[Skunk]

Originally posted by Yorick: If rebuilding their homes, schools, hosptials and electricity plants is a crime, I'd hate to see your definition of "help."

Destroying them in the first place is called a crime. Rebuilding what you have destroyed is called 'war reparations' - not help.

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: I also note our soldiers are paying the price with their lives as well, which you ignore.

No, I don't ignore them - I count them amongst the innocent victims.
I also count the soldiers that go home as victims too - they will have to carry the mental scars (especially those who accidently hurt/killed civilians) for the rest of their lives. It won't be an easy thing to live with.

Originally posted by Yorick: quote: Originally posted by Skunk: It's ugly. The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is simply too important to shed at whim. Justice belongs in the courts and should not be based upon hunches and a 'feeling'.

I never advocated lynch mobs, nor going on hunches and feelings. I repeat are you suggesting Hussein did not torture his subjects? Are you suggesting he was not waging war on the Kurds? Are you suggesting he was not living in opulence while his people starved? These are not feelings, these are facts. I am not speaking about WOMD. I couldn't care about WOMD. WOMD were a selfish motivator in any case. I never advocated removing Hussein because he had WOMD, when America has WOMD. I always advocated removing a PROVEN heinous Hitleresque dictator that abused his power and trampled over globally agreed humans rights. P R O V E N.

THe fact is, rogue states did business with him, and preferred to keep lining their pockets with gold, instead of sanctioning his removal - perhaps through means other than war!!

It disgusts me. [/QUOTE]Nonetheless, WMD was the stated reason for the war. Had the war been called to right human rights injustices, it probably would have garnered world-wide support - even in the middle east.

And speaking of trampling over human rights, the GM Bay residents would probably agree with you that such actions deserve military action against the states that commit them.

What do you do with people who commit these kinds of attrocities:
"'They'd herded maybe 300 of us into each container, the type you get on ordinary lorries, packed in so tightly our knees were against our chests, and almost immediately we started to suffocate. We lived because someone made holes with a machine gun, though they were shooting low and still more died from the bullets. When we got out, about 20 in each container were still alive....

Prisoners died daily: of the 35,000 originally marched through the desert, only 4,500 were still alive, the three men estimate. All this time they could see American troops 50 metres from their prison wing on the other side of the gates. "
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_ne...168937,00.html
According the US government - you create a government for them in Afghanistan and make friends with them.

of course, that would make sense since it was little better than the treatment that US soldiers gave to the victims:

In the very different setting of a sitting room in suburban England, Iqbal demonstrates how they were made to kneel bent double, with their foreheads touching the ground: 'If your head wasn't touching the floor or you let it rise up a little they put their boots on the back of your neck and forced it down. We were kept like that for two or three hours.'

Rasul adds: 'I lifted up my head slightly because I was really in pain. The sergeant came up behind me, kicked my legs from underneath me, then knelt on my back. They took me outside and searched me while one man was sitting on me, kicking and punching.'

All this time they were still wearing their hoods. Then one soldier took a Stanley knife and cut off their clothes. Naked and freezing, they were made to squat while the soldiers searched their bodily cavities and photographed them. At last, they say, they were frog-marched through a barbed wire maze and put into a half-open tent where they were told to dress in blue prison overalls.

They had not washed since the container massacre a month earlier. There, Iqbal had sustained a ricochet wound to the elbow. Displaying an ugly purple scar, he explains that by the time he reached Kandahar, it had become infected. It was late at night by the time they had been processed, but next morning, they say, they were taken straight to their first interrogation. Rasul says: 'A special forces guy sat there holding a gun to my temple, a 9mm pistol. He said if I made any movement he'd blow my head off.'

The accounts of how just nations torture people makes for grim reading:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_ne...168937,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_ne...169122,00.html

What should we do with these nations that commit such attrocities - inavade them? Attack them without even bothering to go to the courts or seeking resolution through democratic processes?

According to you, they should be attacked. Al'Qaida would agree with you - but I don't. I still cling to the idea that civilisation is based both upon the law and democratic process - not the mob - and that disputes should be settled with dialogue and redress - not violence and contempt

[ 03-17-2004, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: Skunk ]