There is a certain court in The Hague that tends to have an opinion on such matters. But the US seems to think they shouldn't be held accountable when it comes to international law or human rights.. ("The Hague Invasion Act").
If it has to get to the Hague, there were drastic failures earlier. The US has a right to a speedy and public trial, and needs to put its money where its mouth is (or was).
>and needs to put its money where its mouth is (or was).
Unwillingness to practice what you preach when people you don't like benefit is a huge problem with all sorts of institutions in the US and will not get better at least not for a generation or two. Broad acceptance of double standards is a necessary part of the currently depending ideological divide so we basically need to wait until the people peddling that are out of the workforce.
No, good God no! There are a ton of conservative voters who loathed the Dubya administration, and I'm one of them. But you have to understand, that's what created Trump, especially as Democrats doubled down on social issues.
> There is a certain court in The Hague that tends to have an opinion on such matters. But the US seems to think they shouldn't be held accountable when it comes to international law or human rights.. ("The Hague Invasion Act").
International law isn't really law in the sense we're used to. There is no world government. International relations are anarchic, and the "international law" that's binding on a country is pretty much what it agrees to abide by or can be forcibly compelled to abide by (through military action, etc).
Funny thing is that Obama asked the Netherlands to take some ex Gitmo prisoners. The Dutch government politely declined to fix his problems knowing full well the legal minefield.
If you are a citizen of another country, at least, vote against politicians that want to strengthen your country's alliance with it, and respond to polls in ways that indicate opposition to causes it cares about.
The US is dependent on its network of allies in many respects; most pertinently, much of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns would not have been possible without the support of its European and the Middle Eastern ones, providing overflight permissions, military bases, intelligence and often even hosting "black sites" where people from the target nations could be tortured far from the meddlesome eyes of journalists and NGOs.
According to whom? The reddit armchair generals? MSM "journalists" with non-technical degrees like humanities?
Russia is weeks, perhaps days, away from consolidating the Donbas (area large than the entire UK) and have greatly reduced the NATO-trained and supported Ukrainian military's (second largest in Europe) ability to conduct offensive maneuver warfare in a time span of just a few of weeks. And that's with maybe using 20% of Russias military capacity. All according to western sources.
Let's not conflate how we feel about the situation with the reality on the ground. The sooner we're honest about whats going, the sooner we can have peace.
Russia isn't really consolidating anything - they are destroying Donbas, razing entire cities. That's after three months of failures, like when they were forced to flee from Kyiv and then Kharkiv. And no, that's not 20% of their capability, that's all of their military capability (that's why they are using conscripts), except the strategic forces. And that's against a rather underfunded country which, during previous Russian invasion, couldn't defend at all.
Ukraine's main problem is that they are not being supplied with enough heavy weapons. The sooner they are, the sooner we can have peace.
You might want to take some time off from reading Sputnik, comrade :-)
It's actually "tovarishch" in Russian, not "comrade". Comrade is Spanish. If you're going to take lazy cheap shots, at least get it right.
Also, I'd love to hear which heavy weapon systems the west has that could change the tide. Like what are the exact platforms and logistics of getting them there and the Ukrainian forces trained up on them?
Nobody cares what it sounds in Russian; this joke wasn't aimed at Russians.
As for heavy weapon systems - literally any of them. Every day Ukrainians are successfully stopping Rashists' attacks, but they don't have the weaponry required to counterattack.
> And that's with maybe using 20% of Russias military capacity.
Let's not fool ourselves here: if there was a way for Putin to avoid looking like an idiot who struggles to take even parts of Ukraine he would take it.
Truth is he failed spectacularily and everyone who has the slightest idea can see for themselves that Russia is struggling mightily despite their initial backstab where they had a few hours to bomb Ukraine and insert troops at will despite their promises the night before.
They fail despite having multiple influential politicians who they had bribed in advance, multiple sleeper cells, and, on the paper, a much much stronger army.
He has already sent the troops that was supposed to protect the strategically important Murmansk area, proving 1.) The Ukraine invasion is massively important to him 2.) He also proved all the words about being afraid of Nato is just a waste of perfectly fine silence, as he knows perfectly well that Nato is mostly peaceful and has not intention of invading or nuking Russia. After all he removed these troops while Nato, Sweden and Finland was gathering lots of troops right across the border :-D
> All according to western sources.
