Analysis: Castro's departure won't bring quick change in US policy
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Feb 20, 2008, 0:22 GMT
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I can't wait until Fidel is shaking hands with Che in hell.
I will not hold my breath for changes...
He did pretty well - outlasted 9 american presidents trying to get rid of him !
Apparently some here suffer from melancholia for the times when Fulgencio Batista was the designated dictator of Cuba,and the island was just a brothel and casino in the hands of the Mafia,Yeah,those must have been glorious times ....
'He did pretty well - outlasted 9 american presidents trying to get rid of him !'
Yeah, dictators last along time and democracies regularly change leaders... And yeah, he did well, hundreds of thousands of Cubans had to flee the country he ran in to the ground though to escape though.
...but Castro runs imprisonment-without-trial, has huge human rights abuse issues i.e. persecution of Gays and Lesbians, and actually kills people wo simply wish to leave.
No thanks, Tonny, I'll let some wise guys own a Casino any day, to a totalitarian!
But its a pretty popular tourist location - I know several people who've been and found it a refreshing change to get away from the Coca Cola/McDonalds americanisation which pollutes so many places around the world
He wrote '...but Castro runs imprisonment-without-trial...'
Yeah SP4 ... just like the practice YOU SUPPORT of Bush with 'detainees' (translation: prisoners).
AFTER YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT BY BUSH - they've never been tried or proven guilty in a court of law of anything ...
At Bush's direction, they aren't given the opprtunity to see any charges or evidence against them (or even to know if any such things exist)
Bush imprisons them indefinitly with no charges or evidence ... ( exactly what the founders of our nation sought to prevent our government from being able to do as outlined in our Constitution)
And here you are saying Castro is wrong in doing so? (which is correct)
But you fail to see the direct comparison to Bush's actions.
Hypocrite.
the poor terrorists.
... forgets that Bush hasn't proven them to be terrorists.
If they are ... then prove it and justice would be done.
But Bush imprisoning without charge or evidence, is the same as Castro doing it (ya see, Castro calls his prisoners 'enemies of the government' too)
SP4 simply can't grasp the similarities ... that's what hypocrites like him, who don't understand our nations founding principles, do.
'Bush hasn't proven them to be terrorists.'
Bush, Bush, Bush... The terrorists hate Bush so they are not so bad, eh... Khalid Sheikh Mohammed isn't a terrorist? Ok whatever.
'But Bush imprisoning without charge or evidence,'
They have been charged and the military has reviewed their cases. You seem to think they should get trials in US court when most of what they were accused of took place outside the jurisdiction of the American judicial system. Did we try the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor in US courts? Of course not. These creeps are not entitled to protection under the constitution and to say otherwise is incredibly naive.
' who don't understand our nations founding principles, do'
Our nation was not founded on the principal of giving dream teams of lawyers to islamist terrorists.
The hundreds of people that were imprisoned at GITMO by Bush and then YEARS later released, to return to their own countries, were released because they were NOT terrorists ... (unless you think Bush knowingly let terrorists go free from his prison)
The fact remains that innocents have been, and are still imprisoned for years by Bush, without trial (as I point out in my original response to SP4s Castro comment)
youtube.com/watch?v=oEufacF1bRA&feature=related
'The hundreds of people that were imprisoned at GITMO by Bush and then YEARS later released, to return to their own countries, were released because they were NOT terrorists'
The fact remains that many have returned to jihad since being released. And many, many more have been imprisoned by their own countries.
The fact also remains that there are real live terrorists in Gitmo... And I am glad they are there... and I think it is amusing that you have a problem with it. Jump up and down and shake your fist... atta boy.
You can't say that you are trying to defend 'American values' (justice for ALL, etc.)
Fools like you are the first ones who want to abandon the very principles that made our nation great and 'just'.
You think that arresting and imprisoning innocents and denying TRUE justice is a worthy and noble goal.
Criticize me all you want ...
It's clear that YOU have no understanding.
Your fear controls you to the point where you are now supporting injustice.
And you're proud of it.
You say 'The fact remains that many have returned to jihad since being released.'
Name one. ... Just one ...
And tell me :-D, How does it feel to let your fears control you?
'Name one. ... Just one ... '
LOL! 'K, here you are...
Released Detainees Rejoining The Fight
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 22, 2004; Page A01
At least 10 detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay prison after U.S. officials concluded they posed little threat have been recaptured or killed fighting U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials.
One of the repatriated prisoners is still at large after taking leadership of a militant faction in Pakistan and aligning himself with al Qaeda, Pakistani officials said. In telephone calls to Pakistani reporters, he has bragged that he tricked his U.S. interrogators into believing he was someone else.
Abdullah Mehsud told reporters he fooled authorities at Guantanamo Bay for two years before his release.
Another returned captive is an Afghan teenager who had spent two years at a special compound for young detainees at the military prison in Cuba, where he learned English, played sports and watched videos, informed sources said. U.S. officials believed they had persuaded him to abandon his life with the Taliban, but recently the young man, now 18, was recaptured with other Taliban fighters near Kandahar, Afghanistan, according to the sources, who asked for anonymity because they were discussing sensitive military information.
'Reports that former detainees have rejoined al Qaeda and the Taliban are evidence that these individuals are fanatical and particularly deceptive,' said a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Flex Plexico. 'From the beginning, we have recognized that there are inherent risks in determining when an individual detainee no longer had to be held at Guantanamo Bay.'
