The most telling point was that in all the time that Smash spoke ith Commander Galanti, he never once mentioned his time at the Hanoi Hilton. Comapre and contrast that with Kerry's constant "I served, I'm a hero" crap.

The American right wing has no principles and no regard for the truth. You've knowingly misrepresented Durbin's speech, and in Kerry's case you smeared a decorated war hero in favor of a phony who went AWOL from the Champagne Brigade of the Texas Air National Guard. And I'm sure if the U.S. is defeated in Iraq you will blame it on "the liberals" instead of on your fake president's lies and incompetence as a leader.

Oh willysnout.

How exactly can Durbin's speech be misrepresented... I suppose he mentioned those despots without any attention at all to color US actions in that way? Sorta kinda like inserting the random words "parsley" "tobogan" and "Mr. Bill" in the middle of his speech for no reason?

Now, it's obvious to anyone that Durbin's remarks were hyperbole... well, you know, that is NOT okay. Was he, perhaps, telling a joke? What?

I got "asked out" once in college by a guy I met in the small weight room at the back of Old Field House... he said, "What would you say if some guy you just met asked what you were doing Friday?" I don't recall why, but my response was that I couldn't go out with him on Friday. His response was that, hey, he hadn't *asked* me so there!

Well bud... he didn't ask me. But I'm entirely correct to think that the guy was a complete waste of my time and a jerk to boot.

We can twinky around Durbin's hyperbole and crunch the grammar and parse the sentences but the fact is that he saw fit to associate Cambodian genocide with our detention of unlawful combatants. He can try to lawyer his way out of it all he likes and it won't change a thing.

And willyhoney, no one would care much about smearing Kerry's war-hero-ship but for the fact that his handlers were hyping it as proof of his worthiness to lead a war time nation. (While hoping we'd ignore his actions afterward.)

Bush never once attempted to apply for the top position in the nation on the basis of what he was doing in his 20s.

Kerry did.

There was no hyperbole in Durbin's comments. The torture techniques used by the American military at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere were perfected in the 20th Century by Stalin's NKVD and Hitler's Gestapo. At the moment, the pro-torture Republican Party feels it necessary to disguise this by denying it. Perhaps at a later date they will advertise it.

http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=489

There is no lie you won't tell, Julie. This is because you have no morals and no principles that you won't abandon on a whim. You flee from the truth like a cockroach from the light. The Taguba report detailed "horrific abuses," and the Red Cross described American treatment of POWs as "tantamount to torture." But you're afraid of the truth. At least for now.

Julie:

Silly Willy fancies himself to be omniescent in terms of understanding those who oppose him ... yet he can't even see that the executive summary of the Taguba report only used the word "rape" four times ...

... twice in reference to DETAINEES who were accused of rape

... once in reference to the message "I am a rapist" wrote in marker on one of the detainees.

... once in reference to the disgusting guards at Abu Grahab threatening rape ... not perpetrating it.

He has yet to show us quotes, from either the exec summary or the full report, that prove that SOLDIERS actually raped detainees ... let alone that it was official policy, directed by the Administraton.

Therefore, he is a liar himself, and is not credible as a judge of anyone's veracity.

He attempts to pass off opinions as absolute truth, asking us to blindly trust him and any source who supports his assertions (including such paragons of veracity as the NYT and the recently-exposed Amnesty International), while never acknowledging that the checked-and-balanced/investigated/media-hounded government that serves us might just be doing things right.

That's why I only have one thing to say to him:

PROVE that torture was policy, Willy ... put up, or stop lying and shut up!

Don't worry about it, Rich. When a stranger makes a list of my supposed attitudes and beliefs that just about proves how careful they are about their facts.

On a related note... went through the line at the grocery store this afternoon (had to pick up some sweet corn for dinner) behind a lady who had a bag of pet food with the slogan on it, "Pet food for thinking people." I didn't go read the ingredients or anything but I'd put money on the fact that this pet food was either Organic or Vegetarian. What ever is in it, the fact that this sentiment can be counted on to appeal to a particular segment of our population is telling. *This* pet food is for people who *think*. It's not that other people disagree thoughtfully, or even that they disagree at all, it's that they don't *think*.

Willysnout's rhetoric reflects the world-view that thoughtful disagreement or even just disagreement is not possible. Only denial is possible. Thinking people must necessarily agree in all cases. What is more, the cadence of his words and the personal attack on my Virtue are methods perfected by a particular segment of religious fundamentalism and easily recognizable as such and even more easily imitated.

