The Troubles

[Smitty-48]

Sure it's war Smitty, but you ok with torture, and specifically targeting civilians?

C'est le guerre, Jedi, thus is war, war does not care what I am "OK" with, you can't control it, are there circumstances where I would resort to torture and targeting "civilians" on the battlefield? Of course I would, it's easy to say you wouldn't, from the safety and comfort behind the protection of the United States, but once you're on the battlefield, against an enemy with no restraint whatsoever, bourgeois niceties are the first things to go, I am quite sure that I would be as savage and unrestrained as the next apex predator uber chimpanzee, in that situation.

[Speaker to Animals]

Can somebody change his forum name to gyne lotrimin already?

You're the one who said you're against targeting civilians, but voted for a guy who is for targeting civilians. And what would you do exactly if he did "take out their families"? I bet you'd still vote for him in 2020 if he ran.

And Hillary wouldn't? It was a wash, you fucking vagina. Fuck off with this hysterical period drama.

[jediuser598]

Sure it's war Smitty, but you ok with torture, and specifically targeting civilians?

C'est le guerre, Jedi, thus is war, war does not care what I am "OK" with, you can't control it, are there circumstances where I would resort to torture and targeting "civilians" on the battlefield? Of course I would, it's easy to say you wouldn't, from the safety and comfort behind the protection of the United States, but once you're on the battlefield, against an enemy with no restraint whatsoever, bourgeois niceties are the first things to go, I am quite sure that I would be as savage and unrestrained as the next apex predator uber chimpanzee, in that situation.

Tell that to John McCain.

""I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering."

McCain added (emphatically) that "the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.""

[jediuser598]

Can somebody change his forum name to gyne lotrimin already?

You're the one who said you're against targeting civilians, but voted for a guy who is for targeting civilians. And what would you do exactly if he did "take out their families"? I bet you'd still vote for him in 2020 if he ran.

And Hillary wouldn't? It was a wash, you fucking vagina. Fuck off with this hysterical period drama.

You can't have both, cupcake.

Either you're anti-targeting of civi...oh wait, are you trying to say it's bad when terrorists do it, but super ok when America does it? Oh shit, I didn't catch that right away.

[Speaker to Animals]

Lol, of course I can.

Didn't you vote for Obama?

[Smitty-48]

If you're honest with yourself, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the people who are actually engaged in savage wars amongst the people.

So lets take an American unit which was infamously condemned for this sort of thing on the battlefield; if I was serving with the 101st Airborne Division Tiger Platoon in Vietnam, would I have really been yip yapping about international law and the laws of armed conflict to the rest of the platoon on patrol, in the free fire zones against the Viet Cong?

Honestly, no, I would be killing the "dinks", "gooks", "slopes", "zips" what have you, as much as anybody else would, once they hurt you and hurt you bad, and there's more where that came from, it's a whole 'nother ball game.

[jediuser598]

If you're honest with yourself, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the people who are actually engaged in savage wars amongst the people.

So lets take an American unit which was infamously condemned for this sort of thing on the battlefield; if I was serving with the 101st Airborne Division Tiger Platoon in Vietnam, would I have really been yip yapping about international law and the laws of armed conflict to the rest of the platoon on patrol, in the free fire zones against the Viet Cong?

Honestly, no, I would be killing the "dinks", "gooks", "slopes", "zips" what have you, as much as anybody else would, once they hurt you and hurt you bad, and there's more where that came from, it's a whole 'nother ball game.

Again, tell that to John McCain who is against torture and spent 5 1/2 years as a POW. Who was tortured.

[jediuser598]

Lol, of course I can.

Didn't you vote for Obama?

Nope, not even once.

[Smitty-48]

Sure it's war Smitty, but you ok with torture, and specifically targeting civilians?

C'est le guerre, Jedi, thus is war, war does not care what I am "OK" with, you can't control it, are there circumstances where I would resort to torture and targeting "civilians" on the battlefield? Of course I would, it's easy to say you wouldn't, from the safety and comfort behind the protection of the United States, but once you're on the battlefield, against an enemy with no restraint whatsoever, bourgeois niceties are the first things to go, I am quite sure that I would be as savage and unrestrained as the next apex predator uber chimpanzee, in that situation.

Tell that to John McCain.

""I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering."

McCain added (emphatically) that "the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights.""

Yes, but John McCain is a war criminal as much as anyone, every bombing mission he flew in an undeclared war against North Vietnam under the rubric of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, was prohibited under international law and the laws of armed conflict, and it was all totally counterproductive, most counterproductive thing America has ever done, so he's in no position to be up on his high horse lecturing to anybody.

America had recognized North Vietnam as a sovereign state with all the privileges therein, by formally participating in the creation of North Vietnam at the Paris Peace Accords in 1954, and as such, couldn't just haul off and start bombing them, absent a formal declaration of war, and every pilot America sent in there, to bomb "industrial targets", was participating in a war crime by default. As it was an undeclared war, McCain didn't actually have the protections as a POW, the Vietnamese called them "air pirates", and technically, by the letter of the law, that was true, could have just hung him on the spot actually.

So, no, America did not distinguish itself by recognizing the basic human rights of the North Vietnamese, threw all that under the bus right out of the gate, and John McCain did not decline the unlawful orders when was time to do so, anymore than the people he is castigating did when ordered to execute "enhanced interrogations", thus, physician heal thyself, John McCain, or get off your fuckin' high horse.

If you're going to invoke the law, you invoke it all, you can't pick and choose which parts of it you wish to follow and which parts you don't, based on what the American people find to be palatable or not, if you're not going to follow it all, to the letter, well then you might as well just get on with it and do what you're gonna do, and quit blabbering on about the statutes you want to follow while ignoring the ones you don't.

Torturing people is a war crime, but so is bombing them absent a formal declaration of war, the law makes no distinction in terms of severity, a war crime is a war crime, it's not a case of torturing being a war crime in the first degree and bombing absent declaration of war being a war crime in the second degree, that's not how it works, so gimme a break, John McCain, in or out, which is it?

Is he going to turn himself in to the International Criminal Court for war crimes against the Vietnamese? No? Well then he has no moral authority, and as such, don't bother presenting him to me as some sort of paragon of international jurisprudence, because he's quite the opposite in fact, it's like Al Capone lecturing people about tax evasion.

[jediuser598]

Going to quote military.com to you:

Civilized people don't torture people.

In the great movie, "The Bounty," Captain Bligh, played by Anthony Hopkins, and a dozen of his men are set adrift in the South Pacific on a small boat. They are soon starving and one of the weaker seamen suggests to Bligh that once he dies, the others eat his corpse to survive.

Captain Bligh rejects that idea by stating, "No Sir! We were born as civilized men and we shall die as civilized men." That statement rings true in regards to torture. There is more to life than staying alive. A society must have standards and laws, and once those are dropped, man will devolve and the society collapse.

So if a young soldier or high-level politician suggests they torture a prisoner in hope of getting information which may save lives, the man in charge must know to say: We are civilized and don't torture people. If we die, then we die as civilized people.