Mr Interweb posted:

He even asked if Obama should be blamed if those Taliban dudes start killing people again. He was basically saying Gitmo detainees should be stuck there indefinitely. I was legit shocked when I saw that.

Von Sloneker posted:

edit: also, Republicans who have seen the classified data on those 5 Taliban ex-prisoners are saying they want it released, so I assume the political hay has only begun to be made.

GAYMIEN SANDOW posted:

War Criminal Oliver North posted:

I have the real story about Bergdahl tonight on Hannity. HINT: It's not the White House version.

pacerhimself posted:

This is such a weird story, because there's clearly a lot of details missing with Bergdahl, but it's impossible to believe anything coming from the right wing because they are chronically full of poo poo. It's like the boy who cried poo poo-wolf that maybe there's actually something there, but you don't know what to believe.

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

I don't know how the average American who doesn't consume right-wing media thinks about Bergdahl, but I would bet they think it's kind of petty and hosed up how he's being treated. Now I could be wrong but criticizing Obama over this surely can't be a clear win for the GOP...

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

I don't know how the average American who doesn't consume right-wing media thinks about Bergdahl, but I would bet they think it's kind of petty and hosed up how he's being treated. Now I could be wrong but criticizing Obama over this surely can't be a clear win for the GOP...

Alexzandvar posted:

It never is, the GOP has the amazing ability to rip defeat from the jaws of victory. They will always and forever lose through shear incompetence and infighting. This is no better shown that the fact the republicans have had the gerry mander the gently caress out of every state they can to keep seats despite the actual majority thinking they are full of poo poo. If the GOP continues on it's course of self destruction they might get to keep the house, but when it comes to national politics the democrats will always come out on top.

Greatest example of this is their focus on poo poo like this and Benghazi, it's a losing issue for them the more they run it into the ground.

Mercury_Storm posted:

I wonder, (like many other right wing talking points) how much of this is due to the GOP trying to make a political statement, and how much it is FOX, etc., driving the narrative in an attempt to "rile up the crazies" (as one FOX stagger put it) to get ratings for the n-thousandth time.

Good Citizen posted:

It's really kind of a non-issue in my opinion. Whether he deserted or not is completely irrelevant and I'm glad he's not a POW any more either way. This poo poo is all over my facebook and all I can think is whatever, let established military justice work it out.

I could see the taliban prisoners we released as being an issue but those guys are probably either completely broken or under surveillance to the point where if they tried to contact anyone remotely connected then we'd be all over them.

My Q-Face posted:

Darkman Fanpage posted:

Abdul Rashid Dostum himself is a huge shithead. He stuffed Taliban captives, many of whom were conscripts that willingly threw down their arms, into metal shipping containers, suffocating 2,000 of them. And of course he's now insanely rich thanks to the US.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

Well, at least he's our shithead.

Or the shithead of whoever happens to be in charge and isn't the Taliban. Which is still kind of us.

quote:

LOS ANGELES – On Saturday, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin were arrested on charges of attempted first-degree murder for luring a fellow classmate into the woods, where they allegedly held her down and stabbed her 19 times.

Court documents revealed that the suspects may have been motivated by their obsession with an Internet creation called Slenderman.

“Some say I’m evil, but all I ever wanted was (a) friend. I think that a few dozen casualties are to be expected during the quest for friendship,” reads the “About” description of Slenderman (also known as The Slender Man) on the character’s public figure Facebook page, which has well over one million likes.

The criminal complaint says the two girls were trying to become something called a “proxy of Slender” by murdering someone.

So what is the ghoulish Slenderman and where did it come from?

In June 2009 in a “paranormal pictures” Photoshop contest on the website Something Awful, user Victor Surge (real name Eric Knudsen) posted images of a child-stalking creation he called “Slender Man.” Fellow Something Awful community members latched on to the creature, and Slenderman went viral.

The popular meme is most often portrayed as a tall, lanky and faceless figure in a black suit with the tentacles protruding from his back. The character is known by its online followers to cause “memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, and coughing fits” and is routinely depicted to stalk and traumatize people, particularly minors.

Since its inception five years ago, Slenderman has inspired everything from fan art, illustrations, and 3D puzzles to a mockumentary similar to the1999 DIY horror movie “The Blair Witch Project.”

In 2012, filmmaker AJ Meadows raised over $11,000 on crowd-funding site Kickstarter to make the movie based on the “legend.” It was made available to stream on YouTube in early 2012 and amassed 500,000 views in less than three weeks before being removed from the Web two months later amid copyright issues.