We are sinners, Rich. Condemned to hell. We chase after pleasures of the flesh and flee like cockroaches from the light of Truth. We are sorry, pitiful creatures, ignorant even of our own ignorance. Believing in our own wisdom we became fools.

It's ridiculously easy to spew out variations of the same flowing condemnations. Just change the subject as necessary. It's not as if I'm going to be impressed by someone who sounds just like a certain reverend of my net-aquaintence who issues similar condemnations on a regular basis.

It's difficult to have this conversation. Rich and Julie, who are typical of the pro-torture American right wing, ask for "proof" of a torture policy, but won't even accept the fact that American military forces have been torturing POWs. Until they will acknowledge that fact, it's impossible to move to the question of policy.

Imagine Gallileo, who was forced by the Catholic Church to recant his view that the earth revolved around the sun. This recantation was made under the threat of torture, so Galileo recanted. It took the Church 500 years to admit its error.

Imagine of the Church had not only denied the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, but the existence of the sun itself. That would seem absurd, but this is in effect what Rich and his fellow right wing true believers are doing when asking for "proof" of an American torture policy.

I've shown that the torture used by the U.S. are derived from the techniques perfected in the 20th Century by Stalin's NKVD and Hitler's Gestapo, yet Rich and Julie persist in denying that U.S. forces tortured anyone. The real question to ask is why they'd deny well-documented fact.

I believe that they are wearing political blinders. They are in thrall to their fake president, George W. Bush, and his bloody war started on false pretenses. I think they have no principles and no morals, but only simulations of those things. Real principals and real morals are universal; they apply at all times and in all places. They are not just talking points to be discarded when inconvenient.

Are Rich and Julie "sinners?" Sure, as much as anyone. Are they "pitiful creatures?" No, they are human beings whose behavior is pitiful, but I think all human beings are redeemable in the light of truth. But they must accept it for redemption to be possible.

In the case of what we are debating, the beginning of redemption is to recognize fact. Our military has used the same torture tactics used by Stalin and Hitler. This is incontrovertible fact. The scale and scope of American torture isn't as wide as that practiced by Stalin and Hitler; no one including me has made that argument. What I and others have said is that our troops tortured people. Rich and Julie won't even acknowledge it, which shows just how thoroughly they've discarded the morals and principles they claim to hold dear.

It's a sad day to see this attitude be the dominant view in the Republican Party, which once stood for the rights of the individual in the face of all-powerful government. In their world, day is night, black is white and 2+2=5. I pity them for what they have lost.

Memo to all: i'm not a Republican, I'm an independent.

PROVE that torture was policy, Willy ... put up, or stop lying and shut up.

So Rich, you're an "independent?" Like Bill O'Reilly is an "independent?" What does this mean? You usually vote for Republicans except when one of them becomes, well, too humane?

As for the rest, you keep pasting that same line into multiple threads. Last week, the censor here deleted my multiple verbatim postings. Let's see if the censor will do the same with you. Somehow, I doubt it because, in the final analysis, I think Mudville has nothing to do with military issues or with supporting the troops, but rather with politicizing the Iraq War for partisan ideological ends. Right wing ends, which means that Greyhawk must find a way to drive me out to maintain the purity of the echo chamber.

See, for whatever reason you people are desperately clinging to the myth that you are the true patriots and that there is no dissent. In fact, only about one-third of the public still supports the dirty little war launched by your lying fake president. I have no doubt that, sooner or later, the censor will delete my postings and/or ban me outright, but that's not going to change the truth of what's been happening or have any impact on how people regard your war, your torture or your cavalier attitude toward truth and toward the lives of the Americans you are wasting on your war.

Remember: It's your war and your president, and that's a burden that you will carry alone.

And I'm Libertarian.

What were we talking about anyway? Oh, yeah, Dick Durbin. Frankly I think the Dems are taking this European thing too far. It makes government far more interesting but harder to take seriously. Like the time some British pol chased another guy around the chamber with the revered Mace. I guess this Mace is some sort of historical and honored implement and he was made to apologize publically to the Mace afterward. That was a hoot when I heard about it but I'll admit I was relieved that it hadn't happened in my country.

