The Glade 4.0

Okay, why is an extremely expensive, civilian slaughtering, obsolete bombing strategy that also happens to be a war crime, such an incredibly wonderful buzz word for the Republican war monger candidates for the presidency of this great land?

Geneva Accords, Protocol I of 1977 outlawed carpet bombing and other forms of indiscriminatory bombing - almost 40 years ago. That was a direct result of the USA using it in Viet Nam. Of course the amendmemt wasn't put out until after the USA was out of Viet Nam.

If those idiots don't know this you would think their speechwriters could do a little homework.

I am not going to vote for anyone who proclaims loudly that one of their first acts in office is going to become a war criminal and direct others to do so.

Also, it is an extremely inefficient use of resources. Wasteful of the taxpayers money.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I've never seen a cost benefit analysis regarding carpet bombing. I suspect that it's pretty cheap.

Still, I totally agree. Saw an interview with Trump about how he was going to bring back torture. Oh, and it's ok because the folks we are fighting are really bad guys.

No no remember, it's not torture, it's "enhanced interrogation". (Incoming a certain person in 3...2...)

They're using carpet bombing in a colloquial sense, not a literal sense. The average person does not know what it means other than "dropping lots of bombs"; they just see pictures of huge bomb streams falling out of B-52s and think that must be devastating, never mind that it's obsolete.

You, in fact, said so yourself, so I'm struggling to imagine why you think that the Air Force would actually attempt to use bombing procedures it hasn't used since World War II - no, we did not use "Carpet bombing" in Viet Nam, B-52 raids notwithstanding. The B-52 raids in question were either raids against forces in the field (Arc Light), excluded city areas (Rolling Thunder, where Haiphong and Hanoi were off limits) or targeted actual strategic assets (Linebacker-series). "Indiscriminate bombing" does not mean "bombing where civilians might get killed"; it means not even trying to hit specific targets and just bombing the living **** out of everything.

In fact, a commentator actually pointed out after one of the debates that while Cruz was using the term carpet bombing, his description of it was a description of an intensive, but targeted, bombing campaign - interestingly, what all these guided munitions we use these days are actually for.

So, essentially, you're claiming you're not going to vote for Republicans because they're using a term wrong, and dressing it up with concerns about "war crimes" despite knowing perfectly well that it's an obsolete tactic that makes no sense to engage in. This is clearly a much more serious concern than a ruinous economic policy, or... for that matter, someone who mishandles classified information or covers for her husband's sexual misbehavior.

Hypothetical crimes are definitely a bigger problem than real ones, you know.



Iron bombs are cheaper than guided bombs, by a lot but you use a lot more of them and there's fixed costs so I don't know that there's a price advantage either way.



Whether it's enhanced interrogation or not, it isn't torture. We use it for training purposes. Nothing like showing up once every few months for some drive-by snark though. Next time, if you have something to say just **** say it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh, come on. That's none of anyone's business but theirs. You had a piece of a point until this nonsense.

I pretty much did just say it. You're in the minority on this issue, and you're wrong. You're also smart enough to know there's a huge difference between a training exercise where a person knows they're in friendly hands and that there are limitations, and not.

Also, I responded to Arathain's reference where he specifically said "torture", unless you think torture is not torture.

Being in the minority does not make me wrong - and I wouldn't be wrong regardless. The torture law is so vague that arguably even handcuffs are torture. As for just saying it, don't be coy with terms like "a certain person." You knew damn well who you were referring to, and so did everyone else.



There is a difference, but that difference is not as large as you might imagine - I suspect that going through SERE would cure you of this notion - and that difference has nothing to do with whether the process is torture in the first place.



Well, since he referred to "bringing back torture" that constitutes an argument that at least some of the things that were done, were torture. Discussions in the past have always revolved around waterboarding. Now, it's possible - probable, even - that other techniques were also used that I would agree are torture, but waterboarding isn't one of them. I'd oppose the techniques I'm thinking of, but they have never been the ones under discussion. You may not like it, but just repeating that "it's torture!" over and over carried no weight in 2007 and it carries none now.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Prove it.



