The general's report

[Skybird]

I find this worth to take note of - and remember it. It is a long essay by Seymour Hersh on General Taguba's report about his examination of abhu Graib. the general forsaw the problems for him personally when he was ordered to conduct that exmaination. He is said that sometimes the Pentagon felt like a Mafia to him.

Gen. Taguba was fired early this year. His report was not what they wanted it to be. If he would have lied instead, the outcome probably wouldn't have been any different for him. Consider him a casualty of war.

There could be serious legal consequences for Rumsfeld for having lied under oath. This time he would not be sued from initiatives in foreeign countries, but the US. i honestly hope so. He and the others should be held responsbile for the crimes they commited, including lying, deception of the public, launching unprovoked war of aggression and assaulting a foreign sovereign nation. Much of the tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths he - and others - must be given credit for.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?printable=true


“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

[The Avon Lady]

What about it? I read it from top to bottom.

That Bush and Rumsfeld were made aware of the abuses after the investigations began and let the military's investigative teams do the jobs they're assigned to do, without parading down Pennsylvania Avenue shouting out loud? So? Like wow!

And that in the end less than a dozen personnel were charged with the crimes? And that no one - not even Taguba - can place a finger on some more serious higher-ups being aware of the abuses BEFORE any investigation began, let alone finding anyone he can say with clarity instigated these abuses?

http://img474.imageshack.us/img474/6636/beatdeadhorsesanitysblokd0.jpg

[Skybird]

I recommend to put toothpicks in your eyes to keep your lids open when reading it a second time.

[The Avon Lady]

I recommend to put toothpicks in your eyes to keep your lids open when reading it a second time.
You've described the boringness of Seymour's hash to a tee. :yep:

UPDATE: It's been a while since weve heard of Hersh. You should know what kind of a character you're dealing with:

Sy Hersh's loose relationship with the literal truth (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/).

[Sailor Steve]

http://img474.imageshack.us/img474/6636/beatdeadhorsesanitysblokd0.jpg

That "dead" horse definitely talked! Beat it some more!:rotfl:

[Skybird]

So it means nothing that

- the CIA operates more secret prison camps than was previously known, for example in Mauretania and Ethiopia for covered airtransports to these places are easier to do than to secret priusons in Eastern europe,

- only the censored summary of the Taguba report was released to the public, while the 6000 pages-appendix alone should hold some dynamite according to sources who remain anonymous and claim to have had access to the complete work,

- Taguba got fired without prewarning and without giving reasons, while during his work he ran into serious resistance and adamant silence in the Pentagon,

- Taguba makes serious accusations against Rumsfeld and says he should be held accountable for having lied under oath abiout when he first saw the photos about Abu Ghraib - Taguba had finished and delivered his report roughly five months earlier than Rumsfeld claimed that first indices about Abu Ghraib had reached him and the government (first half of 2004),

- Taguba had serious difficulties to find senior officers to cooperate with the examination, instead found them to avoid getting involved, what tells something on the often claimed interest of the Pentagon to clear up it'S issues and scandals,

- Taguba delivered the report to "dozens" of adressess in the Pentagon - still the Pentagon remained silcne about the affair for months to come, and did not ract until coming under pressure from outside, which indicates a serious deficit in the politcal and congressional control of the civil political system over the internal proceedings of the military,

- Gen. Abizaidh apparently intimidated if not threatened Taguba personally when indicating to make not only the report but Taguba himself an object of examination, as is pointed out in a german essay describing a meeting of the two,

- Taguba was ordered to leave certain commandos' activities that apparently were linked to chasing Al Quaeda members and kill them, untouched, because - so claims Taguba - their activity were totally beyond control of Congress and should remain outside the counter-control and monitoring of civilian political instances that is nevertheless demanded by law,

- the examination of an internal army-team ended without results and apparanetly run against internal walls that again were to protect CIA hunter-killer commandos not only in Iraq, but a number of different countries. Note that several CIA personnels are sued [in absence) in european courts currently.

There is a reason why the military shall not be allowed to evade congressional control, in the US as well as in any other country where mechanism of civilian control over the military are established in laws and constitutions. Failing in that countercontrol means a hollowing-out of democracy, a shift of power from voted representatives to an isolated military elite, and thus the turning of a democracy into a tyranny. In this context I refer to the intense warnings in the farewell-speech of Eisenhower, and the example of the Third Reich.

