dagblog - Comments for "A difference."

You need to just get over it.

The Decider — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:04:27 +0000

You need to just get over it. I could recommend a good therapist if you will post where you live. Maybe you should focus on the fact that Obama has kept 95% of my policies in force. ANY President must adopt a healthy dose of utilitarianism. That sometimes means harm to individuals. Let's say that fully half of the guys we swept off the battlefield, out of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. were innocent. Getting the half that were committed terrorists out of circulation and finding out what their plans were potentially saved thousands (or possibly millions if they had been trying to get some biological device or dirty bomb to use against us) of American lives. The biological/nuclear thing turned out to be nothing, BUT WE DIDN'T KNOW THAT.

I talked with a lot of folks about this, including Democrats, and most felt that even George McGovern would have done basically the same thing.

Now, if you want to talk about mistakes, yes, I made a bunch of real whoppers. But you have to find a way to move on.

Excuse me, he was sentenced

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 04:36:37 +0000

In reply to The 15 year old has not be

Excuse me, he was sentenced to 8 more years after being held 8, so total 16, and well be eligible in 2013, meaning total time served 13 years.

His "working for the Taliban" was basically acting as a translator. Sure, he chose to go into a war zone, dumb 15-year-old. But it's almost certain from the photos (did you look?) he was unlikely to have thrown a hand grenade from lying face down underneath rubble, and even if he did - it was a NATO raid on a house in a war zone, not a raid on a crack house - soldiers typically don't go to jail for 11 years for responding within a firefight, do they?

Hey, why not incarcerate the neighbors for 5 years for giving aid & refuge to the enemy?

We had 8 years to figure out a better way to handle this - I don't mean apologizing to anyone - simply send him back to Canada and be done with it. But no, we have to show how absurd and arbitrary our military justice system can be.

Anyone going to jail for a drone attack that wipes out 20 civilians? How about our gunship in Iraq that targeted civilians? Thought not. It's okay for trained US soldiers to make "bad decisions" from an armed helicopter, not 15-year-old lying on the floor of a hut during an attack. Guess it was a "bad decision" too for those Reuters reporters to be sitting in a jeep next to someone holding a gun in a warzone.

You've earned your tough-on-terror wings.

The 15 year old has not be

NCD — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:23:48 +0000

In reply to Sounds like you're working on

The 15 year old has not be incarcerated for 20 years. He made a bad decision in working for the Taliban. Fighting the US military is not adjudicated like football. The Pentagon may certainly mislead to their advantage, but the fact is the US Army medic did die, it's not a lie, and like it or not the kid was there, and was tagged for his death. He could have been left to die at the scene, but he wasn't.

I do not believe the press releases on Lynch or Tillman, or the 900+ reasons Bush gave for going to war.

I also noted in one of the links a complaint that the US Army medic was treated first after the Khost battle. Yeah, so what. In combat casualty care you always treat the guy who needs help the most first. Turns out he died anyway, and the 15 year old was treated and survived. There are a lot of bad events, where cruel or unfair things happen, when you start a war, it is inevitable. That's why I support Obama in ending the wars.

Don't know what you are

NCD — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:03:28 +0000

In reply to I don't understand your

Don't know what you are talking about Bruce. I do recall mentioning the successful missile strike by Israel on the blind geriatric Hamas 'spiritual leader' in a wheel chair some years ago, as an unusual instance of the use of aerial ordnance. Remarking at the uniqueness of that incident doesn't mean I support Hamas. I fully believe Israel has a right to defend itself and its citizens, it would help in that regard if Israel had a defined international border.

About the former captives

arcticredriver — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 21:10:46 +0000

In reply to A difference.