And I suspect that going through those experiences at the hands of a true enemy would cure you of your notion. Big deal.



Finally you clarify by inferring that what was meant was only waterboarding, which was never stated. And of course there have been discussions in the past about other techniques as well.

That could be arranged.





You go right ahead and suspect whatever you want, bubba.



Not really, no their weren't. Any discussion invariably went back to waterboarding. It was always the one that was discussed because it sounded like the worst one to people that don't know any better.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why did I bother. You're still completely disingenuous.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/politics/ ... -question/

Bill's infidelity is, indeed, a matter between them. His misbehavior in office is certainly not.

Hillary Clinton also, evidently thinks it's the job of the accused to disprove allegations against them. This runs counter to burden of proof in our legal system and for someone wanting to be allowed to nominate Supreme Court Justices, that is an unbelievably dangerous attitude to have. More importantly, only Bill Clinton seems to benefit from this ability to disprove allegations, and he really didn't ever actually disprove Juanita Broaddrick's allegations. They just weren't proven, and disappeared under murky circumstances.

To be fair, I think she was probably - at best - exaggerating; Bill Clinton did not need to force sex to get it. But, according to Hillary, his accusers should have been believed, something she has only started to discover when she's down by 60 or more points among young women against Bernie Sanders. Sanders might hold the same viewpoint (I don't know if he does) but if he does he's at least probably sincere.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This coming from someone that just demanded I "prove" that being waterboarded has pretty much the same effect whether you're captured by an enemy or not. What the **** do you want me to do, waterboard you until you believe it?

You're doing the same **** you did years ago - drive-by snarky one-liners where you act like your own viewpoint is self-evidently true, a few shitty arguments, a ridiculous demand to "prove" something that can't be demonstrated by internet posting, and then a faux throwing up of the hands in exasperation.

The fact is that you don't know how to construct a point dispassionately. You also didn't know that in 2007 and evidently you haven't learned to since.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The Geneva ACCORDS relate to "Indochina" in 1954; none of the 10 documents issuing from the ACCORDS were treaties with any power to bind the participants.
Oh, you mean the AMENDMENT to the Geneva CONVENTIONS. The AMENDMENT that has not been ratified by the United States.
A little homework indeed.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

No I've just learned not to waste my time with a pathological liar.

An interesting thought occurred to me this morning, actually. I wonder if there's any chance Sanders would, as President, take any actions with respect to the torture and related crimes that were committed during the Bush years. Not necessarily prosecutions, but at least a declassification and info dump to expose exactly what happened, who did it, who approved it, and who knew about it. No chance in hell of any other candidate doing that, of course, but maybe, just maybe, Sanders would. Still, even with him, I expect he'd prefer to use his political capital on economic issues, but who knows.

Please, tell us more about how allegedly learning that lesson is what caused you to decide to drop in out of the blue with a snarky one-liner with zero percent reasoning and 100% antagonism.

Did you just have nothing better to do yesterday and decide to troll a little bit? Maybe you should consider an exercise program.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, there is no chance whatsoever of that happening, and you don't want it to happen. This would permanently cripple the ability of any President to act in a crisis for no purpose beyond an orgy of national self-flagellation and the self-congratulatory fantasy of people that didn't like George Bush.

This would also be a gigantic bonanza to China, Russia, and anyone else that doesn't like us. It's difficult to imagine a more valuable intelligence haul than an exposure of the inner processes of decisions on highly sensitive national programs, and you're proposing putting it out there for all the world to see. Notice that no other nation is doing anything similar? What you're proposing is near-suicidal.

Fortunately, Bernie Sanders is -despite his generally whacko proposals - experienced enough to understand this, as well as know that he doesn't want someone else turning around and doing it to him.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Bull. Other than taking the obvious precautions regarding protection of in-country sources and undercover agents, it would have virtually zero impact on our security to expose and/or prosecute interrogation techniques that were used and the people who authorized and enacted them. All it would do is make it more difficult for our government to commit similar actions again in the future, which is a good thing.

