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: combjelly who wrote (363069)	12/16/2007 3:10:57 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578054

" Why do liberals oppose people doing that?" Some liberals are anti-war. Note the qualifier "some". They are because they feel it is bad for the country. They are wrong, but they still have the interests of the country in mind. Everyone is antiwar on some level. Some view it as sometimes a necessary evil. Still I know of no one on the right who is congenitally opposed to military recruitment. "First, the people are foreign enemies and aren't on our soil. " First, we don't know if they are enemies or not. We have a pretty good idea. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is an enemy. Abu Zubaydah ditto. Osama's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, is an enemy (captured with two SAM's in his car). He was once a taxi-driver, so liberals refer to him as an unemployed taxi driver. Most were served up from bounty hunters with often unknown backgrounds. Myth. There are a lot of bounty hunters running around Afghanistan and Pakistan? I don't think so. Secondly, Guantanamo Bay is held on a long term lease and the Cuban government has absolutely no authority, control or even input into the situation. So, given we have legal authority over it, and Cuba has none, it might as well be considered our soil. In fact, the USSC has taken exactly that stance. To the extent the USSC says something that will be accepted as law. Gitmo is Cuban territory though. "Second, if the US had ever been invaded by a foreign enemy, we wouldn't treat the captured enemy as citizen criminals. " Probably true. Although they should then be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. The folks at Gitmo are treated very humanely. The only thing I know of that might not be in line with Geneva conventions is questioning. I don't think we should refrain from questioning them (beyond name, rank, serial number) - are you arguing for that?. I don't think they qualify as POW's as they aren't soldiers of any country. "We haven't jettisoned any laws. " Excuse me, Brumar. What do you call it when the President can, at his discretion, label anybody an "enemy combatant" for any reason* and hold them in secret without a trial? That is more like a dictatorship. And, unlike the Roman Republic, we don't have a legal basis for that, nor a legal tradition. As I understand it they have to be members or supporters of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. "Saddam was believed to be nearing possession of WMD's (especially nuclear weapons). " No. He wasn't believed to possess nuclear weapons at any point by anyone reasonably familiar with the area. He was believed to have chemical weapons by many, although apparently the intelligence estimates of the time were leaning against it. He was believed to be close to developing nukes. See The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, by Kenneth Pollack. But, in the intervening years, the administration has thrown up many reasons for the invasion. And those reasons have changed over time. Not all of them can be true, so...* This is a myth too. All the subsidiary reasons (human rights, etc) were mentioned in the Congressional authorization. "That would have been news to them. The term hadn't been coined yet." Whether the term was coined or not isn't really relevant. Spinoza, who died in the 1600's, is considered to have laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment. In some respects, the Enlightenment was just an extension of the Age of Reason, so many of the concepts preceded even that time period. Franklin, Jefferson and Paine are all considered to be major figures in the Enlightenment. To in essence claim that the Enlightenment was new and not very well known at the time is not correct. Terms like the enlightenment are invented centuries after the fact to describe an era. The poeple in that era had no idea they were in a different era than any other. The fact that the FF's lived during the "enlightenment" in no way makes them non-Christian. Isaac Newton was an enlightenment figure surely, wasn't he? Well, he happens to have been a "Bible-thumper" who spent a great deal of intellectual effort calculating when Christ would return. IOW simply throwing out the word enlightment doesn't make the people who lived then and took part in the periods intellectual life non-religious secularists. And the FF's weren't non-religious secularists as liberals routinely claim. "He thought he was." Well, it depends. He did reject the divinity of Christ, although he did believe that Christ was a great moral teacher. Now all Christian sects I know of make accepting the divinity of Christ as one of their bedrock, defining issues. Maybe you feel differently. I said HE thought he was a Christian. That is undoubtedly a fact. Your bringing up the opinion of "all Christian sects" is irrelevant to the point I made.