So it is about what Taguba has to say on the issue, it is not about Hersh. You can ignore Hersh as long as you cannot prove that what he writes about Taguba and what he told Hersh is wrong quoted, or misinterpreted by Hersh.

[Heibges]

The secret prisons and the situation at Abu Graib were two seperate issues. As Avon Lady points out, after finding out about the disastrous PR situation at Abu Graib, it is little wonder they would want to cover it up.

The responsibility for Abu Graib lies with Colonel Janis Karpinski. Colonel Karpinksi is obviously your typical incompetent female officer. Like most female officers she lacked a take charge attitude, and her complete failure at her duties, allowed those folks at the prison to think they could get away with what they did. If this proves anything it proves that women have no business in the military. The one time in her life she was in charge of something important, she was a complete failure. Hurray for Equal Opportunity.

[The Avon Lady]

So it means nothing that

- the CIA operates more secret prison camps than was previously known, for example in Mauretania and Ethiopia for covered airtransports to these places are easier to do than to secret priusons in Eastern europe
There are/were no secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Prove it.

Waiting.....................
- only the censored summary of the Taguba report was released to the public, while the 6000 pages-appendix alone should hold some dynamite according to sources who remain anonymous and claim to have had access to the complete work,
Yes, more famous anonymous sources. Always anonymous with Sy Hersh. Nothing verifiable.

Have a look at A Ghost In The Iraqi Prison (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13394) to see the ups and downs of Hersh's career. To give a sample quote what Hersh's own camp have said long ago about him:

“I don’t read him anymore because I don’t trust him,” Max Holland, a Contributing Editor of the ultra-Leftist The Nation magazine, told the Columbia Journalism Review’s Sherman.

“I read what he writes with some skepticism or doubt or uncertainty,” said Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas (who, incidentally, comes by his own Leftist politics as grandson of longtime Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas).
- Taguba got fired without prewarning and without giving reasons,
The entire source for this is Hersh's article. If you look at the latest news articles (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070617/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryprison_070617210804) about Hersh's claims, they just state that Taguba retired. Anyway...............
while during his work he ran into serious resistance and adamant silence in the Pentagon,
Yep. Sounds like the Pentagon. Nothing new here. I would expect a response of "see/hear/speak no evil" from the Pentagon 99% of the time, today and 50 years ago, too. Nothing new here whatsoever.
- Taguba makes serious accusations against Rumsfeld and says he should be held accountable for having lied under oath abiout when he first saw the photos about Abu Ghraib
Please document for us when Rumsfeld actually saw the photos.
- Taguba had finished and delivered his report roughly five months earlier than Rumsfeld claimed that first indices about Abu Ghraib had reached him and the government (first half of 2004),
I don't put it beyond Rumsfeld to tell his personal assistant "don't show me those photos or tell me the details until you absolutely have to." I would actually assume that this happens in order to keep one's innocence on a legal technicality.

I have no problem sending Rumsfeld home. Oh...................... they did already. :yep:
- Taguba had serious difficulties to find senior officers to cooperate with the examination, instead found them to avoid getting involved, what tells something on the often claimed interest of the Pentagon to clear up it'S issues and scandals,
All that tells you is that everyone who could behaved like Sargeant Schultz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan's_Heroes#Sergeant_Schultz) on Hogan's Heros.

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/4877/schultzgc4.jpg
"I know nah-think!"
"I see nah-think!"

Heh-heh! My little ones make me watch an episode or 2 with them once in a while. :p
- Taguba delivered the report to "dozens" of adressess in the Pentagon - still the Pentagon remained silcne about the affair for months to come, and did not ract until coming under pressure from outside, which indicates a serious deficit in the politcal and congressional control of the civil political system over the internal proceedings of the military,
No problem with that opinion. Nothing new in suggesting better oversight for the undersight of various bureaucratic bodies. The military is not exempt. Nor are the Senate or Congress, for that matter.

One doesn't need Hersh to know this and it doesn't necessarily mean that someone's head MUST roll for it. Or maybe someone's head should. OK. Whatever.
- Gen. Abizaidh apparently intimidated if not threatened Taguba personally when indicating to make not only the report but Taguba himself an object of examination, as is pointed out in a german essay describing a meeting of the two,
So, we now have one side of the story, as told by Sy Hersh, an established twister of words and events.

