Set The Record Straight

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Khornet
For so many people, the least sin on America's part outweighs the massive crimes of her enemies. Been that way since the '30s, and always will.

So the Federal goververnment shouldn't be held accountable just because another country does something worse? Maybe I shouldn't be prosecuted for murdering one person if someone else killed 10 peaple last year.


"Your Honor, it was just one measly person, and he deserved it. He was a bad man. He beat his wife and kids. And everything else I do is so good. I gave his wife a new house, and besides he had a GUN. He could have killed me. And did I mention that I'm a really good person and that it seemed like the right thing to do at the time? Also, I'm the richest, most powerful man in the world, and if you try to convict me, I will buy your eternal soul after I bomb the everlasting hell out of you."

hmm. I'm thinking that won't fly.

Few people are comparing Bush, Clinton, et al, to Hitler or Stalin for the simple fact that Hitler and Stalin were punished for their crimes in the end. While the U.S. has not perpetrated crimes of the same magnitude, nevertheless, crimes have been committed. Our respone, as a whole is "oops, sorry about that", but when another country committs crimes it's an "Atrocity" or a "Threat to the freedom of all countries". America has never been held accountable for anything. Frankly, I just sick of the double standard.

-drew
 
America has never been held accountable for anything. Frankly, I just sick of the double standard.

Wow, you get the Osama bin Laden paraphrase of the day award.

Don't let the door hit ya...
 
What, so now I'm a terrorist if I DO believe in the rule of law?

Our sovereign law or international law? Sounds like you "believe" in international law.

I assume you think the whole war crimes tribunal in Brussels is a good thing. Right?

If you think America is a murderous nation, bent on the torture and domination of the rest of the world, why don't you go to someplace more peaceful like, say, FRANCE!
 
There's no positive way to spin your statement , partner. Seriously, if America has "never been" right, why do you continue to support her with your taxes?

Haul butt...or if you feel especially froggy, jump. I bet you keep your thoughts to yourself there in Waco, doncha?
 
fallingblock said
Most, if not all, of what you have cited is anecdotal evidence and speculation by individuals or politically-motivated 'investigations' as to what was done with training and aid provided by the U.S. to foreign goverments.

You say this, but how do you know this? Have you read all those books? Or do you find yourself thinking that it just can't possibly be true since it wouldn't jibe with the image of America that they taught us when we were kids. A priori rejection means never having to examine the evidence or risk having your cherished beliefs challenged. It's a form of intellectual laziness.

There are plenty of declassified US government documents showing connections. There is the testimony by those in the CIA who have first-hand knowledge of the events. There is the testimony of those who actually did the killing, and let's not forget the testimony by the victims who were strapped naked to tables and tortured by men such as US advisor Frank Mitrione and his class of Brazilian police students.

Take just the case of El Salvador. There is the testimony of the killers themselves such as Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez (a soldier in the First Infantry Brigade's Department 2 (Intelligence), Ricardo Castro (a graduate from West Point and a company commander in the Salvadoran Army), Rene Hurtado (intelligence agent for the Treasury Police), Nicolas Carranza (chief of the Salvadoran Treasury Police), Colonel Roberto Santivanez, Carlos Antonio Gomez Montano (paratrooper stationed at Ilopango Air Force Base).

Atlacatl Battalion was atrained and equipped by the US government, was responsible for numerous atrocities including slayings of six Jesuit priests and two women at a seminary.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html

So what do you want? A signed (and notarized, perhaps?) letter by the director of the CIA saying "I hereby authorize, instruct and order Colonel Nicolas Carranza to rape nuns and murder priests so long as he rationalizes it in the name of fighting communism"? You won't find it, just like you will never find anything signed by the Kennedy Brothers ordering the CIA to assassinate Castro even though everyone familiar with US foreign policy during that period knows that those two were all over the CIA to get rid of Castro. (And don't misunderstand me. If Castro takes an assassin's bullet or a hangman's noose, I will shed no tears for him.)

