Walter Hinteler wrote:ican711nm wrote:To the best of your knowledge are there any troops in Iraq under UN command?
I really don't understand this question, especially, why it is posed towards me.
I guess I mistakenly thought you might know the answer. Sorry about that.
ican711nm wrote: Also, whose country's troops in Africa that are allegedly under UN command are allegedly perpetrators of atrocities in Africa?
Walter Hinteler wrote:Are you examining me now? Why on earth should I answer this?
No, I am not examining you. Again, I guess I mistakenly thought you might know the answer. Sorry about that. If my guess is true, there is zero reason why you should answer that question.
cicerone imposter wrote:
You presume wrong. All I'm saying is that I'm not about to determine the guilt or innocence of those soldiers from 10,000 miles away. If you bother to go back and read my posts, you'll see it. Fox believes it's not possible. I, on the other hand, do not know. Quit your assumptions about what I mean, and get back to your yada yada yada. It's more fun that way.
Comment:
When we look at the generals in the US and and leadership from Sanchez, Franks to Myers there is impeccable character. Though there may have momentarily been a bit of oversight but the moment it was detected the military was right back on the ball with the proper protocol. Congress got involved and even today the conduct of the US soldier is being scrutinized so as to insure they perform within all moral standards of conduct.
To compare this with the UN is logical but when you realize that the UN does not have the same level structure of self scrutiny then you will realize the UN is susceptible to corruption and has little effectiveness when it comes to "peacekeeping". Today the press has been the main form of scrutiny directed at the UN. Number one rule... peace keepers need to be moral to obtain trust and succeed in the mission. What missions have the UN succeed at lately? At the onset of the Iraqi war.. I wonder if the average Iraqi hated the UN more than they really hated America...
A military is only as strong as the principles and people that commandeer it.
Quote, "A military is only as strong as the principles and people that commandeer it." I agree with this, but I'm not so sure the US military of today fits that description.
cicerone imposter wrote:Quote, "A military is only as strong as the principles and people that commandeer it." I agree with this, but I'm not so sure the US military of today fits that description.
I know a person would think people have blinders on considering all the abuse scandals of the past few years. I realize the line of it just being a few bad apples, but to me it just don't wash,
but then I am a usual suspect of the blame America first crowd being my treasonous self gettin all my information from terrorist.
revel, Be careful of what you say; read the following article about our CIA removing terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation. You lose all your Constitutional Rights.
*************************************
Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad to Jails
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: March 6, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 5 - The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.
The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.
The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government's efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration's public pledge to provide safeguards against torture.
In providing a detailed description of the program, a senior United States official said that it had been aimed only at those suspected of knowing about terrorist operations, and emphasized that the C.I.A. had gone to great lengths to ensure that they were detained under humane conditions and not tortured.
The official would not discuss any legal directive under which the agency operated, but said that the "C.I.A. has existing authorities to lawfully conduct these operations."
The official declined to be named but agreed to discuss the program to rebut the assertions that the United States used the program to secretly send people to other countries for the purpose of torture. The transfers were portrayed as an alternative to what American officials have said is the costly, manpower-intensive process of housing them in the United States or in American-run facilities in other countries.
In recent weeks, several former detainees have described being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and brutal treatment during months spent in detention under the program in Egypt and other countries. The official would not discuss specific cases, but did not dispute that there had been instances in which prisoners were mistreated. The official said none had died.
The official said the C.I.A.'s inspector general was reviewing the rendition program as one of at least a half-dozen inquiries within the agency of possible misconduct involving the detention, interrogation and rendition of suspected terrorists.
In public, the Bush administration has refused to confirm that the rendition program exists, saying only in response to questions about it that the United States did not hand over people to face torture. The official refused to say how many prisoners had been transferred as part of the program. But former government officials say that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. has flown 100 to 150 suspected terrorists from one foreign country to another, including to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan.
Each of those countries has been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture in its prisons. But the official said that guidelines enforced within the C.I.A. require that no transfer take place before the receiving country provides assurances that the prisoner will be treated humanely, and that United States personnel are assigned to monitor compliance.
"We get assurances, we check on those assurances, and we double-check on these assurances to make sure that people are being handled properly in respect to human rights," the official said. The official said that compliance had been "very high" but added, "Nothing is 100 percent unless we're sitting there staring at them 24 hours a day."
