Constitution (yet another US rant)

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Judge and judge... all people do is blame America for everything...

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I'm not blamming america for anything - all I am saying is the goverment in America should target those responsible for the attacks against their nation and not the nation as a whole. I have no personnal problem with America - however I do fell that trampling a complete country under foot while searching for a terorist group is wrong

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I'm assuming you're the kind of person that even if he told you it to your face, you would still deny and claim some kind of excuse...

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I'm not making up any kind of excuse for him & in all truth my comment there was a lil off topic. I was simply using Bin Laden as an example of how everyone (well the vast majority) - Americans, British, etc etc believe what they hear in the media.....Bin Laden was just an example I was refering to media stories as a whole - sorry for the confussion.

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The American government did NOT know that an attack would occur, they knew something was going on but disregarded it as not a threat...

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This is something that will remain to be very hard to prove our disprove until all secret documents from that time are released - which I doubt they will be even if they havn't been destroyed by now.

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and those historians you speak of are random people who make up random thoughts like that... it is in history books (not one but most college accepted books worldwide) that if the US had not entered the war when Hitler made his push toward Paris, Europe would have fell within hours...

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Actually durring my time studying the rise of natzism and WWI / WWII or text books made very little mention of the American role in the war - the focus only tended to shift to the American contribution after the war had ended. Also the WWII was a war of attrition - these wars are not won or lost in hours - so I feel your last comment is completly unfounded

v_Ln

I have to say... I totally agree with Valhallen on every point he has made, can't put it better myself.

However Jaguar one thing you said

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These people were enemy combatants... which is perfectly legal, read the Geneva Convention buddy... we did not murder anyone... we were attacked and threatened, we took the necassary actions to prevent more deaths on our part...

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This may not be strictly true... some of those people at Guantanamo bay were captured in Pakistan.... not a million miles from Afghanistan I know.... a couple of those folks at Guantanamo are from the UK... muslims yes, but still from the UK. According to the families those captured british people were on holiday in Pakistan... now I don't know if that is true or not... what I do know is the US is currently refusing to send those people back to the UK to be judged according to British law... why is that? Why not let your supposed allies deal with its own subjects?

As for murder... that depends upon what you class bombing civilians as... by the looks of things and in light of 9/11 most Americans class the taking of civilian lives as murder... so what about the civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq that have been bombed?

But this is getting off the original point which a lot of us are trying to discuss... we're NOT arguing with your right to go and make yourselves safe against a terrorist organisation... we're NOT saying that you cannot seek out those who wronged you.... we ARE saying... do it like civilised human beings, seek out those responsible and don't trample a country underfoot just because you can. To quote v_Ln

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those responsible have to be brought to justice but while being fair to the rest of their country

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Z

Just one point for this one....fallowing or breaking the Ganevea convention has nothing to do with the rule of law...especaly considering the world court is purely volintary and that the US isn't part of it. Look at the convention as more of gidelines then rules and you will be much closer to the truth. So in detaining forign nationals that are not subject to our constitution (that only applies to US citizans) we can do what ever the hell we feel like (this is true for any country). If you don't like british (or whatever) citizans held for secrate tribunals and possably the death sentance, don't extradite them to the US and arrest any US troop theat tries to kidnap them. Humm but your goverments happely extrodited them...thats the dirty littel secrate of the world, the germans/british/pakistanies/french, wanted to be rid of these guys but didn't have the balls t odo it themselvs so they let the us do the dirty work..then turned around to their citizans and said..see how evil the US is, vote for me again.

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Originally posted here by jaguar291
The American government did NOT know that an attack would occur, they knew something was going on but disregarded it as not a threat... and those historians you speak of are random people who make up random thoughts like that... it is in history books (not one but most college accepted books worldwide) that if the US had not entered the war when Hitler made his push toward Paris, Europe would have fell within hours...


jag291

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Umm goatta call you on this one Jag, Europ fell long before the US entered the war, britian was the only hold out of the old world, nad the ysurvived only because of some briliant use of duble agents...as for Peral Harbor, well we had decoded the Japanese code months before..if we didn't know about the attack it was due to gross incompatince on the US side. (there may have been some of that as warrnings of the attack where delayed by radio operators on break). But I find it curious that all of our important navel vesels (the carrier groups) where out doing manuvers, while relics that would stir up a lot of public sentament but had littel stratigic value where in port. Also look up project "ever green" a praposed invasion of cuba offered by the pentagon during the kennady administration. It was declassified in 2001 and for any one who thinks the goverment would never sacrifice US citizans for the good of the country it makes an eye opening read.

