torture an iraqi prisoner???

[Uncle Russ]

Maybe this subject really is too political for a fishing board, and if I am guilty in keeping it going, then I do apologize. Having said that, I am feeling lonely and noone has come to see me in the Old Folks Home for over a year. I have been saving up my pills for an overdose after the November elections, so I am off my medication for a while. So here goes:

I agree with Pope that "torture", however one defines it, is appropriate if and only if it is likely to produce results--and those, of a substantial nature, in an extremely serious situation.

In my old age, if I am talking to a Hillary Clinton supporter--oops, make that Borak Obama, now--I don't even try talking about the candidates. Rather, I like to discuss specific issues--you know--something to get them thinking. I recently was talking to a young woman who attends Columbia University. She is a very dear person and completely sincere. But, having been exposed only to academic, liberal opinions, she passionately hates George Bush and the war and everything he and it stand for. I asked her this about torture: "Assume the worst case--that President Obama, knew a thermonuclear weapon--or even "just" a dirty bomb--was buried under Manhattan. Assume further that it was known to be set for detonation in 24 hours. And assume finally that he knew beyond doubt that a certain captive knew where it was buried. Would President Obama be justified in that limited hypothetical, in authorizing (1) waterboarding or (2) true torture of the most vicious kind?" She told me that was a stupid hypothetical question that would never happen and she was not going to answer it.

But you know, the girl lives in New York--she doesn't really need to answer it--just think about it a little. I was born when Hitler still held sway over Europe. Soon I will be an old man. Hell, most of you probably think I am already! And, as the scribe said in Ecclesiastics: "One generation passeth away...but the Earth abideth forever." I am willing to let the younger generation take over the government because this is their world. And as all of us who have children know: we can never save the next generation by holding out the example of our own mistakes--rather, they have to learn by their own.

I harbor the undying hope that when, (not if), we are attacked again, the younger generation, including our next President, will very quickly formulate the belief that the United States is worth saving, that, while we have much to learn and many problems, we remain, nevertheless, if not the last, then certainly the very best hope of mankind.

I harbor the undying hope that the young people will realize that it is fine to travel to other countries and embrace "leaders" like Bin-Laden, Castro, and Chavez, and say bad things about the United States--just so long as one can return to America to live without being imrisoned for speaking freely.

And I harbor the undying hope they will come to see that, when the United States is attacked on their watch, that it is morally sound to defend it.

If so, the United States will continue to march forward, as we have for over 200 years, into the fog of international relations.

If not, then sadly, perhaps the United States will have at that time forfeited our right to march forward as a world power and as the defender of the people's right to criticize its government.

The second thing I would point out is this (not my idea--but it bears repeating): To paraphrase the late, great, Oldsmobile commercials, "This is not our fathers' war."--or, I would add, our Grandfathers' or our Great Great Grandfathers'. It is something new. We were fighting civilians in Germany and Japan, in the sense that they were building the war materiel in support of the troops. We had to bomb the cities where they hid the production lines. And, had Presidents Roosevelt and Truman not had the moral courage, respectively, to build and use the atomic bomb, we would have had to lose anywhere from a hundred-thousand to a million troops in the invasion of the Japanese homeland.

But that was only the beginning. In the current war, our enemies are not "troops" in the traditional sense of the word--and therefore subject to the Geneva Convention. Rather, they are civilian para-military who hide. They hide in caves, in cities, in schools, in hospitals, and even in their own mosques. They stone their women to death for being raped and they teach their children to strap bombs to their bodies and vaporize themselves. They hate us beyond imagination, and the only people they hate more than us "infidels" are those who have accepted Islam and rejected it. We cannot be bound by the Geneva Convention or by the rules of conventional warfare, which grew up by common acceptance among gentlemen warriors over many centuries. We cannot even afford to play by the rules of the "Cold War"--mutually assured destruction.

Because our enemies do not play by any rules. And, unlike our Judeo-Christian or the Buddhist or Hindu worlds, they are largely willing to accept death instead of pursuing life. President Obama will have to face the fact, somewhere in his administration(s), that "reaching out" to our enemies will bear no fruit--but in fact, will bear retalliation based on a perception of weakness. Jimmy Carter was a sincere, well-meaning, though incompetent president (who, I might add was elected to provide an alternative to Bush and, as a "Washington Outsider" who would bring about "change". Sound familiar, fellow tuna heads?)

