The War On Terror

[Vice]

Amnesty International has urged African nations to arrest former US President George W. Bush during his visit to the continent this month.

 

"International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfill their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed," senior legal advisor for Amnesty International, Matt Pollard said.

 

According to the international rights group, African nations have the obligation to bring Bush to justice for his role in war crimes, Reuters reported.

 

This is while Bush's stay in Africa is aimed at raising awareness of cervical and breast cancers, as well as HIV/AIDS.

 

Last month, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal found Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of committing crimes against humanity during the Iraq war.

 

Earlier this year, Bush canceled a trip to Switzerland due to fears of being arrested over allegations of ordering the torture of prisoners held in overseas military bases.

 

President from 2001 to 2009, Bush authorized the use of waterboarding, as well as other interrogation techniques, considered to be torture by human rights groups. [/b]

 

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213420.html

[SpursRiot2012]

The evil regimes bit...

 

Crikey, please stop being manipulated by the BULLSHIT in the media!

 

That is all

 

What are you on about? Gaddafi was a sick and evil man that gave everyone in his country free education, healthcare and a home.

 

There are a lot of people defending Muammer Gaddafi and his regime by stating living conditions and infrastructure in Libya was world class, and all the people in the country enjoyed unimaginable wealth. This is not true. The Gaddafi regime was rife with corruption and deception. Who you know was more important than who you were as a person, with many basic services being only available to the highest bidders.

 

Below, Nizar Mhani of the Free Generation Movement responds to common misconceptions relating to the Gaddafi regime

[David]

Gaddafi carried out the world

[Keith Houchen]

No one is saying that Afghanistan is anything but hell, but the situation for women is better currently. It is still the worst place on earth for a woman to live, according to Amnesty, but it is better than it was. As I say, they are in education, work and are allowed outside. Something previously denied to them.

[David]

No one is saying that Afghanistan is anything but hell, but the situation for women is better currently. It is still the worst place on earth for a woman to live, according to Amnesty, but it is better than it was. As I say, they are in education, work and are allowed outside. Something previously denied to them.

The problem I have is that any benefit that the inhabitants of these countries experience is purely coincidental. We didn't go in there in order to help the women (or anyone else of Afghan origin), we went in there to further our own agenda.

 

I know you know this already, but others on this forum seem unable to grasp the fact.

[Merzbow]

Funny as i've heard common Libyans backing what i have said too and this was before it all kicked off, but either way we had no place being there.

[Vice]

On the issue of us intervening and making these places better:

 

If the Libyan war was about saving lives, it was a catastrophic failure

 

Nato claimed it would protect civilians in Libya, but delivered far more killing. It's a warning to the Arab world and Africa

 

As the most hopeful offshoot of the "Arab spring" so far flowered this week in successful elections in Tunisia, its ugliest underside has been laid bare in Libya. That's not only, or even mainly, about the YouTube lynching of Gaddafi, courtesy of a Nato attack on his convoy.

 

The grisly killing of the Libyan despot after his captors had sodomised him with a knife, was certainly a war crime. But many inside and outside Libya doubtless also felt it was an understandable act of revenge after years of regime violence. Perhaps that was Hillary Clinton's reaction, when she joked about it on camera, until global revulsion pushed the US to call for an investigation.

 

As the reality of what western media have hailed as Libya's "liberation" becomes clearer, however, the butchering of Gaddafi has been revealed as only a reflection of a much bigger picture. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Gaddafi's last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed

[JNLister]

The problem I have is that any benefit that the inhabitants of these countries experience is purely coincidental. We didn't go in there in order to help the women (or anyone else of Afghan origin), we went in there to further our own agenda.[/quote}

 

I thought we went there to punish the Taliban, bring democracy, find Bin Laden, destroy Al Qaeda, allow women to vote, protect Britain from terrorist attack, end the drug trade, and deter other dictators. Or as John Reid put it, our aims are to bring "democratic government that can maintain the rule of law and deliver basic services; a sustainable security environment where the population is free from coercion; a viable legitimate market economy that is increasingly able to support basic social needs and reduce poverty; and a sustainable decrease in poppy cultivation and drug trafficking."

 

So yeah, I don't see how's there's any confusion about our aims.

[Loki]

Most didn't, it was the extreme religious "rebels" who were against his civilized laws and were planning to dissolve any law that would be seen as "anti-islamic". Mahmoud Jibril mysteriously changed his whole stance at the last second, probably doing as he was told by the same western goons who helped them by killing countless civilians.

 

That's demonstrably not true, there were plenty of interviews on the news services with rebel fighters, many of whom were oil workers, doctors, farmers, hotel staff, lawyers... not religious radicals, but just citizens like you or me who were taking their future into their own hands; also professional soldiers from Gadaffi's own armed forces, who were most definitely NOT radical muslims.

 

And before you all Duane on me, I'm not just talking about BBC, Reuters, CNN and so on (all of whom are reputable and reliable news sources, incidentally) but also Al Jazeera.

 

There is much that is lamentable about British and US foreign policy over the years, but let's not paint it in uniformly bad colours. Libya was very different from both Afghanistan AND Iraq. We had very little interest in overthrowing Gaddafi until the homegrown rebellion reached the pivotal moment where, without intervention, a wholesale massacre was about to take place in front of the world's cameras, just on the other side of the Med. Expediency and timing are happy bedfellows sometimes - NATO was able to intervene and "do the right thing" because it could, it had carriers on-hand and the ability to strike fast and cleanly (for itself at least).

 

You might well ask why we haven't similarly intervened in Syria then. I suspect the answer is complex - more difficult logistics but also that the situation there hasn't reached that terminal point that we saw in Benghazi. Also, the rebel movement hasn't made its move yet - they are massing their forces on the borders, but open armed conflict hasn't happened yet. When it does, and if the rebels get into trouble, we might well see a similar no-fly zone and bombing solution.

 

Both these scenarios are entirely different from the foreign policy ideologies enacted in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both can be seen through the prism of securing access to oil, if that floats your boat, or a post 9/11 retaliatory crusade against Al Qaeda. Neither of those is applicable to Libya.

[David]

I thought we went there to punish the Taliban, bring democracy, find Bin Laden, destroy Al Qaeda, allow women to vote, protect Britain from terrorist attack, end the drug trade, and deter other dictators. Or as John Reid put it, our aims are to bring "democratic government that can maintain the rule of law and deliver basic services; a sustainable security environment where the population is free from coercion; a viable legitimate market economy that is increasingly able to support basic social needs and reduce poverty; and a sustainable decrease in poppy cultivation and drug trafficking."

 

So yeah, I don't see how's there's any confusion about our aims.

Ah, right. Cheers for that. I guess it's my own fault for not taking our Government at face value.

 

Why are they waiting so long to liberate Iran anyway? We may as well clean up the entire region, ensuring "democratic government that can maintain the rule of law and deliver basic services; a sustainable security environment where the population is free from coercion" for all, as Baron Reid of Cardowan would say.