News-Record.com

You can put him on the "I'm embarrassed he went to my college" list, along with the doctor in Charleston, SC who refuses to treat attorneys or their dependents, and called on the AMA to recommend that all doctors do so.

Even so great a place as Davidson can produce ignorant morons. The problem is, Davidson's ignorant morons tend to be connected and moneyed and thus end up doing a lot of damage.

Not as much damage, yet as Yale's idiots, but close.

Oh, it's not so much that he went to Davidson ... there certainly was no shortage of ignorant morons when I was there. (Indeed, I was one, or at least acted like one, a good bit of the time.) It's that the kind of person he was when I knew him seems so incongruent with what I'm reading about him now.

Conservative? Yes. Straightlaced? Yes. Pro-military? He was in ROTC, so sure. But a torturer? Hey, times change and so do people, but I could name 15 people on that hall I'd've considered "Most Likely to Grow Up and Commit War Crimes" ahead of Jim.

Lex, please provide evidence to support your allegation of "torture" by the government.
Specifically, please show us where any legal body has found our government "guilty" of torture.
I'm not talking about individual criminals acts outside regulations by military members, but "torure" as defined by recognized legal bodies being ordered by our government.
And I don't mean a statement of your opinion or that of some other liberal that making detainees stand up for 6 hours (the horror!) or listen to Christina Aquillera music constitutes "torture."

jaycee, if you don't get this by now, you never will. G'night.

Lex, if you don't understand by now that there has been no government/Pentagon ordered torture as defined by law then you never will get it.
If you have evidence, please present it.
If not, quit lying to us every time you claim the government/Pentagon has engaged in "torture."

OK, jaycee, here ya go. Recall if you will that the reason no court has ruled is that the administration has been doing its dead-level best to keep these cases from getting in front of a judge in the first place.

That's it. Deal with the reality or don't, but I'm not playing any more Foucaultian games.

That report contains allegations only. The CCR is a left-wing legal advocacy group. I question whether Lex would take as truth reports by The Federalist Society, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Institute for Justice, or the Center for Individual Rights- all of which are similar right leaning legal advocacy groups. Probably not.

I also question if many of the instances cited in the report (keeping in mind that some of the allegations are sourced to the attorney's for the alleged victims as proof they occured- very dubious at best) rise to the level of torture. To me, torture is pulling out fingernails, strapping someone naked to a hot tar road or asphalt on a blistering hot day, sticking a face into a deep fryer, covering someone in honey and dumping ants on them, etc.

Lex, I challenge you to do this:
1) Research and find out what acts or omissions constitute "torture" according to international laws, Geneva Convention, or internationally recognized laws of warfare
2) Provide documentation that the US government or the Pentagon commits these acts or omissions as a matter of government policy
3) Document where the US government or Pentagon have been adjudicated "guilty" of "torture" as a matter of policy
You can't because they haven't. Period.
No matter what you personally think is "torture," the rest of the world doesn't see it that way.

You mentioned that once you were a crime reporter. Did you call people "murderers" in your news articles before they'd been convicted? Did you publish that someone was "guilty" before an arrest, trial, or verdict? I kinda doubt it, since you're still employed at the N&R. Can you explain why you think it's acceptable journalistic ethics to do that to the government?
You need to label your "opinions" as such and leave the judgement to the courts. They have that responsibility, not you. Thank goodness.

jaycee, it's out there and I'm not going to do your homework for you. We've been over and over this.

Sam, you're a lawyer: Please tell me what the penalty is for lawyers who knowingly submit falsified affidvits. And for the record, I don't discount such reports from conservative legal groups any more than I do liberal ones; indeed, I'm pretty sure I've relied on Federalist Society research in past reporting, although I haven't gone back in the archives to check.

Yes, Lex, this is old ground.
You have no proof, only opinions based on your hatred of conservatives.
The lack of facts to support your allegations confirms that you're lying to your readers.

