[thegamerslink]

You are only saying this because I've disagreed with a few of the things you've said in the past but your statement is bullshit.

I wasn't saying that because of you're disagreement of my statements in the past. You have a habit of not allowing any form of logic or reason persuade anything you are thinking or feeling on a subject. As for bullying I wasn't saying anything about you calling me a bully for not agreeing with you, I just didn't think John's common tactic of discussion was bullying but I do sometimes see him get frustrated with you in the midst of discussion for the above mentioned reasons.

I can respect your point of view, most of the time. But I really do have to take exception to your "Big Bad Democrats are causing the recession" theory.

As for the Dems causing the recession.....I wasn't implying that the Dem's were the sole reason for us having a recession. What I was asking, and implying, and I might add I'm not the only one as many economists and stock market types have repeatedly talked on the news stating the very same thing, is does not the Democrats trying to make the economic outlook as bleak as possible, news agencies in their attempts to help the Democrat Nominee's spreading that word, and Dem's in general trying to use economic panic as a means to attack the current administration was decreasing the over all confidence of the market and the consumer causing the effects of an economic slow down or recession to become more severe and more impactfull faster.

Saying that waterboarding is not torture because there are no physical effects completely discounts the mental effect it has on the person being tortured. Would you want American citizens in captivity elsewhere to undergo waterboarding? Would you be OK with it being performed on you?

Ok, how do I put this? Firstly waterboarding is immediate mental stress, it has very little lasting, if any lasting mental effects. As whether I would want other American citizens or myself waterboarded. Given the option then yes waterboarding would be my choice compared to other methods that have always been used and are still being used against Americans in other places especially the Middle East. As for innocent people being tortured, that happens to Americans all the time, and has throughout our military history.
When a country i.e. The United States has a manual of excepted Standard Operation Procedures. It minimizes the possibility of innocents being treated as those that are not. As with any system unfortunately there is 1 or a few that will be innocent and thought other wise. As for the treatment of those that are beyond doubt not innocent...why should we put them up in a hotel feed them steak and treat them like family? I'll tell you this, our foreign prisoners get treated better than our domestic prisoners do, they get treated better than our homeless do...so what more do you want? The people in Gitmo and other places for the most part are people that are a known threat to the U.S. and many of those that have been released have simply been captured or killed after they were released doing the exact same thing they were imprisoned for in the first place. So why should we release those that pose a threat in a time of war? And as an addition if you stop for just a second and think, a lot of these folks are from the deserts etc, from the Middle East and are living far better than they ever have in their lives at Gitmo or other places.

I'm a little surprised at both if you. You both argue so strongly in favour of rights, including your right to smoke in restaurants, but here we have people being tortured (and denied rights) and you both are in favour of it. Innocent people do get tortured.
I guess you're both really only concerned with your own rights.

As stated above, when you follow an S.O.P. you minimize the possibility of innocent people being imprisoned lowering still the possibility of them reaching a state like water boarding. If you strike against a country in a state of war, especially an enemy as hideous as the one we face now that targets the citizens, the weak, and the meek rather than having the courage to go strictly after military targets. How can you even consider the thought of giving them any rights other than those given to prisoners of war? That's just beyond my understanding, you do something wrong you give up rights, that's pretty simple and is a reason for people to not do things wrong. Now don't take it out of context, wrong is attempting to kill 10's, 100's, or 1000's of innocent people in this case, not shoplifting a pack of gum from a convenience store. There has to be a line drawn to turning the other cheek. And unending compassion, I'm not these peoples father, I am a fellow citizen of a country they are attempting to destroy not to mention the son, brother, cousin, grandson, husband and father of family that they are trying to kill. They have rights, they have the rights of a prisoner of war, those are the only rights they should get and in some cases may even be to many. But they should have rights in any case so the Military rights of Prisoners of War are the ones they deserve. They are not citizens of the United States and are either proven or suspected enemies of the state so they have no rights as those given by the state to it's citizens, nor does a soldier expect to get the rights of the citizens of an opposing force, we go in knowing that if captured we get treated as a prisoner of a hostile force, that is what we are trained for and are told to expect. So in all actuality I've answered 2 or 3 or your questions because what we get trained for and told to expect is actually more severe than we give those we capture.