And for you current and former CIA guys out there reading this, I don't want this to sound like I am excoriating your agency as a rogue elephant. When Congressman Frank Church investigated the CIA in the 1970s, one of the questions he asked was whether the CIA was a "rogue elephant." He found that it wasn't. CIA does what the president orders it to do with monies appropriated by the Congress. (Now Washington is blaming the CIA for intel failures over Iraq - which is IMHO totally unfair to the agency.)

There's no positive way to spin your statement , partner. Seriously, if America has "never been" right,

Well, I for one would never say that "America is never right." America was right to go to war against Japan and Germany in 1941. America was right to stand up to the Russians over Berlin. (Sounds like a strawman, thumper.)

why do you continue to support her with your taxes?

Because I fear the consequences of nonpayment. A lien, levy or jailtime would tend to interrupt the flow of my day.

Khornet:
"Blame America First" Left.

That's really not where I am coming from, khornet. I am hardly a leftist, I am not "blaming America first," I do not "hate America," and I am not upset that Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election. It appears to me that your claim is a form of ad hominem.

Tired of the double standard? Then leave.

Ah yes, that old standby. "America: love it or leave it." Intellectual engagement reduced to bumber sticker sloganeering.

Even the smallest speck of dirt shows when you're the one wearing white.

I think that there is some truth to that. Crimes committed by Soviets do not really surprise us, but finding out that the US government allied itself with fingernail-pullers against the Jeffersonians somewhere.....it's disheartening.

The Shah's folks were doing the skulduggery and naughty deeds, not U.S. personnel.

I bet that Iranian mullahs could offer similar rationalizations for their support for Hezbollah. I don't buy it. When you sponsor terror, when you train them, give them weapons, money, intelligence, and encouragement, then the blood of the victims is on your hands. In the case of Iran, the CIA-sponsored putsch (Operation Ajax) and subsequent US support for the Shah managed to alienate a country that should have been an allied constitutional republic. Anti-US sentiment grew and then exploded in 1979. Over the longterm, did Operation Ajax really further our nation's own rational self-interests? I do not think that it did.

Our troops are mostley [sic] out of Saudia Arabia, this was a source of contention in the region.

We now have bases scattered throughout the region in Oman, UAE, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Djibouti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, etc. More than 725 military bases throughout the world. We will be in Iraq for years if not decades. See _The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic_ by Chalmers Johnson (Henry Holt and Company: 2004).

Are you one of our men and women?... If you aren't then how dare you presume to know what our young men should or shouldn't do.

Because I am a tax-paying citizen in a republic, not a subject of a military dictatorship. We pay your salary, soldier. You work for us.

As one of those men, I can tell you that I know of the atrocities committed by Saddam

The crimes of Saddam are well-documented. They were well-documented even during the 1980s when Rummy was toasting Saddam, when the US supported Saddam with material and intelligence. Saddam's crimes are not why the US went to war last year.

Also, I doubt anyone here has a higher security clearance than the president and his advisors. They probably know quite a few things about the situation that we don't.

Bush, Cheney and Rummy sure have acted as if they knew something that the rest of us. Turned out that their high security clearances notwithstanding, they were either clueless or dishonest with us. In either event, it doesn't exactly make me want to trust anything more that they say.

you might not be here if it wasn't for the US "meddling" in the affairs of other nations.

The US knew that the Reich was exterminating Jews, but was still turning back Jewish refugees by the boatload. We did not go to war until after Germany declared war on us. Hitler's "Final Solution" had nothing to do with it.
 
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War is certainly good for business!

In this case, it was also in the long-term strategic interest of the U.S. middle east policy, as well as of outstanding benefit to the Iraqi people.

Fallingblock, I’ve pointed out on several occasions that the war could and would probably have some long-term benefits. However, in my opinion, the continued profitability of U.S. oil companies or even the putative freedom of the Iraqi people are not worth the cost in American lives, the damage to Constitutional governance, and the ambiguous morality of this war.