Please answer this question, Lex:
You mentioned that once you were a crime reporter. Did you call people "murderers" in your news articles before they'd been convicted? Did you publish that someone was "guilty" before an arrest, trial, or verdict? I kinda doubt it, since you're still employed at the N&R. Can you explain why you think it's acceptable journalistic ethics to do that to the government?

jaycee and OJ Simpson, seekers after the truth.

jaycee, rant on all you want, but I'm not going to waste any more time rehashing your little reality problem. We're done here.

idee fixe (ee-day-FEEKS), noun:

An idea that dominates the mind; a fixed idea; an obsession.

The reality of obsession -- its incessant return to the same few themes, scenarios and questions; its meticulous examination and re-examination of banal minutiae for hidden meanings that simply aren't there; the cancerous way an idee fixe usurps other, more interesting thoughts -- is that it is confining, not rebellious, and not fascinating but maddeningly dull.
-- Laura Miller, "The Streetwalkers of San Francisco", New York Times, August 20, 2000

It became an idee fixe that he stubbornly adhered to in spite of the plain evidence . . . that obviously contradicts it.
-- Edwin G. Pulleyblank, "Prosody or pharyngealization in old Chinese?", The Journal of the American Oriental Society, January 12, 1996

from dictionary-reference.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2001/03/01.html

(And the term does not refer to Lex. Got that?)

Regardless of whether torture occurred (and it demonstrably did in Abu Graib), there are two things to remember here:

(1) this jackass has written opinions which purported to justify exempting the United States from the dictates of the Geneva Convention, which not only protect those we capture, but protect those of us who happened to be captured. This is why the legal officers of all of the branches of the service told him he was wrong. He ignored them.

(2) we don't know exactly what happened in Gitmo because this administration has used every tool at its disposal to prevent the courts from finding out. And they have done so at least partly on the counsel and through the strategy of Mr. Haynes.

He no more deserves a seat on the Court of Appeals than my dog does. Some semblance of ethics and, dare I say it, honor, are required of a judge.

Lex, thanks for admitting that you have no evidence of your allegations, and have maliciously made accusations against the government that you cannot prove. As a journalist, you're a liar. You do your best work as a left-wing sputtering pundit, a transparent mouthpiece for the anti-Bush crowd. Why not stick to opinion pieces, now that you've admitted lying to your readers.

Mr. Burns, the US voluntarily abides by the Geneva Convention, even though it is not legally bound to do so because our enemy is not a signatory or bound by the Convention.
The acts at Abu Ghraib were criminal acts by individuals without authority and contrary to US and Military policy.
What profession are you in? If one person in your profession commits a crime, does that mean your profession has a written policy ordering every one of you to commit crimes? Your analogy is ludicrous.
Mr. Burns, we know EXACTLY what's happening at Gitmo every second of every day. Gitmo is perhaps the most controlled environment on the earth today. Each and every single second is watched over and recorded and reviewed by on-site inspectors from the Int'l Red Cross, military IG's, and human rights groups. EVERY SECOND.

John, I would love to carry on a legal debate regarding the Court's ability to enforce the Geneva Convention and all the associated problems with such a ruling. Indeed, precedent suggests that it cannot. The majority stated they believed that the Bush program violated Geneva, yet the Accords themselves confer no such jurisdiction to make such a determination on the Courts.

Further, a lower court ruling that Geneva did not apply and could not be enforced in American courts is not contrary to prior established precedent. Calling the judge a jackass or otherwise singling him out as being out of the mainstream for such a ruling is a big stretch. If you have the opportunity, go back and read my responses to Lex regarding this subject from last week.

I know you are a smart guy. You always have been, and for all the other readers, I have known John Burns for many years. We don't agree on anything, but I don't question his intelligence. He has a stellar resume going back to high school. He never beat me in a debate, though... (he,he). Anyway, I don't agree with his analysis but I certainly respect him.

Sam, I believe John was calling Haynes (the 4th Circuit nominee, who, AFAIK, has never been a judge) a jackass for offering opinions supporting what the admin. wanted to do w/r/t detainees.