It has long been known that the C.I.A. has held a small group of high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in secret sites overseas, and that the United States military continues to detain hundreds of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The rendition program was intended to augment those operations, according to former government officials, by allowing the United States to gain intelligence from the interrogations of the prisoners, most of whom were sent to their countries of birth or citizenship
Italian Reporter Arrives in Rome Amid Questions
By JASON HOROWITZ
Published: March 6, 2005
ROME, March 5 - Giuliana Sgrena arrived in Rome on Saturday, a day after American troops at a checkpoint in Baghdad fired on the car taking her to the airport following her release from kidnappers.
Ms. Sgrena, a 56-year-old journalist for Il Manifesto, a leftist Rome daily, was assisted off the plane in a wheelchair at Rome's Ciampino airport, where she was greeted by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and her relatives.
An ambulance then took her to a military clinic for on operation on her collarbone, where she was hit by shrapnel during Friday night's shooting, in which an Italian secret service agent, Nicola Calipari, was killed trying to protect her.
According to the Italian news agency ANSA, Ms. Sgrena told a friend, "The most difficult moment was when I saw the person who had saved me die in my arms."
The American military said the car carrying Ms. Sgrena and the Italian agents was speeding to the airport as it approached a checkpoint. Soldiers shot into the engine block after trying to warn the driver to stop by "by hand-and-arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car," a statement said.
But on Saturday, some members of the Italian opposition, which has fiercely criticized the presence of Italian troops in Iraq, expressed doubt about the American version.
"I don't believe a word the Americans are saying," said Oliviero Diliberto, a Communist deputy in the lower house of Italy's Parliament. "I think there is something really dirty about all this business. Next week we will once again propose a measure to pull the troops out of Iraq."
Last month, Italy's Senate voted to approve funding to keep Italy's roughly 3,000 troops in Iraq.
This month, things might change.
revel wrote: ... I know a person would think people have blinders on considering all the abuse scandals of the past few years. I realize the line of it just being a few bad apples, but to me it just don't wash, but then I am a usual suspect of the blame America first crowd being my treasonous self gettin all my information from terrorist.
OK Revel! Let's suppose your view is the perceptive, the rational, the true view, and mine is the deceptive, irrational, and false view. Then you will go to your grave convinced tomorrow will be worse than today, and I will go to my grave convinced tomorrow will be better than today. Because of your absence of hope you will lack the will to try and make things better. While because of my prescence of hope I will possess the will to try and make things better. You will be undisappointed and hopeless the rest of your life.
I will be disappointed and hopeless only after I die.
I definitely prefer my expectation to yours, even if
your expectation were to turn out to be the valid one.
But what if my expectation is valid and yours is not? You'll miss
all your opportunities to make things better.
I won't miss
all my opportunities to make things better.
I definitely prefer my expectation to yours, even if
my expectation were to turn out to be the valid one.
Lose lose for you. Win win for me. Remember Yogi Berra's immortal words: "It ain't over 'til its over." And don't forget W.C. Fields's famous words: "We shall see my little chickadee." :wink:
seems to me the 3 primary people who seem to think they have a firm grasp on "the truth" are preachers/psychiatriatists/politiciansm which are the same people who, in the end, have the least grasp.
ican711nm wrote:revel wrote: ... I know a person would think people have blinders on considering all the abuse scandals of the past few years. I realize the line of it just being a few bad apples, but to me it just don't wash, but then I am a usual suspect of the blame America first crowd being my treasonous self gettin all my information from terrorist.
OK Revel! Let's suppose your view is the perceptive, the rational, the true view, and mine is the deceptive, irrational, and false view. Then you will go to your grave convinced tomorrow will be worse than today, and I will go to my grave convinced tomorrow will be better than today. Because of your absence of hope you will lack the will to try and make things better. While because of my prescence of hope I will possess the will to try and make things better. You will be undisappointed and hopeless the rest of your life.
I will be disappointed and hopeless only after I die.
I definitely prefer my expectation to yours, even if
your expectation were to turn out to be the valid one.
But what if my expectation is valid and yours is not? You'll miss
all your opportunities to make things better.
I won't miss
all my opportunities to make things better.
I definitely prefer my expectation to yours, even if
my expectation were to turn out to be the valid one.
Lose lose for you. Win win for me. Remember Yogi Berra's immortal words: "It ain't over 'til its over." And don't forget W.C. Fields's famous words: "We shall see my little chickadee." :wink:
I am not being purposely obtuse; I really can't understand how you arrived at some of your statements just from my post regarding the prisoner abuse scandal.
It happened, it is a fact. To deny it happened is not going to make it go away and change anything regarding how the world unfolds.