The ends do not justify the means. The institution of slavery brought tremendous economic and cultural benefits to the U.S. and arguably to the slaves themselves, but that doesn’t make it right. The war against Iraq was also wrong, regardless of what good may come out of it.

~G. Fink
 
idd, sorry you got confused...Perhaps my reference to Waco threw you off? *hint* I was speaking of macviolinist's post.

Specifically, this statement:

America has never been held accountable for anything. Frankly, I just sick of the double standard.
 
Ah yes, that old standby. "America: love it or leave it." Intellectual engagement reduced to bumber sticker sloganeering.

Call it whatever the hell you want. You don't like it here, get out. My dad's blood, his father's blood, and the blood of airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines were spilled in defense of this country. :cuss: :cuss: 's like you who equate this country and its actions to those of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia can kiss my (*)

There is no "Intellectual engagement" when family members leave parts of themselves on the battle field in defense of their nation.
 
Ojibweindian,
My father was a medic in the First Infantry Diviosion during WW2. He was on the front lines in Europe for 19 month, and participated in (among others) The Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of the Hurtgen Forrest. He did it precisely so that I can engage intellectually in the causes and consequences of war.

Thumper,
I never said America was "never right". I said the leaders of the Federal government are never held accountable for their actions. Nor did I ever say that any American, criminal or not, should be held accountable to an international tribunal. Why do have such a problem with the idea that politicians should be held accountable for their actions? Why do you think it's ok for Our Glorious Leaders to violate our constitution overseas and not be tried on charges here?

-drew
 
What have YOU done?

Comparing America to Nazi Germany and the USSR, then hiding behind your father's service is dubious.

Why do you think it's ok for Our Glorious Leaders to violate our constitution overseas and not be tried on charges here?

Simple. The Constitution applies to AMERICAN CITIZENS, not foreigners in another land.

You're a "globalist", aren't you?
 
indian,

I believe he is, though he deftly sidestepped the issue with the "nor did I ever say that any American, criminal or not, should be held accountable to an international tribunal" comment.

I suspect he's already determined that the internationalists' point of view is not too well respected here.

His earlier comments belie his position, however. Just my opinion.

Rude question: Who are you rooting for in November, Mac?
 
Ojibweindian,
I did not compare America to the USSR or Nazi Germany. As a matter of fact, I specifically said that such comparison does not work.

The Constitution applies to AMERICAN CITIZENS
.

Exactly my point. The constitution applies to Americans all over the world. If Amercans break American law in Iran, Iran, Nicaragua, or Viet Nam, or anywhere else they are still Americans and subject to our laws and our Constitution. And no, I am not a globalist.

-drew
 
Tired of the double standard? Then leave.

Whoa, dude... time warp. Flashes me back to the 60's when that pathetic reply was on the bumper stickers:

America: Love it or Leave it.

Ten years later, it was reborn in another form:

America: get your heart in or get your (picture of donkey) out!

Of course, the logical folly is that anybody who is complaining about how America is must not be a true American. That would apply to Martin Luther King, the Viet nam war protesters, the people who were calling for Nixon's impeachment... there have been lots of times that Americans have complained about what their government or (specifically) what the president was doing.

And, thank God they did.

And thank God most Americans don't believe in the moronic philosophy of "anybody who doesn't think like me has to leave".
 
My dad's blood, his father's blood, and the blood of airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines were spilled in defense of this country.

That's probably not a card you want to flip out of the deck. I prepared the medal board for my father's burial at Arlington. Six bronze stars, two silver stars, two purple hearts, a ranger badge and more ribbons than you could fit into five rows of bars. He served the ENTIRE war from Dec 7 on in the Pacific and survived the Japanese attacks on Scofield barracks. Served 33 years total service, retired at full colonel. I also had two brothers in, both served in country during Viet nam. I would have been the third except I had the blind luck of getting a high draft lottery number, or I would have been on the next boat to that dump. I'm currently married to a 25 year Navy veteran who is the current commander of a Navy Reserve Medical unit. She was activated for the full duration of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, but (thank God) not yet for this one.

