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truth masseuse posted:Gadaffi had his inner circle penetrated towards the end as well... Bwahaha, hilarious! He was sodomized at gunpoint and then brutally murdered! Vintage SA poo poo right here! We laugh at anything!!!
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Jul 18, 2012 23:30
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:You might have a problem with that since HSBC is a British bank. If anything that would make it easier. No law restrains us in dealing with so-called "foreign nationals."
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Jul 19, 2012 06:13
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Charliegrs posted:In response to the Apache video: I think since the US has been actively fighting Islamic militants in the last decade that the general position has been that no enemy combatant is truly neutralized until he is completely 100% dead. We arent fighting nazis anymore, a gunshot wound isnt going to make a hardcore Taliban fighter want to surrender to save his life. These people want to die, and take an American soldier with them in the process. If one of these guys isnt dead then they might have enough energy to detonate a suicide vest or pick up a rifle and take out an American soldier. This is a grotesque apologia for barbarism. You should be ashamed of yourself. "Legally speaking this is probably a major war crime, but I don't blame him for doing it?" loving Christ, man. "These people" don't want to die, they want the U.S. occupying forces out of their country.
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Jul 19, 2012 06:14
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Orange Devil posted:Good job Dutch news for reporting the bombing on Syrian government officials as a "terror-attack". In what way was it not a terror attack? Is this more of the "We shouldn't call it terrorism if the Good Guys do it against the Bad Guys" thing?
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Jul 19, 2012 13:24
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Orange Devil posted:I just fail to see how targetting high ranking members of an illegitimate, undemocratic and murderous regime during a state of civil war qualifies as terror. By that definition trying to bomb Hitler would've been a terrorattack. "Terrorism" doesn't mean "Bad thing done by bad people".
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Jul 19, 2012 13:30
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Orange Devil posted:Actually, it does. It does not have a definition anyone can agree upon. From that perspective the term is entirely meaningless. However we can still see that the term has gotten some meaning due to the context in which it is commonly used, especially recently. And it has precisely been used in Western media as something that is an inherently illegitimate thing to do. Terrorism is, according to our media and politicians, always bad. We've been told this for over a decade. So in that context, using this term is ridiculous. And there's not even a possibility to fall back on "yes but technically actually the term terrorism is defined as meaning such and so" because no such agreed upon technical definition exists.
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Jul 19, 2012 13:51
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Jarmak posted:
Yeah, so would I, because the definition of terrorism is "Use of violence against civilians to force political change." Very good point, Jarmak. That's also why the US's use of predator drones to bomb random convoys in Afghanistan is terrorism, and Taliban attacks on US military bases are not. 
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Jul 19, 2012 14:05
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Golbez posted:Sue for peace? So far as I can recall there hasn't been open war between Israel and Syria for 30 years. There's no peace to sue for, it's there, just don't rock the boat further. Without a dictator needing to create a boogeyman, hopefully whomever takes over will realize the priorities lie inward, not outward. "Peace", in that Israel is illegally occupying and colonizing land that belongs to Syria.
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Jul 19, 2012 16:49
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Alchenar posted:It's fairly easy to understand; the overriding priority for everyone in the region is North Korea, just as in the middle east everyone's politics largely gravitate around being terrified of Iran. That doesn't mean that countries don't have other priorities or conflicting interests, merely that co-operating over the crazy man of the neighborhood who's waving a big stick tends to take the front seat. In what sense is Iran a "crazy man" "waving a big stick"? This is the kind of in-passing slur that contributes to the gross misapprehension that Iran is the aggressor rather than (as the facts show) the one being militarily and economically threatened by the world's superpower on a daily basis for the past ten years.
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Jul 29, 2012 19:05
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az jan jananam posted:I thought this was kind of a funny indicator of normalcy in Tripoli. Or NATO enacting its plan to forever render the Libyan people immobile. You see, the rebellion was successful - we've opened up Libya to American corporations! God bless 'em.
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Aug 2, 2012 13:36
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The USA and Israel both consider it their sovereign and indisputable right to launch cyberattacks on Iran. Like this is just a basic, plainly, openly known fact. We have officially and publicly declared open season on the Iranian cyber infrastructure. I am not at all surprised that the regime is trying to close itself off as much as possible when it is literally being made war on.