Someone dubbed Heissentruths, truths whose exact value cannot be known until you open the box.
Russians and their friends has a lot of Heissentruths. Western media being a reliable source is one of these. In this case it is absolutely true and very reliable, in another case were they point out the Russian attempts at genocide they are of course absolutely unreliable and only fools would refer to them.
Edit:
If Nato joins the conflict, Russian authorities only hope is their strategic weapons.
And given what we have seen about how well the kleptocracy maintains their conventional weapons I am somewhat less worried about that then what I was in February/March.
I have a feeling they too have noted this as I hear less and less mentions of this option from them, so it is either that they have realized the red button won't work or they are preparing a surprise.
> If Nato joins the conflict, Russian authorities only hope is their strategic weapons.
If Nato joins the conflict, they will very quickly get aquatinted with Kinzhal, Tsirkon & Avangard hypersonics (un-interceptable as of now) loaded with conventional warheads (non-nuke) followed by a barrage of their other (of larger variety and longer range than anything western) ballistic stand-off weapons. For now, Russia has the advantage in ballistics and layered air defense (S-300, 400 & 500, Pantsir + electronic warfare systems). They also have an advantage in field artillery (more variety & longer range than anything western). Even the US president had to admit the hypersonic complication.
> If Nato joins the conflict, they will very quickly get aquatinted with Kinzhal, Tsirkon & Avangard hypersonics (un-interceptable as of now) loaded with conventional warheads (non-nuke) followed by a barrage of their other (of larger variety and longer range than anything western) ballistic stand-off weapons.
Exactly how many of those missiles does Russia have in its inventory? I suspect it's only enough to get NATO mad. If it had enough to do serious damage, I'd have expected the Russians to have done better in Ukraine.
Also, the Kinzhal and Avangard appear to be nuclear capable, and the Avangard is ICBM-launched. It would be, to use a technical term, stupid-as-fuck to use those with conventional warheads against a nuclear-armed adversary.
> Exactly how many of those missiles does Russia have in its inventory?
Good question, it's hard to say - but probably enough to knock out most NATO command and control and sink all carrier groups in Europe. Remember, MSM said they would run out in just a couple days about two months ago. Considering they're launching a handful per day for the past few months, probably not any time soon. You can bet that their factories are working three shift right now.
> Good question, it's hard to say - but probably enough to knock out most NATO command and control and sink all carrier groups in Europe.
What's your source on that? Because it sounds like a fantasy. The Russians haven't even knocked out most of Ukraine's command and control, and doing the same against NATO would be a much larger task.
Yes, yes, uninterceptable. But there are Kessler sats up there who intercept the once un-interceptable ICBMs and there are toys down near the ground, that can intercept hypersonic missiles. All it takes is hard glorified buckshot, the detection is were its still at.
And that is getting better all the time.
Which is exactly the problem. All those bloated behemoths of the past, are running out of time.. they are not crisis stable and have nothing compelling going for them.
> there are toys down near the ground, that can intercept hypersonic missiles
Which toys, exactly? Like which specific weapons systems? Because that could be a game changer. From the research I've done, there are no capable systems as of yet unless there's some secret programs that we don't know about.
Early on, Russia hit the base near the Polish boarder used for mercenary intake and the incoming warning system didn't even come on. And those were supposedly not even hypersonic. Google up the pics, videos and interviews. It was devastating.
You really believe that the guys who can't properly weld an armoured vehicle can produce ICBMs? That the guys who cannot produce their own cannon barrels any longer are capable of creating rocket engines? That the guys who cannot prevent thieves from stealing electronics from their doomsday plane are somehow capable to produce, maintain and secure a fleet of ICBMs?
Are you really sure that the Russian cleptocracy that sends sappers to the front line with wooden bricks wrapped up as TNT (yep) and styrofoam wrapped up as dry rations for "liberated" civilians are somehow capable of maintaining a fleet of strategic missiles at 1/100 of the budget that US spends to maintain theirs?
