IS AMERICA A BULLY?

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I am not a monster, Olivier.

Of course you are.

Don't be so shy... You want innocent kids to remain in bondage forever, and think that whoever decided they should stay in Gitmo forever was a smart ass, who needs to be respected and not contradicted.

A monster you are. A bored, weak-hearted, cowardly, oh-so-normal monster, happy to stay misinformed, happy that crimes be committed in your name as long as you don't hear the victims scream.

Hiding behind Vichy is ridiculous.

The only reason America flexes its muscle less is because there's more scrutiny in the 21st Century. America still practices the death penalty and allows poor people to die from preventable diseases.

Your whole argument is based on an anachronism. And none of your platitudes change the fact that almost half a million Iraqis died as a result of the illegal invasion no matter how you try to spin it.

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About half a million people died in Iraq as a result of war-related causes between the US-led invasion in 2003 and mid-2011, an academic study suggests.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24547256

If you want to compare 21st century invasions why not look at the action in Sierra Leone? We managed to secure peace without killing half a million civilians.

The United Kingdom began a military intervention in Sierra Leone in May 2000 under the codename Operation Palliser. Although small numbers of British personnel had been deployed previously, Palliser was the first large-scale intervention by British forces in the Sierra Leone Civil War. In early May 2000, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—one of the main parties to the civil war—advanced on the country's capital, Freetown, prompting the British government to dispatch an "operational reconnaissance and liaison team" (ORLT) to prepare to evacuate foreign citizens. On 6 May, the RUF blocked the road connecting Freetown to the country's main airport, Lungi. The next day, British soldiers began to secure the airport and other areas essential to an evacuation. The majority of those who wished to leave were evacuated within the first two days of the operation, but many chose to stay following the arrival of British forces.

After the effective completion of the evacuation, the mandate of the British forces began to expand. They assisted with the evacuation of besieged peacekeepers—including several British ceasefire observers—and began to assist the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and the Sierra Leone Army (SLA). Despite the mission expansion, it was not until 17 May that British soldiers came into direct contact with the RUF. The rebels attacked a British position near Lungi airport, but were forced to retreat after a series of firefights. On the same day, the RUF's leader, Foday Sankoh, was captured by Sierra Leonean forces, leaving the RUF in disarray. After deciding that the RUF would not disarm voluntarily, the British began training the SLA for a confrontation. During the training mission, a patrol returning from a visit to Jordanian peacekeepers was taken captive by a militia group known as the West Side Boys. Negotiations achieved the release of five of the eleven soldiers, and three weeks into the crisis, British special forces launched a mission codenamed Operation Barras, freeing the remaining six. The success of Operation Barras restored confidence in the British mission; one academic suggested that its failure would have forced the British government to withdraw all its forces from Sierra Leone.

The overall British operation was mostly completed by September 2000. The RUF began to disarm after political pressure, and later economic sanctions, were exerted on Liberia—which had supported the RUF in exchange for conflict diamonds smuggled out of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leonean government eventually signed a ceasefire with the RUF that obliged the latter to enter the Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) process. By September 2001, when the British training teams were replaced by an international force, the DDR process was almost complete. British forces continued to be involved in Sierra Leone by providing the largest contribution of personnel to the international training team and advising on a restructuring of Sierra Leone's armed forces. A small force was deployed to the area in 2003 to ensure stability while several indictments and arrests were made by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The success of British operations in Sierra Leone vindicated several concepts, including the retention of high-readiness forces. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was keen to see Western interventions in other conflicts, and—along with France—supported the creation of several European Union Battlegroups for the purpose. As it happened, political opposition and later British commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq prevented further British operations in Africa.

If Tony Blair were looking for anything to bolster his belief in his Africa mission, his visit to Sierra Leone has provided it.

The people in this devastated and extremely poor country love him.

They love him for helping end the decade of civil war that has destroyed their country.

They love him for pledging never to turn his back on them and their attempts to cement their new democracy.

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

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I agree, Panzada, but I still think we have been showing greater restraint than previous world powers showed when they were at their most powerful.

With all due respect Frank, that is the sugar tit pacifier. The rag soaked in sugar-milk that comforts a discomfited baby at a Baptist revival.

All you need to do is read some of JTT's cut and paste jobs to know you're kidding yourself.

and I would rather be water-boarded than read anything by JTT.

Yes you are hiding behind Vichy. But you are right in a way, they were the same type of inhuman bureaucratic cowards as Gitmo supporters and perpetrators are. Vichy on Potomac.

There are no Gitmo supporters here that I know of,

So you're insisting on your own definitions, which means you can apply ridiculous comparisons 18th, not even 19th or 20th Century Britain to 21st Century America. When 21st Century Britain is compared you run back to your definitions again.

You're playing with loaded dice and you're still losing.

Frank Apisa wrote:

There are no Gitmo supporters here that I know of,

What difference does that make? Is America still detaining people, without trial, offshore so that they don't have the protection of American law?

You do support Gitmo.

You said right here that it was not immoral, since the government approved it, and that criticizing Gitmo on moral grounds was "presumptuous"... Your words.

Going by your logic you could ask how 18th Century Britain would have reacted to terrorists flying two passenger airliners into the Houses of Parliament.

They would probably have sued for peace meaning that 21st Century Americans are so much braver.

You're starting to sound like Foofie, and you don't want that.

Stop fantasizing about my ass, Frank.

You're on record supporting Gitmo continuous operation.

Hence you're just another ordinary monster.

Izzy...I am doing exactly what I said I was doing.

I am saying that America is IN MY OPINION not as abusive of its great power as other most-powerful-nations have been throughout history.