Australia Fesses Up
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Trackposted to Right Pundits, Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog’s Weblog, Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, The Populist, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Pursuing Holiness, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, third world county, Wake Up America, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Al Jazeera, a beacon of objectivity in the Arab Media. I believe this report about as much as I’d believe a report on the front page of the National Enquirer.
Would you believe ABC News?
Perri’s response is interesting.
Perri, what is it exactly that you doubt?
Oh my god. I swear I was just about to type:
“Ohnoooo, al jazeeeeera! How long til some wingnut comes along and starts whining about bias?”
Beaten to the punch.
[...] White House Link to Article iraq Australia Fesses Up » Posted at Stageleft:. Life on the left side on Thursday, July 05, 2007 Australia Fesses Up It was about the oil Posted by stageleft on Jul 5, 2007 in Iraq/Afghanistan, Other International There are (0) comments View Entire Article » [...]
Actually, ABC is a far more credible news agency than Al Jazeera (although both rank far below most credible news agencies in transparency).
Judge for yourself:
http://www.icmpa.umd.edu/pages/studies/transparency/main.html
Ya, if it’s from Fox Noise, aka the White House, it is worth shit. Unless it is about WMD, ties to Al Queada, Iraq behind 9/11, and all those other honest mistakes, that they tried to hide,… because after all they are all about intregrity and honesty, unless of course you count ignoring laws and treaties, like the Libby Conviction, the Prisoner of War treaties, treaties on torture,…
Well, ABC is far more credible than Al Jazeera. As for bias, all news sources are biased to one side or the other. ABC much less so than Al Jazeera, but about equally with Fox News. If you’d given the ABC link in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have said anything about the post.
Zorpheous — ignoring laws and treaties?
1. The Libby Conviction — Yes. He was guilty of lying to the grand jury (perjury). He was guilty of lying to two seperate FBI investigators. I submit to you though that at the time he gave his testimony, Patrick Fitzgerald already KNEW that it was Richard Armitage that leaked Valery Plame’s name. It had also been determined early on that she was not a true “Covert Agent”, and so no crime had been committed. Scooter Libby should not have even had to give any testimony at that point, so the crime was a process crime.
The Constitution of the United States grants the Executive Power of the United States ONLY to the President. The Executive power includes Law Enforcement, the enforcement of sentences, and the exclusive, non-reviewable right to grant pardons and clemency.
President Bush did not grant a Pardon, which would have erased the conviction. He granted clemency, which leaves the conviction and the taint of felony, but removed the jail sentence. That is hardly ignoring the law.
2. Prisoner of War Treaties. Do you by chance mean the Geneva Convention? Do you understand that Al Qaeda, and the Taliban were not signatories to the Geneva Convention? That it therefore did not apply to them in the first place?
Do you understand what the term “unlawful enemy combatant” means in relationship to the convention? It specifically deals with people engaged in hostilities on the battlefield that are not wearing the uniform of any recognized military. The United States could have LEGALLY had all of the detainees summarily executed on the battlefield, as has been done by other signatories to the Geneva Conventions.
3. Torture? You mean humiliation perhaps, which is far from true torture. Compare the acts of people like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who butchered his prisoners on videotape in hideous ways. The Nicholas Berg beheading video is still available on the Internet. THAT was torture, as well as pure barbarism.
Nothing that our Military or the Bush Administration has done even comes close to that.
[...] Stageleft:. Life on the left side » Blog Archive » Australia Fesses Up [...]
Over the years I have linked Al Jazeera a number of times. Every time I do so someone comes along and says something about their credibility, and then I end up linking some western outlet to back it up. It’s a knee-jerk thing, see the words Al Jazeera, yell bias, look no further.
With regards to true torture TM (and its lazy half cousin real tortureTM) you stopped short, a long way short, but that’s really not unusual for those supporting Bush’s war.
Do you not consider water boarding torture? What about inducing hypothermia as part of interrogation? What about the prisoners who died under interrogation? Where they humiliated to death? Mock executions don’t count? Do you consider US interrogators shoving things up a prisoners rectum as part of interrogation simple humiliation? Was Major General Taguba reporting on the Taliban when reported on “Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” and “systemic and illegal abuse”?
The simple facts are that the US military and intelligence agencies have been caught torturing prisoners, and your president has sanctioned the use of torture – that puts America in the ranks of countries who engage in the physical torture of prisoners.
Debating where America is ranked on the list of countries who torture as a rationalization for those actions really should scare the hell out of people who live there – don’t you think?
Perri:
That was certainly a lengthy evasion of the core discussion point: the statement on the link between oil and the American invasion of Iraq. Care to throw up any more smoke? I think you should toss in something about the Clintons. That’s always good.
Perri,
“2. Prisoner of War Treaties. Do you by chance mean the Geneva Convention? Do you understand that Al Qaeda, and the Taliban were not signatories to the Geneva Convention? That it therefore did not apply to them in the first place?”
Sorry doesn’t work that way Terri, read the laws before you comment on them.