I'm not.
But I am afraid that if we give them 5 years they will manage to get something working.
And that scares me more than the thought of angering Putin right now.
Luckily I don't have to make this decisions, we have people in Nato who knows extremely much more than me. If they tell me to show up I do.
So all the videos getting posted by Ukrainians of missiles zipping through the sky as well as missile strikes are fakes? The western news showing video clips of Russian missiles hitting Ukrainian infrastructure like bridges and bases are fakes? The Pentagon openly saying that Russia has been using hypersonics - fakes? The Russian RD-180 rocket engines powering NASAs Atlas V are fakes?
Do you have access to a computer and basic Google skills?
I've heard talk of one hypersonic that hit a weapons cache early in the war. The rest of what I have seen has been ordinary missiles of various kinds, often either aimed at civilian infrastructure or extremely imprecise.
They haven't appeared to use a lot of hypersonics (no need, really); probably just testing and calibration. With just the kinetic energy alone, they can do massive damage. And make no mistake, the US will have them soon enough. There's a reason Russia made their moves now (during that gap).
As for preciseness, the newer ballistics have precision of over 90% (thanks, US designed chips). Older ones probably 75%. Their biggest weakness is access to chips.
And the imprecise hits are coming from the Tochka-Us, an old system that mostly the Ukrainians are fielding - but maybe pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists forces some, too.
It is no secret that much of the good Soviet tech was produced in Ukraine, both tanks and missiles, and without maintenance they won't be as precise as they were supposed to be. And for some reason Ukrainians hasn't wanted to do maintenance on Russians tech the last few years.
That said we've also seen plenty enough evidence that Russians shoot civilians on purpose.
Tbh this “angering Putin” might make sense. As long as Rashists believe they can win, they continue to bleed out. When they realize they can’t win this, they could try something else, so it makes sense to try to defer that.
> Western media being a reliable source is one of these
If you are a westerner, sure. If you follow non-western sources, you'll see there's no imminent coup on Putin, you'll see many testimonials of Azov torturing eastern Ukrainians, you'll see Russia slowly advancing into Ukraine, you'll know about mass Ukrainian soldiers defecting, you'll know casualty reporting by western media is either wrong or pure propaganda... The GP is correct, it'd be better for west's supporters to pay attention to what's happening on the battlefield instead of the obvious (to non-westerners) propaganda that's being spread. To sum it up, Ukraine is not winning and the Russian army is not a pack of doofus.
Even tidbits of truth accidentally seep through western media despite the massive campaign of consent and huge PR spending by the Ukrainian government:
I'm telling you outright that Ukrainians got their nazi problem under control during the last eight years while Russia did not and in fact encourages groups like Task Force Rusisch.
You are showing me half a tatoo in an image out of context.
I'm giving you and everyone else here some pointers to look up whole nazi detachments of the Russian army.
I don't trust western media on anyting important. Many of them lie without stopping about a number of things. You have to verify with a number of sources to get what is actually happening.
> If you follow non-western sources, you'll see there's no imminent coup on Putin, you'll see many testimonials of Azov torturing eastern Ukrainians, you'll see Russia slowly advancing into Ukraine, you'll know about mass Ukrainian soldiers defecting, you'll know casualty reporting by western media is either wrong or pure propaganda...
I also follow (and get pushed info from) non western sources, and according to them the assault on Kyiv was on track until it was a feint. Moskva was not hit, but had minor damage due to an accident and was simultaneously sailing by its own power, towed and all sailors were saved until it suddenly sunk in a very local storm. According to them Russians are the smart and nice guys that somehow couldn't prevent [UK Snipers/Ukrainians/Voldemort] (ok, one of these is a joke but I have forgotten a couple too) from raping and killing civilians in Bucha while they were there. I've had pro Russians telling me that a plausible explanation for Bucha was a foreign sniper shooting the civilians just as the Russians happened to drive into the streets there.
And I hear a lot about all the nasty things Azov has done against Russian speaking Ukrainians, often accompanied by a mix of 8 year old pictures, some of them havily manipulated. But looking closer at it Donbas looked nicer after 8 years of supposed Ukrainian shelling than after a few weeks of Russian "liberation". And more Russian speaking Ukrainians have been killed by the Russian "liberators" than by the "evil" Azov.
