Is it your contention that nobody is responsible for the torture that obviously took place? Powell, said that:"If we break it, we own it." This is bush's war and anything that occurs during it's course is owned by bush. Peace

CBS "tortures" it's viewers.

Human Rights Watch report on Rumsfeld's liability for torture at Guantanamo:

"On December 2, 2002, as the Pentagon has previously acknowledged, Rumsfeld approved 16 interrogation techniques for al-Qahtani and other detainees, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and “using detainees’ individual phobias (such as fear of dogs).”

"In 2005, the Judge Advocates General of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps told the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services that the techniques used on al-Qahtani violated the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, and would have been illegal if perpetrated by another country on captured U.S. personnel."

“Is CBS claiming that torture of prisoners was a policy of the Bush administration? It appears so.”

Matt, you either didn’t read the article, or you are deliberately trying to mislead your audience with another one of your “media bias” diatribes.

The following paragraph from the story CLEARLY states it was not Bush’s policy (I think otherwise):
“In 2004, the department withdrew the opinion, saying any such treatment of detainees the opinion appeared to condone would violate President Bush's policy against torturing prisoners.”

Further, the article is inaccurate in that there has not been a change of policy, in fact, the policy has always been that detainees are to be treated in accordance to the Geneva Conventions.

You are awesome.

Steve,
Names and dates please of the "torture that obviously took place". Simple enough.

Now go ahead and spin another of your lies. Remember, name and date. No BS.

Peace.

If we were always treating the detainees under the geneva conventions, then why did you get so pissed at that Hamdan case?

You seem to have an issue with consistancy:

Leahy apparently doesn't even know what he's talking about... As Jonathan over at GOP Bloggers explains:

If Leahy knew anything about the Genva Conventions, he'd know that they don't apply to terrorists. So if the President does not grant terrorists Geneva protections, it is not because he is above the law but because they are not applicable.

The White House's internal deliberations over the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to terrorists (there is none) and the acceptable limits of stress interrogations (there should be some) are disconnected and separate from the breakdown of discipline within the night shift at the prison.

That enemy has forfeited any claim to Geneva protections and should be dealt with accordingly.

Geneva Conventions: Al Qaeda Are Not POW's

Al Qaeda are not due any rights under the Geneva Conventions.
snip

To grant them Geneva protections would simply diminish the incentives for compliance with their strictures, and would weaken America's fighting posture in the War on Terror by unilaterally choosing not to avail ourselves of all the tools at our disposal.

The Geneva Conventions, which the ICRC purports to uphold, are very specific about who is a POW and what may be done with them - and the men we hold in Guantanamo Bay in no way meet the requirements of being a POW; they are men whom, if we so wished, we could put up against a wall without a hearing and shoot them - they are people captured under arms fighting American and allied forces with no recognizable chain of command, nor anything to distinguish them from civilians.

But most people would also agree that foreign terrorists do not have those same rights, nor do they have Geneva rights because they do not abide by those conventions.

So, Gore wants us, apparantly, to re-embrace the Geneva Convention vis a vis our detainees. Now, good people, who are our detainees? They aren't Girl Scouts. Heck, they're not even bank robbers and drug dealers. They are terrorists. The Geneva Convention protects captured soldiers from being abused - from being forced to talk by extreme measures to demoralise them and place them in fear...this is good; for soldiers. For terrorists, its like making a feather bed for a pig. The terrorists we fight are not amenable to normal modes of thinking and doing...regardless of what we do, they will try to kill us...and if getting them to talk means putting the fear of God into them, then its what we must do...but Gore doesn't want us to do it. He wants us to fight terrorists nicely, so they don't get mad at us.

Salvage,

Perhaps Jonathan over at GOP Bloggers is wrong, infact, the SCOTUS seems to disagree with his assertion.

His simplistic assertion that if detainees aren't POW's then that is the end of the discussion is completely wrong; if he were to actually reference the GCs, you would see that there are many "categories" that people may fall into that the GCs cover, civilian criminal/spy/mercenary being just a few of them.

This guy is about as dense as lead, but I guess the 'modus operandi' of people like this are to just keep parroting the same BS and hopefully some of it will stick.

CBS "tortures" it's viewers.-by: OhioOrrin

Bwahahaha! I agree!
:)

Talk about torture:Putin calls him a lousy shot and Plame sues him, Cheney sure is having a rotten week. Peace

Tird-Eye-Open:

"His simplistic assertion that if detainees aren't POW's then that is the end of the discussion is completely wrong; if he were to actually reference the GCs, you would see that there are many "categories" that people may fall into that the GCs cover, civilian criminal/spy/mercenary being just a few of them."

If it is so simple, why don't you reference those GC clauses for us. Show where the terrorists that are not soldiers of any state fit into the GCs.

Be specific.........

You know the old saying: "Money talks, bullshit walks."

Time to get steppin', Tird-Eye-Open.

SEW.

Don't hold your breath while waiting for Steve to provide you with the information you requested. I've been lurking this site for a few months now, and I've noticed that Steve is a hit-and-run troll who never provides proof for his bilge he spews.

Matt, I don't know why you didn't title this thread "What Media Bias?..." This is just more of the same from See B/S. Sort of like when the MSM reports on the terrorist surveillance program--they almost always call it either "domestic spying" or "warrantless domestic wiretapping." And there's little to no wiretapping being conducted.