Next Perri, why don’t you try an hour of waterboarding, followed by being kept awake for 72 hours, forced to stand, hooded with arms outstretched for 4 hours and them piled naked with a bunch of other naked men. Then tell me how you feel.
“The United States could have LEGALLY had all of the detainees summarily executed on the battlefield”
Sure if you want to be mass murder nation, go for it skippy.
Now take your retarded ass back to the Freepers where it belongs, fack what a complete moron.
Virtually all foreign involvement in the ME is, at root, “about the oil”. That isn’t the same thing as the tinfoil hat belief that the US went into Iraq to seize control of the wells and pump them dry to fill its own coffers.
Yes, in the last few days, we’ve seen a quick shuffle in a number of quarters from: “it was never about oil” to “of COURSE it’s about oil, just not the way YOU meant.” Heh.
Balbulican at #9.
It wasn’t a smokescreen. It was a response to specific statements made by Zorpheous.
As for the core discussion point, while the stability of the world’s oil supply is always a consideration in the middle east, and may have been one of the motivating factors for the Australians, it was not even among the primary reasons that the U.S. went into the war.
There are 23 causes of action cited in the authorization to use force. The PRINCIPAL reasons that the U.S. went into the ware are as follows (from the AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ RESOLUTION OF 2002 (Public Law 107-243 — Oct. 16, 2002):
In all, there were 23 reasons cited by the U.S. Congress for going into the war, and NOT ONE OF THEM was OIL. Further, it was CONGRESS and not President Bush that wrote that law, and approved it by an overwhelming majority of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, including politicians from BOTH major parties.
What a wonderful sentiment. It’s certainly a powerful argument when you resort to ad-hominem attacks isn’t it. So typical of “debate” from the left.
Other than hypothermia non of the “tortures” you describe are physically dangerous the the human body. That hardly compares to the rape of women committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, or the physical dismemberment of his regime’s prisoners, including the removal of tongues, eyes, genitals, hands, fingers, toes or other bodily parts.
Waterboarding is effective, but does no damage to the body. Sleep deprivation is effective, but does no lasting damage. I see no moral equivalence here.
We didn’t though, and that was the point. We could have done so though, like the Germans did in WWII (they were signatories to the Geneva Convention). The execution of illegal combatants on the battlefield is not a war crime.
Perri:
Thanks, but we’re all very familiar with the U.S. sanctioned, published casi belli. Foreign Affairs, an excellent (and predominantly right wing) publication, has published a few excellent non-partisan analyses of the “real” causes: check out their website, there may still be some online (they tend to cut them back to abstracts after a few months.) One of the primary ones, not much discussed, was the urgent need to maintain the political primacy and security of Saudi Arabia (ostensibly an American ally) by relocating the approximately 100,000 US troops stationed there: you will recall that was one of the few specific offenses cited by Bin Laden to justify the 9/11 murders.
As for your next point…you know, I’ve yet to read the missing line in the following syllogism:
a) Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and murderer:
b) Missing Logical connection:
Conclusion: therefore the torture and murder of detainees in American custody is totally cool.
Could you provide that missing link?
“Waterboarding is effective, but does no damage to the body. Sleep deprivation is effective, but does no lasting damage. I see no moral equivalence here.”
But it is still torture. In fact, the US executed Japanese officers after WWII for doing this very thing. Waterboarding torture was often cited as a reason to go to war against Saddam back in 1990 (along with falaq, the ‘art’ of beating the soles of the feet with a stick, used by Saddam AND by the Amir of Kuwait, but I digress). But when the US does it, you see “no moral equivalence”?
That’s because you don’t want to. You are too afraid to admit that your government and your nation has lost its way and are now the immoral evil ones, just as immoral and evil as those you seem to fight against.
15 minutes of waterboarding and a chickenhawk like you would not only convert to Islam, you’d confess to the Kennedy assassination and the death of JonBenet Ramsey. Not torture my ass. You are truly a dupe and a fool.
Perri,
Let me ask a very simple question, would you permit these methods in your home police interrogation rooms?
If you say “no”, but this is different, then you guilty of “Moral Relativism” which the far-right religous Neo-Clowns always harp about that the Left wing nutters do.
Oh, and Perri, just an FYI, I am a conservative, but I am not a braindead conservative, and if you don’t like my name calling,… there’s the door. Balb may be willing to explain to you why you are wrong, but I grew sick of explain the fucking obvious to the mentally challenged back in 2004. I got sick of explain that there were no WMD’s. I got sick of point out the evidence that support the position that there was no WMD prior to 2003 invasion. I sick of explain that there were link to Iraq and Al Queada prior Bush Optional War of Choice. I go sick of explaining how PNAC and the Office of Special Opperations manipulated the pre war intel. To be honest, I got sick of people who think Fox News if actually Fair and Balanced.
So if Balb want to beat you over the head with a Clue-By-Four, hey, it’s his nickle and he is one of the blog owners. Me I’d rather spend my time debating with people who will actually acknowledge reality.