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Aug 10, 2012 17:13
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Mans posted:I'm sure you were also repulsed by people gathering around Mussolini's corpse. For this to be analogous, the video would need to be of people gathering around Bashar al-Assad's dead body. I somehow doubt this is the case.
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Aug 12, 2012 17:14
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CeeJee posted:They'll probably give them a medal for being a defender of the faith. Yeah, "they" probably will do that, because of course that's just what I'd expect from "them."
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Sep 12, 2012 05:55
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:Oh man, Hillary just said that the picture leading drudgereport was a picture of Libyan civilians carrying the ambassador to the hospital, not taking of a trophy reminiscent of what happened in Iraq. Wow, you mean Drudge flagrantly misrepresented a photograph and Arzy ate that poo poo up, telling us about how much it made him see red and want to kill Muslims? Golly, I'm totally shocked by this crazy turn of events!
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Sep 12, 2012 15:06
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Flagellum posted:Was the attack a Natural Consequence of posting stupid videos on the internet? It apparently was an explicitly predicted consequence, so ......
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Sep 12, 2012 16:02
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pinkeye posted:RIP Vilerat and all, but isn't anyone concerned that a senior State Department official was a moderator here? He wasn't "senior." He was an IT contractor for the state department. edit: But I do take your point.
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Sep 12, 2012 16:03
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OatmealRaisin posted:Man, I'm about to start tearing up here at work. I hope we manage to resolve this without driving another country into the ground. Do you seriously not realize that that's what's already happened in Libya? An Islamist militia staged a riot so that they could attack the US consulate in Benghazi with explosives. That doesn't happen when things are running smoothly.
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Sep 12, 2012 21:03
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Zeroisanumber posted:There are other, non-military options that are much better than military force. Building up civic institutions and the Libyan Army through training and financial assistance is much, much better than throwing SEALs and drones at the problem. No duh but saying "I hope we don't run this into the ground" is like, uhh, a year late? Ish?
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Sep 12, 2012 21:08
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kylejack posted:We vs. he. Qaddafi did this. We could still make it a lot worse, and I also hope we don't. No, Kylejack, I do not think that Gaddafi formed an Islamist militia to attack US diplomatic personnel.
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Sep 12, 2012 21:16
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whydirt posted:Honestly, Vilerat would probably be one to appreciate the gallows humor and irony in this if he were around. Oddly enough gallows humor has been punished with bans and permabans all day.
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Sep 12, 2012 21:22
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kylejack posted:Qaddafi created the civil war by refusing to step down, and the civil war created the power vacuum that the militia exploited. I think you're being a little pedantic when the poster has clarified he was simply saying that he doesn't want to see a massive US invasion of Libya over this. I totally agree that nobody should want to see a massive US invasion of Libya but the point that I wanted to make is that Libya has already been driven into the ground by the civil war that we took part in.
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Sep 12, 2012 21:24
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Fog Tripper posted:Good lord, what were they considered up til this point? Presumably, since the government had no real desire or ability to combat them, they had no legal status whatsoever.
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Sep 13, 2012 23:41
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AllanGordon posted:Actually drone strikes are pulled off if there is someone who is unknown in the area. They use active intelligence to choose their targets and have eyes on the ground to scout out the area. It's much more in depth than just fire away that most people think it is. Yeah, for instance sometimes we are so in-depth that we conduct follow-up attacks in which we kill the family and friends of a dead man.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:38
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AllanGordon posted:Surprisingly enough the family and friends of a dead enemy combatant are also enemy combatants. This is clearly not universally the case. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:46
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AllanGordon posted:Well I'm fairly sure the 2nd strike was based off on the ground intelligence that made a drone strike against them a good idea. Seems like it's less let god sort them out, because they knew who would be there. Did you read the article? "suspected militants had gathered to offer condolences to the brother of a militant commander " It sure looks to me like we decided a drone strike against the dead man's associates was a good idea, and then we decided that killing his brother was acceptable collateral damage.
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Sep 14, 2012 19:48
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Pohl posted:They are doing a live ceremony right now, why are you guys arguing about drone strikes and tactics? This is the thread for the Middle East Wars. Am I to stop having a discussion about America's wars in the middle east because you'd rather TV/IV? I think not. Fog Tripper posted:Where does the "doesn't care" part stem from? Of course people care. What alternative is there poster Karl Sharks? But the US doesn't care, because it has not allowed any hypothetical CareFeel from anyone at any step of the process to impede the exertion of imperial will in killing anyone, anywhere, anywhen. evilweasel posted:Take this poo poo elsewhere for now, thanks. Should we start another thread for the US's conduct in the wars in the middle east?