I'll wait for the other side and it may not be forthcoming for reasons that would not give Hersh a scoop.
- Taguba was ordered to leave certain commandos' activities that apparently were linked to chasing Al Quaeda members and kill them, untouched, because - so claims Taguba - their activity were totally beyond control of Congress and should remain outside the counter-control and monitoring of civilian political instances that is nevertheless demanded by law,
There are indeed some things best left unknown. And the funny thing is that all of us here may have very well benefitted from it.

Maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree whether we are all shooting ourselves in the foot or not. Read The Trans-Atlantic Terror Divide (http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27949).
- the examination of an internal army-team ended without results and apparanetly run against internal walls that again were to protect CIA hunter-killer commandos not only in Iraq, but a number of different countries. Note that several CIA personnels are sued [in absence) in european courts currently.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Good luck, Europe!

One day Europe will cry when it will be unable to do the necessary dirty work that others did for Europe as Europe simultaneously spat in face of the US.
There is a reason why the military shall not be allowed to evade congressional control, in the US as well as in any other country where mechanism of civilian control over the military are established in laws and constitutions. Failing in that countercontrol means a hollowing-out of democracy, a shift of power from voted representatives to an isolated military elite, and thus the turning of a democracy into a tyranny. In this context I refer to the intense warnings in the farewell-speech of Eisenhower, and the example of the Third Reich.
In the game of survival in Islam's war against the west, let's see whose democracy survives last: Europe's or the States.

That's not to say that all's permissable in times of war but life is nevertheless very different under the circumstances.
So it is about what Taguba has to say on the issue, it is not about Hersh. You can ignore Hersh as long as you cannot prove that what he writes about Taguba and what he told Hersh is wrong quoted, or misinterpreted by Hersh.
And why? Because Hersh says so? Circular reasoning.

Because Taguba says so? I'm sure he has plenty of bones to pick and justfiably so. But his words in the hands of a con artist like Hersh? Nope. Hersh isn't a mere messenger. He's a provocateur and and established liar to boot.

[P_Funk]

Seriously AL you really aren't trying hard enough.

For one you can't summarily dismiss the Hersh article because you allege that he is no longer a reliable source. Nothing in your provided links assert that his written works since 9/11 are anything but factual. You have to prove that he's lying and not just rely on a general ad hominem attack. If anything the very first article in post #4 claims that the changing of the media through the internet is to blame for his preferred method of public speaking. There is no accusation of intentional misrepresentation in his written work however, aside from vague suspicions about his work on Kennedy, but since then the New Yorker carefully fact checks him, as stated by your article.

And of course the 2nd quote by Evan Thomas in post #8is misrepresented. The full quote is as follows, and in its proper context, ironically from an article provided by you in your previous post:
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas soured on Hersh after The Dark Side of Camelot, telling the Columbia Journalism Review in summer 2003, “I read what he writes with some skepticism or doubt or uncertainty.” But Thomas has since changed his mind. “Even if he’s made a few mistakes—even if you’re not sure what they are—overall you’d have to say he’s pretty much been ahead of everybody,” Thomas says. italics added.

And much of what you refuse to debate is in fact not a paraphrasing or analysis by Hersh but the direct quotes of the interview with General Taguba. That is no anonymous source.

And with regards to this link (A Ghost In The Iraqi Prison (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13394)), you give a very interesting source for use in your debunking of Hersh's truth. That that site is directly associated with the David Horrowitz Centre for Freedom can make me question their methods for criticizing anything. The propoganda spilled on the main site for the DHFC is itself enough to bring it under the category of a right wing mouth piece. But eithr way theres nothing more than an attempt here to slander the man by challenging his character, his alleged hatred for american leaders and institutions (it might as well say he hates america the way the article says it) an nothing that directly contradicts his facts in this case. This part in particular basically calls him out without saying it directly:
Is this good or ethical journalism? We report. You decide. That refers to an alleged blackmail overheard incompletely. But thats proof of nothing. The significant portion was never revealed but it is a tactic that biases the reader by emphasizing it. I'll say that in itself is bad journalism. That the next paragraph goes on to describe a scenario as if he had blackmailed the alleged source unethically shows the real reaching that this article does. The bias is heavy. It says that fact checkers could be duped by serious efforts to mislead. Wheres the proof of intent of that kind of significant deception?

[The Avon Lady]

Seriously AL you really aren't trying hard enough.
There's no need to.
For one you can't summarily dismiss the Hersh article because you allege that he is no longer a reliable source.
That was only half of it.
Nothing in your provided links assert that his written works since 9/11 are anything but factual.
So he has phases? Is this a decade thing or when the moon is full? How silly. He has a history of getting things right and making things up. Why must we do the guesswork every time he gets something printed.