I'm getting a bit tired of (and embarassed by) the separate standard of truth required of our Senators. We should start electing Engineers but I doubt they could be compelled to run.

Julie ... given the opportunity, this engineer would run for office. It hasn't come, yet ... but I would do so, if able.

Greyhawk ... looks like I may have violated one of your rules re: verbatim postings. If so, I do apologize, and will understand if you delete the offending posts of mine.

In fact, at this point I'd understand if you shut down comments all together ... the news and links provided by Mudville, for the reader's evaluation, make this one of the most valuable sites on the 'Net. I'd still read it ... comments or not.

Here's an interesting question: since we have been informed that allegedly two-thirds of this nation is now opposing the war, I wonder how many of these people are opposing it ... becuase it is not being fought hard enough, or smart enough, in their eyes? The other side tends to sweep all the dissenters, regardless of the reasons for their dissent, into the anti-war camp ... and that may not be the whole truth.

And, if anyone knows the polling methodology/questions these numbers are based upon, I encourage you to post them here ... but with appropriate links back to the polling entity's report, to make sure we are dealing with credible numbers ...

... and not answers derived from broad-brushed Big Lies.

I oppose it for two reasons. One is that once you strip away your lying president's lies, there has never been a coherent rationale for the war. Second is that it's been incompetently led from start to finish. Torture is, in that sense, a symbol of a losing war fought by losers. Winners do not torture people. Losers do that.

Willy's repeated lies are torturous, he's a loser!

Wow, "An American," that was a powerful and intelligent response! I quake at your brilliance.

Willy, I guess I got into the conversation late, but could you enlighten me as to what, exactly, the soldiers at Gitmo are doing that constitutes systematic torture?

Taguba Report on Abu Ghraib
http://www.agonist.org/annex/taguba.htm

[Greyhawk notes: For more on the Taguba report see here. Key quote from Taguba: "We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level," Tugaba said. Now back to Willy]

Red Cross Report on Iraq sites
http://cryptome.org/icrc-report.htm

FOIA’d reports on torture, including at Gitmo
http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/

Seymour Hersh on "Copper Green" torture/perversion policy
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040524fa_fact

Comparison of US torture methods to those used by Stalin and Hitler
http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=489

How USMC treated Japanese POWs in WW2
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6kt7j/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/aamitcsm.pdf

Willy, I asked you to tell me what torture was being used at Gitmo, and you give me links to Abu Ghraib among others. Can't you put these things into your own words?

Looking through your links I could only come up with this:

" choking with water, exposure to extremes of heat or cold, and forced standing and other "stress positions""

I'm sorry Willy, but there is NO WAY that those tactics can in any way be construed as torture.

You can say it as many times as you want, but to imply those tactics are analogous to Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot is absurd.

Greyhawk, I consider myself pretty patient ... but your patience far exceeds mine.

Fortunately, your patience does not extend so far, that it supplants prudent action with the INACTION when it comes to lethal threats.

This stands in stark contrast to those who tell us "Bush Lied" when in fact he instead, acted ... and in the process showed to all the lies of those "enlightened" viewpoints promoting INACTION, at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Problem is, no one seems to be held accountable for the consequences of INACTION.

So Rich, you're an "independent?" Like Bill O'Reilly is an "independent?" What does this mean? You usually vote for Republicans except when one of them becomes, well, too humane?

Aw, poor Willysnout. Are the bad awful people who don't agree with you not fitting in the mold you're trying to shoehorn them into?

Looking through your links I could only come up with this:

choking with water, exposure to extremes of heat or cold, and forced standing and other "stress positions"

I'm sorry Willy, but there is NO WAY that those tactics can in any way be construed as torture.
I posted this in a different thread, but the addition of new threads has pretty well buried it so I hope our censor will tolerate the second posting because it directly refutes the lie to which I am responding.

From The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn:

Preliminary humiliation was another approach. … At the Lubyanka, Aleksandra O___ refused to give the testimony demanded. She was transferred to Lefortovo. In the admitting office, a woman jailer ordered her to undress, allegedly for a medical examination, took away her clothes, and locked her in a “box” naked. At that point the men jailers began to peer through the peephole and to appraise her feminine attributes with loud laughs. If one were systematically to question former prisoners, many more such examples would emerge. They all had but a single purpose: to dishearten and humiliate.

Intimidation was very widely used and very varied. Another form of intimidation was threatening the prisoner with a prison worse than the one he was in.