You can of course continue to flog that long dead horse of George Dubya Bush all you want, but he is retard and complete useless waste of flesh. His Administration regularly ignores internation treaties or finds ways to skirt them and when it comes to USA law he is the same way (ask Ashkoft about the wire taping and Gonzo’s push for the illegal)
Maybe some here would give you the rather long list of the Laws Bush has ignored or decided to reclassify inorder to get around them. Or I have a better Idea, why don’t you go out there and research and learn it yourself.
PS
Sorry Bulb and Stageleft, by I have little use for people like this, even when they are polite about it. These debates have been beaten to death for the last two years and it is like debating whether the world is round or flat today,…
On another note, are you guys going to the Ottawa Blogging get together in August? Balb, would you be up for a dive on the Sunday? Maybe Lock 31? If it is near by.
Zorph
Thanks Mike,
I am very tired of explain the obvious history to those who still insist “My Country can do no wrong” even when we do the same thing, just as long as we are not as evil as the other guy BS.
If we are the good guys, then we play by the higher standard of rules that we expect all to play by and we do not lower ourselves into the mud and claim it is ok because we are only dirty up to the waste while claiming our enemy is up to his chin,… we would still be in same pit of mud,… and mud is as you know slippery stuff
>Yes, in the last few days, we’ve seen a quick shuffle in a number of quarters from: “it was never about oil†to “of COURSE it’s about oil, just not the way YOU meant.†Heh.
The shuffling is by critics trying to revise “it’s all about oil” from meaning “the US is going to take it for themselves” to meaning “for the security of the world’s oil supply”. That’s a change of the war critics’ making after they spent years belaboring the first point. I guess that’s the nice thing about a vague slogan; you can later pretend you meant something else by it.
IrC, since the war, I have never heard a critic say the USA was going to take the Iraq Oil, that is the red herring of the right. When most critics of the war talked about the oil aspect of the issue it was regards to the control of the supply and the effect on the market. A really funny thing happened in Iraq just before the war, I raq was and did going to move to the Euro trading currency for all oil deals,… and many other mid east countries have done that as well,… but as soon as the USA invade and took over,… well they mysteriously went back to the US dollar for oil trading,… but I’m sure that is a just another leftwing conspriacy theory based in a thing called facts.
So in short, it isn’t about the oil, it about the control of it. Unfortinately Bush really screwed that part of it up too.
lrC, I think you’re falling victim of your own straw man. As Zorph said, I don’t recall reading any intelligent war critic suggest that the US was intent on “taking the oil for themselves”.
If anyone is playing the revisionist game, it’s the folks who are now forced to concede that it was, in fact, about the oil .
Perri, your defence of American atrocities is that others committed greater atrocities. Do you consider “but the other guy did worse”to be a legitimate defence of illegal action?
There were several variations on what the US was supposed to do, Z. Pump it and sell it. Strangle the Euros and Chinese.
>If anyone is playing the revisionist game, it’s the folks who are now forced to concede that it was, in fact, about the oil .
The basic reason for the US military presence in Saudi Arabia and the war in Kuwait which preceded it was never disputed. To now claim that denial of the various flake theories was really denial of the root and implied assumption is to grasp at the thinnest of reeds. You’re behaving rather like the simple-minded people who think a person who is skeptical of anthropogenic global warming rejects the notion of climate change entirely and indulges in asinine sloganeering to that effect. Apparently you’ve all lost your grasp of nuance in the service of what you wish to believe.
“…is to grasp at the thinnest of reeds.”
Heh. I think you’ve missed something, lrC. Fortunately, we don’t actually have to grasp at reeds. As it turns out, both our analysis of cause and our prediction of outcomes has been vastly more accurate that those of the American invasion’s fans and admirers.
To put it simply: turns out we were right.
To put it simply: turns out we were right.
Dang right, we were right.
Retreating to the unremarkable observation that foreign involvement in the ME is always a function of oil is hardly something of which to be gleeful. I suppose that means you no longer have any practical or sophisticated analyses to offer. I’ll stand by my own general observations I’ve made here and elsewhere in the past as to why Iraq was selected, of which a few are: to further geopolitically isolate Syria and Iran within the region; to allow the US to militarily vacate Saudi Arabia; to remove Hussein; to enhance the physical security of the nations on the southwest side of the Gulf; to pre-empt the rapidly eroding collective will to maintain sanctions; to answer decisively whether Iraq had any CBRN stockpiles or development programs; indirectly by several of the following to increase the security of Israel.
“I suppose that means you no longer have any practical or sophisticated analyses to offer.”
No, I’ll stand by the analysis and prediction of outcomes I made four years ago, thanks, which are turning out to be correct.
(Love your revised war aims, by the way. You’re doing a much better reconstruction job than US troops in Iraq.)
Revised in what way? Those are my own assessments, most of which predate the actual US invasion.
While you fall back to defend a protest sign slogan, I expect the histories yet to be written will have quite a bit more to say.