Classic fear-mongering designed to insulate people in power. "You can't provide oversight and impose responsibility for our actions! It would be suicide!"

The only 'bull' here is you imagining that this is the case because it would give you what you're fantasizing about - and as long as it remains theoretical, you can just pretend the consequences wouldn't be real. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and there's a lot more value than just protection of sources.

Just redacting those specifics, in particular, doesn't protect them. There was an incident during the cold war in which a picture of a Russian jet taken by a source - just a jet on a runway, nothing else - was leaked. Just from knowing where the examples of that prototype were (it was a plane under development) and looking at the angle of the sun the Russians were able to locate and disappear that source.

The intel that you think can be isolated down to the people that did all these things that you imagine to be horrible and terrible can't be. To the intelligence agencies of our enemies it's valuable pieces of a larger puzzle - very valuable ones, and very large ones.

I could actually do the same thing. Let's say we have a battlefield with an enemy brigade. If I learn the position of, for example, an air defense vehicle I can start making educated guesses as to where the entire rest of the brigade is just based on their doctrine, the ranges of their weapons, and the terrain itself. Why? Because air defense vehicles have specific capabilities and are deploye4d according to certain doctrine to make best use of them.

You really don't have the foggiest clue what you're even suggesting. You have all the calm self-assurance of someone who is completely unaware of the reality, and is absolutely convinced it must all be a smokescreen



Public dumps of information are not "oversight" or "accountability". Oversight of executive agencies is the responsibility of Congress, so if there's any information to be provided it should go to Congress - and most likely, already has.

Hell, you're "fear-mongering" yourself with appeals to fears of "insulating people in power". We don't have direct democracy for a reason and sensitive decisions should not be made based on the verdict of the court of public opinion.

This is something Bernie Sanders already understands. You guys can convince yourself I'm wrong all you want - it is still never going to happen. Not even under Bernie. There is a reason why a seemingly crazy old man is able to run for President - he understands how things work very well, and that decisions like this are driven by the actions of people outside this country that we have no control over. The rest of the world is real, it makes its own decisions, and acts in its own interests. It is not just all about our internal ideas and principles.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't think anyone suggested anything about making decisions based on public opinion. If, however, the government, or a branch of government, is not behaving properly, that information should be released to the public.

For two reasons: First, we are a representative democracy, and a nation of laws - we have a right to know when our representatives are breaking these laws.

Second, we provide oversight of the people providing oversight of the executive branch. We need the information in order to pressure our reps to take action. There are numerous accounts of congressional inquiries occurring only after a public outcry. It's an important tool in our democracy.

No one suggested it, but that is the effect of publishing internal deliberations and decision-making, which would inevitably happen in this scenario. The fact that no one suggested it does not make it any less a consequence of this course of action.

Furthermore, this is begging the question. Who exactly is determining that the government is "behaving badly" (leaving aside the total lack of an identifiable standard there)? The people that want the information rel3eased? Great. So if someone wants information, all they have to do is announce that misbehavior is going on.

We have a Constitutional system in which the public intentionally has no direct participation in the correction of alleged wrongs. If the voters decide they do not like the actions being undertaken (whether known or suspected) they can vote people out. They failed to do so in 2004, thus endorsing the policies of the Bush administration, they failed to vote Obama out in 2012 despite claims that he was essentially continuing Bush's policies in most respects. The voters do not have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt before voting someone out, so mere suspicion is plenty - the gory details need not be publicized for our enemies to sift through and use for their benefit.