About the former captives moving forward ... The McClatchy News Service published interviews with 66 former captives in 2008. The interviews were an important addition to the public record. Unfortunately McClatchy's excellent and insightful Carol Rosenberg wasn't involved, and Tom Lasseter, the senior reporter who wrote most of the articles seemed to lack the insight or empathy to understand what the men were telling him. A depressing fraction of those 66 men seemed to be deeply, clinically depressed. Understandable. General Geoffrey Miller made clear his intentions -- the captives were to be treated in a way that would crush their will. Sadly, many captives will never recover from this. Former captives in Afghanistan fear both Afghan security officials and the Taliban. There were two former captives Lasseter interviewed, whose Guantanamo transcripts I had read, who had run away from madrassas when they were teenagers. How did they end up in Afghanistan? It seemed clear to me, from their accounts, that they had been naive kids, seduced away from the madrassas by older men who promised them they could find them a role in Bollywood movies, but who instead became their pimps, and sold them to brothels in Afghanistan that catered to pederasts. PBS has broadcast a documentary "Dancing boys of Afghanistan", documenting how the sex trade in Afghanistan revolves around boys, not girls or women, and that most of these boys were essentially slaves, chattel. This went clear over Lasseter's head. One of the dirty secrets you can see when you read the transcripts from Guantanamo captives' annual reviews is that the officers who conducted those reviews were authorized to continue to detain men, even if it was determined they had really been innocent civilian bystanders, when they were captured, if they thought years of unjust detention, humiliation, brutality, and coercive interrogation, had radicalized these innocent men, and made them hate the USA. No, I am not making this up. I remember the first transcript where I noticed this. It was a transcript from 2005, and I thought the captive had fully and completely addressed the allegations that had been offered to justify his detention. When the Presiding Officer of his review board started to berate him, I thought he must be drunk -- or on drugs. This officer denounced this man, who had been detained in Guantanamo for four years at this point, because there were notations in his file where guards wrote that he had made "anti-American comments". But this was only the first transcript where an innocent man was having the fact that he had been detained NEXT TO dangerous men was being advanced as a valid justification for his continued detention.

As Willard so dramatically

jollyroger — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:21:31 +0000

In reply to It would not have been too

As Willard so dramatically proclaimed in his (no doubt ghostwritten) book, it is unAmerican (capricious capitalization is the last refuge of the teabagger) to apologize. (or as The Stache would have it "suck on this!")

I don't understand your

Bruce Levine — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:35:41 +0000

In reply to The facts are Omar was

I don't understand your posture here, when measured against the actions you so openly condone with vigor against Israeli civilians. I distinctly remember how vehement your reaction was to my posting of a piece about a freed Palestinian female accomplice to a suicide attack on Israeli civilians, who was publicly extolling little Palestinian boys and girls to become martyrs. I know you know exactly what I'm talking about here. I just don't understand how your position can be reconciled, unless civilian Israeli life is cheaper than the lives of American military personnel in your view. I hate it all. What say you?

It would not have been too

erica20 — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:25:51 +0000

In reply to A difference.

It would not have been too difficult to treat that kid with decency, even if the Canadian government had no motivation to try to get him out of there. I've always disagreed with his treatment.

(And really, the fact that he was found in a very aggressive part of Afghanistan makes little difference. He wasn't even from there.)

And your point is?

jollyroger — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:13:37 +0000

In reply to The facts are Omar was

And your point is?

Sounds like you're working on

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:16:13 +0000

In reply to The facts are Omar was

Sounds like you're working on our movie script, "Afghanistan: the Heroic Years".

Nevertheless, nice of you to callously dismiss our ridiculous torture and detainment with a "he deserved it" for a 15-year-old tortured and incarcerated by 30-year-olds/50-year-olds. It's one thing to shoot Khadr in a firefight - another to incarcerate him for 20 years for a killing he likely couldn't have done*. Can see how we're going to keep winning hearts and minds for the long-haul. Guess those Afghanis killed by the drunk soldier deserved it too - no use starting to play Sorry at this point in time.

*"Alive and well" meaning he's eligible for parole in Canada next year after serving a decade at Gitmo, so hey, only 11 years in detention for being in a hot house, lucky him. Tell me how many other soldiers are sentenced to 20 years for throwing a single hand grenade in a firefight, presuming it's true?

Do you believe all the Jessican Lynch and Pat Tillman press releases from the Pentagon?