Freecer Split: Have we ever been this divided?

[Rhino]

You know, there is an upside to this "Freecer Split". Have you noticed how much less Ron Paul gets discussed here now? :lol:

[Suzie]

Like Bush he makes a big show of guarding the front door, while actively taking steps to make sure the back door stands propped wide open to allow anyone and everyone to invade and sink their claws into this nation...

True, but people still voted for Bush even when they knew this second time around.

[Suzie]

Doc, I'm not convinced that McCain can't win.

I think he stands a very good chance of winning, whether he's pitted again Hillary or Osamabamabammy.

There are waaaaay too many obvious reasons why the nation will not elect Hillary or Osamabamabammy when push comes to shove. Either candidate getting elected on the "D" side is going to turn on National Security and Taxes, and I think those are issues that voters will turn out on.

I am certain he can beat Hillary. Not so sure about Obama when I see the crowds he draws. :sad:

[Rhino]

Bush hasn't taken as many steps, and several of those steps did not occur until his second term. Had they all happened in the first term, the last presidential election likely would have been quite different.

[d'urville]

I am certain he can beat Hillary. Not so sure about Obama when I see the crowds he draws. :sad:

I'm not even sure Juan can beat Hiilary, but Obama would do the most damage out of the three. He's worse than Hillary who is worse than Juan. The "change" this guy is talking about is marxism to the core.

His political history in Illinois shows that Obama has proven himself to be a nearly perfect leftist dhimmicrat. He supports homosexual marriage, racial preferences, gun control, flag-burning, socialized medicine and the absolute right to abortion, including partial-birth abortions. He voted against requiring medical care for aborted "fetuses" who survive.

He is anti-war, voted against the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, against privatizing Social Security and opposes the death penalty, three strikes laws and school vouchers. He has no military service record, which is REALLY bad, because the war hero ALWAYS loses.

[Neil Peart]

the war hero ALWAYS loses.Not always.

http://www.dwight-eisenhower.info/dwight%20eisenhower.gif

[DesertFox]

Disagree that Obama can do more damage than Hillary. Hillary is wired to every important crooked asshole in the world. Obama hasn't been around long enough to get that crooked yet. Both are top-drawer Marxists who think that ruining America is the moral thing to do. McCain thinks he can split the difference between conservative principle and Marxist expedience, and he'll either go wholesale over to that side or lose all credibility in trying to split the difference.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Hence, I for one come even closer to recognizing the essence of the McCain conundrum:

The seven reasons to vote for McCain are:

1). WoT - both HillBilly and Obama will get us killed
2). Justice John Paul Stevens, age 87
3). Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, age 74
4). Justice Anthony Kennedy, age 71
5) Justice Antonin Scalia, age 71
6). Justice David Breyer, age 69
7). Justice David Souter, age 68




But also, in a post prompted by The Elucidator wanting to know the difference between McCain and Guliani, I write:
Rudy has consistently supported significant cuts of marginal and corporate rates. He wanted to significantly reduced taxes on capital gains and eliminate the estate tax once and for all.

He would have happily nominated strict constructionists to the courts.

He supports the idea of overturning Roe v. Wade.

In other words, he's personally opposed to abortion and even more importantly believes the matter should be left to the states. I can live with that.

His positions on border security and illegal aliens are solid, not as aggressive as Romney's, but fine just the same. Secure the border and establish a nationwide employee verification program, and the overwhelming majority of illegals will self-deport. The Rude promised to do those two things, and he would have too. As for those who remained in the shadows -- mostly because their roots run deep, in terms of time here and offspring who are citizens -- the Rude would have provided a road to legalization and proposed a migratory work program. I actually like the Rude's two-step, comprehensive plan best. It's practical.

He would not shut down Gitmo.

He opposes defining waterboarding as an illegal form of torture.

He's a staunch supporter of school choice.

McCain's not reliably conservative in any of these areas, including abortion as far as I’m concerned given his “gang of 14” activities and his apparent aversion to Justice Alito.

Yes, I would have happily voted for the Rude had he won the nomination.



The war on terrorism and court appointees: these then become the only pertinent considerations for a conservative still trying to decide whether he will or will not support McCain.

The alternatives' weaknesses are obvious. These are McCain's: Gitmo, waterboarding, gang of 14, Alito.

:question:

[Suzie]

The war on terrorism and court appointees: these then become the only pertinent considerations for a conservative still trying to decide whether he will or will not support McCain.