"Check your sources" still applied when I last heard.
You have to prove that he's lying and not just rely on a general ad hominem attack.
Why does anyone have to believe a verified phoney? Are you that desparate?!
If anything the very first article in post #4 claims that the changing of the media through the internet is to blame for his preferred method of public speaking. There is no accusation of intentional misrepresentation in his written work however, aside from vague suspicions about his work on Kennedy, but since then the New Yorker carefully fact checks him, as stated by your article.

And of course the 2nd quote by Evan Thomas in post #8is misrepresented. The full quote is as follows, and in its proper context, ironically from an article provided by you in your previous post:
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas soured on Hersh after The Dark Side of Camelot, telling the Columbia Journalism Review in summer 2003, “I read what he writes with some skepticism or doubt or uncertainty.” But Thomas has since changed his mind. “Even if he’s made a few mistakes—even if you’re not sure what they are—overall you’d have to say he’s pretty much been ahead of everybody,” Thomas says. italics added.
I partially agree with Thomas. Hersh is often ahead of everybody but then he gets ahead of himself and the facts.
And much of what you refuse to debate is in fact not a paraphrasing or analysis by Hersh but the direct quotes of the interview with General Taguba. That is no anonymous source.
I have debated some of Taguba's claims here. They are not definitive. They are speculative. They are what's normally called "wishful thinking".
And with regards to this link (A Ghost In The Iraqi Prison (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13394)), you give a very interesting source for use in your debunking of Hersh's truth. That that site is directly associated with the David Horrowitz Centre for Freedom can make me question their methods for criticizing anything. The propoganda spilled on the main site for the DHFC is itself enough to bring it under the category of a right wing mouth piece.
Why? Because you're left and he's right (possibly in more ways than one)? Got some specific mud to sling?
But eithr way theres nothing more than an attempt here to slander the man by challenging his character, his alleged hatred for american leaders and institutions (it might as well say he hates america the way the article says it) an nothing that directly contradicts his facts in this case. This part in particular basically calls him out without saying it directly:
Is this good or ethical journalism? We report. You decide. That refers to an alleged blackmail overheard incompletely. But thats proof of nothing.
You'll ignore it. Obviously you have reason to.
The significant portion was never revealed but it is a tactic that biases the reader by emphasizing it. I'll say that in itself is bad journalism. That the next paragraph goes on to describe a scenario as if he had blackmailed the alleged source unethically shows the real reaching that this article does. The bias is heavy. It says that fact checkers could be duped by serious efforts to mislead. Wheres the proof of intent of that kind of significant deception?
What didn't you understand in the words: "He was practically blackmailing this guy"? This was a verbatim quote from the book Fit to Print: A.M. Rosenthal and His Times.

[P_Funk]

Nothing in your provided links assert that his written works since 9/11 are anything but factual. So he has phases? Is this a decade thing or when the moon is full? How silly. He has a history of getting things right and making things up. Why must we do the guesswork every time he gets something printed.

"Check your sources" still applied when I last heard. Actually if you want to reply to the article then you should actually prove its BS or else you should just ignore it. I mean if it is BS why even bother right? But to enter the conversation you need to bring something to it. If he has phases then tell which it is. Your own article says that the New Yorker meticulesly checks his facts and sources. There is no alleged journalistic incompetence since the Iraq War so the recent trend acknowledged by your own source states that this is a good "phase". As such if you want to contradict it you need proof.

You have to prove that he's lying and not just rely on a general ad hominem attack. Why does anyone have to believe a verified phoney? Are you that desparate?!Alleged phoney. See above.


And with regards to this link (A Ghost In The Iraqi Prison (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13394)), you give a very interesting source for use in your debunking of Hersh's truth. That that site is directly associated with the David Horrowitz Centre for Freedom can make me question their methods for criticizing anything. The propoganda spilled on the main site for the DHFC is itself enough to bring it under the category of a right wing mouth piece. Why? Because you're left and he's right (possibly in more ways than one)? Got some specific mud to sling? Because it doesn't make much sense logically to contradict one political slant with another. And there is enough criticism of the objectivity of David Horrowitz out there that using his organizations as a source isn't squeaky clean in discussions. By all means use them as a source for your own informed opinion, but do you think that I would be so stupid as to direct you to Democracy Now! for the purposes of an argument?

