DebateGate

<<LOL....actually we all got a chance to witness a BS brigade on your part, with that latest rant.  But as long as it made you feel better.>>

Actually, you all got a chance to witness a typically moronic piece by a "conservative" media whore taken apart line-by-line to expose its ludicrous essence and total divorce from reason and reality.  I'm sorry but not particularly surprised that it went right over your head.  I'm confident there were some members of this group who were able to get it.

<<You point out areas where we're actually doing something about the abuses that have been noted . . . >>

Yeah, "actually doing something.>>  That's hilarious.  It's called "whitewashing" or "damage control," and yeah, you are actually doing it.  Proving, in my "twisted thought process" what?  That this is a cover-up in process?  BINGO!!!. 

<<Your Anti-American pathology obvioulsy has no bounds >>

Right.  So now it's considered "pathological" to be AGAINST torture and AGAINST the cover-up.  "Normal," of course, in Bush's America, is to SUPPORT these things.   

<<And yea, When the fact that the # of abuses brought up was a mere fraction of what makes up the military . . . >>

LMFAO.  The "fact" that the number of abuses is a mere fraction . . .   A "fact" that exists nowhere on earth except in the delusional fantasies of sirs and his demented ilk.  As if widespread and repeated instances of torture aren't a problem unless they can be proven by demonstrative evidence to affect 85% or more of all prisoners held in US custody.

 your frequent focus was on how well Bush and Co is able to hide all the rest of the abuses.  All without 1 scintella of facts/evidence to prove such.  Just your severe case of foaming at the mouth BDS

 <<Especually how your "Southern Stragety" racaist hypothosis was abundantly demonstrarted to be horse dren.>>

Yes.  "Abundantly demonstrated" to date being the single absurd quotation (from Pat Buchanan, of all people!) that the "Southern strategy" was merely the Republicans' well-meaning attempt to unite the causes of "states' rights" with human rights in one big, freedom-loving party.   Pat Buchanan denies it (in wildly self-contradictory terms) so OF COURSE it can't be true.  That, to the Republican "mind," is "abundantly demonstrated."  Just like they "abundantly demonstrated" that Bush never lies.

You're hilarious, sirs.  You never fail me.  Whenever I need some comic relief, I know just where to turn.  And that's invaluable.

<<Yet you keep focusing on it, [llack, or rather alleged lack of evidence] as if it does prove the allegations. >>

That's not true, either.  First of all, there IS no lack of evidence.  There's actually a good deal of evidence:

• Abu Ghraib
  Bhagram Base
  Secret prisons in Eastern Europe
  Secret prisons in Diego Garcia
  Mickey Mouse sentencing of low-ranking personnel
  Lack of prosecution of higher ranking officers
  Reluctance of the "President" to endorse anti-torture legislation

I have NEVER "focused" on lack of evidence as proof of wrongdoing.  Lack of evidence is something the DEFENDERS of torture raise to rebut the charges - - "Tee insists that  . . .  WITHOUT A SHRED of evidence that . . . " and this has to be dealt with.  I am not in the habit of simply ignoring anything said to contradict my beliefs, no matter how idiotic the contradiction may be.  I deal with it.  I point out the simple truth that government wrongdoing is not usually advertised by the wrongdoers, it is usually covered up (again, as anybody with any knowledge of the real world would be forced to admit) and given the resources they have to work under cover, it is often, most of the time, SUCCESSFULLY covered up, so that we never hear about it.

 For example, despite the passage of years, less than TEN PER CENT of the Abu Ghraib photos have ever been released to the public.  What are they afraid of?  What are they hiding?  Of course, to right-wing fantasists and persistent deniers of reality, like sirs, these pictures probably don't show anything wrong at all - - they are probably of birthday parties given by the guards for their prisoners, with everybody wearing funny paper hats and eating birthday cake.  To those of us more acquainted with the real world, those pictures probably show atrocities more horrible than anything the U.S. government has yet revealed, and are kept secret for that very reason.