The alternatives' weaknesses are obvious. These are McCain's: Gitmo, waterboarding, gang of 14, Alito.

:question:

McCain voted against the ban on Waterboarding and other torture today.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure Wednesday.
SOURCE (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_go_co/intelligence_bill_7)

[Bluemoon_Rising]

McCain voted against the ban on Waterboarding and other torture today.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure Wednesday.
SOURCE (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_go_co/intelligence_bill_7)

Good. Pushed to the right on another significant issue . . . maybe. The real test, however, would be whether or not President McCain would veto the messure like Bush.

[ColonialMarine0431]

McCain voted against the ban on Waterboarding and other torture today.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure Wednesday.
SOURCE (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_go_co/intelligence_bill_7)

If memory serves, during one of the debates, he took a holier than thou anti-waterboarding stance. Now he doesn't oppose it.

He's really desperate to shore up that conservative vote.

Arguing for such restrictions, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the use of harsh tactics would boomerang on the United States.

Pinhead. Our people captured by the Islamofascists were tortured & beheaded LONG before waterboarding became an issue. You don't take a knife to a gunfight.

[Suzie]

Yeah, and it's MY pinhead. :sad:

[Jack_Savage]

If memory serves, during one of the debates, he took a holier than thou anti-waterboarding stance. Now he doesn't oppose it.

He's really desperate to shore up that conservative vote.



Pinhead. Our people captured by the Islamofascists were tortured & beheaded LONG before waterboarding became an issue. You don't take a knife to a gunfight.


Correct. And what have the weenies done about the beheadings other than plead for softer interrogation methods. Kinda proves the need for torture. Maybe if we got serious, we would see the Islamo's become warm and fuzzy, like the Deaniacs and McCains allies, Russ and his Fiengolders.

[gnome]

I would like to hear McCain comment on his recent vote on the waterboarding ban. He has consistently been against US torture, and it's possible for him to oppose this without a change to his overall position, if he believes that the law is redundant, for example, to other anti-torture laws, and adds unnecessary restrictions besides.

[Suzie]

I would like to hear McCain comment on his recent vote on the waterboarding ban. He has consistently been against US torture, and it's possible for him to oppose this without a change to his overall position, if he believes that the law is redundant, for example, to other anti-torture laws, and adds unnecessary restrictions besides.

It isn't needed because we are signed on the Geneva Convention. But this bill also outlined other interrogation methods that aren't considered torture.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

But honestly, historically, liberal Presidents have made great war Presidents historically as well - they are Americans in the end and they too will usually rise to the occassion to answer the threats from abroad.

I'll be damned if I can think of one. In addition to prolonging the Depression with slappyhappy economic policies, Roosevelt gave half of Europe away to the Soviets. Some victory. Truman snatched defeat from the jaws of total victory in Korea. Both of their administrations were riddled with Soviet spies and sympathizers. Johnson - Vietnam. . . .

Wilson maybe.

The Democratic war record is mixed at best, and the lefties of today are utterly unreliable. No, today's libs are Americans by birth only. In no other sense are they Americans. Traitors, but not Americans.

Rush is most likely right when he argues that Clinton or Obama would do what they can to prevent Iraq devolving into chaos on their watch. (Certainly, they wouldn’t mind if it were to happen under Bush’s first, in spite of the all the blood and treasure already expended. Evil pukes!). It’s what they would do to our offensive posture on Islamofascism that's unacceptable. Gentile libs secretly hate Israel. I don’t trust them for a moment to handle the likes of Iran, Syria and Korea. McCain will handle them with brass knuckles.

Sorry, that dog won’t hunt.

Vote McCain.

[Naturalized-Texan]

I would like to hear McCain comment on his recent vote on the waterboarding ban. He has consistently been against US torture, and it's possible for him to oppose this without a change to his overall position, if he believes that the law is redundant, for example, to other anti-torture laws, and adds unnecessary restrictions besides.
At the risk of sending this thread off on a tangent, waterboarding is NOT torture.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

I would like to hear McCain comment on his recent vote on the waterboarding ban. He has consistently been against US torture, and it's possible for him to oppose this without a change to his overall position, if he believes that the law is redundant, for example, to other anti-torture laws, and adds unnecessary restrictions besides.