FOX News, the internet, and talk radio--fair and balanced...

If there has been no change in the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo, why the ruling? Why the determination to start with the Geneva conventions now? Your argument is not logical.

Torture equals:

Dragging our soldiers dead bodies through the streets, even denegrading them in death.

Hanging soldiers that are already dead at the terrorists own hands, on bridges for all to see,
their 'handiwork'.

Cutting off the heads with swords as they video tape this 'brave hideous act'...(how macho)

Cutting off hands, legs, ears and tongues of anyone who dared "speak out in any fashion about the lives they had to lead under the oppression of
the Mad Saadam and Sons.

Torture, is Sadaam's Mad Sons, going into children's classrooms to remove them for their sick pleasures of raping them. (These were little
girls around 6-l6 yrs. of age)

To continue, torture is having these Macho-types in Iraq who wanted to rid themselves of their own wives, accuse them of looking at another man, or stating that she comitted adultery so she would
"automatically be stoned to death in the town square"

Torture is all the above, and much, much more.

So those of you who think, that Gitmo is "torturing those captured for Terrorism, who want to kill Americans (and have even tried to kill the soldiers at Gitmo that are there guarding them) and would do anything to avenge their sick, hateful, religious ferver, (Allah approved) YOU NEED TO RETHINK YOUR IDEAS ABOUT TERRORISM, AND TORTURE. THESE, ARE NOT SOLDIERS
IN UNIFORM EASILY IDENTIFIED, AND ENTITED TO GENEVA CONVENTION, BUT....Like theives in the night, that strike, whenever and wherever, in their sick minds that justify killing Americans,
just because they are Americans. Why or how, do you think this is justified, because they have NO ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS THAT DON'T BELIEVE IN THEIR RADICAL IDEAS OF RELIGION, AND THUS, SHOULD DIE?

You that post about the "torture" at Gitmo, don't know what the hell you're talking about. You can get information that is pertenant to saving lives from these madmen, and frankly, I really don't care how the guards would have to get that info,
as long as it saves American lives. You think it makes us like them???? IT DOESN'T, BECAUSE THEY
AREN'T ANYWHERE NEAR BEING "TORTURED" FOR THAT INFO, WHICH IS WHY SO MANY OF THEM, DON'T EVEN WANT TO LEAVE GITMO...."THEY KNOW WHAT WOULD AWAIT THEM IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY" (Some of what I described above) GET IT FOLKS???

Torture is also tossing babies out of incubators. Or even crushing their skulls and sucking out their brains.

Torture is NOT putting panties on terrorists' heads. Wearing panties is something I'm sure many liberals are familiar with.

Jo-Bob

So what you're saying is that it's okay to torture as long as you don't do the things you describe? What level of torture are you comfortable with? How much torture can America do and still be in accordance with the philosophies of the Founding Fathers? I'm pretty sure that "cruel and unnusual" was meant to cover all torture and abuse.

The incubator story was a lie cooked up to sell the first Gulf War to Americans by a PR company.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html

And there was more than "panties" on the head, murder for one and they're released thousands of people from that prison over the last two years so it's questionable that they were even terrorists.

Tired of Thinking,

(Article 5): "Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act..." is a prisoner of war "...such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."

--This is the point which you lead-heads can't seem to grasp. To determine if someone is a POW or not, then you have to have them before a "competent tribunal", this is not what we have been doing, we have been starting with the assertion these guys are somehow not "civilian criminals" so they must be some made-up group that is not under the jurisdiction of anyone but the American executive. The government is required to hold these "competant tribunals" to determine status, yet the government's lawyer who was tapped to set the rules for them, said that this isn't what we are doing, we aren't trying to find out if they are POWs or not: [CSRT]"do not have the discretion to determine that a detainee should be classified as a prisoner of war -- only whether the detainee satisfies the definition of "enemy combatant"" --James Crisfield

(4th Convention) Article 2 indicates that signatories are bound by the convention both in war and peace time.

Article 5

"Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.

Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.

In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be."

--Take note of the last paragraph, where it explicitly talks about these criminals being given the rights of a fair and regular trial. The idea of fair and regular trial is defined earlier in the GCs, and include the right to hear evidence against them and to refut that evidence in court.

Hey, they don't call it See B S for nothing!

First the neorads completely trivialized "torture" by defining it as anything that is remotely unpleasant. That allowed them to apply the word to any treatment of any detainee. So, if you think it is "torture" to be embarrassed, or to be uncomforable, yes, we probably (NOT 'obviously') did "torture" some detainees.

But the key word to any neorad argument is "trivialize". Actually, one cannot be a neorad without making a commitment to the trivial, and a decision to elevate it at every opportunity, to try to make it seem significant. (View the recent obsessive posts on such trivial matters as what book the President was reading when the plane hit the twin towers, what he wore on an airplane, and other matters that only matter to the insignificant.)

When and if the silly Left can get a grip and realize the nature of true torture, and then find a way to overcome its hysterical loathing of a man and all who support him, the real issue of what is and what is not torture, and what is and what is not acceptable, could be addressed. Till then, it's just Liberal jaws flapping in the wind, making lots of noise but meaning nothing.

Then they could address their addiction to lying, simple out-and-out lying, to try to justify their unjustifiable world view. If it WAS justifiable, the truth would be sufficient.