dub

some say that obama's speech in cairo has started a new beginning for the palestinians. some say it's just more words and actions taken by him will reveal his true commitment to ending the palestinians' struggle towards self-determination.

it's all fun and games until houses are demolished and building permits are only given to jews. oh the humanity!

one of cheney's justifications for attacking iraq was a false 'admission' by a prisoner who said there was a connection between saddam and al queda. the 'admission' came after the prisoner was tortured.

why are you making ridiculous comments?

who said i haven't before? i even re-confirmed how i feel about pearl's killing in that post. just because a person criticizes israel, it doesn't mean that they condone acts like pearl's killing. not sure why you had to take a page out of DoP's immature style of responses.

i believe that those who agree with torture are either what you have described or they're mindless sheep who have submitted to fear imposed on them by the sheepherders. fear that trumps compassion and rationality.

so which is it? occupation or annexation? israel is doing this because it believes east jerusalem is part of israel. i'm only asking because you seem to care so much about the context of international law. me and other gerbils? are you calling the rest of the world gerbils? are you downplaying the fact that international law has stated israel's annexation of east jerusalem to be illegal? if you don't believe me, look up resolutions 2253 to see what the world (or as you like to call them, gerbils) think about israel's annexation. again, why are you okay with shutting down a literature festival?

how is pointing to israel's illegal activities jew hatred?

3 issues: #1 - israel's annexation of east jerusalem is illegal. israel has shut down the theatre because it believes that east jerusalem is part of israel. #2 - who shuts down an international literature festival? looks like something the taliban would do. #3 - why are you okay with shutting down a literature festival? to shed more light into israel's illegal annexation: Approximately a third of the land illegally annexed in 1967 was expropriated to build 12 settlements, now home to some 200,000 Israeli settlers. The majority of the remaining land was re-zoned so as to prevent Palestinian use, and in effect serves as a land reserve for further settlement construction and expansion. While Palestinians constitute over 50 percent of the population of East Jerusalem, only 7.3 percent of the land therein is available for Palestinian construction, most of which is already built-up. illegal.

israel does not have legal power over east jerusalem. not according to internatinal law. lol @ US shutting down a book fair. also lol @ comparing canada's relationship to puerto rico and PA's relationship to east jerusalem and the palestinian theatre.

Israeli police have shut down a Palestinian theatre in East Jerusalem. The action, on Thursday, prevented the closing event of an international literature festival from taking place. Police said they were acting on a court order, issued after intelligence indicated that the Palestinian Authority was involved in the event. Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967 and has annexed the area. This is not recognised by the international community. The British consul-general in Jerusalem , Richard Makepeace, was attending the event. "I think all lovers of literature would regard this as a very regrettable moment and regrettable decision," he added. this is not okay.

so you are saying it's okay to be as despicable as those who killed pearl? that it's okay to break the law because those guys did it? okay then.

the situation is not as simple as you are wording it. when you have no control of your borders, airbase and economic relationship with other nations, then you have no way of improving your situation economically.

it was a job and an experience. it could be argued that it was "noble" and helpful but it can also be argued that canada didn't have to be there, but being part of NATO, we were obliged to. plus, the money we spend on arming ourselves should be used somewhere, right? otherwise it would seem like we're wasting our money. back to torture: there are set rules of war. if you look down at those who break these rules (killing innocent people / torturing) then we owe it to our dignity to follow the rules. furthermore, when serbian civilians, afghani civilians or iraqi civilians see that the foreign soldiers are treating prisoners outside of the rule of law, which we've created and expect others to follow, then they lose respect for us and if you don't have the respect of the civilians, you cannot "win the war".

i'm embarrassed for you. really. i'll acknowledge you once you're able to make a post that's not useless.

i served in the former yugoslavia. the problem is that war is a serious business. you're lying to yourself if you think we need to be in the wars we're in right now in order to preserve our security.

your usernote is perfect: Klown Without Pity

you're getting quite violent and you're continuing with your flustered responses. think of the children, who deserve the same chance at life as your daughter, whose lives are being ruined because people like you are okay with violating human rights.

haha? this is okay? Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape' Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged. At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee. Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube. Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts. Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. how much longer will some of you try to justify these behaviours?

you're in a lot of pain. whenever you get bothered and flustered, you respond with the nazi/hitler/anti-semite card. it's become a pattern. i suggest next time you're laughing and condoning torturing someone, taking someone's land and bombing and killing innocent people, you think about the children around the world who deserve the same rights as your daughter does.

you're no different than abu al booboo in saudi arabia who is trying to tell his board that cutting a person's head on camera is acceptable and useful. good thing that savages like you are a dying breed.

research after research. expert opinion after expert opinion and you still don't get that torture is useless? what's wrong with you? dub

lol? a comment like that suggests that i make you hurt on the inside and you have unresolved sadistic issues. maybe you shouldn't try to counter facts so often, then you wouldn't constantly feel the booboo?

what do people who 'interrogate' or interrogated for the U.S. have to say about this: it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea." or how about: Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop." Worse, you'll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country's image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington's confidential Pentagon report, which he won't discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. washington post

putting the moral and legal issue aside, it's been proven that torture does not work. U.S. intelligence officers say they have little—if any—evidence that useful intelligence has been obtained using techniques generally understood to be torture. It is clear, for instance, that Al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) was subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. His interrogators even threatened, à la Jack Bauer, to go after his family. (KSM reportedly shrugged off the threat to his family—he would meet them in heaven, he said.) KSM did reveal some names and plots. But they haven’t panned out as all that threatening: one such plot was a plan by an Al Qaeda operative to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge—with a blow torch. Intelligence officials could never be sure if KSM was holding back on more serious threats, or just didn’t know of any. source