Yeah and he's wrong when it comes to waterboarding. The Senate measure would place the same restrictions on the CIA as it does on Army intelligence. Bad idea. Stupid idea. Waterboarding is a non-lethal and effective interrogation tool. In the rare instances when it’s applicable, it’s necessary!

[Bluemoon_Rising]

At the risk of sending this thread off on a tangent, waterboarding is NOT torture.

Yes it is, but so what? It's non-lethal and effective.

[DesertFox]

Tex, you might wanna read Moon's contribution on waterboarding in the Hall of Fame (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?t=54688). He has actually been waterboarded.

[DoctorDoom]

... waterboarding is NOT torture.Damn right it's not. THIS is torture.

US and Iraqi forces have discovered a "torture complex" in an al-Qaeda safe haven near Muqdadiya in central Diyala province, the US military has said.

Three buildings containing chains on the walls and ceilings, and a metal bed connected to a power supply were found during an operation on 9 December.

Mass graves containing 26 bodies were uncovered nearby, the military said.

Correspondents say Diyala has been the focus of some of the fiercest attacks by insurgents in recent months.Iraq 'torture complex' discovered (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7154856.stm)

And this.

The human rights dossier, released earlier on Monday, contains graphic first-hand accounts by Iraqi victims of torture, with methods including eye gouging, piercing of hands with drills and acid baths.

It accuses Saddam Hussein of introducing severe penalties like cutting off ears and tongue amputation for criminal offences and speaking out against him.

Women are allegedly raped, tortured and summarily executed. Prisoners at one jail are said to have been kept in steel boxes like those found in mortuaries with only half an hour a day allowed for light and air.UK unveils Iraq 'torture' dossier (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2533229.stm)

Although Iraqi law forbids the practice of torture, the British Government is not aware of a single case of an Iraqi official suspected of carrying out torture being brought to justice.

Treatment of women and children:

Under Saddam Huseein's regime women lack even the basic right to life. A 1990 decree allows male relatives to kill a female relative in the name of honour without punishment.

Women have been tortured, ill-treated and in some cases summarily executed too, according to Amnesty International.

The dossier says that BBC correspondent John Sweeney said he had met six witnesses with direct experience of child torture, including the crushing of a two-year-old girl's feet.

Prison conditions:

Conditions for political prisoners in Iraq are inhumane and degrading.

At the "Mahjar" prison "prisoners are beaten twice a day and the women regularly raped by their guards.

Arbitrary and summary killings:

Executions are carried out without due process of law. relatives are often prevented from burying the victims in accordance with Islamic practice and have even been charged for the bullets used.

[snip]

Methods of torture:

• Eye gouging
• Piercing of hands with electric drill
• Suspended from ceiling by their wrists
• Electric shock
• Sexual abuse
• Mock executions
• Acid bathsIraq dossier: Key claims at-a-glance (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2533897.stm)

But at least they didn't use waterboarding, hey, libs?

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Waterboarding is a form of torture too, Doc. We're talking semantics here, degrees of difference. Waterboarding works. It's terrifying. Psychologically horrific. I'm telling you.

Obviously, my point is that while most forms of torture are either useless or downright evil, waterboarding is not! Presuming it is done correctly, it's technically non-lethal, mostly non-painful and doesn't permanently harm the subject. Also, the information garnered is mostly reliable, usually the first time, every time.

Of course, it can be lethal, and that goes to the subject’s age, fitness, etc.

There's torture, and there's illegal torture (or what should be illegal). Waterboarding definitely falls into the former category, and that's where it should remain. Attempts to take this technique away from the CIA are asinine.

[Beowulf]

Wanna see a good example of what torture is or even a war crime? Watch the very beginning of the movie "The Great Escape" where Japanese captors put U.S. prisoners in a sandy bunker, roll in barrels of gasoline and burn them alive.

Nobody in the U.N. or even our own congress said anything when Saddam Hussein's henchmen would torture people quite often for nothing. I'm so sick of hearing about torture, what it is and what it isn't.

[DoctorDoom]

Waterboarding is a form of torture too, Doc. We're talking semantics here, degrees of difference.My point escaped you, evidently. We are dealing with subhuman monsters to whom physical, disfiguring, usually-permanent torture is routine, often for no reason other than to satisfy sadistic urges. They don't use waterboarding.

Our guys don't employ their nightmarish techniques, and when we do use "torture", it's to obtain vital information.