Sound effects: Or two megaphones are constructed out of rolled-up cardboard, and two interrogators, coming close to the prisoner, bellow in both ears: “Confess, you rat!” The prisoner is deafened; sometimes he actually loses his sense of hearing.

A cigarette is put out on the accused’s skin.

Light effects involve the use of an extremely bright electric light in the small, white-walled cell or “box” in which the accused is held – a light which is never extinguished. Your eyelids become inflamed, which is very painful.

Prison begins with the box, in other words, what amounts to a closet or packing case. … The human being who has just been taken from freedom, still in a state of inner turmoil, ready to explain, to argue, to struggle is, when he first sets foot in prison, clapped into a “box,” which sometimes has a lamp and a place where he can sit down, but which sometimes is dark and constructed in such a way that he can only stand up and even then is squeezed against the door.

Sleeplessness, which they quite failed to appreciate in medieval times.

The above method was further implemented by an assembly line of interrogators. Not only were you not allowed to sleep, but for three or four days shifts of interrogators kept up a continuous interrogation.

The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees. Then there is the method of simply compelling the prisoner to stand there.

Punishment cells. No matter how hard it was in the ordinary cells, the punishment cells were always worse. In the punishment cell a human being was systematically worn down by cold (In Sukhonovna Prison there were also hot punishment cells). There were various aspects to punishment cells – for example, dampness and water.

Starvation has already been mentioned in combination with other methods. Actually the starvation technique, like interrogation at night, was an integral element in the entire system of coercion.

Beatings — of a kind that leave no marks. As everyone knows, a blow of the fist in the solar plexus, catching the victim in the middle of a breath, leaves no mark whatever. The Lefortovo Colonel Sidorov, in the postwar period, used to take a “penalty kick” with his overshoes at the dangling genitals of male prisoners.

Or bridling (also known as “the swan dive”). A long piece of rough toweling was inserted between the prisoner’s jaws like a bridle; the ends were then pulled back over his shoulders and tied to his heels. Just try lying on your stomach like a wheel, with your spine breaking – and without water and food for two days!

The United States has its own Gulag Archpelago, of which Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are only a small part:

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/statements/abu-yr-042605.htm

(repost to correct a formatting error)

Looking through your links I could only come up with this:

choking with water, exposure to extremes of heat or cold, and forced standing and other "stress positions"

I'm sorry Willy, but there is NO WAY that those tactics can in any way be construed as torture.
I posted this in a different thread, but the addition of new threads has pretty well buried it so I hope our censor will tolerate the second posting because it directly refutes the lie to which I am responding.

From The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn:

Preliminary humiliation was another approach. … At the Lubyanka, Aleksandra O___ refused to give the testimony demanded. She was transferred to Lefortovo. In the admitting office, a woman jailer ordered her to undress, allegedly for a medical examination, took away her clothes, and locked her in a “box” naked. At that point the men jailers began to peer through the peephole and to appraise her feminine attributes with loud laughs. If one were systematically to question former prisoners, many more such examples would emerge. They all had but a single purpose: to dishearten and humiliate.

Intimidation was very widely used and very varied. Another form of intimidation was threatening the prisoner with a prison worse than the one he was in.

Sound effects: Or two megaphones are constructed out of rolled-up cardboard, and two interrogators, coming close to the prisoner, bellow in both ears: “Confess, you rat!” The prisoner is deafened; sometimes he actually loses his sense of hearing.

A cigarette is put out on the accused’s skin.

Light effects involve the use of an extremely bright electric light in the small, white-walled cell or “box” in which the accused is held – a light which is never extinguished. Your eyelids become inflamed, which is very painful.

Prison begins with the box, in other words, what amounts to a closet or packing case. … The human being who has just been taken from freedom, still in a state of inner turmoil, ready to explain, to argue, to struggle is, when he first sets foot in prison, clapped into a “box,” which sometimes has a lamp and a place where he can sit down, but which sometimes is dark and constructed in such a way that he can only stand up and even then is squeezed against the door.

Sleeplessness, which they quite failed to appreciate in medieval times.

The above method was further implemented by an assembly line of interrogators. Not only were you not allowed to sleep, but for three or four days shifts of interrogators kept up a continuous interrogation.

The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees. Then there is the method of simply compelling the prisoner to stand there.

