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Can we call this a Star Chamber yet?

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
Again, I can't wait until President Bristol Palin puts a drone-fired missile through my window in 30 years because I called her mom a stupid bitch (well, worse, actually) on RM.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

It's funny how an impeachable offense is staring the GOP in their face, and they won't take it. Semen on a dress? Rabble Rabble Rabble!

Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Unreal. Obama should be in the Hague next to Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and Powell. And this is the best option we have? Fantastic.
 

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
Oh, and the first guy who says "Vote for Ron Paul, then!" in that sneering I'm a fvcking moron who is too stupid to breathe voice?

Light yourself on fire.
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
what can one say other than on this issue, also, his position has evolved. and i predict hillary would have done the same

on the +side, by using this method, he's effectively closed down gitmo. maybe he could take his list & re-categorize into F/M/K
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
I must be failing as a "liberal", because I really don't see anything wrong with this. Car full of known bad guys. 2 guys (military age) who are riding around in the car full of bad guys, but not necessarily known to be terrorists...... How would you classify them?? Civilians? Seriously? I'm pretty sure that the anonymous official has it spot on:

innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs
What, is that one guy in the middle standing above the cab (white turban) unknown to the CIA and isn't specifically holding a gun, so he should obviously be listed as a civilian?



Going after a purely military target and having some (possible) civilian casualties is a fact of war. It's true when Obama does it, it was true when Bush did it, and it's true when the Israelies and Palestinians do it.
 

Andyman_1970

Turbo Monkey
Apr 4, 2003
3,105
5
The Natural State
I must be failing as a "liberal", because I really don't see anything wrong with this. Car full of known bad guys. 2 guys (military age) who are riding around in the car full of bad guys, but not necessarily known to be terrorists...... How would you classify them?? Civilians? Seriously? I'm pretty sure that the anonymous official has it spot on:



What, is that one guy in the middle standing above the cab (white turban) unknown to the CIA and isn't specifically holding a gun, so he should obviously be listed as a civilian?



Going after a purely military target and having some (possible) civilian casualties is a fact of war. It's true when Obama does it, it was true when Bush did it, and it's true when the Israelies and Palestinians do it.
Must spread rep.

AQAP just tried a few weeks ago to slip an underwear bomb past the goalie and onto a US bound jet. If they are targeting us, should we not be targeting them?
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
We're not ruled by law when a dictator president can unilaterally order ANYONE killed and define anyone in their proximity as an enemy, merely because he and he alone decides that he's sufficiently convinced they're a "baddie."
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
I wouldn't use drones. If a target was sufficiently well identified and was agreed to be a threat (by more than just me and my hen-pecked advisors) then I'd send in actual troops. Needless to say, the prospect of losing soldiers would make me much more wary to flex my foreign assassination muscle, as it were, and I probably wouldn't do so at all.
 

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
^^^^And what would your definition of "enemy combatant" be, and how would you implement that determination in say.... Yemen?
So if we can go and blow people up in Yemen, then they are justified in blowing us up here, right?

After all, you can't possibly argue that American bombs overseas only hit bad guys. (Iraq says hi!)

Congrats, you just justified 9/11 from the other side. Bush Doctrine, after all.

Unless you're arguing that only Americans are allowed to kill people and pretend it's ok. If that's it, you're in agreement with the communist Kenyan faggot and about 99% of the richest, fattest, and most ignorant nation on the planet, so you're not an outlier or anything...
 

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
How ****ing ignorant do you have to sound to make a point? faggot?
Ironic, except not really. That talking point should get me a spot at right-wing think tank. Or a internship with Andrew Sullivan. You've noticed the rhetoric over the last bunch of years?

Yes, they've called Obama a fag. It's been one of the charges, along with atheist Muslim communist socialist fascist collectivist etc. Nigger, of course, is on the tip of their tongues, but they can't quite say it because they know that's beyond the pale, even for the racist base that makes up the GOP. Progress!

Not leveled against Larry Craig very often by the same people, I've noticed...

Lets not derail the thread, though. All those things the right want wants to hang Obama for, and they ignore the legitimate reason to remove him right under their noses...which goes back to my concern about President Bristol Palin...

And before anyone asks again, the only reason I'm in the US is for family. Without that, I'd kiss this banana republic ****hole goodbye in about 0.0001 seconds. Can one of you Americans convert that to Jesus-time for me?
 
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jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,559
24,182
media blackout
We're not ruled by law when a dictator president can unilaterally order ANYONE killed and define anyone in their proximity as an enemy, merely because he and he alone decides that he's sufficiently convinced they're a "baddie."
don't forget, part of the role of POTUS is also commander in chief, ie the head of the military.

Besides, it's not like he's sitting in the oval office making kill orders all willy-nilly.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,029
7,549
The POTUS should not be the judge, jury, and executioner, regardless of his nominal title.
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
I wouldn't use drones. If a target was sufficiently well identified and was agreed to be a threat (by more than just me and my hen-pecked advisors) then I'd send in actual troops. Needless to say, the prospect of losing soldiers would make me much more wary to flex my foreign assassination muscle, as it were, and I probably wouldn't do so at all.
So you'd just sit back and watch them grow in number/strength and wait till they're physically trying to light the fuse on their underwear/shoe/hat bomb on some plane destined for here? Seriously? Or if you're going to send in troops, what's the difference if civilians get killed in a shootout? Same dead (possible) civilians, only far more likelihood of dead Americans.