I have been reading the Italian shooting and while I think that was an unfortunate accident that may or may not have been avoided if they were not so quick to shoot and ask questions later. However, it is hard for people who are not in the line of fire to judge what those that are in the line of fire perceive the danger to be. I really don't buy the Italian woman's story of it being an American plot. To me she just comes off as someone with an axe to grind and is fast loosing credibility.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20050306/ts_nm/iraq_dc
Quote:Iraqi Assembly to Meet, Hopes for New Government
Sun Mar 6, 4:09 AM ET
By Mariam Karouny
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites) will hold a meeting of its newly elected National Assembly in 10 days with or without a new government, the deputy prime minister said on Sunday, hoping to instill a sense of order amid the daily violence.
Five weeks after elections, the lack of agreement between leading parties over who will lead the new government has fanned fears the unrest of insurgents will spiral unchecked.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih said he hoped politicians would end horse-trading over top posts before the meeting.
"The meeting will be on March 16 and we agreed to continue meetings (on a government) and hope to reach an agreement by then," Salih told Reuters. "If we don't reach an agreement then the National Assembly will begin its work and discussions will continue inside the assembly."
The main point of contention between the three leading parties is who will be prime minister.
A Shi'ite alliance which won a slim parliamentary majority in the Jan. 30 polls, gaining power after decades of Sunni Arab domination under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), has chosen Ibrahim Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister.
Pro-American interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is also bidding to keep his job.
Both have launched a charm offensive with the Kurds who, having come second in the elections, can make or break a deal. The Shi'ite alliance needs the Kurdish vote to secure the two-thirds majority required to select a new government.
HUNG PARLIAMENT
The powerful Kurdish coalition said on Saturday that it would not back the Shi'ite alliance unless assured there would be no imposition of an Islamic fundamentalist state.
Earlier Ali al-Lami, spokesman for the Shi'ite Political Council, part of the Shi'ite bloc, said the Kurds were demanding guarantees such as clarifying the status of the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.
But with talks running for weeks, politicians have voiced fears of a hung parliament, with Allawi running the country in a caretaker role until a compromise is found.
Many Iraqis fear this could send a signal of weakness to Sunni Arab insurgents bent on bringing down the U.S.-backed interim government and stalling efforts to form the new cabinet.
For all parties, a balance of sectarian interests is crucial to boost the government's legitimacy after many Sunni Arabs boycotted the polls or were too afraid to vote.
The 20 percent Sunni Arab minority has little representation in Iraq's new parliament, fueling an insurgency in Sunni areas.
The U.S. military said on Sunday 400 suspected terrorists had been detained in Anbar province, a Sunni Arab dominated region where several areas are controlled by insurgents. "Our forces, in conjunction with Iraqi security forces, will maintain enhanced operations to continue to keep the pressure turned up on the insurgency," said Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division.
Personally I think the way they set this up is having the effect of thwarting the will of majority who voted for the main Shiite Alliance.
revel wrote: I really don't buy the Italian woman's story of it being an American plot. To me she just comes off as someone with an axe to grind and is fast loosing credibility.
Well, I've heard the interview and read the additional stories.
Looking in this light, the Italina Secret Service seems to be "someone with an axe to grind and fast loosing credibility" as well.
The story gets quite unbelievable more and more, and since no additional facts are yet known from the American site, we'll still have to wait.
Calipari, the shot head of Italian Intelligence in Iraq, died by one shot in the head according to the autopsy.
I too have noticed that the story keeps changing from the Italians' side. The details of American side, while receiving review, will no doubt not be aired to a sometimes less-than-responsible press as the Americans do not wish to inform the terrorists of what criteria is used to make judgments at check points. What is being reported that the Americans said, however, has been consistent in every detail.
To Revel's assertion that we should have not been so quick to shoot and ask questions later, tell that to the brave young men who have been gravely wounded, lost limbs and eyes, and who have lost their lives when seemingly innocuous automobiles blew up in their faces. As they have learned from their mistakes and implemented different controls, there have been far fewer such deaths and injuries.
Are you going to tell the police officer not to use deadly force when confronted by a charging suspect who refuses to stop when ordered to stop? Are you going to tell your son and daughter in uniform that if it fails to stop when ordered, by all means do not shoot to stop the car speeding toward you unless you are positive it is a car bomb?
Can 'unarmed' people be killed in both scenarios? Yes and it happens. Have the police or military acted improperly? No they have not.
Foxfyre wrote: Have the police or military acted improperly? No they have not.
Well, Rumsfeld (today) as well as Rice and Bush (yesterday/ the day before yesterday) said that would be investigated.
Foxfyre wrote:I too have noticed that the story keeps changing from the Italians' side.
Which is quite naturals, since only today the prosecutors could start there with there investigations.