Punishment cells. No matter how hard it was in the ordinary cells, the punishment cells were always worse. In the punishment cell a human being was systematically worn down by cold (In Sukhonovna Prison there were also hot punishment cells). There were various aspects to punishment cells – for example, dampness and water.

Starvation has already been mentioned in combination with other methods. Actually the starvation technique, like interrogation at night, was an integral element in the entire system of coercion.

Beatings — of a kind that leave no marks. As everyone knows, a blow of the fist in the solar plexus, catching the victim in the middle of a breath, leaves no mark whatever. The Lefortovo Colonel Sidorov, in the postwar period, used to take a “penalty kick” with his overshoes at the dangling genitals of male prisoners.

Or bridling (also known as “the swan dive”). A long piece of rough toweling was inserted between the prisoner’s jaws like a bridle; the ends were then pulled back over his shoulders and tied to his heels. Just try lying on your stomach like a wheel, with your spine breaking – and without water and food for two days!

The United States has its own Gulag Archpelago, of which Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are only a small part:

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/statements/abu-yr-042605.htm

[Greyhawk notes: For more on the Taguba report see here. Key quote from Taguba: "We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level," Tugaba said. Now back to Willy]

I have never once cited Taguba as an example of a U.S. government admission of a torture policy. In fact, it's been the other way around. I have consistently stated here that Taguba is a reasonably good report on some of the torture that occurred, but a whitewash of upper-level responsibility for that torture.

I believe -- but cannot prove -- that the upper-level whitewash is the result of the lying psuedo-president, George W. Bush, having publicly stated that the Abu Ghraib torture was the isloated actions of a few. Bush's statement was made before Taguba finished his report, and I believe that it was a direct signal of the conclusion that our latter-day fuhrer wanted Taguba to reach.

Is it at all possible for you to cogently argue a point without a cut-and-paste fest?

To wit, because of your formatting error I read your first post as a rebuttal to your allegations, before I realized it was you trying to BS your way out of proving your point. Anybody else with a functioning moral compass will read those same passages and come to the same conclusion; that what happened at Gitmo is not close to the horrors of the Gulag.

If you can read those portions of Solzhenitsyn and in any way, shape, matter or form equate it to Gitmo, you are a moral cretin.

TomB, the right wing posters here are contantly asking for "proof" and "evidence." I find this both irritating and invigorating. Irritating because once the provide it they still say the same things as if they never even bothered to read what I've provided, but invigorating because going up against implacable opposition sharpens my thinking and forces me to corral the evidence.

Your objection to my having cut and paste at all is a little ridiculous. I mean, you made an assertion and I answered it with Aleksandr Solzhenityn fer chrissakes. I guess you not left with a whole lot more than sputtering about my C&P job, but at least I C&P'd the best. By the way, I wonder if any right wing posters here have actually read it. I have read all three volumes, but I confess that it was a long time ago and I had a great deal of difficulty keeping all those Russian names straight.

Your substantive reaction to what I posted is a case in point about my irritation with you people. The excerpt from The Gulag Archipelago is eerily similar to the tortures described at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Anyone who really bothered to do even cursory research would see that.

Something to keep in mind: In few, if any, cases to torturers refer to themselves as "torturers" or call what they are doing "torture." Torturers know that torture is evil, so they will always tell themselves that they are doing something other than torture and that the recipient is somehow uniquely deserving of such treatment. The psychology of torture depends upon euphemism, denial and evasion of moral principles.

Irritating because once the provide it they still say the same things as if they never even bothered to read what I've provided, but invigorating because going up against implacable opposition sharpens my thinking and forces me to corral the evidence.

Oh for God's sake get over yourself. The reason they ask for proof over and over is that you continually fail to provide it. Somehow, you read your links and then your hatred of the military takes over and your ridiculous charges miraculously become "proof". It isn't torture.

The excerpt from The Gulag Archipelago is eerily similar to the tortures described at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Anyone who really bothered to do even cursory research would see that.

Once again you prove my point.

There is NOTHING "eerily similar" between the horrors of the Gulag and Gitmo, and speaking directly to that isn't just me, but Pavel Litvinov a survivor of that Soviet horror:

By any standard, Guantanamo and similar American-run prisons elsewhere do not resemble, in their conditions of detention or their scale, the concentration camp system that was at the core of a totalitarian communist system.

You can repeat your charges all you want, but it doesn't make them any more accurate