The latest case emerged two weeks ago when two Chinese engineers working on a dam project in Pakistan's lawless Waziristan region were kidnapped. The commander of a tribal militant group, Abdullah Mehsud, 29, told reporters by satellite phone that his followers were responsible for the abductions.
Mehsud said he spent two years at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in 2002 in Afghanistan fighting alongside the Taliban. At the time he was carrying a false Afghan identity card, and while in custody he maintained the fiction that he was an innocent Afghan tribesman, he said. U.S. officials never realized he was a Pakistani with deep ties to militants in both countries, he added.
'I managed to keep my Pakistani identity hidden all these years,' he told Gulf News in a recent interview. Since his return to Pakistan in March, Pakistani newspapers have written lengthy accounts of Mehsud's hair and looks, and the powerful appeal to militants of his fiery denunciations of the United States. 'We would fight America and its allies,' he said in one interview, 'until the very end.'
Last week Pakistani commandos freed one of the abducted Chinese engineers in a raid on a mud-walled compound in which five militants and the other hostage were killed.[snip]
Another former Guantanamo Bay prisoner was killed in southern Afghanistan last month after a shootout with Afghan forces. Maulvi Ghafar was a senior Taliban commander when he was captured in late 2001. No information has emerged about what he told interrogators in Guantanamo Bay, but in several cases U.S. officials have released detainees they knew to have served with the Taliban if they swore off violence in written agreements.
Returned to Afghanistan in February, Ghafar resumed his post as a top Taliban commander, and his forces ambushed and killed a U.N. engineer and three Afghan soldiers, Afghan officials said, according to news accounts.
A third released Taliban commander died in an ambush this summer. Mullah Shahzada, who apparently convinced U.S. officials that he had sworn off violence, rejoined the Taliban as soon as he was freed in mid-2003, sources with knowledge of his situation said.
The Afghan teenager who was recaptured recently had been kidnapped and possibly abused by the Taliban before he was apprehended the first time in 2001. After almost three years living with other young detainees in a seaside house at Guantanamo Bay, he was returned in January of this year to his country, where he was to be monitored by Afghan officials and private contractors. But the program failed and he fell back in with the Taliban, one source said.
'Someone dropped the ball in Afghanistan,' the source said.
One former detainee who has not yet been able to take up arms is Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, a Dane who also signed a promise to renounce violence. But in recent months he has told Danish media that he considers the written oath 'toilet paper,' stated his plans to join the war in Chechnya and said Denmark's prime minister is a valid target for terrorists.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52670-2004Oct21.html
There is a partial list here in PDF format:
www.defenselink.mil/news/d20070712formergtmo.pdf
Abdullah Mehsud
Mullah Shahzada
Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar
Mohammed Ismail
Abdul Rahman Noor
Mohammed Nayim Farouq
Ruslan Odizhev...
Starting to get it yet? (as if)
'And tell me :-D, How does it feel to let your fears control you?'
If I had done that I would have moved out of lower Manhattan where I saw friends and business people I knew pulverized in to powder because they were infidels. Fears control me? Nope. Just a recognition of what these dirty animals are capable of borne of walking through the wreckage and seeing about 50 miss-matched shoes with feet still in them.
Tell me, idiot, how does it feel to be living in such denial?
As a result of 9-11, the first thing you do is 'roll over and beg for someone to take anything they want, just protect me'
If you had any personal strength, you'd stand strong and refuse to give the terrorists what they want (to change your way of life).
But instead you act afraid ... and hand a victory to them. (oh how they smile with great joy when they see they've had an affect on people like you)
That's your fear controlling you.
Be a man for once, stand strong and refuse to alter your life and values for them.
'As a result of 9-11, the first thing you do is 'roll over and beg for someone to take anything they want, just protect me''
No one has taken ANYTHING away from me. I can read whatever I want, I can say whatever I want, I can keep and bear arms, I can go anywhere at any time... I am not about to indulge your paranoia and pretend that it bears any correspondence to reality. Have the storm troopers kicked down your door for being a stupid internet troll? Nope.
To say the the US constitution applies to jihadists picked up in Afghanistan is simply idiotic.
'If you had any personal strength, you'd stand strong and refuse to give the terrorists what they want (to change your way of life).'
The only changes in my life is that I have to take my shoes off at airport security and I spend more time volunteering for Navy/Marine relief... Oh yeah, one more thing, I want all the islamist terrorists killed when before I didn't care what they did to each other.
'But instead you act afraid.'
Simply not true. Would it would be more 'courageous' to pretend that my country is not under threat and not to take precautions against that? No, it would be STUPID.
'and hand a victory to them.'
I am not the one who wants to abandon the middle east to them.
'That's your fear controlling you.'
Nope, reason. A calculated assessment of the situation at hand. I think that it is hysterical of you to advocate capitulation as a sign of courage. It is more stupid, nonsensical new-speak right out of a George Orwell story: Submission = Strength, Capitulation = Courage.
Grow the hell up.
'Be a man for once,'
Like I said, grow the hell up.
'stand strong and refuse to alter your life and values for them.'
Let me start by standing strong against morons like yourself. I hereby stand up to your stupidity and hypocrisy and I refuse to alter my life and values endorsing the stupid idea that simply ignoring these serial killers will make them go away.
... ignorance.
You contradict yourself when you say you 'want to defend America' ... then beg to have our government abandon what America stands for.
You're beyond frustrating, and are now in the realm of the purely ridiculous.
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