The Doonesbury "Say What?" thread

[s_stabeler]

remind me... this is the United States of America we're talking about, right?
Signatory to (Indeed, helped DRAW UP) treaties banning torture- no ifs, no buts- not to mention the Geneva Copnventions. (even if you admit that terrorists don't count as POWs- and I'd argue they don't, actually, since the whole reason you treat POWs as something other than criminals is because, ultimately, it's not really that soldier's fault he was invading your country. Terrorists do have that choice- they still enjoy certain protections given to anyone: 1) the right not to be tortured 2) the right to a trial- yes, terrorists should be put on trial. I can understand you don't want to identify sources. So you don't mention the initial tip in detail. But you could easily use a temporary gmail account for sending and receiving emails between members of the group- talk to the FBI sometime about how they are able to use the same agents to infiltrate drug cartels. It has the same problems. My point is that you should not really be imprisoning people for X number of years without a trial.

[Andara Bledin]

Ignoring the fact that pretty much everybody except those who want to excuse torture have concluded that it is either merely as good as or notably not as good as civilized means of questioning.

[the_std]

Sadly it seems like he doesn't have a problem with it.

"I'd do it again in a minute...I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective."
—

Dick Cheney on torture

Ah, of course! Obviously the rectal prolapse, weeks of intense sleep deprivation and fucking Russian Roulette are all justified by the complete and total eradication of terrorism, right?

[lordlundar]

Sadly it seems like he doesn't have a problem with it.

"I'd do it again in a minute...I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective."
—

Dick Cheney on torture

[Andara Bledin]

It's mostly just a grasping at straws to do anything to to not have to admit, especially to one's self, that the US and the politicians and/or policies one supported did something heinous and reprehensible. Not to mention unconstitutional and against multiple treaties.

[lordlundar]

"Three thousand Americans died on 9/11 because of what these guys did, and I have no sympathy for them. I don't know the specific details... I haven't read the report... I keep coming back to the basic, fundamental proposition: how nice do you want to be to the murderers of 3,000 Americans?"
—

Dick Cheney, asked about the Senate report's account of the torture death of Gul Rahman, who had no connection to 9/11

Is guilt by association a cultural thing in America? I've been seeing a lot of it lately.

[lordlundar]

Well it's always a possible future. The trick is in making sure it won't be a likely future.

And I'm going to abstain from today's Say What as it's a rather graphic detail from the torture report.

[Bloodsoul]

Why do I have a feeling that the colony drop from Mobile Suit Gundam may end up as a possible future for us?

[Jetfire]

Gotta start somewhere. "Longest journey begins with a single step." and all that. And a big part in making it viable is getting out there and figuring out what we need to do once we're there.

[lordlundar]

"We need the frontier. We need people moving into space. My vision is I want to see millions of people living and working in space."
—

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

While I can understand his perspective, we're still a long ways away to make it viable.

[lordlundar]

There's nothing inherently illogical about "I don't know what it is, but it isn't that."

Not when you're trying to define something, no. Ditka however is trying to apply it to an objective statement. The first part is saying "no, I don't know what happened" while the second part is saying "yes, I do know what happened."

[HYHYBT]

There's nothing inherently illogical about "I don't know what it is, but it isn't that."

[lordlundar]

"I don't want to hear about this hands-up crap. That's not what happened. I don't know exactly what did happen, but I know that's not what happened."
—

Mike Ditka on Ferguson protest gesture

And any computer analyzing this statement just blew up from the logic error.

[catcul]

"In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced."

--

Will Dana, Managing Editor for Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone has retracted the story because they found inconsistencies in the alleged victim's story.

Rolling Stone apologizes for its reporting in UVA rape story - Yahoo!
A Note to Our Readers - Rolling Stone

[HYHYBT]

Exactly. Degrading, but it seems clear enough to be about *willing* women.