my respect for matt lauer went up by a lot

I say let them torture those people, I personally don't want another 9/11.

 

I say that you ^ haven't taken the consequences into account. These people are often innocent. A lot of the people at Guantanamo bay haven't been charged with any crime.

 

Prove it. Just to save you having to respond, I can't prove they're all guilty either. But what were they doing in a Middle Eastern battlefield? They should have fled and not stuck around.

 

^ Bingo. There's too many cases of mistaken identity, false assumption... all of that. Amnesty international have a lot of cases of it. Bush's removed most of a prisoner's constitutional rights.

He says he removed them to make it easier to prosecute terrorists. The reason he removed them was basically because he wanted to be able to imprison without proof, indefinitely. Did you know that if you're imprisoned, you no longer have the right to know why?

Prove they were on a Middle Eastern battlefield.

I don't trust the American government in general, not just Bush. I don't expect them to take human rights into account.

They'd arrest anyone who'd ever ridden a camel or whose surname name starts with 'al-'.

And torture doesn't work. You can't trust it. After all, if you're being tortured, and someone's screaming at you to

 

Well, foreigners generally believe that. I'm not surprised, y'all are entitled to your opinions. Just f.y.i., we don't trust you either.

 

What professor?

 

That's kind of vague, I have no idea what you're talking about. You could be right, he may be completely innocent. All I'm saying is, if we pluck someone off some battlefield and rough 'em up to save people, I'm all for that. If someone is illegaly arrested, then shame on us, I'm not gonna try and excuse it.

 

i personally support President Bush, the war, and the patriot act... at the end of the day i dont care if they hear i have a dentist appointment on the... 18th at 10:00 because are they arent going to care. and torture, who knows if we really do, only the people who did or didnt. but the bottom line is that terrorist acts were stopped because if the improvements since 9/11.

 

Well that's just the thing, when you arrest someone you have to either charge them with a crime or release them after 24 hours, so all those people sitting in Guantanamo who haven't been charged are being held illegally. Fear cannot justify direct violation of U.S. law and international human rights standards, and I personally think that the top minds of our government should be thinking more "what humane and effective interrogation techniques can we lawfully apply to make these suspects talk?" than "how can we get away with torture?"

 

Our government or me in general? You trust us a little too much, I think. We tend to design a lot of your war machinery.

And 'Foreigners generally believe that...' is that line directly from George Dubya's portfolio?

 

Do you honestly think that torturing people in some prison stopped a terrorist attack?

Has it made people hate us? yes.
Has it ruined lives? yes.
Do they (terrorists) have enough people that catching a few and torturing them won't really matter int he long run? yes.

Yes, I would agree that terrorist attacks may have happened if not for improvements, but not all of the improvements are exactly 'improving' anything.

 

They aren't American citizens, they're P.O.W.'s. Again, I'm only talking about the people we actually find on battlefields. Anyone else who is illegally arrested, what can I personally do about it? Nothing, all I can do is be disappointed in my government for doing such a thing.

 

Britain designs our war machinery, hmpf. Maybe, I can't prove it either way, but I'm going to have to doubt it, considering your country's amount of "war machinery." It's kind of lacking. Remember the Flaklands war and how the Argentians fought y'all so well?

The "all foreigners" refers to George W. Bush, yes. Most of them hate him, and in turn associate American citizens with that. Is it from his portfolio? I don't know what you're talking about.

 

Yes to the first three questions, and no to the last one. They can still give important information that we need.

 

No, the onus is on the the accuser to prove that the accused is guilty of crimes. Habeas Corpus and whatnot.

And no, there are not being treated as POWs. If they were, then it would be expected they would be treated as outlined in the Geneva Convention. Including, for instance, not torturing prisoners...

Doubtful. Torture's an awful way of gaining intelligence. There's no incentive for the person being tortured to give out truthful information.


I cannot abide a country that heralds itself as a bastion of freedom and human rights, and condones torture of human beings.