I'll tell you what my father fought for, because it's the same thing he taught me: don't take crap off anybody and don't salute some lying arse wipe just because he got elected (sort of). Being an American doesn't require you to leave your brains at the door when you sign on.

Bottom line is that there are tons of veterans who opposed Bush's stupid war. There were thousands of them at the rallies, they just didn't get shown on TV because they didn't "fit the image" of the peacenik war protester. They also destroy the myth that the people who oppose the war don't support the military, because we ARE or WERE the military. We just don't like having troops sent into combat on the basis of a pack of lies.
 
She was activated for the full duration of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, but (thank God) not yet for this one.

Well, I'm sure that if she does, she'll appreciate your overwhelming support.

Undermining the morale of those who serve during wartime (and I know FIRSTHAND what I'm talking about) is deplorable...but hey, your daddy served with honor...keep smearing your country. I'm sure his comrades buried along the French coastline would be proud.
 
Well, I'm sure that if she does, she'll appreciate your overwhelming support.
Undermining the morale of those who serve during wartime (and I know FIRSTHAND what I'm talking about) is deplorable...but hey, your daddy served with honor...keep smearing your country. I'm sure his comrades buried along the French coastline would be proud.

First of all, she (like all reservists) do get the support of their families.

Your statement that the people protesting the deployment are damaging morale is a lie that is both ignorant and despicable. The facts are many of them hope it will force an early withdrawal.

First of all, you don't know jack about morale at present. You are not seeing the troops come back and hearing what they say when cameras are not on. You are not aware of the level of problem morale is in actives and reserves not because of "press coverage" or "protests" but because they were promised a road home when they got to Baghdad and got stuck as an occupational force that will serve for years.

You also don't know what affect the recent implementation of "stop-leave" on the reservists returning from Iraq had... because they are restricted from leaving the service so they know they will be shipped back again if needed. They are locked in and can't get out.

I could fill an encyclopedia with what you don't know, but if it comforts you to think the morale disaster in Iraq is due to those who oppose the war, I guess it's the only comfort you can get. BTW: if you think I am opposed to Bush, you should hear what the reserve troops think of him. You won't hear those sound bytes on Fox news.
 
From my post (the one you didn't read):

He served the ENTIRE war from Dec 7 on in the Pacific and survived the Japanese attacks on Scofield barracks.

regarding your snide aside:


keep smearing your country. I'm sure his comrades buried along the French coastline would be proud.

There were very few French troops killed in the Pacific Theater.

As for your statement I am smearing the country, I wonder if you will live long enough to ever learn: George Bush is NOT this country. he is just the elected (?) president. Last time I checked, it was still legal to dispute his actions and I am disputing them along with things he says that are proven false.
 
You should have heard what we said about Clinton when I was in.

The general public was not privy to the information at the time, but the reserve units were given directives to discipline officers or enlisted who spoke against Clinton after it became known that he was a running joke among the ranks. My wife was second in command of the unit then, her entire unit was warned about it and it was for real: people were disciplined for it.

It's also the reason you will never hear one word uttered aloud by a reservist today against Bush or his policies. Freedom of speech is one of the rights you give up in the military.
 
What part of "FIRSTHAND" did you trip over there, bub?

What, you have a handle on deployed soldiers' feelings because you pinned your daddy's medals on? To paraphrase fix: I was there!

Ignorant? Hardly. I wont descend into the blatant name calling, but I will continue to enjoy watching you marginalize yourself.

Seems that I and the other actual Vets here are pretty much in agreement. Kind of turns your current position into mush.

Have fun with it, bountyhunter (smirk). Hey, do you have one of those cool plastic badges? Seriously, I want to know.

:D
 
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