I am NOT an apologist for torture but rather an advocate of the TRUTH. I am the AUTHORITY you crave. If only you were in the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area. Would love to buy you a cup of coffee and discuss this face to face.
Thank God for those that will put on a uniform and live up to the oath they swear. I did my 24 years in uniform. How about you?
Hope your protest today goes well and you get your point across. Still don’t agree with any of you but didn’t serve 24 years to see your protest get blocked.
]]>An apologist for torture: your momma must be proud! You should move to the Middle East before the last US supported dictator falls. Guys like Ghaddafi would welcome a moral prostitute and authority worshiper like you.
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and, since we don’t know each other personally, with “ron” I mean people with such a mindset
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> … foolish, … good , … helpful, … serious, … unwise
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all those are very subjective adjectives. You do not specify what exactly and to what extent you found … the historical facts that I pointed out (which, of course, are not part of the media diet we get in the US)
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> This man is paying a heavy price eaCH SEC. MIN. HR. DAY, WEEK MO. 10 MONTHS.
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Yes, Bradley Manning is AND the over a million people who have have been killed in the genocide and crimes against humanity by the US government who were made to pay the ultimate price already
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> NOW Seek truth and speak truth words of truth change things.
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You again do not specify what is “untrue”, but “true” is an adjective I like much better because it is -falsifiable- (you can actually prove what is true or not)
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Given the kinds of things we are dealing with here, lets try to compare genocide by the US government/military to the Nazi’s, so we can compare them in their proper dimension. For the purpose of the comparison, let’s not even take into account that the Nazis’ were fighting an all out war against troops/governments, not primarily abusively killing people as if they were playing computer games. Let’ define some sort of -prorated killing- as the total number of people they (have (in the case of the US)) killed divided by the ratio of their own casualties
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Of course, the layers and layers of lies and manipulations the US government sits on makes virtually impossible to estimate this data and the little there is out there is even made harder to read/interpret/use. (as they say “sh!t weighs less than water”, so the truth about this data will one day float up) I will use publicly available data:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
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Nazis: 70/(30.4%) = 2.30
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here 70 million is an estimate of every who died in the war, even as a result of famine and the 30.4% figure means that out of 10 Nazi troops/army … 3 died
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
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Opinion Research Business survey (March 2003 to August 2007): 1,033,000 deaths as a result of the conflict. So I think, after 4 more years, it is safe to approximate it to 1.2 million people
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// __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq
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As of January 2011 , 4,754 Coalition soldiers had been killed in Iraq
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Over a million troops and etc., have been deployed to Iraq so let’s consider this number to be 1.5 million troops and support personal altogether
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4,754/1,500,000 = 0.003169
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US: 1.2/(0.32%) = 3.75
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even if this is just an estimate it is a very much telling one.
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I am using this -prorated killing- comparisons because “‘we’ are a ‘Christian’ nation”, yet in the Bible does not say “you may kill as long as you are the US government/military and are having fun while doing it” and/or “hear God commanding you to do so”, “the president of your country considers you to be a ‘hero’” it actually says (among many other things): -You shall not kill-
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C ]]>
paraphasing a contributor to an assange discussion:
“I am Bradley Manning! We all are Bradley Manning!”
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Achim Keiper
Journalist
PF 1708
D-77907 Germany
Dear Mr. Obama,
Myself and many other people here in Germany are deeply concerned about the circumstances in which accused “whistleblower” Bradley Manning is being subjected to while held in custody.
Depriving a person of sleep, depriving a person of communication, depriving a person of outdoors, making a person sleep without clothes below a carpet-like material – we see all these as measures detrimental to the call for human rights and proper treatment of humans, that you and your government currently are demanding of countries far away from the US.
The case of Bradley Manning is getting *very* much attention here in Germany. He has been, and continues to be, on the front pages of daily newspapers as well as the biggest weekly magazines. For a great number of people, he is becoming a touch-stone for how serious US-politicians are in putting into practice their intentions for non-violent treatment of prisoners of any kind.
Let me assure you that the positive view that many germans have about the US suffers a lot due to the continuous flow of news about Brad Manning’s treatment. I live on the french boarder, and I know that the same is true for a lot of people in our neighbouring-country, France.
Especially after the promise of the closing of Guantanamo there was hope for a big change in respect of a more respectful dealing with inmates of any kind. This promise too has been broken.
Please put an end to Brad Manning’s physically and psychologically damaging treatment, so that the current picture of the US as a country speaking with two tongues may be corrected.
Sincerely,
[your name]
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We at the Church I am a member of here in Harlem/NYC (http://stmarysharlem.wordpress.com/) are very socially oriented and are very much against the war … These are discusions that started from this thread, so I’ll keep it here in case I post some comments in reference to it
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Sorry for getting a bit abusive, guys!
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> I find the translation of the Brecht poem to leave me wondering if that’s really what he said.
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About Brecht’s poem; I do speak German (I went to school in Germany (in fact eine Samlung of my German poems was published)) and I can tell you that that was a word-by-word literal translation of his poem
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Deutsche Kriegsfibel aus den Svendborger Gedichten von Bertolt Brecht. Svendborg in Dänemark war von 1933 bis 1938 dessen erste längere Station im Exil. Auswahl und Einrichtung der Gedichte durch den Komponisten.
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General, dein Tank ist ein starker Wagen.
Er bricht Wälder nieder. Er zermalmt hundert Menschen.
Aber er hat einen Fehler: Er braucht einen Fahrer.
General, dein Bombenflugzeug ist stark.
Es fliegt schneller als der Sturm und trägt mehr als ein Elefant.
Aber es hat einen Fehler: Es braucht einen Monteur.
General, der Mensch ist sehr brauchbar.
Er kann fliegen, er kann töten.
Aber er hat einen Fehler …
Er kann denken.
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> It seems a bit simplistic to be sure and I would have to know more what’s behind Brecht’s intentions.
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What’s behind Brecht’s intentions he himself explicitly wrote/expressed in his poem, no? 
Part of his “intentions” definitely relates to his personal biographical life, as someone who didn’t seem to like a bit the militarism of his countrymen
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About: “Democracy may not be a perfect system of gov’t but it sure beats a lot of other forms of gov’t”.
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All I would say right now is that after growing up in Castro/communist Cuba and living in the states for 15 years, I have grown thoroughly tired of “philosophies” and “politics”/politicians. And with “politicians” I mean of all talks and walks including “Obama”, “Putin”, “Chavez”, “Sarkozy”…
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It all boils down to “quality of implementation” issues. What is the point of, say, having a “free” media, when Bradly Manning is in prison, pretty much awaiting a death penalty or a life sentence for doing the job that “journalists”/the media should be doing?!? “Representative Democracy” to me more of another way of lying and entertaining illusions, fencing people’s minds … if people pay their taxes directly why “democratically” electing a government to play with it as they please?
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At the end of the day what matter are people!
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> … the US gov’t does cross lines of ethical and moral decency in its quest to “save the world from dictatorships and such”
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Actually the US gov backs plenty of dictatorships and abuses when it serves their purpose. They, all of a sudden @@, realized Hosni Mubarak was a ruthless dictator (after supporting him/his regime for 3 decades ) and not long ago the Thai military brutally abused protesters, but the US gov backed them (always taking care of “looking good” illusions) because they are “allies” … and yes regarding Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, … I think it is about time the US gov starts talking sense to themselves, but they are not going to freely do it out of their good senses as the good fellows they are, people like Bradly Manning and the rest of us must throw their sh!t back on their faces and stand in their ways, for them to start making sense of themselves …
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C