And as for the past argument that the vote isn't an effective check, this argument is being proven hilariously wrong as we speak. When this argument was deployed in the past it really meant "The vote isn't an effective check because the voters won't vote to check the government in the way my ideology says they ought to." (Yes, I realize that you were not the one making this argument, to the best of my recollection; it's repeated here for completeness and not directed at you)



We are a Republic, not a Democracy and no, we do not in fact have any such right - mainly because under our system of justice, the law isn't broken until there's a guilty verdict. You are putting the cart before the horse.

Yes, I get that this makes it difficult to prosecute crimes when they are undertaken under the cover of classification, but that's why we have separation of powers. Congress, by design, has its own powers and independence from the executive and is supposed to have a political incentive to discover and castigate executive wrongdoing.

We are a representative Republic with a specific system, so if you're going to assert we have a specific right under that system (never mind that no such right exists, and can't exist while maintaining the concept of due process of law) you can't then reject the rest of that system because you're suspicious of it or because it doesn't give you the level of personal oversight you feel entitled to. I suggest running for Congress; since you feel so strongly about these issues why not take a crack at it? Given some of the idiots that have managed to get elected I'm pretty sure you'd have a chance.



So the public was already aware of the issue. Evidently there was already plenty of public information available or else that outcry wouldn't have occurred.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The Senate has already provided oversight on the matter of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in a long and tedious report: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program. You can access the public portion of the report here. The majority of the report remains classified. Senator Feinstein was the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time of the report. The report strongly suggests that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were torture and outright claims they were ineffective and produced little usable intelligence. The TL:DR of the report is this: the CIA **** up and **** up bad.

Going after individual actors won't solve the problem and won't make the offenses go away. Going after the powers-that-be at the CIA won't change anything, because the leadership of the CIA has been largely replaced in the intervening years.

Making everything in the report public knowledge, however, stands to damage international goodwill and pose a tangible threat to national security, as the CIA has been collared in the aftermath of these events.

The CIA **** up. The CIA attempted to cover up its **** up. The CIA misrepresented itself to the Executive and Congress. And, consequently, the CIA was punished directly and indirectly for its behavior. Criminal prosecutions won't do anything except provide feel good politics. Better to spend your energy lobbying to prevent future **** ups than seeking retribution for this particular **** up.

And a little bit of a tu quoque defense here -- what other countries do, including our allies, is far, far worse.

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The French are a good example.

The reality is that most of the other countries having the vapors over this are also-rans, or are just using it as a political tool to beat us over the head with. That's to be expected from China and Russia.

In the case of our allies, it's a matter of keeping the U.S. on the European leash where (in their opinion) it belongs - paying for defense, but allowing Europe to set the defense priorities. They are perfectly happy to toot the horn of human rights as long as it plays well with a public living in fear of Nazis reappearing out of thin air while quietly engaging in whatever they want to do under the table and allowing the U.S. penchant for self-flagellation to distract.

As an example, the furor over U.S. spying on allies provided a distraction from the fact that Germany was caught doing exactly the same thing. This was quickly swept aside lest it undercut the narrative of upstanding progressive Europe vs. backwards, dangerous Americans.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There would have to be a careful appraisal of what can and can't be publicly released, but just because some disclosures could be damaging doesn't mean all disclosures would be. And, frankly, I am willing to accept some damage to our intelligence operations and international relations if that's the price we have to pay to hold people accountable for torture and help ensure this **** doesn't happen again. I know you don't agree, but I believe that the normalization of torture in the last decade is an enormously shameful and destructive turn for this country, and it absolutely has to be reversed.


I disagree. Despite my liberal bent, I do believe there is moral value in retributive justice. More importantly, though, I think criminal prosecutions is the only real way to prevent future **** ups of this kind. If no one goes to jail or even gets publicly named and shamed, there's much less disincentive for would-be bad actors to refrain from their bad acts in the future. If getting caught just means a talking-to from some committee and maybe having to resign, followed by a book deal with Regenery so you can tell the world that you and your ilk are the real patriots making the hard decisions for everyone else, people in power will continue to flout the law (and basic morality) as they see fit. Start handing out 10+ years in federal prison, though, and folks will think twice the next time.