Snowdon is a dummy

Yeah I know. Sad though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Protection_Act

American Service-Members' Protection Act
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The American Service-Members' Protection Act (ASPA, Title 2 of Pub.L. 107–206, H.R. 4775, 116 Stat. 820, enacted August 2, 2002) is a United States federal law that aims "to protect United States military personnel and other elected and appointed officials of the United States government against criminal prosecution by an international criminal court to which the United States is not party." Introduced by US Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX)[1] it was an amendment to the 2002 Supplemental Appropriations Act for Further Recovery From and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States (H.R. 4775).[2] The bill was signed into law by George W. Bush on August 2, 2002.

ASPA authorizes the President to use “all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court”. This authorization has led the act to be nicknamed The Hague Invasion Act,[3][4] because the freeing of U.S. citizens by force might be possible only through an invasion of The Hague, Netherlands, the seat of several international criminal courts and of the Dutch government.

The Act prohibits federal, state and local governments and agencies (including courts and law enforcement agencies) from assisting the Court. For example, it prohibits the extradition of any person from the United States to the Court; it prohibits the transfer of classified national security information and law enforcement information to the Court; and it prohibits agents of the Court from conducting investigations in the United States.

The Act also prohibits U.S. military aid to countries that are party to the Court. However, exceptions are allowed for aid to NATO members, major non-NATO allies, Taiwan, and countries which have entered into “Article 98 agreements”, agreeing not to hand over U.S. nationals to the Court. The President may waive this prohibition if he determines that to do so is “important to the national interest of the United States”.

It being sad depend on whether you trust such courts to not play political games against the US using charges of war crimes as a tool or not.

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I would think that a materialist would have no other explanation for any behaviour that didn't express a need. Can you suggest any?

There's a question Apisa. You insisted you answered all questions. My having a bad day or otherwise is neither here nor there. My day was actually pretty normal. Getting out of bed at the time you do I consider to be very abnormal. A sign of nervous tension. I bet you take showers too.

Where's you answer to that question? Which is another question. But one at once eh? We don't want to rush you.

Can you suggest any explanation for a behaviour that doesn't express a need. Need being a relative term of course. A fact everybody knows who has been crouched over a 3 ft putt to save a double bogey when an earthquake comes on.

You even distort a word like "need" to feed your narcissism. And it goes so deep that you think it is only me you tried to smear in that amateur play-pen fashion.

You are very seriously stupid and have no shame in demonstrating the fact every ******* day.

lack of accountability on US armed forces is glaring.

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lack of accountability on US armed forces is glaring.

The members of the US armed forces are accountable to the US government and US courts.

The US National Security Agency has spied on French diplomats in Washington and at the UN, according to the latest claims in Le Monde newspaper.
[...]
A document dated August 2010 suggests intelligence stolen from foreign embassy computers ensured the US knew ahead of time the positions of other Security Council members, before a UN vote for a resolution imposing new sanctions on Iran.

The US was worried the French were drifting to the Brazilian side - who were opposed to implementing sanctions - when in truth they were always aligned to the US position, says our correspondent.

The intelligence agency quotes Susan Rice, then-US ambassador to the UN, who praises the work done by the NSA: "It helped me know... the truth, and reveal other [countries'] positions on sanctions, allowing us to keep one step ahead in the negotiations."

The members of the US armed forces are accountable to the US government and US courts.

In theory.

Lol... It takes a literally insane amount if wrongdoing to get you punished. Eg the guys who murdered an entire neighbourhood in Iraq out of anger at an IED attack walked free.

(Reuters) - A decorated American soldier was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Friday for killing 16 unarmed Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, in two bloody nighttime forays from his military post.

Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, a veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has admitted to slaughtering the villagers in attacks on their family compounds in Kandahar province in March 2012.

He pleaded guilty to the killings in June in a deal that spared him the death penalty, and a sentencing jury of six military personnel deliberated less than two hours on Friday before deciding he should spend the rest of his life in prison.

Bales, who appeared in a military court in Washington state in blue military dress, showed no emotion as the verdict was handed down, but his mother cried and rocked back and forth.

Army prosecutors said Bales acted alone and with premeditation when, armed with a pistol, a rifle and a grenade launcher, he left his outpost twice during the night, returning in the middle of his rampage to tell a fellow soldier, "I just shot up some people."

The killings marked the worst case of civilian deaths blamed on a rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and further eroded strained U.S.-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in Afghanistan.

"He wiped out generations and he ruined lives forever," prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Jay Morse told the jury in his closing arguments. "He should be known by one official title from this day until the day he dies: inmate."

In arguing for life without parole, Morse told jurors that Bales lacked a moral compass, and played video in which Bales could be seen returning to base on the day of the killings, cloaked in a blanket snatched during the rampage.

"This is the walk of a cold blooded killer," Morse said.

Defense attorneys had contended that Bales carried out the killings after suffering a breakdown under the pressure of the last of his four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. They said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury even before shipping off to Kandahar province.

"We won the case when we got the death penalty off the table," John Henry Browne, one of Bales' attorneys, said in a statement after the sentence was handed down, adding the defense would mount an automatic appeal.

'WE DIDN'T GET OUR WISH'

Some Afghan survivors of the attack and family members of the victims who had been flown to the United States to testify about the impact of the shooting later expressed disappointment at a news conference that the penalty was not stronger.

"This murderer jumped into my house in the middle of the night, killed 11 members of my family and then burned them," said villager Hajji Mohammad Wazir, who lost his wife and six of his seven children, among other relatives, in the attacks.

"We were brought all the way here from Afghanistan to see if justice would be served. But not our way. The justice was served (in the) American way, their way," he said. "We wanted this murderer to be executed but we didn't get our wish."

Bales' sentencing came the same day a separate military jury convicted U.S. Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan of killing 13 people in 2009 when he walked into a medical facility at Fort Hood, Texas, and opened fire on unarmed soldiers with a laser-sighted handgun. He could face the death penalty.

Prior to the sentencing, Bales told the jury on Thursday he had struggled with anger issues that worsened after his third military deployment, but that he had tried to disguise his problems behind a veneer of normalcy. He said he briefly sought treatment before his final deployment but stopped after he felt it was not working.

He also apologized, both to his fellow servicemen and to the Afghan villagers, for the killings, saying: "What I did is an act of cowardice behind a mask of fear, bullshit and bravado."

In seeking the possibility of parole for Bales, civilian defense attorney Emma Scanlan had tried to persuade the jury to look at Bales' life in entirety while deciding on an appropriate sentence.

"We don't throw out the first 38 years," Scanlan said. "That doesn't mean, again, that there is anything about this that is not completely horrific."

Scanlan read a letter Bales wrote to his children and family before the attack in which he compared Afghan children to his own, saying they love "to eat candy and play soccer."

"Those aren't the words of a cold-blooded murderer who likes to kill innocent women and children," Scanlan said.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bernard Orr)

U.S.

Let's hope Frank reads this... As he has trouble figuring out that all this spying is NOT to catch Mullah Omar.

Don't worry about me, Frank. Just tell me when you have processed the information contained in Walter's post (# 5,473,608), and what you've learnt from it. Take your time.

Theory hell as military men and women for that matter had been try and sentence under that theory for disobeying the rules of war.

It being sad depend on whether you trust such courts to not play political games against the US using charges of war crimes as a tool or not.

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It being sad depend on whether you trust such courts to not play political games against the US using charges of war crimes as a tool or not.

I wonder how much of that mistrust is rational and how much is paranoid... Anyway, the lack of accountability on US armed forces is glaring.