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Sep 14, 2012 20:00
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PT6A posted:As far as I'm concerned, we're only obliged to play by the rules as long as everyone is playing by the rules. Humorously, this is not what the rules say.
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Sep 14, 2012 20:06
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BootStrap posted:Probably the fact that at this moment the body of the late mod of this forum is being honored on by the President and SecState. I was dead serious in my question if we should start another thread to keep talking about it.
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Sep 14, 2012 20:20
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Soap Bat Derby posted:Humorously, that's exactly what the rules say. "failure to abide by the rules removes any protections under the rules". I'd pull up the specific convention if I had a faster connection. The reason you haven't done this yet is that although some articles and protocols require both parties in the conflict to be signatories, others do not. And the US violates even those one-party protocols.
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Sep 14, 2012 23:24
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Sucrose posted:4. The United States support of brutal Middle Eastern dictators, and the United State's embargo against a different brutal Middle Eastern dictator, Saddam Hussein. I've seen these two attacks against United States policy back-to-back plenty of other times, without any trace of irony. That would probably be because a) Saddam was a brutal tyrant who oppressed his own people with the help of the US, and b) the US embargo killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children for literally no reason.
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Sep 15, 2012 01:35
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Sucrose posted:Guess the US is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't.
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Sep 15, 2012 02:03
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Like, the proper response to "We used to support this brutal dictator" is not "So I guess we'll exact collective punishment on all of his subjects, killing half a million and only strengthening his regime."
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Sep 15, 2012 02:05
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Soap Bat Derby posted:Um, you know that Saddam killed them, right? Unless you want to follow the blame trail back a few degrees of separation, but personally, I prefer to hold the person who took the most direct action responsible rather than assigning guilt to the US through as many chains of causality as necessary to get to the US. No, Saddam didn't kill the half-million children who died under the sanctions regime.
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Sep 15, 2012 02:52
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Fog Tripper posted:I don't think many were "defending" it. Folks who were condemning it were asked what they would offer as alternative and not much was given beyond "killing civilians is bad".
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Sep 16, 2012 18:05
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Greenwald wrote an article on the Guardian today about a study by Stanford and NYU about the impact of drone strikes.  The report goes on to point out that not only do Pakistanis feel terrorized by the apparent arbitrariness of US drone activity and our policy of conducting follow-up strikes to murder rescuers and humanitarian workers, but that it is counter-productive in that it encourages recruitment and spurs violent attacks. This does not come as a surprise to me, but perhaps those arguing with me earlier in this thread about the morality and efficacy of drone strikes would do well to read the report and meditate on it.
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Sep 25, 2012 22:36
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New Division posted:Intimidation of the population is one reason if I had to guess. Yes, the two 'classic' reasons to torture someone are to terrorize a population and (relatedly) to extract confessions of wrongdoing.
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Sep 25, 2012 23:18
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steve1 posted:I'm sure some of it can also be a form of therapeutic release, as Mr. Abd ul-Ahad has speculated. Well, but that's not so much a "reason" to engage in a torture campaign as much as it is a "cause" of one.
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Sep 25, 2012 23:33
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Mans posted:Civil wars or revolutions aren't pretty. They're loving awful actually. Which just makes the reactionary forces even worse, they know pretty well just how hosed up the situation will become if they refuse to change the status quo and yet they prefer the destruction of their homeland for the sake of a small chance of maintaining the oppressive regime of old. I don't know if that's really an accurate description of the reactionary forces. The regime leadership, yes, but you're imputing way too much agency to John Alawite the lance-corporal.
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Sep 26, 2012 03:18
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I was wondering if the only response I would get would be "Well those people were terrorists despite what anyone says." Bravo.
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Sep 26, 2012 03:50
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Dead Reckoning posted:Wow, OK that's not at all what I said. Are you arguing that their methodology was in any way scientific? Do you think that their sources were unbiased? Absolutely I think their methodology was scientific. Did you read the paper? Nobody is claiming that their sources are unbiased, but you appear to be claiming that their sources are uniformly liars.
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Sep 26, 2012 04:39
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