US Army Intel Specialist Admits Torture in Iraq; Marines, Navy SEALS also Torturing

[Ted Striker]

Sorry to hear about that Pekka.

You'll find your way.

[Pekka]

sure. It's like Chris Rock says.. hypocricy in democracy. The level of your responsibility to an act as tied to the status that you have in the society. Or who you know, basically the status you are connected to. I'm not saying it's unfair, it's just the way it is. They say the protect your privacy, and even though I didn't get a criminal record or anything, and was underaged, and small potatoes, like I made the thread about maybe month ago or so, when the cops pulled me over and started messing with me about the pot thing. Checked my car, had to stare the flashlight, started asking me about things, you know, how do they know that? That **** shouldn't be there, I have no record, and even if I had gotten a criminal record, it would have been deleted in 5 years. The law that protects privacy is ****. A traffic cop gets ALL my information, past and present, because they get the arrest history, and that sucker is for life, and they say the reason too. So to them, I was a druggie. WTF is that all about? You know, yeah some databases get cleaned but not all of them, in fact it all stays there, and it is used all the way down to traffic police. WTF?!

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Agathon


Why not abandon this juvenile Rambo talk and be sensible for a change?

What is it with all this pseudo-tough talk?

You do realize this is MTG you're talking to, right?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Incendiary munitions are not CW. Nor is napalm. Maybe we should shake their hands and give them daisies?

YEAH! That is exactly what Boris and the others are arguing for! To shake their hands and give them daisies!



Come on, MTG.

[Arrian]

The WP is a gray area and I'm just not very worked up about it.

The torture, otoh, I find very upsetting. Not surprising at this point, but upsetting nonetheless. Who are we again?

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by notyoueither
They aren't chemical weapons, period. <--- full stop.

Yet they result in what every reasonable person would call a chemical burn.

What counts as a chemical weapon "officially" and what does not is a matter of policy and compromise, not reality. To argue otherwise is just sophistical. Mustard gas seems less harmful than WP in some respects.

If these things are being used to administer chemical burns, then they are being used as chemical weapons. Whether or not this should be prohibited is another question, but it is pretty dumb for an aggressor that has a major downer on chem weapons to be doing anything like this.

[MrFun]

The hair-splitting over what is a chemical weapon and what is not, is ridiculous -- NYE and some others need to find a more reasonable hobby.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Arrian
The WP is a gray area and I'm just not very worked up about it.

The torture, otoh, I find very upsetting. Not surprising at this point, but upsetting nonetheless. Who are we again?

-Arrian

arrian

I fully support the McCain amendment.


In general i find McCain one of the most sensible voices on the war.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
Yet they result in what every reasonable person would call a chemical burn.

When the chemical is burning at 1200 degrees (is that Farenheit or Celsius, Oerdin? Not that it makes much of a difference), you aren't going to notice whatever chemical burns you receive.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by MrFun
The hair-splitting over what is a chemical weapon and what is not, is ridiculous -- NYE and some others need to find a more reasonable hobby.

Maybe you could get a better grip on reality. Getting your panties in a bunch over the inhumanity of war does not make something illegal. Nor does it make it inappropriate to use when targetting enemy combatants in an attempt to extinguish the lives of those enemy combatants while preserving the lives of your own.

[notyoueither]

For your benefit, MrFun, here is the relevant passage of an international treaty that applies to WP as it most likely was used in Faluja (to burn out dug in combatants).

PROTOCOL ON PROHIBITIONS OR RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF
INCENDIARY WEAPONS
(PROTOCOL III)
Article 1
Definitions

For the purpose of this Protocol:

1. "Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.

(a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.

(b) Incendiary weapons do not include:

(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems;

(ii) Munitions designed to combine penetration, blast or fragmentation effects with an additional incendiary effect, such as armour-piercing projectiles, fragmentation shells, explosive bombs and similar combined-effects munitions in which the incendiary effect is not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons, but to be used against military objectives, such as armoured vehicles, aircraft and installations or facilities.

2. "Concentration of civilians" means any concentration of civilians, be it permanent or temporary, such as in inhabited parts of cities, or inhabited towns or villages, or as in camps or columns of refugees or evacuees, or groups of nomads.

3. "Military objective" means, so far as objects are concerned, any object which by its nature, location, purpose or use makes an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.

4. "Civilian objects" are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 3.

5. "Feasible precautions" are those precautions which are practicable or practically possible taking into account all circumstances ruling at the time, including humanitarian and military considerations.

Article 2
Protection of civilians and civilian objects

1. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.

2. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

3. It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.

4. It is prohibited to make forests or other kinds of plant cover the object of attack by incendiary weapons except when such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objectives.

From

http://disarmament.un.org/TreatyStatus.nsf

Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects

Note that it is found in a convention on the use of conventional weapons, not as some would have it, in a convention on chemical weapons. The former are directed munitions that can be fired at a target and none outside of a defined target can be thought to be affected. The later are area weapons, and no such targetting is possible. Every living thing within a very large area will be affected.

Hense, I believe that KH was off base earlier to have pointed to a treaty from the 1920's that dealt with the use of poison gas and biological agents. WP clearly does not fall into that category of area weapons.

[Agathon]

Someone please tell NYE that international treaties, for political reasons, often contain sophistry and ill defined terms.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Agathon


Yet they result in what every reasonable person would call a chemical burn.

No, they result in thermal burns. Chemical burns are caused by substances which are caustic, typically substances which are highly acidic or base.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Agathon
Someone please tell NYE that international treaties, for political reasons, often contain sophistry and ill defined terms.

ok



And NYE I think it's you who needs to get some reality. Super Target has some that you can buy in Aisle E in the Home Improvement department.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by lord of the mark

arrian

I fully support the McCain amendment.

In general i find McCain one of the most sensible voices on the war.

As do I. I generally like him. Generally. He's more of a hawk than I, and he does occasionally march to the party line (which, IMO, is a bunch of bull****, so it's unfortunate when he parrots it).

But I think we'd be a lot better off if he'd been running the show for the past 5 years instead of Dubya.

-Arrian