I'm pretty sure my position hasn't changed one bit since the last time this was discussed on here, so I won't bother retyping it...

silver said:
So if we can go and blow people up in Yemen, then they are justified in blowing us up here, right?
If you can somehow prove to me that the WTC was a military target, then you might have a point. Or if you can prove that drone strikes have been specifically targeting civilians. Are we launching a few tomahawk missiles into crowded marketplaces in an attempt to disrupt their economic transactions or state-GDP? If so, it wasn't in the NYT article.
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
The POTUS should not be the judge, jury, and executioner, regardless of his nominal title.
Our soldiers are quite often judge, jury and executioner. Or do you think that our soldiers literally wait until that guy with the rifle *actually* starts shooting at them so that they can claim self-defense?

Why should our president be any different?
 

dump

Turbo Monkey
Oct 12, 2001
8,194
4,419
We're not ruled by law when a dictator president can unilaterally order ANYONE killed and define anyone in their proximity as an enemy, merely because he and he alone decides that he's sufficiently convinced they're a "baddie."
I guess this is not a surprise to you is it? The US carries out extra judicial killing all the time in various forms - the difference is that they rarely make the news[sup]TM[/sup] and it's often very hard to prove. I used to know a guy from the special forces (who lived on a hill and was armed to the teeth) who talked a little bit about the time he spent after vietnam in South America on various assignments... often waist deep in a swamp waiting for x target to walk by.
 

dump

Turbo Monkey
Oct 12, 2001
8,194
4,419
Also, murder murder murder, kill kill kill. Not sure where it gets us.
 

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
If you can somehow prove to me that the WTC was a military target, then you might have a point. Or if you can prove that drone strikes have been specifically targeting civilians. Are we launching a few tomahawk missiles into crowded marketplaces in an attempt to disrupt their economic transactions or state-GDP? If so, it wasn't in the NYT article.
Ah yes. "We don't intentionally target civilians, so that means we can ignore the fact that we kill many many more civilians than the terrorists do."

We are all Israelis now.

Besides which, of course the WTC was a military target. It was full of military aged men and women, after all...
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
I wouldn't use drones. If a target was sufficiently well identified and was agreed to be a threat (by more than just me and my hen-pecked advisors) then I'd send in actual troops. Needless to say, the prospect of losing soldiers would make me much more wary to flex my foreign assassination muscle, as it were, and I probably wouldn't do so at all.
if the argument is "don't use technology that can reduce the risk of being killed", then why send them in armed with any manner of weaponry that extends reach beyond arm's length? or maybe only tool up to the extend they are?
So if we can go and blow people up in Yemen, then they are justified in blowing us up here, right?
if the justification is law of armed conflict or geneva convention, then no. but if it's simply retaliatory, or b/c any moral high ground is surrendered due to violations of aforementioned 'standards', that would then be logically consistent, yes.
Obama's peace prize = Milli Vanilli's Grammy.

One of them got revoked.
public enemy taught me everything i needed to know about grammys
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
Ah yes. "We don't intentionally target civilians, so that means we can ignore the fact that we kill many many more civilians than the terrorists do."

We are all Israelis now.

Besides which, of course the WTC was a military target. It was full of military aged men and women, after all...
Can we not kill *any* civilians? How about keeping a running tally of civilians that we kill vs how many they kill (both Americans *and* brown people) and just not equal or exceed their number? So we could have the chance to kill a few terrorists/freedom fighters, but since there are two civilians (and that would put us over the magic number!!!) with them, we have to wait a few days till they kill some more people... Sound good?
 

JRogers

talks too much
Mar 19, 2002
3,785
1
Claremont, CA
I must be failing as a "liberal", because I really don't see anything wrong with this. Car full of known bad guys. 2 guys (military age) who are riding around in the car full of bad guys, but not necessarily known to be terrorists...... How would you classify them?? Civilians? Seriously? I'm pretty sure that the anonymous official has it spot on:



What, is that one guy in the middle standing above the cab (white turban) unknown to the CIA and isn't specifically holding a gun, so he should obviously be listed as a civilian?



Going after a purely military target and having some (possible) civilian casualties is a fact of war. It's true when Obama does it, it was true when Bush did it, and it's true when the Israelies and Palestinians do it.
Matters are not so simple. We are not talking about a random guy in a truck full of terrorists. Resorting to that sort of example does not get at the real questions involved. This is a year old, but has some good examples of what is at issue:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rogers/whos-a-target-drone-death_b_840018.html
 

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA


Won't get fooled again?

Probably.
What's the other option? Romney? He'll do the same, except make things worse domestically for the 99.5%.

Meet the new war criminal, same as the old war criminal...

Oh, and after Obama? Probably Clinton. Or, hopefully, since Dante is so onboard with this, President Walker. I'm sure he'd support the same foreign policy actions coming out of that office, right? Realistically though, we're probably looking at a Trump/Snooki ticket...
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
How many land wars have we started based on false pretenses since Obama was elected? How many new tax cuts were passed that primarily went to the upper 2%? How many CIA agents were outed for political payback? How many House majority leaders have been indicted?


If you're equivocating targeted drone strikes with the massive invasion of another country that cost 4,000 American lives, 100,000 Iraqi civilian lives, a trillion dollars and 8 years, well.... hyperbole much?
 

daisycutter

Turbo Monkey
Apr 8, 2006
1,651
124
New York City
I wouldn't use drones. If a target was sufficiently well identified and was agreed to be a threat (by more than just me and my hen-pecked advisors) then I'd send in actual troops.
Thats so great you would put american lives at risk rather then use drones?
 

$tinkle

Expert on blowing
Feb 12, 2003
14,591
6
And what makes the life of an American inherently worth more than the life of an Afghani or Yemini or Pakistani?
on avg, ea american is saddled with far more debt, both private & inherited, so i believe it's not so much worth, but collection potential