The significant portion was never revealed but it is a tactic that biases the reader by emphasizing it. I'll say that in itself is bad journalism. That the next paragraph goes on to describe a scenario as if he had blackmailed the alleged source unethically shows the real reaching that this article does. The bias is heavy. It says that fact checkers could be duped by serious efforts to mislead. Wheres the proof of intent of that kind of significant deception? What didn't you understand in the words: "He was practically blackmailing this guy"? This was a verbatim quote from the book Fit to Print: A.M. Rosenthal and His Times. According to the quote. But he never heard the whole thing, therefore its out of context. You bring up the fact that the General in Skybird's article infers certain things and speculates. Well this is effectively no different. And that was at a different publication. Its a hasty generalization to infer that one fractured remark as proof of anything other than suspicion. And suspicion is nothing to bury a man for. I'm talking in hard facts here. In an argument you make provable points. Hersh may very well be guilty of what you allege. However my point was the blatantly biased way the article presented it. It isn't just a game of who's side you're on. There is a bit of academic analysis involved in this.

[Skybird]

There are/were no secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Prove it.
The EU officially came to different conclusions than you, many monthd ago, and in the latest report just weeks ago. Which certainly will not impress you - no surprise.

Yes, more famous anonymous sources. Always anonymous with Sy Hersh. Nothing verifiable.
No, i saw links and sometime seven read articles on people claiming to have seen more of that report in vartous medias over the last 6-9 months. Which will noit impress you as lin as I don't spend another hour to google those links again. and nthe it will be the lefties links only.

Have a look at A Ghost In The Iraqi Prison (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13394) to see the ups and downs of Hersh's career. To give a sample quote what Hersh's own camp have said long ago about him:

“I don’t read him anymore because I don’t trust him,” Max Holland, a Contributing Editor of the ultra-Leftist The Nation magazine, told the Columbia Journalism Review’s Sherman.


“I read what he writes with some skepticism or doubt or uncertainty,” said Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas (who, incidentally, comes by his own Leftist politics as grandson of longtime Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas).



Ah, your links obviously are more valid than other links.

the German wipipedia site on Hersh is a bit better and more complete than the English entry:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

many of his works stand beyond doubt - until, today.

And just btw, AL, it is not about Hersh, it is common pratcice in this forum to shoot messenger sinstead of messages, you use that for destraction and for cleaning this issue easily off the table. It is about this general - who is still living. I would think that Hersh put wrong words into his mouth, the general would make himself heared, I even more expect that when having read his remark on integrity and honour in a soldier, and how deeply he felt wounded when he was accused of having let these iodeals down, while his superiors whewre faling in these ragards, and completely.

THE GENERAL IS THE ISSUE HERE, AND WHAT HE SAID AFTER HIS REPORT. IT'S NOT ABOUT HERSH.
-The entire source for this is Hersh's article. If you look at the latest news articles (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070617/pl_afp/usiraqmilitaryprison_070617210804) about Hersh's claims, they just state that Taguba retired. Anyway...............

That's how it is done. Uncomfortable militaries as well as high rankiung officials never get fired. They voluntarily retire instead. What a surprise.

Yep. Sounds like the Pentagon. Nothing new here. I would expect a response of "see/hear/speak no evil" from the Pentagon 99% of the time, today and 50 years ago, too. Nothing new here whatsoever.

That's what makes their internal examinations and their confessions of internally poutting light onto an issue so very much trustworthy. We do not need external control of the military.
Please document for us when Rumsfeld actually saw the photos.

please google yourself (like i did) to read about the hearings and note the non-matching dates yourself! And in anyway, I am not speaking in place of Taguba.

-I don't put it beyond Rumsfeld to tell his personal assistant "don't show me those photos or tell me the details until you absolutely have to." I would actually assume that this happens in order to keep one's innocence on a legal technicality.
Always the best and innocent intentions, I see. However, Taguba indicated something different, knowing from inside how the machinery works. At least as long as you cannot proove that hersh lied when quoting him.

I have no problem sending Rumsfeld home. Oh...................... they did already. :yep:

No. He voluntarily retired, and left office (according to the washington Times) in "the finest mjkilitary fashion". According to your logic that is a great difference.


So, we now have one side of the story, as told by Sy Hersh, an established twister of words and events.

