maybe he'll get thrown in with chong

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102558,00.html


i just don't get it, it's a fucking war....boo fucking hoo if somebody got scared...



to be fair though, even if he had shot the dude i still wouldn't care as long as it saved more than one life...

He used a scare tactic. No harm, just scare, and not for confession, but for lifesaving information.

Yeah, no harm at all.

Hello? Any sentient beings out there? He threatened a helpless man with summary execution

That maybe he didn't really mean it doesn't make a shitload of difference if youre the guy tied to the chair. Not to mention, that they were "arrested" is meaningless. They were arrested because he named them, not because we had real evidence against them. We snatched them up because some guy in fear for his life named people to save his own ass. This is not reliable.

We don't do that. Scumbags do that.

Shit, I always fire a gun off to make my point.

You'd think this would be obvious to people, surely?

Sadly the main recurring justification for various abuses of human rights (as an aside, the Geneva Convention, anyone else remember that throwaway and obviously pointless agreement?) seems to be 'scumbags would do that to us so why can't we do that to them'...it's a dangerous path to walk and it's amazing that so many supposedly intelligent people can't see how it could backfire dramatically...

No. He fired a gun away from the guy. Not a threat. a scare. No death, no harm, lives saved. Which part do you take issue with?

You get that argument from zealots. My point has always been that we are still within the guidelines of the 1949 ( I keep telling you people there are more than one Geneva Conventions so you aought to seek a little specificity, geez) geneva convention. We still live up to our own standards and have not went down to theirs

Actually I get that argument from most people who bother responding with less than 2 sentences whenever Guantanamo Bay and 'terrorism' is ever mentioned...they're usually the same people who'd tell me 'if it wasn't for us you'd be speaking German'...

Troll, pulling out a gun and firing it near them is an obvious threat, especially during an interigation! The reason these tactics are not used is because it makes the person more likely to give false information to save their ass than to cooperate. And because of this, we'll never know if lives were saved, or innocent people rounded up because of false inteligence.

Well I try to use punctuation properly, otherwise you may only get two sentences from me as well.

But as fucked as it may be or seem to be, we are within the rules. The real problem is that this is new. I've read the convention thta pertains several times over pertaining to pows and granted I'm not a lawyer, but these particular types of prisoners aren't covered by it. A little known fact is that prisoners get turned over if the country of origin wants them. If they don't want them it's also not covered. Given regime change and new governments, it's a little hard and will take some time for the countries in question to decide each case of want or not as it pertains to return. Now I'll be the first one freaking if we refuse a request by the country itself.

My favorite part of the foxnews.com article is definitely this:

Click here to watch Fox News Channel's full fair and balanced report.

heh

Did someone really just post a link to a story from FoxNews... here?

I'd like to see if any serious news outlet also mentioned a theory that what this asshole did may have saved lives in the first sentence of their article. What the fuck? "It's a good article, boys, but could you make sure our political angle comes across loud and clear in the first. fucking. sentence? Thanks."

Actually we do know. they captured the guys and they were prepping for an attack on west's unit and they were the same one's that attacked and killed people in his unit several months before. This was on CNN, FOX and MSNBC.

as for threat versus scare the procedure usually works this way:

ask
no response
ask
no response
scare into thinking he'll die
get response
then threaten to kill if information is false
get confirmation or revised version

This guy was in scare mode at the gunshots.

As for false information? Rarely happens. You get old information that can be verified at least because most want to save their lives. and as everyone likes to claim that we trained and prepped these guys, then we must have used our own methods and policies and that is our policy on giving information. If you get into a life or death situation you give old and verifiable information as to location etc. The goal is not to be silent but to keep you and your buds alive

That's a lawsuit in waiting. Man I'd have killed a few people in disguise instread of freaking and am happy my friends know better than to try that shit with me

Troll, we may not have violated the Geneva convention, but if you read the article he violated US law. So he is not "within the rules".

The sad thing is that is he had violated the Geneva convention he may not be facing court martial.

Oh, west did violate at least two articles of the UCMJ. I agree. And I agree he should at least face the procedure.

But like people that get abused and then kill the abuser in a fit of rage or passion, I merely think the why and the result should be taken into consideration when it comes to the punitive phase.

sorry for the confusion. I just get so used to debates about the 1949 convention policies that I tend to overlook our own

Ich kann Deutsches bereits sprechen. Haben einer faschistischen Regierung würde mich betreffen...

The article didn't mention your claim that they caught them prepping an attack, you'd think fox news of all things would include that, so post a link to one of the news stories you mentioned and I'll belive you.

Now, let's say someone pulls out a gun and shoots it toward you. Would you feel threatened or intimidated by this? I know I would, and I would guess that a vast majority of people would.

And finally, how do you know that false information is rarely given? This is not normal procedure so we just don't know.

I didn't post a link to any article, so maybe it was someone else trying to be helpful but not in tune with what I was refering to?

It's happened. and I fucking hate getting shot at. If I'm not hit the first time, I take it as intimidation and I generally stand there and wait for the discussion to begin at their leisure.

It rarely happens because the vast majority of times false information is given is when under threat of life from the onset. Humans have this tendancy to want to live and if they feel that is threatened from the start you're going to get anything they feel may save them. we don't have a policy of actual torture and such so we have to sit around and get countries bitching at us because they don't like the food we actually serve our captives, or the cells we have them living in that aren't little cages half-immersed in rat and leech infested waters.

Sorry. I regress to other topics aout how we treat people versus how we'd be treated in the same circumstances at times.

Notice I said that threat of life on our part is usually made for confirmation purposes? Now technically it's not supposed to happen, but it does from tiem to time and ya never hear about it if it was all verbal like, "If you lie you die. Are you sure of what you told us?"

Firstly, your credulity is astounding.

Secondly, you might want to read his own words before defending him.

" He said his soldiers "physically aggress[ed]" the prisoner. A subsequent investigation resulted in nonjudicial punishment for them in the form of fines.
    After the physical "aggress" failed, Col. West says he brandished his pistol.
    "I did use my 9 mm weapon to threaten him and fired it twice. Once I fired into the weapons clearing barrel outside the facility alone, and the next time I did it while having his head close to the barrel. I fired away from him. I stood in between the firing and his person. "

For those of you paying the home game, they snatched up a guy based soley on the word of an informant, beat the shit out of him, put a gun next to his head where he couldn't see it and pulled the trigger. Sorry, but thats called torture, and youre absolutely right, the 3rd Geneva convention doesn't apply, as he is not a combattant, but Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment absolutely do apply and this treatement incontrovertably violates all three.

Whats more, he was offered the oportunity to retire without benefits and shit-for-brains refused.

What he did was everything we're supposed to be fighting against over there and he wants to put it all on the line over ego and a pension.

Fuck him, let him rot.

Ummm, you do understand that what "we know" and what was reported is based on West's analysis. I think perhaps I won't rely on his judgement.

You wouldn't mind giving a link to the article you quote would you?


and can we find him guilty in a court first then let him rot?

[Edited on Nov 10, 2003 by Troll]

Until the trial. But what we do know is that they did get information that led to the capture of people that had attacked them before in the same region