I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.
@ Matt Bryant
How is it that you've posted nearly 2100 times and I've yet to see your name but in this one thread alone I have seen it pop up numerous times, nearly every single one regurgitating the same tired partisan tripe? Yes, sorry, my apologies, I brought out the post count argument. I concede!
Perhaps my previous response to Paul 106 will hint as to where my sensibilities and loyalties lie. I doubt it, as you just want to rail off your pedestrian opinion while masquerading it as high-brow intellectual analyzation. You didn't read my post, or you'd understand the correlation between a society that condones secretly shipping off POWs to secret military bases (ie doing everything it can to "protect" us from people we denote as "evil") and one that has no problem stripping everyday citizens and soldiers of their rights (ie doing everything we can to set an example for would-be "traitors" and constitutionally protected leakers alike). Our obsession with security has led us to accede to the continual and wanton stripmining of rights and protections from both the constitution and federal law. Moreover, our acquiescence to the turned blind eye of oversight has caused the moral and ethical erosion of government that seeks to domestically abuse the powers given to it to fight terrorism and foreign espionage. To wit, we treated foreign nations like shit for so long, simply because they're foreign, that we fail to recognize what's wrong when we treat our own citizenry the same. As I said in my post, which you failed to read, I pointed out that the military CAN and WILL treat him like this as military law is far more strict than its civilian counterpart. All the same, that certainly doesn't make it right.
Now, because you're obviously here for no other reason than to spout off crap rhetoric, I'll give you a line by line response:
"Please state how any of that - even if it was true in other cases - applies to Manning?"
- No, thanks, you'll just take it out of context again in a crude and infantile attempt to discredit what I'm saying and repeat partisan talking points because you lack both the originality and cognition to form your own opinions about the matter.
"He hasn't been kidnapped"
- I never said he was, that was in regards to our treatment of should've-been-POWs-instead-of-detainees and the fact that they were flown to secret prisons and never charged. Don't even attempt to straw-man me.
"he's been arrested by the US military for breach of US military law."
- Yes, a fact which I stated and bears repeating. Thanks, Matty!
"He hasn't been flown to a secret prison,"
- Again, never said he was. Don't straw-man me.
"he's in Quantico Brig, an established US base, and his friends, family and lawyers have all been given access to him."
- This is not a flat out lie, but it's disingenuous, as you leave out the part where his friends, family, lawyers and journalists have all been harassed by the military. Their cars have been searched and towed, they have been given court summons for things such as not having up to date car insurance paperwork on them (and then refusing to take electronic insurance papers), they have been written ticket after ticket for infractions found without having probable cause, etc. There are more ways to skin a cat than one, and just as Bradley Manning's treatment amounts to torture, so too is constant harassment a tool used to keep his friends, family and lawyers from having easy access to him.
"He hasn't been tortured,"
- Legally he hasn't. Nor has he been subjected to what is torture under international law. Still, his treatment is torturous, and I wager that is the implied meaning of most people's posts on this subject. This is not a nit you should be picking, as you are neither a pedant nor clever, you are merely trying to score points by feigning to not have understood our posts and then hoping we don't come back to clarify.
"he's been kept under US military prison rules, including their rules on how prisoners judged likley to self-harm should be kept."
- Yes, just as prisoners as Camp X-Ray and Abu Ghraib were kept under military prison rules, including their rules on how prisoners judged likely to self-harm should be kept. These rules and their interpretation are ripe for abuse, however, and the fact that you don't even think that they could be is appalling. The military is doing everything they can to prevent oversight of his treatment, and therein lies the problem. You understand this, yet you, again, acted as obtusely as possible to make an asinine point.
"Seeing as I doubt you have any psychiatric training and have likley never even met Manning,"
- While I have no psychiatric training, many people do. People being kept from meeting and evaluating Manning. My lack of training and personal interaction with Manning does not preclude me from forming an opinion about his treatment, just as your own personal inadequacies don't preclude you from forming yours. Again, willfully obtuse. Again, don't straw-man me, buddy.
"I don't see how you are qualified to question the conclusions of trained doctors."
- Trained military doctors with an agenda who are operating under the cover of a military that is doing everything it can to prevent oversight of their treatment of Manning. Look, if you don't understand that the military looks out for its own, and has in the past gone to the exact same extremes it is now to threaten, demoralize and discredit people that have scorned it, then you are even more deluded than I thought.
"There is no "pressure" on foreign governments, all Manning's wrong-doings have been committed in US bases under US militray juristiction,"
- Again, this was part of my correlation/causation bit regarding how... fuck it, you know what, you don't care about this argument, you're just a partisan asshole that has made this thread into his own personal crusade against against anyone who is taking a moral stand against his treatment. His treatment is legal, yes, but it isn't right, and that is why you have gone to the fringes of misunderstanding and misrepresentation to make our arguments look weak because you lack the ability to bolster your own arguments through reason, logic, empathy and understanding. The four previous sentiments are not something only Democrats are prone to, and your incredible ability to incorrectly slander many people for holding those opinions (and ones that you simply made up and credited to them) is simply astounding.
"so no need to involve foreign powers at all."
- Oh, no? So the United States government leaning on Sweden to prosecute him for crimes in their country so that the United Kingdom can extradite him to a country that is then far more likely to extradite him to the United States isn't involving foreign powers at all? I realize that is, of course, not what you meant, as you were merely warping my easily understandable post to suit your own needs, but it is what the US is doing.
"And please give a single example of how the US administration has threatened it's own over Manning?"
- Straw man. Straw man. STRAW MAN. STTTRRAAAWWW MAAANNN!! My post contains three extremely separate points that tied in to make one overarching statement about the way in which this country is operating. (1) Obama is continuing Bush era policies, (2) many of which began to intrude domestically, (3) the treatment of Manning is morally, if not legally, wrong, which directly descends from (1) and (2). Again, I don't expect you to make that logical leap, seeing as how your entire purpose here is to score points and manipulate what we're all saying. I doubt you even read to the point of comprehension the majority of our posts in your hurry (as indicated by the legion of misspellings and typos) to post as many platitudes as humanly possible. It looks as if you just scanned for as many talking points as you could and then vomited up some pointlessly vitriolic reaction, all of which boil down to "it's A-OK legally" and "democrat crybaby wah wah wah".
"In short, you can't for any of the above, because all you sprouted was a load of mindless, unsubstantiated drivel."
- I apologize for my inability to properly germinate. I promise to consult with an arborist before next posting.
As my favorite "liberal" once said, "Don't kick cow crap on my boots and call it bull shit."
Biting the hand that feeds IT
