And I think I and others have shown it was not legal by international standards... and it was only "legal" by our standards due to a changing of the understanding of what TORTURE is. Up until we decided to change our minds on it so we could us it on defenseless prisoners waterboarding HAS ALWAYS BEEN CONSIDERED TORTURE.
The off the reservation comment was simply saying Bush/Cheney were people who authorized terrible things, lied like it was their religion and overall deserve to be ostracized and condemned.
Yes just like Republican Presidential candidate and former POW Senator John McCain said... should have been treated as POW's... should not have been waterboarded it's TORTURE! I can play the clip again if you like. But not only that also other international agreements like the Basic Human Rights agreement that's been posted on the other thread.
Really quite simple in this case. We agreed to abide by certain standards and we did not under the Bush administration policy of let's TORTURE DETAINEES.
Same as saying "we got valuable information" that didn't stop anything because the information was just talking about hopes for other attacks.
The word smithing is getting a little tedious. You never said those exact words but you've spent pages glorifying a terrible series of TORTURE events. All you've done is search out loopholes in our laws and say no one has authority to enforce non TORTURE regulations on us.
If you think the Bush TORTURE was bad and we shouldn't have used it then say so. That's the direct question... it's a YES or NO answer only. You may also feel it was legal but that's not the question I'm asking.
I'm saying the intentional targeting of civilians is wrong and against international law. Are you disputing this?
The reason for targeting cities is a response set up to a nuclear attack. It is not... I REPEAT NOT... a first strike scenario.
Well I could post about 20 different clips documenting Bush/Cheney lies on just about every subject. I think some show a total of 935 separate lies. It doesn't matter... if you believe Bush/Cheney never lied after all that's came out already that's your position.
Are you saying we couldn't have called the Gnomes or Werewolves or something and still treated them under Geneva Convention Standards? Come on Rob! It's not what we called them it's that we TORTURED THEM! And you know that.
There you go again... not able to just say the words... TORTURING BOUND & DEFENSELESS DETAINEES IS WRONG. Instead what are you doing? Encouraging TORTURE through the reason of nonenforceability.
We could have treated them as POW's just like Senator McCain has said. Instead the Bush/Cheney gang of thugs chose TORTURE.
You don't know everything that we've done. These things usually come out years later as they did in Vietnam. But when you start with the baseline of all the various things that happened at Abu Grabe add to that a procedure for a water suffocation torture the parts we don't fully know about will be chilling when they come out.
As far as the nukes... my point is there are those who think in foolhardy ways. They think us having the ability to destroy the entire planet 350 times over is a stronger position than say Russia that can only DESTROY EVERYTHING ON THE PLANET say 200 times. My wife the ex-Intelligence Officer always gets a kick out of that whole missing of the point thing. Probably because her field was Russian studies.
And if you had a small nuke and you watched as certain Americans praised TORTURE and it was your bother or father was being TORTURED I could see the scenario in their minds for a 9-11 type of retaliation attack by just regular looking people. But this time instead of a plane it's a nuke.
Well good that's something to agree on. Although I don't think it has to necessarily be inevitable if we always work hard on our image of being just even if it's not expedient or convenient.
I'm just saying torturing bound & defenseless prisoners puts us on a fast track to a downfall that I'd like to slow down. 
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