Dick Durbin

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

However, I would not believe in any way that this would be indicative of daily happenings.

What exactly does the term "training drill" mean to you?

Am I to believe they let this "training drill" continue because they wanted to demonstrate what NOT to do?

Whenever I've participated in training, I've always believed it's because they want to impart to me techniques and procedures they WANT me to use.

Your mental gymnastics here just amaze me.

[scaeagles]

Actually, I believe it is your mental gymnastics that are amazing.

Do you believe they were instructed to beat the undercover MP? This is why they used an undercover MP, because they knew he would be beaten? That is absurd. Rather, I would suspect that they were quite surprised when it happened. Otherwise, they aren't going to use one of their own in the drill!

[Scrooge McSam]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Actually, I believe it is your mental gymnastics that are amazing.

It shouldn't surprise you that I am becoming less and less enamored with what you believe.

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Do you believe they were instructed to beat the undercover MP?

This particular man? No, though I can't be sure. Any other detainee? I don't know. I would like to be able to say that American soldiers are not trained to act this way, but I can't. They're beating what they think is a detainee with MP training officers watching them. You tell me. No, don't... I don't have the stomach to listen to whatever excuse you're going to come up with next.

What I believe is the MP's running the drill did NOT inform their trainees that this was a drill... gross incompetence there. They nearly got one of our own killed due to their gross negligence.

So these MPs hit that room believing they were dealing with a real situation. Their actions provide us an example or how MPs treat military detainees, contrary to your continued assertions that American soldiers just don't act like that. Yet, here we are. American soldiers beating a "detainee" all the way to brain damage.

(As an aside, do you think they beat detainees like that when they're torturing them for information? And I'm just talking about the few documented cases of torture that have been brought to light. After all, we all know that torture is not systemic in US prison camps, don't we? It would seem to me to be unproductive to beat somebody all the way to brain damage if you're trying to get information out of them.)

And now let's move to the reaction from the base commanders. There was none. No action has been taken against the "brave soldiers" who pepper sprayed and beat an innocent man they "thought" was an unruly detainee.

Yes, I am SO sure other detainees are being treated properly though.

And from the Pentagon? They denied it. We were never supposed to know about this. They only acknowledged it after a lawsuit was introduced. A Pentagon that actually strives to treat detainees properly, as they claim to do, would not have swept this under the rug.

We have a systemic problem in our prison camps. We have lost our way.

Originally Posted by scaeagles

This is why they used an undercover MP, because they knew he would be beaten? That is absurd.

That idea is yours, not mine, though I am happy to agree with you that it is absurd.

[scaeagles]

Senator Wyden, D of Oregon and certainly no friend of the Bush administration, after a trip this past weekend, seems to think Gitmo is no gulag:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160859,00.html

Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (search) of Oregon and Ben Nelson (search) of Nebraska said that while they believe some kind of standard should be set for the status and treatment of the prisoners there, they did not observe anything in interrogation practices or conditions that would prompt them to agree with a call to shut the facility down.

"It is my opinion that closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay (search) would result in less accountability in the treatment of prisoners, not more," Wyden said. "The question we have to ask is who do we trust more to treat these prisoners humanely — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt or the United States?"

.......

Wyden said that past practices he had heard about at Guantanamo, a.k.a. Gitmo, have been changed, and procedures and conditions at Camp Delta, where the prisoners are housed, offer the best commitment to human rights.

[Scrooge McSam]

Ah, Faux news... bastion of unbiased reporting.

I wonder why Fox fails to mention that these lawmakers weren't allowed to view any detainees?

[scaeagles]

Attack the source of the quote? Did they misquote Wyden or take him out of context? Is Wyden so pro-Bush that he would say something like that even if it weren't true?

[Scrooge McSam]

Yep, I'm attacking the source of the quote. Fox sure seems to go out of its way to leave out the fact that Wyden, or any or the rest of the lawmakers who went on this tour, did not see any detainees.

AP reported it.

So did Reuters.

And MSNBC.

And CNN.

Yet, Fox seemed to miss that little point... or leave it out intentionally. I really have no way of knowing, and don't care one way or the other. I stopped looking to Fox for news long ago.

And please don't think I reserve all my contempt for Fox and none for Wyden. Wyden was irresponsible to make that pronouncement. They went on their little "fact finding" tour of the prisons to verify how our prisoners are being treated and yet somehow failed to even lay eyes on a single detainee.

Curious how that works, isn't it?

[scaeagles]

Perhaps all of the prisoners at that time were in prayer and didn't wish to be disturbed.

[Scrooge McSam]

Of all the possible responses flooding my brain right now, I guess I'll stick with this one...

I'm glad someone can find something to laugh about here. Please excuse me if I don't join in.

[scaeagles]

Humor has to have a certain element of truth to it to be funny. It's funny because it's so ridiculous to compare Gitmo to gulags when, as a matter of fact, they are given specific quiet times for prayer (among many other comforts).