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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?
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 03:56 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 12:32 |
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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. This is actually a useful pivot point when arguing against torture specifically and Gitmo generally. If we lock someone up for seven years, torture him, and he turns out to be innocent (or ineffective or unimportant), do we release him when we learn he wasn't a terrorist? We may well have made an enemy out of some guy who just drew the short straw with regard to cousins in a war zone, but there's no reason to punish him more for that. At some point we have to stop making things worse and accept that our actions have consequences (cue American Exceptionalism rhetoric). It's either that, or waver between turning Gitmo into either a concentration camp or a lifelong resort prison, depending on how much each administration cares about international perception. The only figures I'm finding on Gitmo re-offenders (or first-time offenders who turned terrorist post-release) are from that DNI report last year. 16.6% confirmed terrorist recidivism rate, with 12.3% additionally suspected of terrorist activity. That's actually a much better rate than our domestic prisons for Americans. sweart gliwere fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jun 5, 2014 |
# ? Jun 5, 2014 03:58 |
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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. They're saying it because they know it won't happen, or by the time it does, this will have been forgotten.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 04:42 |
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He should've suggested selling arms to the Taliban. Did anyone have the misfortune to catch Hannity, because hoo boy War Criminal Oliver North posted:I have the real story about Bergdahl tonight on Hannity. HINT: It's not the White House version.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 05:05 |
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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.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 05:06 |
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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. 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.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 05:19 |
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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...
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 05:24 |
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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... 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 Bengazhi, it's a losing issue for them the more they run it into the ground.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 05:28 |
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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... 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 staffer put it) to get ratings for the n-thousandth time. Mercury_Storm fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Jun 5, 2014 |
# ? Jun 5, 2014 05:32 |
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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. With this story, it isn't even ripping defeat from victory, it's stepping in a hole of one's own creation. Everything does not have to be political, but the Republicans can't let Obama have anything. So, they try to turn something harmlessly positive into a partisan story, and it predictably blows up in their face. In the long run, the Republicans are slowly shaving away percentage points of the national electorate every time they pull this poo poo. Eventually, the vast majority of the country will be Democrats and whatever the blue dog Democrats turn into, or the Greens, or something else. The Republican brand name will basically be the far-right huckster party. 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. It's a combination of both. Fox and the right-wing media control the Republican party now, and Roger Ailes is so paranoid, he can't let anything go. Therefore, Fox helps create the narrative about Bergdahl, pushes it out 24/7, then all these Republican politicians have to go back and delete their tweets supporting the release of an American POW. Fox gets to bully everyone else around and be the power broker, and when the narrative inevitably collapses because it's horseshit (as it's doing right now!), the Republicans will get the brunt of the criticism. Meanwhile, among the conservative base, they'll only support Fox even more ravenously while being angry about those squish politicians who didn't stand up to Obama and an American POW. Fox always wins in the game they're playing, the Republicans always lose in the game they're playing. The larger problem with this whole situation, and this gets to the fact that Bergdahl's hometown is overrun with angry death threats from conservatives is that the die-hard conservatives are just getting crazier from the right-wing media bubble they can surround themselves with. They will act crazy, it will drive away anyone more sane than them, until the party is just a bunch of paranoid gun nuts talking gibberish to themselves. You ever see those studies on how Republican congressmen feel their district is way more conservative than it actually is? That comes from getting a constant stream of letters that breaks down like this: 15% of actual people wanting actual things, 40% of conservative email forwards, 15% mailing lists, 10% of bizarre demands (some guy wants to tell racist jokes on the local news and they won't let him, no matter how many times he comes to the station, why won't you help), 10% of gun nuts sending vaguely menacing threats, and 10% of lunatic conspiracy theories (Barack Obama is secretly a lizard, and someone in your district can prove it with pictures of his feces). The mass conservative movement, outside of the connected and the donors, to the actual politicians, is loving CRAZY. The long-term impact of Bowe Bergdahl is probably going to be more and more military turning against the Republican party, and conservatives being utterly confused as to why. Just like how women are turning against the Republican party, or young people, or anyone darker than 'Klan member in winter'. And conservatives will be utterly confused as to why.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 06:00 |
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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. 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. This whole reaction is pissing me off. In SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training, the biggest thing they wanted us to take away was to never break faith, to always trust that our government would do anything and everything in its power to get us back. It's the basis for the code of conduct, and for a POW may be the only hope they have. I'm very disturbed about what message this Republican response sends: That the words "You are not forgotten" and "we will do everything to get you back" that we preach and believe and ask our soldiers to trust in if they are captured don't apply unless the soldier is a perfect clean upstanding recruitment poster service member who toes the (Republican) party line and whole-heartedly supports the war no matter what. It smells like a fascistic ideological purge of the military, and I would bet dollars to donuts that's exactly what would happen if they got back into power. Oh yeah, and I'm not one to throw around the H-word very often, but whatever Bergdahl did before he got captured, he kept faith, resisted his captors and repeatedly tried to escape over the last five years. That makes him a hero. Having been one, I can say that an Infantry PFC doesn't know poo poo about poo poo, so he was worthless as an intel source despite what the rumors of his disgruntled peers say and blaming him for ambushes and bombs is just ignorant pissed off people trying to find a reason for random poo poo happening. If it wasn't Bergdahl, it would've been that Haji goat herder squatting on the side of the mountain every day looking at them "funny". My Q-Face fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jun 5, 2014 |
# ? Jun 5, 2014 06:01 |
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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.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 06:10 |
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Can you be on the Sunday talk shows this week instead of Bill Kristol and the rest of those nitwits? tia
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 06:29 |
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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. 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.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 06:46 |
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Well, at least he's our shithead. And until we decide he's not, at which point his atrocities are shocking and deplorable, a clear causus belli to liberate the people from this monster.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 07:09 |
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http://news.yahoo.com/mcchrystal-on-bergdahl---we-don-t-leave-americans-behind--that-s-unequivocal-193638795.html Thank you, General McChrystal.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 07:39 |
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http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/06/04/slenderman-behind-online-monster-cited-in-wisconsin-stabbing-report/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.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 08:35 |
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This is a thing which is going to happen.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 08:57 |
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He should try to make the interview about Benghazi. REMEMBER VILERAT.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 09:19 |
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BBJoey posted:
No loving way
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 09:45 |
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Spacedad posted:He should try to make the interview about Benghazi. Unironically this!
