Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (233251)	5/17/2005 10:10:14 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574786

"Could be, what was it, 10 years? " Bit more. But it was pretty low intensity until Johnson. He was determined to win the thing, so... I got to know quite a few vets during the late 70's and early 80's. Some saw pretty intense action, the one that amazed me the most spent the first part of his tour on the back of a tank in the central highlands, but finished out as a door gunner on a Huey. Which, by the way, had an average life expectancy of around one mission. I tend to accept his story, he doesn't brag and cuts the conversation short when it comes up. But so many that I knew were changed by their experiences, and not in good ways. Many had various problems with drugs and tended to drift for years. Most eventually got plugged back in to society, but not everyone. Some are likely still lost.

To: Road Walker who wrote (233251)	5/17/2005 10:43:28 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574786

Iraq is getting worse. It's going to continue to get worse until our country can't stand it anymore. That's the best case scenario where the war doesn't spread to Iran or Syria and a new war doesn't break out in Ubekistan or North Korea. TP

To: Road Walker who wrote (233251)	5/18/2005 3:55:23 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1574786

A gift for a White House set to pounce May 18, 2005 It was Christmas in May at the White House. And what a glittering little present Newsweek magazine delivered to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.! It was truly the perfect gift for a beleaguered administration trying to convince the world - not to mention its own restive citizenry - that basic American values are still being upheld in this age of terror, even as we fight a scary new enemy all around the world. After Abu Ghraib, after the naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in human pyramids, after "leash girl," after hoods and handcuffs in the midday sun, after the deluge of scathing reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, after the whole messy lot of it - here, at last, was something the Bush administration could unwrap with glee: An allegation of Islamic prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay that could not immediately be confirmed. The short Newsweek Periscope item ran in the May 9 edition. It said American guards at the secret U.S. military-detention facility on Cuba had flushed a Quran down a toilet. Put aside for a moment the plumbing implications of that. Does Guantanamo really have toilets that can ingest such a bulky book? A few choices verses? Maybe. A page or two? Sure. But the entire Islamic holy book? We must immediately bring these plumbing geniuses to New York! Be that as it may. If true, the alleged Quran-dump would have been a violation of stated U.S. policy, which prohibits any such desecration of the sacred Islamic text. And Newsweek's single source, a high-ranking U.S. government official who had proved reliable in the past, had gone suddenly wobbly on reporters John Barry and Michael Isikoff. In the absence of solid confirmation, there was really nothing Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker could do but retract the report and apologize. Which would have been a whole lot easier if the item hadn't already sparked riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and across much of the Islamic world. But wars against terror are fought with words even more than bombs and bullets. Victories and losses are not counted in captured territory anymore. It is the swaying of hearts and minds that matters most of all. And so the White House wasn't turning up its rhetorical nose at Newsweek's unexpected generosity. Here was a major American news magazine admitting that, in one instance anyway, a report of prisoner abuse could not be verified. Let carol-singing begin! Newsweek's retraction was merely "a good first step," crowed the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. "We would encourage them to help undo the damage that has been done," McClellan went on yesterday, milking the magazine's admission for all it was worth. "Some of it's not going to be able to be undone, some of it is lasting." Newsweek "certainly has the ability" to help repair the damage, McClellan added. "They are a widely published magazine." Now, no one could seriously argue that a short item in Newsweek had single-handedly turned Islamic fundamentalists against the United States. And McClellan didn't even try. But others, outside government, who've been following the prisoner-treatment issue said yesterday that they were not all certain that alleged toilet-flushing claims - or others quite like it - were entirely untrue. For more than a year, former Guantanamo prisoners have claimed in lawsuits that they'd seen U.S. soldiers use the holy book as a tool of psychological abuse. Tossing pages in a toilet. Dragging the book through the dirt. Putting a copy into the mouth of a guard dog. At the Center for Constitutional Rights in lower Manhattan yesterday, attorney Tina Foster was looking skeptically on Newsweek's denial. "There's a context here," she said. "It's not just the Quran. It's that and so much else." Lawyers for the detainees, Foster noted, are prohibited by federal court order from getting too specific about the details of their treatment. "But serious physical abuse," she said. "Harsh psychological treatment. The story goes a whole lot deeper than a book. We know that for sure." newsday.com