So, when the non-existent "lack of evidence" is brought up - - inevitably by conservative defenders of the right to torture or by conservative deniers of torture - - the argument is answered with the common-sense proposition that OF COURSE you would not expect there to be much evidence of these things.  Even the Nazis knew better than to publicize their own misdeeds.  But to say that I focused on lack of evidence as proof of the allegations is just more total bullshit.  As usual.

<<Would anyone like top hear about my Pict ancestors?>>

Yeah, they've been much maligned and badly dePicted.  Tell us about it.

sirs:  <<Were you [hnumpah]  decrying the U.S. for daring to hold thousands upon thousands of Germans during WWII without "having been convicted yet"??  They're not your damn petty criminals H.  They didn't just try to hold up a 7/11 with a squirt gun.  They didn't just rough up some grandma and snatch her purse.  This isn't some crime investigation.  These are enemies taken during wartime acts. >>

MT:  <<Decry what?  They were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, weren't they? >>

sirs:    <<Still don't get it yet, do you.  Geneva convention, when it was applied, applied to unformed soldiers captured in war.  There was no provision applied to non-uniformed military combatants captured in war. >> 

OY.  OY.  OY!  WHY on earth would hnumpah "decry" the U.S. treatment of German POWs if it was in accordance with the Geneva Conventions?  And if these men are "non-uniformed military combatants captured in war" and thus NOT entitled to the Geneva Conventions protection, why not just SHOOT the whole damn bunch of Islamofascist beheading barbarians (which is EXACTLY what the US did (without ANY public outcry)  to German soldiers captured out of uniform in WWII?

<<Could there not have been a slower and more peacefull settlement that would produce the same thing but with less sudden displacement of others?>>

Definitely.  It could have been done with more justice and sensitivity, much more gradually.  There was Arab opposition to the project, sometimes violent opposition, but it wasn't universal and it's not unrealistic to think it might have been managed. 

The politics of the region even then were complex.  Britain and France were the colonial occupiers, with vast holdings in the region.  Their enemy was Germany.  The Zionists, who were almost all secular Jews, based their claim to the land primarily upon a concession from the British Government, the Balfour Declaration.  It was inevitable that they would be seen by the locals as agents of the colonial powers, particularly since their enemy was also Germany, even though the Zionists were (before and after the actual hostilities of WWII) killing British soldiers who were trying to strike a neutral course between the Jews and the Palestinians.   Inevitably, there were local nationalists throughout the region who believed that Germany was winning the war (during its early years) and would be their best bet for the future.  The local rulers, almost all of whom were installed by either the British or the French, would be naturally inclined to favour the cause of their colonial patrons.  Some of the native ruling class, including liberal professionals and academics, believed that the Jews were a modernizing force in the region and would be instrumental in bringing the Arab world into the 20th Century.  For the Palestinian occupants of the land, many of whom were being turfed out after the land was sold out from under their feet by absentee landowners in Beirut, Cairo, Damascus  and Istanbul, the Jews were obviously the enemy, and the enemy of their enemy (Germany) was naturally their friend.

The upshot was that there were various currents and factions in the Arab and Palestinian populations, which could have been exploited for alliances and assistance.  This never happened.

Israel was never an attractive destination for Western European or North American Jews before the War.  But the victims of the Holocaust had no options.  They simply no longer wanted to live in Europe.  More, they felt in their bones, they COULDN'T live in Europe.  This was strictly because of the Holocaust.  They were desperate to leave Europe.  It was literally the graveyard of their families.

The other effect of the Holocaust was less obvious.  It destroyed many Jews' faith in human nature.  They felt that no one gave a shit whether they lived or died, and those were the benevolent ones.  Others still actively wished them dead.  As that attitude took hold, the corollary quickly developed - - "Fuck the world, they stood by and watched what happened to us."  This led to a lack of empathy for the Arabs, an inability to see them as human beings with understandable problems and concerns, people who had to be reasoned with, compromised with, placated.  The Jews had come out alive where most of their relatives had perished in a kill-or-be-killed world and their attitudes were irrevocably altered by the experience.  The new attitude was not one that was focused upon building a lasting peace with their neighbours.