’s office in St. Paul, MN to protest spending and escalation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. United States Representative Betty McCollum is planning on voting for the $33 billion supplemental funding bill for the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Participants included: Anti-War Committee, Merriam Park Neighbors for Peace, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Women Against Military Madness
Quote:November 15, 2010--Anti-war protesters gathered Monday on the Southern Methodist University campus, a day before the groundbreaking for the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The Dallas Morning News reports that the protesters Monday used 175 pairs of worn Army boots to represent some of the troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sunday, November 21, 2010 10:21 AM
FREMDFIRMA
Sunday, November 21, 2010 12:02 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: You could say precisely the same things about Bush as you did Obama in that first paragraph, so I don't get your point.
Sunday, November 21, 2010 12:42 PM
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