Noone "reached out" to our Islamic enemies more than President Carter. Noone negotiated more and did less. And what was his reward--only to be ridiculed and manipulated by the Iranian Islamic Revolution for over a year. Similary, Bill Clinton "reached out" and spurned any kind of serious retalliation for attacks on his nation and on the Constitution he was sworn to defend. And what happened? The Cole was attacked and the first World Trade Center bombing occurred. Following that, the instigator fled to the Phillipines and planned a future attack with American jetliners and an assassination of th very man who had "reached out" to them so sincerely--William Jefferson Clinton.

Noone will never know what was in the documents Sandy Berger admits to destroying after stealing them from the National Archives. More's the pity.

Nor will merely "reaching out" to our so-called friends, the Russians, the French, and the Germans, serve our cause if not backed by strength on the part of the United States. These virtually failed world powers have long depended upon the U.S. for their salvation--the French, for our saving them from the Germans, the Germans for saving them from themselves, and the Russians, for saving them from a failed philosophy of government and economics. But, like the whores they are, they assume we will be there for them when it counts and in the mean time, accept the highest price for providing to the Islamists substantially the same services that Monica Lewinski provided to President William Jefferson Clinton.

The lesson we would hope any president would learn from this would be quite simply this: that the hand with which we reach out should hold two things: an olive branch and a hand grenade. In appropriate circumstances, it might also have to have one finger on the nuclear trigger. Under such circumstances, it is less important how our President pronounces "nuclear" as it is that he understands it's use!

Another observation: The Democrats and many Republicans say "Bush lied about our reasons for going to war." And I reply: "Yes, that is what Presidents do." I will avoid, for the moment, adding that President Bush, to the extent he may have "lied", was not, at the time, like his predecessor, lying about having dropped his striped boxer shorts down around his milky-white thighs covered with moles, in the Oval Office in order to get a blow job from his own young female employee. I am beginning to think that, in addition to the legitimate ends of pursuing WMD (which, by the way everyone admits were there,) and destroying the largest Islamic army on the planet, we also achieved, whether we planned it or not, a civil war in Iraq. And I am sorry folks, but far from feeling that is a bad thing, I stand up and cheer. There is an old saying among Islamists: "My brother, my cousin, and I against the Infidel. My brother and me against my cousin. Me against my brother."That is the one key, I believe, to achieving their downfall. The more our enemies fight each other, the less time they have for the "infidel". And that, my fellow fishing buddies, is us.

Who can ever know whether the fact that the Shiites and the Sunnis have been pinned down fighting each other may have kept them off our shores these many years now? I cannot prove it, but who among us would have thought on September 12, 2001, that we would be facing the 2008 elections without (God forbid) another major attack on U.S. soil. Yes, 9-11 happened on Dubya's watch, just as the first attack happened on Bill "Stain of the Union" Clinton's watch. But we have not had a repeat in 7 years, and if President Bush is partly responsible for 9-11, then he is also solely responsible for the respite we have enjoyed since. My one hope for the future under a Democratic administration is the fact that the Democratic Congress has not had the moral fortitude to withdraw funding for the troops they promised to bring home.

No, we have not had a repeat.

But we will. We will.

We will be attacked again--on our own soil and most likely with atomic weapons. We cannot yet know who will be Commander in Chief at that time. But given the large-scale rejection of President Bush by those who oppose his actions in Iraq, and given the apparent downward trend in the economy, you have to think a Democrat will prevail. And that now appears to be arguably one of the most liberal and anti-war Democrats available to the electorate--Borak Obama. Many of us here are over 50 and most of us would answer to the "conservative" label--though not all, I grant you.

What I want to say to those of you who think as I do is this:

When, (again,not if) we are attacked during President Obama's term of office, we need to avoid screaming: "We told you so" to him, to his overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, and to those who elected them. Rather, it is incumbent on us to behave as we would have hoped the Obama supporters would have done when we were attacked with a Republican in the White House--that is, to gut it up and embrace President Obama as our leader, give him the benefit of the doubt, and hope that he will stand strong in the face of our enemies and respond in the only manner to which they will grant us a modicum of respect--in the strongest terms.

That will be very, very hard, my friends, but I for one intend to behave in just that way--until, and unless, he fails to do so. In that case, I intend to demonstrate to the liberal Democrats of this country that freedom of speech is a two-way street, and do everything lawful to defeat or impeach him. But make no mistake--I am hoping against hope that he succeeds. Because he will be OUR president.