Once again vahallen, we are targeting those responsible for the attacks, but like I said earlier, when the whole country is harboring terrorists it makes it a little hard for us to just go after them.

Zonewalker, it is a sad thing when innocent civillians do die during a war but sometimes it does happen. We do not intentionally kill these civillians but mistakes do happen. War is never a good thing but it does happen, and when it happens people die including civilians. Thats how its always been.

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Actually durring my time studying the rise of natzism and WWI / WWII or text books made very little mention of the American role in the war - the focus only tended to shift to the American contribution after the war had ended. Also the WWII was a war of attrition - these wars are not won or lost in hours - so I feel your last comment is completly unfounded

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Umm... after spending about an hour reading and talking with other World War II knowledgables (new word?).. my information is correct for the most part... let me expand on this:

When we entered the war in '41, Roosevelt and Churchill made an agreement that all Allied forces would first concentrate on Nazi Germany, the larger threat at the time. Like bballad said, England was the only stronghold left for the Allied forces in Europe when we entered the war and they were running low on supplies. We came with the ability to mass produce weapons and vehicles and we supplied them with both and furthermore troops... we then, along with the Brits, dropped over 2 million men on Normandy over a 90 day period and pushed east taking France and so on until the end of the war... on the other side of Europe, the Soviets were barely keeping up with the Germans but when we entered, Germany was forced to fight a war on two sides.. Germany then mobilized a lot of its troops toward the west where US and UK forces were pushing toward Berlin, thus giving the opening for the Soviets to fight and move the Germans back, which eventually led to the capture of Berlin by the Soviets... soon after Germany declared an unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. As you can see that if the US had not entered the war, England would have been taken and eventually the Soviets would have fallen... it was the US's ability to mass produce weapons and vehincles and our enormous amount of troops that led to the Allies's victory in WWII....

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This may not be strictly true... some of those people at Guantanamo bay were captured in Pakistan.... not a million miles from Afghanistan I know.... a couple of those folks at Guantanamo are from the UK... muslims yes, but still from the UK. According to the families those captured british people were on holiday in Pakistan... now I don't know if that is true or not... what I do know is the US is currently refusing to send those people back to the UK to be judged according to British law... why is that? Why not let your supposed allies deal with its own subjects?

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Since I don't see the UK making a big fuss over this incident (pending it being true) I'm guessing that the US has proven to the UK that these people were in fact somehow dangerous... I don't know the specifics but maybe its that in a time of war we can hold people we suspect to be dangerous at our camps?!

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But this is getting off the original point which a lot of us are trying to discuss... we're NOT arguing with your right to go and make yourselves safe against a terrorist organisation... we're NOT saying that you cannot seek out those who wronged you.... we ARE saying... do it like civilised human beings, seek out those responsible and don't trample a country underfoot just because you can. To quote v_Ln

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those responsible have to be brought to justice but while being fair to the rest of their country

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Afghanistan ran a state sponsored terrorist organization... we took out the Taliban and attempted to rid Afghanistan of al-Quieda.. as for Iraq, we took a man out of power who was a threat to his own people, the man killed his own people in the early 90's and invaded Kuwait. The man was a threat to the inernational community and since the state supported, we took care of the threat.. yes, yes, I'll give you the fact that innocent people died... its war, people will always die, you cannot stop that... but we did the correct thing.

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Umm goatta call you on this one Jag, Europ fell long before the US entered the war, britian was the only hold out of the old world, nad the ysurvived only because of some briliant use of duble agents

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Yup, my bad, messed up a few details... but corrected them in this post.. see above...

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as for Peral Harbor, well we had decoded the Japanese code months before..if we didn't know about the attack it was due to gross incompatince on the US side. (there may have been some of that as warrnings of the attack where delayed by radio operators on break). But I find it curious that all of our important navel vesels (the carrier groups) where out doing manuvers, while relics that would stir up a lot of public sentament but had littel stratigic value where in port.

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I agree that it happened because of error on our side but it happened which is still an attack on a neutral side (not really, we were selling tanks and weapons to the Brits) and that led us to enter the war...

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Also look up project "ever green" a praposed invasion of cuba offered by the pentagon during the kennady administration. It was declassified in 2001 and for any one who thinks the goverment would never sacrifice US citizans for the good of the country it makes an eye opening read.