(John, of course, is capable of speaking for himself. I just thought I'd point that out.)

A lawyer's job is to advocate for his client, not inject his own opinions. If Mr. Haynes' client is the President, he is expected to advance the President's goals. John is a lawyer. He knows this. I don't think John would argue that he is immoral if his law firm asked him to defend a large corporation that did something he personally disagreed with. He would probably lose his job.

Mr. Haynes' client was not the president. (I believe, strictly speaking, that it is the SecDef, whose interests generally, but not always, intersect with those of the president at whose pleasure he/she serves.)

Moreover, a government lawyer also has an obligation not to tell his superiors (and any lawyer has an obligation not to tell his client) things they want to hear when the law suggests, and all his peers are screaming, that those things are almost certainly false. And government lawyers in particular also have an obligation to the law and the Constitution.

Jim Haynes appears to have signed off on orders for custodians to allow prisoners to be attacked with dogs. Show me anywhere in U.S. or international law where that's permitted ... or any argument whatever that might lead me to believe it's even a good idea.

Lex, please provide evidence that the US signed orders for prisoners to be "attacked" by dogs.
Didn't happen.

Here ya go. The dogs item is down toward the bottom of the list. Note that the word "attacking" is not used, but the use of dogs combined with the kind of intentionally vague guidelines described this past fall by Army Capt. Ian Fishback add up to a perfectly predictable outcome.

Just as I thought, Lex, you have no evidence, only opinion.
Playing mental games based on someone's "fear of dogs" does not even require that a dog be present, fer cryin' out loud.
There is not one single word about using dogs to "attack" anyone. That's about a million miles away from your false allegation that we "allow prisoners to be attacked by dogs."
To claim some hypothetical "predictable outcome" is keyboard-commando nonsense; mental masturbation by someone who does not know how the real world (or war) works.

Capt. Fishback does not mention dogs in his letter to McCain.

You're gonna have to do better than that.

Sorry, my name was left off of the above post.

Actually, being able to anticipate the possibility of things going wrong in the absence of clear guidelines and strong unit discipline is *precisely* a marker of one's familiarity with the real world, jaycee. Just as a bonus, it's also an obligation of any military commander.

The fact that you remain in denial about this suggests that you are the one who is having a little trouble with reality.

Lex, that's probably the stupidest thing you've ever written. You're projecting wildly ludicrous and politically motivated hypothetical situations with no core knowledge of that field of endeavor.
In other words, you're lying when you claim that there was an order signed by our government to "attack prisoners with dogs." You know it's a lie, and you've proved your own lie by linking to the document that shows it's not true.
Perhaps you'd like to detail your "real world" experience on the field of battle, or in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Gitmo. Tell us what you've personally seen by being in those places, not the opinions of those who oppose any and everything from behind their keyboards.
Please detail your personal knowledge of an "absence of clear guidelines" or an absence of "strong unit discipline" by telling us what military units you've served with in a combat zone which qualify you to make these statements?
You have no knowledge, you only regurgitate the anti-Bush opinions of others.
Your journalistic integrity is zero. You lie in print to make your money. If you were a lawyer you'd be disbarred. You use your position to further your political agenda, and do the readers of your newspaper a grave injustice by trying to feed them your opinions as fact.

And yet, somehow, reality rolls along bearing basically zero relation to what you've just said.

Oh, well.

How much are they paying you to hang here and harangue me? It must be a lot, because I can't imagine the work is particularly fulfilling.

Ah, I thought so, Lex.
Your "experience" in the real world is behind the keyboard.
Thanks for contributing.

I see Sam remains intelligent, but as misguided as ever. Reading this reminds me of watching him trying to rap and beatbox on the ativity bus. Lot of energy, lot of effort, but something he really never should have tried. :-)

Anyway. Mr. Haynes's client is not the President of the United States. His client is the US Government, and by extension the People. Where the interests of the President diverge from the protection of those interests, Mr. Haynes has a choice to make. And as the old knight said to Indiana Jones, "he chose.... poorly."