(I think I need to go fishing more often. )

Russ

[SkeeterRonnie]

why use plain water on the ballz! use battery acid...

[Pope]

I agree with nearly everything you said Russ and appreciate the wisdom acquired over the many years of experienced gained in your years. The direction of our country and the way we conduct ourselves is central to my life. I will be there standing behind whomever is leading our country at the time we are attacked and voicing my desent in the case I dissagree.

[crazyjigr]

thank you Uncle Russ, your a great american.
Jim

[Uncle Russ]

Well, crayjigr: I cannot claim to be a great anything. I have to confess that I was dead set against the war in Vietnam--even to the extent, at the time, of telling friends of mine they ought to resist the draft and that they were wrong to fight--this after having two non-health related deferments and having my birthday drawn number 361 in the first lottery--so I skated! Don't get me wrong: I was sincere in my belief that the war was wrong. And later, I despised Ronald Reagan. It was only after watching how the cold war played out and realizing that all the anxiety my generation grew up with (I drove around with a survival kit in the trunk of my forty-eight Chevy in High School during the Cuban Missle Crisis) that I came to appreciate what Reagan and his predecessors had done in defeating the Soviet Union without detonating a single nuke. And I came to understand that Vietnam was a small battle in that greater war. And finally, it is hard for the young to separate even a bad war (had Vietnam been that) from a badly planned and executed war (which it was--by the politicians.) Nor can the young easily separate a hypothetically bad war from the valor our troops show doing their duty in any case.

And I argue that, whether it was a correct judgment on President Bush's part to invade Iraq or not, that too is just a single battle in a greater war. And God knows, even if it was bad judgment on his part (which I do not think it was) just look at how many mistakes we have made in other wars.

So I am not a great American by any stretch of the imagination--although I do thank you for the compliment--but merely one who has learned from his past errors committed in youth. It is a lot easier to sit in an easy chair composing an email on what my children and grandchildren need to do!

I can't remember who it was--may have been Eric Severeid of CBS News--who said, when the Soviet Union collapsed, to paraphrase slightly:

After our euphoria is over, I assure you, we will look back on the cold war with deep nostalgia.

I don't think that is the case. I do think it is possible we will have a new cold war with either Russia or China, and I have no doubt that proliferation will lead to one or more nukes being used--that is much more likely now.

But we no longer live under the threat of total annihilation. That is a big step and one which was brought about by none other than the strength of the United States of America--and the people who really were and are deserving of the title: "Great American"--our troops. With their sacrifices, I am hopeful we will be able to free ourselves of the anxiety our younger generations face today.

Russ

[capn_billl]

I dont believe the end ever justifies the means. Most of our "guests" at Guantanamo Bay were caught in the act of shooting at our troops or placing/building roadside bombs. As enemy combatants, (whatever their afilliation or legality), They should face a military tribunal and if found guilty executed. If found not guilty returned to face charges in their country of origin. As they were not accused of breaking U.S. law on U.S. soil no civilian court has jurisdiction. Those who are not U.S. Citizens are NOT! afforded ANY protection by the U.S. Constitution other than that which governs the operation of our government. Indefinately detaining anyone without charges especially since it had become obvious we will get no usefull information from these guys, Is not part of the constitutional operation of our government. Since these guys will return to blowing themselves up if released, tribunal then execution is the only way, and what would have happened by now by combatants detained historically. In the last few wars we kept live prisoners to exchange with other civilized countries, as they were pressed solders fighting under the instruction and direction of their rulers and held no individual animosity. As these guys have individually chosen to take up arms against us, (and mostly inocent bystanders), they are guilty of a criminal act and should be imediately executed. Just my .02c

[gman]

Im as much of an american as anyone here as a matter of fact we lost several close friends and relatives in the Trade Center attacks as we live 15 minutes away but to be honest I fail to see the benefit or cause to just executing everyone detained as described above. That is not the answer.

[Gunsmoke]

The picture below pretty much sums up my opinion on the subject.

[SpecialK]

Originally Posted by Gunsmoke

The picture below pretty much sums up my opinion on the subject.

Mine Too...!!!

[Snagged]

By international law terrorist have no rights under the convention and may be shot out of hand.