Indeed Slenderman’s ownership is a source of legal contention, given that Knudson is often accredited as its creator, although an unidentified third party reportedly owns the rights to media adaptations.

Slenderman’s fans have been quick to hit back at the character’s critics. Sean Stacey, the owner and operator of fan site Unfiction, insisted that the character is in no way responsible for the actions of the Wisconsin girls.

“It’s pretty clear (they) are a couple of disturbed individuals who had their own issues. It’s (not right) to blame that external muse,” he told FOX411. “It reminds me of things like John Hinckley Jr. thinking that assassinating President Reagan would impress Jody Foster into going out with him. This is a crazy individual that has concocted some reasoning in his head that seemed reasonable to him but not to an outsider. There is no incitement of people in mythos itself to get people to do anything other than try to get away from Slenderman should they encounter him.”

The Slenderman Facebook page is still being updated with images of corpse brides and Satan worship quotes, although the page did acknowledge that one “must be stupid” to commit the girls’ alleged crime. The Wisconsin tragedy has also sparked lively debate in an array of related Internet threads and communities.

An administrator for the website Creepypasta Wiki –a community database for chilling short stories designed to make it seem as though they are news items or true crime stories – also defended the Slenderman character following the attack, writing that “all works presented on this wiki and other sites (including Slenderman) are fictional stories and characters.” The admin went on to condemn the ensuing public outcry to “censor” and shut down the site.

Representative of the Creepypasta Community even launched a crowd-sourced fundraiser on YouCaring.com to raise $10,000 for the stabbing victim over the next month.

“It’s our goal to get her through this tragic time so she can live a full, long life” reads the campaign. “We, as the Creepypasta Community wish to save this girl’s life and prove that the community is made up of strong, sane individuals and not those depicted from the suspects. All proceeds will go directly to the family for medical expenses and court expenses. We are standing together to show that we can overcome this tragedy.”

As of Wednesday morning, it had 45 supporters had raised $370.

BBJoey posted:

This is a thing which is going to happen.

Spacedad posted:

He should try to make the interview about Benghazi.

REMEMBER VILERAT.

Darkman Fanpage posted:

So how much money does Bergdahl stand to make if he's exonerated of any wrong doing and is given free reign to sue everybody that has slandered him?

My Q-Face posted:

http://news.yahoo.com/mcchrystal-on-bergdahl---we-don-t-leave-americans-behind--that-s-unequivocal-193638795.html

Thank you, General McChrystal.

Spacedad posted:

He should try to make the interview about Benghazi.

REMEMBER VILERAT.

My Q-Face posted:

Those guys were members of the Taliban Government of Afghanistan prior to the establishment of the Interim government. Two military staff officers, one deputy chief of intelligence, one interior minister, and one provincial governor (who ordered forces in his province to lay down their arms and surrender when the Americans arrived). All of them have records of good behavior for their time at Gitmo. All of them were recognized and their release requested by the current Government of Afghanistan. The "Crimes against humanity" they're accused of revolve around their fighting the militia forces of Northern Alliance Warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum -who incidentally fought on the side of the Soviets against the Mujahadeen during the Soviet-Afghan war, and against the Taliban through-out the 90s, so it's not like they just chose to ethnically cleanse him-.

One of the men had a brother who had a neighbor who was trained by Al Qaeda. One of them was arrested for having and using icom radios (those cheap-o mini-walkie-talkies you can buy at any electronics section of any department store). This Taliban Five crap is pure bluster. They were found during Bush's tribunal/review to meet Bush's definition of enemy combatant on account of the fact that when the review was conducted, the legitimate government they had worked for when they were captured no longer existed.

These are not Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Ladin's right-hand men. These are not blood thirsty AQ members who can't wait to get revenge. The only disciplinary issues they had in Gitmo were doing PT in their cells and going on hunger strike.

Darkman Fanpage posted:

So how much money does Bergdahl stand to make if he's exonerated of any wrong doing and is given free reign to sue everybody that has slandered him?

Ghost of Reagan Past posted:

Now I could be wrong but criticizing Obama over this surely can't be a clear win for the GOP...

moths posted:

As much as I want to see the right get a bloody nose for smearing a POW, I don't think it'll actually happen. They've quickly focused the narrative on the idea that he's a deserter, so he's not technically one of Our Troops. In fact he got Our Troops killed and Terrorists released!

BBJoey posted:

This is a thing which is going to happen.

BBJoey posted:

This is a thing which is going to happen.