And whom do the liberal assholes condemn? Our guys, of course. They don't give a shit about what the barbarians do, nor about the dangers our warriors and the Iraq people face every day. Their only bleeding-heart "concerrn" is that we must be nice to the hell-spawned savages who torture and kill for pleasure. Allah forbid that we squirt water up their noses.

IMO, the whiners can fornicate themselves.

[Rhino]

McCain voted against the ban on Waterboarding and other torture today.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, voted against the measure Wednesday.
SOURCE (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080213/ap_on_go_co/intelligence_bill_7)It doesn't say why he voted against it.

The prohibition was contained in a bill authorizing intelligence activities for the current year...Waterboarding was one provision tacked onto a much larger bill, so McCain's vote is not necessarily a statement on waterboarding. I'm continually pissed off by the way our representatives can tack just about any extra provision onto just about any bill, related or not. And I'm even more pissed off by how many partisans will use the votes on those bills to try to portray the political position of an opponent, when the opponent's voting position may have had absolutely nothing to do with the issue the partisan is trying to label him with. We've all been misled by such disinformation before, and we can't be certain why McCain voted the way he did as a result.

[Lazarus]

:ditto:

[Lubbock]

What I heard McCain say was, he didn't want to tie the CIA's hands by limiting them to what they could do according to the . . . something Field Manual.

Military Field Manual? Does that sound right?

It seemed to me as if he was drawing a distinction between what the military [uniforms] could do, and what a "civilian" entity could do when it comes to extracting information from high-value prisoners.

Anybody else hear that?

[Suzie]

What I heard McCain say was, he didn't want to tie the CIA's hands by limiting them to what they could do according to the . . . something Field Manual.

Military Field Manual? Does that sound right?

It seemed to me as if he was drawing a distinction between what the military [uniforms] could do, and what a "civilian" entity could do when it comes to extracting information from high-value prisoners.

Anybody else hear that?

I didn't hear it but I know what you are talking about, and it makes sense. There are specific task forces that are constructed during a war to deal with very high value targeted individuals. They are made up of a joint task force which include the type of agencies you mention.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,133423,00.html (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_6-26)

[Lubbock]

Here it is from another thread posted by Delcine, regarding Bush's veto of what the Seante passed:

"The Democratic-led Senate voted 51-45 on Wednesday in favor of a bill calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to adopt the US Army Field Manual, which forbids waterboarding and other types of coercive interrogation methods."

[Suzie]

Well then McCain is doing the right thing waterboarding or not. There have already been liberals trying to go after what these task forces do. You can see that in the wikipedia description of the task force I linked you to in my last post. I am betting Nancy Pelosi submitted it to wikipedia. It wasn't like that when it was first submitted someone added the negative things later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_6-26

[DoctorDoom]

Wiki needs to indicate when edits have been made to articles by people other than the original authors.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

My point escaped you, evidently. We are dealing with subhuman monsters to whom physical, disfiguring, usually-permanent torture is routine, often for no reason other than to satisfy sadistic urges. They don't use waterboarding.

Our guys don't employ their nightmarish techniques, and when we do use "torture", it's to obtain vital information.

And whom do the liberal assholes condemn? Our guys, of course. They don't give a shit about what the barbarians do, nor about the dangers our warriors and the Iraq people face every day. Their only bleeding-heart "concerrn" is that we must be nice to the hell-spawned savages who torture and kill for pleasure. Allah forbid that we squirt water up their noses.

IMO, the whiners can fornicate themselves.


Of course it escapes me, Doc, I mean it's so subtle. :rolleyes:

I did not touch on your main point because I emphatically agree with it. There was nothing to add. Not every disagreement is a challenge, Doc. I made a point on one matter, a categorical fact. Also, language and meaning matter. My point stands.

[Suzie]

Wiki needs to indicate when edits have been made to articles by people other than the original authors.

They have a "history" tab that is supposed to show the details of the posting edits, but it's hard to make heads or tails of it and most of the people appear to just be using screen names, so who knows who they are.

[mkafrica]

Wiki needs to indicate when edits have been made to articles by people other than the original authors.

They have a "history" tab that is supposed to show the details of the posting edits, but it's hard to make heads or tails of it and most of the people appear to just be using screen names, so who knows who they are.

I'm registered with Wikipedia to edit articles... Just let me know which ones need changed... :evilgrin:

[Suzie]

I would prefer all the negatives not be in there, but they are citing articles from lib news papers to justify it I guess.