... an established revealer and investigative journalist who uncovered many scandals and got credits for masjor parts of his works. According to Roosevelt he is the classical muckraker, and Roosevelt said that this kind of journailsm is absolutely inevitable for a healty democracy, but only turns into a pain when the sensations are not true. So prove that Hersh is lying here. Oh, I forgot, it is not about Hersh, but about Taguba.

There are indeed some things best left unknown. And the funny thing is that all of us here may have very well benefitted from it.

That's why political gremiums that are controlling secret military activities keep their results and meetings - secret, and are not meant to reveal thewir knoweldge to the public. As voted representatives they nevertheless issue thze people's control over the secret service, secret commandos, or whatever. Nevertheless - it is mandatory that there is a civilian control and monitoring of ALL military activities. Else you have accepted a de facto state-inside-the-state that is completely avoiding democratically legitimized counter control. this is a hidden policestate then, or a military tyranny.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Good luck, Europe!

One day Europe will cry when it will be unable to do the necessary dirty work that others did for Europe as Europe simultaneously spat in face of the US.

The Us claims to be the leading moral power in the world, and by quite some bits of it's constitutional values and ideals it could even be that. but to be in that leading position also means that more and better performance has to be expected of it. I claim for myself very much the same postio9n that Kissinger recently described in Helmut Schmidt:

Helmut is part of the immediate postwar generation that looked to America for special qualities of leadership as the best, at first, the only hope of the free peoples. He therefore has tended to judge America by special standards and has found American shortcomings more difficult to accept than those of societies toward which his expectations were lower. And, in the process, he has considered it an act of trust to call attention to challenges in need of urgent attention. Helmut's relations to America are those of a somewhat strict uncle intolerant of intellectual or moral sloth, insistent on high performance, convinced that Europe and Germany contribute more to the common good by assuming their own intellectual responsibility than by simply becoming spectators or executors of the design of others. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=116817

By this I do not wish to compare myself to the credibility of Schmidt, by far not. It's just that we look very much in the same way at the US, and are motivated by comparable reasons to do so.

If these exceptionally high morals are not relfected in the way in which the US fights, than it mirrors the inferiority of it's enemies, and becomes something nthat is not better than these. It is mandatory that certain key principles are not violated, never, at no costs. Else whatever will come from this fight already is infested by wrong ideals, lies, wrong doings. We can't afford to will the giving-up of such key principles - else we will stop to be who we are, and will be transformed into the forms of our enemies. Then we are not better than them.

In the game of survival in Islam's war against the west, let's see whose democracy survives last: Europe's or the States.
See above. what I wrote is true both for europe that is violating it's most basic ideals and rejects it's own historically grown identity, and the Us as well, betrying basic principals of it's constitution and bill of rights, and betryain the ideals of it's foundign fathers. both spheres are no real demoracy anymore, they are immense bureaucarcies that are hiding oligarchis and plutocratic structures of control. And although different, both support intense links to the Islamic world and accept to do even more damage to their inner identity. the force behind this is shortsighted selfishness and egoism of the few. when it continues like this, europe will fall earlier than Am,erica - but america will fall nevertheless, only abit later. we both need to learn to go back to our ethical roots and stick to these, not accepting to go the path "to the dark side of the force." It is not more powerful, but tempting, easier, persuasive, as Yoda rightly pointed out. ;)

[The Avon Lady]

No time today. I'll just respond to your first point.
There are/were no secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Prove it.
The EU officially came to different conclusions than you, many monthd ago, and in the latest report just weeks ago. Which certainly will not impress you - no surprise.
Tell me what impresses you about these Eurocrats on a high (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/496e8ca4-15f1-11dc-a7ce-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=fc3334c0-2f7a-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html)?

A short while ago, we had this report (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060700505.html). Quote:

"Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centers did indeed exist in Europe," Marty wrote.

Or, to put it more succinctly, "give us enough time and we’ll come up with something."

Also this report (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5054426.stm). Notice the smooth tongue talk:

The most serious charges are levelled at Poland and Romania, where Mr Marty says there is enough evidence to support suspicions that CIA secret prisons were established.

Did you catch the doublespeak? Let's highlight it, just in case you missed it:

Mr Marty says there is enough evidence to support suspicions

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

What he's saying and what you're swallowing is "we have our suspicions, and we offer as evidence of our suspicion and, of course, our suspicions are the cat's meow!"

But in all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised that such facilities could have existed. But so what?

I know! I have a suggestion that will make everybody happy! The CIA will go back to sticking the bad guys with poison umbrella tips or giving them exploding cigars.

That's it for now.