Comments Posted By Qwinn
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One rather obvious reason why McCain might not have given those details on his first telling is that at the time it wasn't just possible but likely that the Vietnamese would have identified the guard that helped him based on the details of the story and had him shot. A couple of decades later, not much to worry about anymore.
Qwinn
Comment Posted By Qwinn On 18.08.2008 @ 12:45
I'd like to add that after further review of the ACLU links, I still haven't found one that even alleges that "hundreds if not thousands" have been abused, etc. I did find one report that claims that eight people died, across all of Afghanistan and Iraq, supposedly as a result of abuse, over a period of 3 years after the war. And the documents make absolutely no claim that the ones listed as homicides were at the hand of guards. From what you can tell from the actual documents, there's no reason to believe that they weren't killed at the hand of fellow detainees. You -have to make the deliberate assumption- that every death in a camp was at the hand of the US military. Do you believe that every single person who dies in US prisons every year dies at the hand of the guards, rather than fellow inmates? Do you think even a majority or even a significant fraction are? Where does such an assumption come from? These ACLU guys are taking partial information that doesn't prove anything, but feeding it to you with "analysis" that fills in all the gaps with totally baseless assumptions, assumptions that always, always, always assume the worst about the US military. Wake up and smell the propaganda, man.
Qwinn
Comment Posted By Qwinn On 4.08.2008 @ 20:12
I looked through your links. Thank you for making the effort. However, I don't think they prove anything like what you claim they prove.
I was specifically looking for evidence to back up your claim that "Yes, torture has been used on many hundreds and probably thousands of detainees in our custody.". I found none. There certainly wasn't any evidence, or even a claim, of that in the first three links you provided, which leaves only the ACLU link. I'll get to that link in a moment.
I also found no evidence, or even the claim, in the first three links that "The techniques went far beyond water boarding and “stress” techniques and included beatings, electric shock, and other barbaric practices." So, again, we are left only with the ACLU link.
So it appears that your most sensational claims are backed up only by your ACLU link, and my God, what a mountain of BS is contained therein. I was particularly amused by the very first links I saw - "New Evidence that Government Knew Abuse was Widespread Before Abu Ghraib Photos". ZOMG NO RLY?!?! Um, I actually remember, seeing with my own eyes, a press release from the DoD and Rumsfeld himself, about 4 months before the Abu Ghraib thing got covered on the front page of the NY Times 31 days in a row, wherein they voluntarily released to the press the information that abuses at Abu Ghraib had occurred and were under investigation. No one paid attention at the time. It didn't make the news. That doesn't change the fact that they voluntarily gave the press that information 4 months before the media turned it into a circus, and it at least went out far enough that a simple blog-reading guy like me noted it. The breathless cries about how THE GOVERNMENT KNEW, as if the media themselves "broke" the story amid a massive government conspiracy to never let anyone know about it, is precisely the sort of bullshit you need to learn to watch out for. Is the information that "the government knew!" accurate? Sure. And you read it and say "Wow, this is a great source", and you believe it, but what you don't think about is the assumptions that are required in order to make that -matter-, that assumption being that the government wasn't forthcoming about it. They were. They voluntarily released it in a press statement, long before the press "broke" the story. This makes the dozens of links at that site talking about coverups at Abu Ghraib completely nonsensical.
The problems with the rest of the links are in a similar vein. Not all are accurate though, many relying on flimsy information - what you don't realize is that government agencies have to note stuff down if someone even makes an allegation. The fact that someone from the government made note of an allegation (often made by the prisoners themselves, and we have the Al Qaeda training manual that specifically instructs their members to allege torture whether it occurs or not) doesn't give it any sort of credibility. At all.
The link also repeatedly describes things like "sensory deprivation" and "dogs" (not actually letting dogs attack prisoners, just scaring them with dogs) as "torture". I'm sorry, but if that's considered torture, then you're devaluing the term into meaninglessness. I remember lefties going absolutely hysterical over a memo written by Rumsfeld that supposedly "authorized torture", but the single statement quoted by any media from that memo was, paraphrased, "I stand for eight hours a day every day, why do we have rules saying these guys can't be made to stand for four?" That was the most sensational quote "authorizing torture" that they could come up with in this supposedly devastating memo? It's absurd, and you really gotta stop looking at headlines and thinking, zomg, US is teh ebil. You're being conned. They're -trying- to con you. It's deliberate. It's propaganda. And you're falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Qwinn
Comment Posted By Qwinn On 4.08.2008 @ 19:59
Sorry, Rick, but your sourcing is awful. You claim incredible things and link only to a single blog and a single NY Times book reviewer you admit is a liberal. Then you say things like this:
"(as are several other anti-Administration books on the Iraq War that my fellow conservatives dismissed at the time as “hit pieces” or products of “liberal media bias” but are now generally accepted as accurate historical references to the bumbling stupidity of the Bushies)"
Actually, I'm pretty damn sure just about all conservatives still dismiss them as "hit pieces" and products of "liberal media bias". To claim they are "now generally accepted as accurate" without any evidence is the oldest liberal trick in the book ("the debate regarding global warming is over!"), but it seems you fell for it hook, line and sinker. Are you that gullible? Or have you just accepted Andrew Sullivan as your personal guru?
You're doing a good job, though. You've already got several conservative commenters believing you and trying to justify what needs no justification because it never happened (or happened MUCH MUCH MUCH less often than you claim). Your jedi mind-tricks are strong, and you display much potential as a modern MSM journalist.
You seem to place a profound amount of trust in liberal claims, as if they would never, you know, lie. As if they haven't been caught lying and making stuff up out of thin air about this exact subject a thousand times before. What I find amazing is how you can have such trust in liberal sources and -ever- have been a conservative. Simply looking at things from that perspective, and seeing how practiced and casual liberals are at wildly distorting the truth to serve their political ends, should make it amazingly clear to anyone to treat their claims with at least -some- skepticism, but you appear to accept their accusations against conservatives unquestioningly. It doesn't make much sense, which leads me to guess that there's someone - or many someones - on that side of the political divide that you're very eager to impress. Well, I have to give it to you, putting out hyperbolic heart-wrenching Sullivanesque rants like this will almost certainly get you invited to all the cool parties where the easy women hang out. Have fun.
Qwinn
Comment Posted By Qwinn On 4.08.2008 @ 05:48
BLOGBURST FOR FRED: MAN THE OARS AND START PULLING
NH was as meaningless for Fred as Iowa was for Giuliani. Neither of them even campaigned in those places. They were deliberately written off. To attempt to gauge their overall performance from something like that is absurd. Now if Fred doesn't do well in SC, you'll have a point - but to claim NH matters when there was -no- expectantion he'd register there is plain silly, and speaks of an agenda.
Qwinn
Comment Posted By Qwinn On 10.01.2008 @ 15:41
