Quote:

Chant said:
opinion is something you have to be VERY concerned about, especially world opinion, if you aren't, suddenly you won't have any allies.



Please don't take this the wrong way, Chant, because I'm not directing it at you personally. I know you are posting an opinion based on what you've seen in the European news media.
But I do feel the global media --even more so outside the United States-- is very biased against Bush.

And that a news perspective that makes any attempt to argue the logic of Bush's Iraq or detainee policy is virtually non-existent, outside of the United States.

And even within the United States, you pretty much have to go to a select few conservative sources, such as the Weekly Standard or Wall Street Journal or Fox News to hear the logic of the conservative opinion given equal time, or any coverage at all.


Quote:

Chant said:
Besides, as someone said earlier, agents from your own FBI and Red Cross has stated that the techniques used are similiar to torture.

That's one of your own law enforcement agencies, surely they most know what they are talking about.



In an organization of tens of thousands, one can always find a few disgruntled employees or former employees in the FBI and CIA, who will speak negatively of U.S. policy.

That doesn't mean that the overwhelming number of agents don't fervently believe in the Patriot Act and other specifics of the Bush administration, in the war on terror.


Quote:

Chant said:

Red Cross most certainly DO know what constitutes torture and what doesn't.

And if you can't acknowledge the Red Cross, or one of your own law enforcement agencies, then you are in a sorry state indeed.



The Red Cross has historically, and to this day, been a great humanitarian organization.
But...
The Red Cross, being made up of thousands of individuals, is not above corruption, or above having a few select individuals playing partisan politics.

Quote:

Chant said:

But then again, the definition of torture varies from nation to nation




Yes, it does vary.

But the universally recognized Geneva Convention does not vary in its definition. And the United States has upheld that definition in its interrogation of prisoners.

The only exception to that has been at Abu Ghraib, where seven U.S. soldiers guarding prisoners (out of 150,000 stationed in Iraq at the time !! ) crossed the line, were reported by their fellow U.S. soldiers, were investigated by their fellow U.S. solders, were court-martialed and convicted and imprisoned for their actions by their fellow U.S. soldiers.
And the highest U.S. military officers in Iraq, and the President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and succeeding Secretary Rice as well, have condemned these acts and said very clearly that this is not U.S. policy in the treatment of prisoners.
And STILL the assholes come forward and say the U.S. military is evil, and authorizes this mistreatment of prisoners as standard policy on a mass scale.

Give me a break !




The United States does interrogate prisoners and cause them some discomfort, but within the parameters of the Geneva Convention standard for the treatment of prisoners.


Those with a political axe to grind against the Bush administration can wax philosophic about the "inhumanity" of treatment of al Qaida prisoners.
But that is an allegation that goes outside the standard set by the Geneva Convention, in a partisan propaganda war against the United States, that uses emotions, not facts to accuse the U.S.

And I think that's the core of it, in both
1) the Red Cross
and
2) earlier allegations by Amnesty International that
Guantanamo Bay is a "Gulag":

Liberals with a partisan hostility toward Bush have more sympathy for terrorists who have murdered, and would murder thousands more if given the chance, than they have for the U.S. government that operates within established laws to try and stop them, in an unprecedented situation, fighting an army of terrorists, terrorists who fight a war without borders or specific nationalities, who can only be defined as criminals ( NOT soldiers), and not nationals of a specific nation the U.S. can be defined to be at war with.

Sympathy for the devil, and partisan politics against the United States.

  • from Do Racists have lower IQ's...

    Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.

    EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.