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 09:56 |
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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? I hope it is all the money. I have to say though, Bergdahl is responsible for greatest amount of political satire this year yet, if we count war criminals saying the darnedest things as political satire, which I fear we must given the state of the political landscape.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 12:55 |
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My Q-Face posted:http://news.yahoo.com/mcchrystal-on-bergdahl---we-don-t-leave-americans-behind--that-s-unequivocal-193638795.html Don't read the comments.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 13:25 |
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Spacedad posted:He should try to make the interview about Benghazi. Yeah the slenderman is a pretty messed up story that we made up. I heard you guys like making messed up stories as well...
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 13:39 |
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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-. beefnoodle fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jun 5, 2014 |
# ? Jun 5, 2014 14:17 |
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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? Less than from the book deal that I hope he's negotiating as we speak.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 14:50 |
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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... 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! After they establish that Bergdahl is a Soldier In Name Only, they can trash him (and Obama by proxy) more or less without consequence. It's disgusting.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 14:54 |
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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!
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 15:02 |
Time has been bitching about him since the day after it was announced. They are a poo poo heap rag unless this like is that National Geographic about evolution where the next page was just a big NO (although in this case YES).
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 15:05 |
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BBJoey posted:
This is a great day for somethingawful.com
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 15:26 |
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BBJoey posted:
Please for the love of all that is holy someone find this online.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 15:34 |
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This is as bad as when ABC Nightly News declared that Congress was going to vote to, "leave our troops high and dry!" when a bill was introduced to cut funding for the Iraq Occupation. I think it was around 2007 and the anchor directly implied that cutting funding would mean that the weapons and armor of the soldiers would vanish like magic and they would be left behind to get beheaded. No orderly withdrawal, just the wanton slaughter of our troops because Evil Congress cut funding. gently caress you, TIME.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 15:44 |
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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.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 15:58 |
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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. Time has been doing lovely articles since before Ailes was born.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:00 |
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beefnoodle posted:Do you have a source for this? I'm not challenging you; I'd like to cite it elsewhere. Thanks. I hate to break all wikipedia on you, but each individual's page on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban_Five That page is fresh and new, so it's probably yet to be de-biased and the other pages are changing by the day or even hour as this goes on. Looking at each individual page though, the two "staff officers" I mentioned have conflicting information as to whether they were actually uniformed military or not. Each definitely worked for the Afghan security forces prior to the invasion though. Mohammad Fazl, Politician/Army Chief of Staff: Deputy Defense Minister[and/or] Chief of Staff of the Afghan Army prior to the American invasion. One of the Staff Officers. quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Fazl Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, Politician: Various postings including Governor of Herat province quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khairullah_Khairkhwa Norullah Noori, Politician: Governor of Balkh Province. quote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norullah_Noori Mohammad Nabi Omari, bureaucrat or politician: a minor Taliban official in Khost Province. He was a minor functionary, whether a bureaucrat, bodyguard or council member, there isn't much else about him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Nabi Abdul Haq Wasiq, [Military or Civil (??) position within Afghan FBI equivalent] Deputy Minister of Intelligence quote:
All of the information in the articles is sourced, much of it to DOD or other sources. Undoubtedly four of the five had some intelligence value when they were captured, likely considerable value. However, that's all evaporated, and Admin reviews of each one show consistantly compliant behavior. I won't editorialize on the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, other than
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:02 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:02 |
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My Q-Face posted:I hate to break all wikipedia on you, but each individual's page on here: Thanks, you must have been compiling this while I was editing my post
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:06 |
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beefnoodle posted:Thanks, you must have been compiling this while I was editing my post There were a few other sources I found information by googling their names over the last few days, but everything has been saturated with the Taliban Five nonsense since then.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:07 |
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No no, Hitler was just the most influential man in 1938. And you can't argue with that! He was definitely influential, and Time magazine was in no way tickled that finally someone was standing up and telling the truth about the blacks and the Jews. Oh did I say "truth"? I meant uh, not that!
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:10 |
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# ? Jun 4, 2024 12:32 |
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(Apologies if I posted this already) There is at least one pastor giving sermons about how Wonder Showzen (formerly Kid's Show) is a satanic, demonic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTdOGsWq9oM He is completely serious, there is no trolling at all. He believes this poo poo and wants others to believe it and to do something to combat it. There are church congregations like this all around America.
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# ? Jun 5, 2014 16:11 |