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I have no doubts that the US would sacrifice US citizens for the good of the country... I'll check this out sooner or later..

jag291

cheyenne... yep you're right civilians do and have always died in war, I can't argue with you on that... I realise mistakes do happen and that they are always a sad thing. However would you agree that we should always at least do our best to minimise (at least) civilian casualties? If we do agree on that then, that's all I'm saying - that we should act like civilised humans... yes wars happen, yes people die... sometimes these things happen for good reason and yes sometimes violent action is necessary.... I agree with you - but it should never be the case that we lose our own humanity, sense of justice or morality whilst doing this.

Jaguar... the UK is making something of a fuss about it....most of it is behind the scenes I'll grant you that but I can guarantee that a fuss is being made - it's gone political at the moment because of the UK/US past relations but this issue has put a strain on current diplomatic ties. Whilst I agree that during times of war things can be a bit different, a lot of people in the UK have had their noses put out of joint because during this war on terror the US and UK were supposed to be allies. To some people in the UK it looks like you don't trust us to deal with the suspects who are our responsibility (those that are British subjects).

As far as Afghanistan and Iraq... the fact that the governments of those countries were corrupt is not in question, the fact that the world is probably a better place without them is not in question. The question is did the US (and the UK and your other allies) do enough to minimise civilian casualties, did we conduct ourselves in a proper fashion during the war? Like I've been trying to point out in all of my replies that's one thing some people are concerned about. when people hear US citizens saying 'we were justified in doing it' or 'we did the right thing' yeah broadly speaking we may have done the right thing.... question is did we also do the right thing by trying to rectify any mistakes made whilst bombing the ass off the country? Some people don't think you (perhaps I should say us since the UK are also your allies in this) have done enough to rectify any mistakes made.

Sadly I don't (at the moment) have time to go into a really lengthy reply (being at work) but I'm finding this quite an interesting conversation . Bballad - I'd like to take you up about talking about the geneva convention later if I may - I'd like to hear your thoughts on something.

Z

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Originally posted here by jaguar291

When we entered the war in '41, Roosevelt and Churchill made an agreement that all Allied forces would first concentrate on Nazi Germany, the larger threat at the time. Like bballad said, England was the only stronghold left for the Allied forces in Europe when we entered the war and they were running low on supplies. We came with the ability to mass produce weapons and vehicles and we supplied them with both and furthermore troops... we then, along with the Brits, dropped over 2 million men on Normandy over a 90 day period and pushed east taking France and so on until the end of the war... on the other side of Europe, the Soviets were barely keeping up with the Germans but when we entered, Germany was forced to fight a war on two sides.. Germany then mobilized a lot of its troops toward the west where US and UK forces were pushing toward Berlin, thus giving the opening for the Soviets to fight and move the Germans back, which eventually led to the capture of Berlin by the Soviets... soon after Germany declared an unconditional surrender to the Allied forces. As you can see that if the US had not entered the war, England would have been taken and eventually the Soviets would have fallen... it was the US's ability to mass produce weapons and vehincles and our enormous amount of troops that led to the Allies's victory in WWII....

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That is basicly right on, although russia had woken up before we entered and may have beateb the Germans with out US intervention, this would have been a *very* bad thing and is part of why we focused on Europ first. Then when the russians turned towards Japan we droped the bobmb t okeep them out of that side of the war. If you spend time looking deep into history you can see the cold war being faught in the middle of WWII.

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Originally posted here by jaguar291

I have no doubts that the US would sacrifice US citizens for the good of the country... I'll check this out sooner or later..

jag291

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Let me sumerize project ever green for those who havent read t yet. This was just post bay of pigs and the pentagon was foaming at the mouth to get their shot at Cuba and Castro but relised that the US would never go for a war in Cuba and the Soviets would come running if we attacked (not to mention the nuks that would be lobed at us.). So we came up with a plan to paint Cuba in such a bad light that the US citizns would beg for war and the world comunity, includeing russia would let us do what ever we wanted. The plan called for takeing anti-Castro cubans and useing them to attack Miami (pretending to be pro-Castro terrorists/state sponserd from Cuba). they where to attack soft targets, especaily high rise office buildings, and the ywhere to acheive at minimum a specified number of civilian casualties. This would upset the US citizans and the world so much that we could then go invade Cuba. Kennady shot the plan down and removed the secratary of defense who proposed it (he was republican), that defense secratary has ties to Cheny and Rumsfeild.

We do do our best zonewalker to try and not kill any civilians, but it does happen. It would be very nice if civiliians never died. I believe that if we weren't trying to minimize civilian casualties then there would be thousands of civilians dead. But we do try to minimize their loss.