JehovahsWetness posted:

JehovahsWetness posted:

Zwabu posted:

Roger Ailes must masturbate furiously each and every time he sees how easily he can make the entirety of US media jump through whatever hoops he chooses to make.

beefnoodle posted:

Do you have a source for this? I'm not challenging you; I'd like to cite it elsewhere. Thanks.

quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Fazl

Mullah Mohammad Fazl is the Taliban's former Deputy Defense Minister and was held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba after being classified as an enemy combatant by the United States. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 7. He arrived at the Guantanamo detention camps on 11 January 2002, and was held there until 31 May 2014.

Not much is known about Fazl, except that he served as the deputy defense minister under the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan

Although he negotiated an amnesty with the Afghan Northern Alliance leader Abdul Rashid Dostum, it is alleged that he is responsible for killing thousands of Shi'a Afghans between 1996 and late 2001

Mohammed Fazl's Guantanamo identity portrait -- the white uniform shows he is considered "compliant"

quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khairullah_Khairkhwa

Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa is a Taliban official and former governor of Herat. Press reports have referred to him as "Mullah" and "Maulavi", two different honorifics for referring to senior Muslim clerics. [Also, any sufficiently religious elder who has completed the Hajj can be called Mullawi]

He held various government posts, both before the Taliban took over Afghanistan, including a police official in Kabul, and finally, Governor of Herat Province.

Khirullah was one of the original Taliban members who launched the movement in 1994.

Khairullah Khairkhwah was the Minister of the Interior under Taliban rule in 1997 and 1998.

Some reports have said he had been the Taliban's deputy minister of the interior, interim minister of the interior, the minister of the interior, and the Minister of Information.

Khirullah was also to serve as the Taliban's Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman, giving interviews to the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of America.

In early 2011 president Hamid Karzai demanded his release and Hekmat Karzai, the director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul said "His release will be influential to the peace process," and that "Mr Khairkhwa is well respected amongst the Taliban and was considered a moderate by those who knew him".

quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norullah_Noori

Norullah Noori was the Governor of Balkh Province.

Fareeda Kuchi Balkhi, a Kuchi nomad tribeswoman, who ran as a candidate for the Wolesi Jirga in 2005, described her delivery of a list of 1000 Kuchi stranded in an impromptu refugee camp to then Governor of Balkh Noori as the beginning of her political activism in 1998.

In the fall of 2001, when the United States, allied with the Northern Alliance, and other anti-Taliban forces, started to use military force to seek out al Qaeda, Noori was one Taliban leader who is reported to have directed the Taliban fighters in his province to lay down their weapons and surrender.

Fareeda told Carlotta Gall, of the New York Times that Noori accepted her list, and forwarded to humanitarian agencies, and aid did arrive.

The allegations used to justify his detention in Guantanamo asserted he was an interim Provincial Governor of Jalalabad, temporary governor of Mazar-e-Sharif and Governor of Balkh Province.

Norullah Noori wears the white uniform issued to compliant captives

quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Haq_Wasiq

Detention Memo posted:

The detainee is associated with al Qaida and the Taliban.
1 The detainee in a letter to his brother, included greetings to an al Qaida member.
2 The detainee was the Taliban Deputy Minister of Intelligence.
3 The detainee used a radio to communicate with the Taliban Chief of Intelligence.

[As a note, he was a "Deputy Minister of Intelligence" working for their version of the FBI, so a deputy director in Kabul]

The detainee served as Deputy Minister of Intelligence in the Taliban Intelligence Service.

The detainee served as acting Minister of Intelligence when Qari Ahmadullah was away from Kabul performing his duties as governor of Tahar province

The detainee was a participant in military operation in Konduz. [Note, many of them were accused of this, but the accuser is Dostum so take that for what you will.]

Detainee used Icom radios and provided information on communications security procedures within the Taliban Intelligence Department

At the time of his capture, the detainee claims he was attempting to assist the U.S. in capturing Mullah Mohammed Omar. He claims if the Americans had not arrested him, then they might have captured Mullah Mohammed Omar and the detainee's superior, Qari Ahmadullah, head of Taliban Intelligence.

Detainee has very few citations, primarily for non-aggressive infractions including physical training in cell, leading prayer; making excessive noise; and periodically refusing medications, food, and showers.

My Q-Face posted:

I hate to break all wikipedia on you, but each individual's page on here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_Five
.
.
.

beefnoodle posted:

Thanks, you must have been compiling this while I was editing my post

Miltank posted: