After he went to work for Justice, Goldsmith began standing up to the torture cabal at the White House–to his enduring discomfort. In one incident, recounted in his book and in a September profile by Jeffrey Rosen of the New York Times Magazine, he knocked heads with Dick Cheney’s advisor (now his chief of staff) David Addington. Goldsmith delivered the bad news that terror suspects were, in fact, covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention against torture of civilians: “’The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,’” Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. ‘You cannot question his decision.’”….

[http://www.progressive.org/mag_rc041408]

Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture

When our President and Vice President personally approve torture, that time is now.

In his suit, he said the waterboarding was not the only thing Christopherson did to humiliate subordinates. Christopherson allegedly took away underperforming employees’ desk chairs, drew mustaches on their faces and hit their desks with a wooden paddle….”

Utah-based Prosper, Inc provides “executive-level coaching for individuals,” which includes “the education and hands-on experiences they need to achieve their personal and professional goals.”

The story also appeared prominently in the Washington Post.

This is a little too pat and timely, and so very convenient for those who wish to argue that “waterboarding” is not torture that it is hard to avoid a suspicion at least, that the story is either (1) invented out of whole cloth (for the press coverage) or (2) part of a rigged scenario (toward the same purpose).

If either of these cases, and that is a strong conditional, some important information may be gleaned.

Utah, eh?

First torture does not work as shown by numerous studies; Stalin’s show trials are a good example of how those who are tortured will say what they believe their torturers want to hear.

Second, Christianity and Islam both have adherents who have perverted each religion in order to amass power. Look at the totalitarian aspects of Medieval Europe with the Inquisition, the Albigensian Crusade, the Crusades in the Middle East (read Edward Gibbons account of the Crusades in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (the portion covering the successor states to the Western Empire while the Eastern Empire still survived). Even today, the US has Reverends John Hagee, Rod Parsley, Pat Robertson, and others who have promoted hateful ideas and fantasies. Islam has its own problems with such people. But before you start addressing the problems with other societies, deal with you own society’s problems first.

Third, the idea that only those societies dominated by one language can be coherent, peaceful, and successful is demonstrably false, because Switzerland can be provided as a counter example. Switzerland has been de facto independent for over 800 years, and has three official languages German, French, and Italian, plus a fourth, Rhaeto-Romansch) spoken and published in the country. The Swiss system works very well, and Switzerland has never been an imperial power.

Fourth, as Robert Pape pointed out in his book Dying to Win, the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, the Tamil Tigers (from the island country of Sri Lanka) is the single group that has used suicide terrorism the most. The American media do not report from that area of the world very well, which is probably why you are unaware of this.

Fifth, any terrorist act requires the motivation, the means, and the implementation to commit the act. Those in whom all three converge are the ones who are a true threat. At this point, only al Qaeda has an active program against the United States. Attacking other countries that have neither attacked the United States nor have the realistic means of doing so adds nothing to the overall security of the United States.

Sixth, our government has shown gross incompetence in handling those groups that did come here. The most egregious example of this is the career of Ali Mohammed, as documented in the book Triple Cross, by Peter Lance. In quick summary, Ali Mohammed operated as an al-Qaeda mole, trained the World Trade bombers (in 1992-1993), cased the US embassy in Nairobi for the bombing attack, and numerous other activities while simultaneously an FBI informant, CIA asset, and a US Army Staff Sargeant from 1983 through 1998 (when arrested). No one in any of these US government organizations caught onto the clues he left of what he was really doing. This is the same kind of cluelessness that allowed Aldrich Ames, Jonathan Pollard, and others to continue their activities for years. The FBI covered up a great deal to protect their agency’s reputation. This kind of gross incompetince and negligence continues and does absolutely nothing to protect the country.

Most terrorists are also men. So who is the enemy if it is not men?

Forget memorizing examples of Muslim terrorism. You need to learn some basic logic: “All terrorists are the enemy, and all terrorists are Muslim, therefore all Muslims are the enemy” is not a valid syllogism.

Maybe you should go into the mental health field.

I was thinking more along the lines of blue collar work.

Listen my impetuous young lad, just because we disagree on things is no reason to personally attack each other.

This isn’t mere disagreement. You display many of the classic symptoms of an authoritarian personality. Lacking any sort of capacity for reflection, I doubt you’re aware of this, so I thought I’d helpfully highlight it. If you can suspend your dogmatism long enough, you might fight “The Authoritarians” by Bob Altemeyer quite edifying: http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

The Tibeten people are terribly oppressed by the Chinease Communist Party but I don’t see them resorting to terrorism.

So are the Uighur Muslims, but oddly enough, they haven’t produced any suicide bombers.

And so on and so forth. These are just a few examples. I could cite you hundreds, yes, I repeat, literally, HUNDREDS of such examples of Muslim fanatics committing acts of terrorism. But you say, Muslims are not the enemy. Then just who is the enemy? The fact of the matter is, you are right, most Muslims are not terrorists. But the fact of the matter is also that most terrorists are, indeed, Muslim. So just who is the enemy if not Muslims? And by the way, when good and decent Muslims fail to speak out against the radicals they are indirectly responsible and share the blame. The Tibeten people are terribly oppressed by the Chinease Communist Party but I don’t see them resorting to terrorism. That’s because they do not follow a radical Islamic theology that promotes a robust and unwavering blood lust. I guess you will tell me it is just a tiny, tiny fraction of Muslims that are “misguided criminals.” Oh, heaven help us. This sort of well meaning but naieve attitude is just what we don’t need. It is an attitude of defeat and appeasement. It is an attitude that says, if a lion wants read meat, give the lion plenty of red meat, and eventually he will become a vegetarian!

You seem to really enjoy psycho analysis, thank you for bring my ” manifold psychological deformities” to my attention. Maybe you should go into the mental health field. By the way, in the old days in the Soviet Union, if someone disagreed with the policies of the government, often times they were locked up in a mental institution and labeled as having some form of schizophrenia. Listen my impetuous young lad, just because we disagree on things is no reason to personally attack each other.

Even if it were a sound principle (and again, it isn’t) your grandmother’s folksy wisdom still wouldn’t apply to the Obama-Farakhan “connection,” since it only applies to one’s own friends, and not the friends of one’s friends. But even setting aside the matter of transitivity, it’s not even clear how you can infer much about me from my first layer of friends. Although we share some similarities, we disagree on many and various matters of importance. Some of my friends are communists, some of my friends are socialists, and some of my friends are religious, conservative Republicans. Is your grandmother claiming that I hold all of those views simultaneously? Not if she isn’t an idiot.