You know Ukraine recently fired Lyudmila Denisova, their commissioner for human rights, for pushing fake rape stories, right? She admitted that she thought they would garner more western support for sending weapons.
> You know Ukraine recently fired Lyudmila Denisova, their commissioner for human rights, for pushing fake rape stories, right? She admitted that she thought they would garner more western support for sending weapons.
Good for them.
Now think if Russians had did the same and fired the lying faces that lies every week on Russian TV.
But they don't.
Look: using cheap tricks against people who are smarter than you, more knowledgeable than you and doesn't care about persons, only truth, that is a rather sure fire way to get owned. Badly.
> US, China and Russia project this image of great power but they can hardly project it, as evidenced most recently in Ukraine.
The US can bomb any country to pieces if it wants, they have shown that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia can bomb a country to pieces (e.g. Syria) or massively impede any sort of progress (e.g. Libya). I wouldn't underestimate the UK and France either, both are nuclear powers and have sizable navies. Projecting power is not an issue at all for them, their weakness is nation building which is why Bosnia is on the verge of collapse, Afghanistan back into a hellhole and Iraq not too much better.
The wild card is China, they haven't done anything more than a couple of border fights with India and silently taken over Hong Kong so it's completely unknown how good their firepower and training actually is.
In any case, being "independent" doesn't really work either - if your resources are of interest to a major power, you will get fucked over eventually. Yugoslavia broke apart and most of its former parts allied with the EU/NATO, Cuba is deeply held back by US sanctions (which in my opinion should have gone years ago). Even the Swiss, the world's most prominent neutral nations, had to cave under US and EU pressure to open up their bank books. And now Ukraine, which was agreed to by both the NATO and Russia to stay neutral, was invaded by Russia on a pretext.
China certainly isn't spotless, but for starters it 1. Hadn't invaded anyone in at least five decades now, 2. Is not the country with largest incarceration rate.
Hong Kong was leased by the British for 99 years (lease terms were set after British beat Chinese in opium wars, giving British drug dealers the right to sell opium to Chinese citizens). After 99 years, China was strong enough where British couldn’t reasonably renege on lease or force new terms, so they gave it back to China.
Americans' claim they live in democracy. Chinese say the same thing. To you China might not be a democracy; to somebody else US - where corporations literally just buy their own congressman - isn't a democracy either.
People in the USA vote regularly to choose their leader, while people in China do not. Hence, by definition, USA are a democracy and China is not.
Sure, the last two elections were a confirmation that democracy is not perfect (with millions of idiots voting Trump in 2016 and still millions of freaking idiots voting Trump in 2020), but it is the best we have got so far.
People in USA can’t vote to choose their leader at all - they can only choose their representatives, who then vote for the leader. That’s almost exactly how it works in China.
I'm fine with what you're saying, but the sad truth is that US rarely has "allies" it's mostly puppets and dogs [1], even for a large and rich entity like the EU it's mostly forced to follow the US strategy willingly or forcefully.
And some even gave them money... I think it is reasonable to jail anyone who funded anyone involved here either death penalty or rest of their lives in such facility like one in question here. They can't be redeemed as human beings.
Trying to imprison the guy leaving office is a great way to have that guy not leave office. There's a reason that presidents don't get prosecuted, and it's not because nothing illegal happens.
It's like trying to end the war in Ukraine while also saying that you're trying to depose Putin. Putting very powerful people in corners tends to be a really bad plan.
I don't know if it is such an easy answer. On the one hand, a policy of not prosecuting the office holder might help the peaceful transfer of power; on the other, such a policy creates an unaccountable sovereign every four years.
Was it fear of prosecution that kept Caesar from giving up imperium when returning from Gaul? It was certainly a factor. Would there have been no Roman civil war if there was such a non-prosecution policy in place? I'm less certain.
The risk you bring up must be carefully considered, but so is having an unaccountable sovereign, just four years at a time.
I find it so odd that every single gitmo detainee was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were thousands of people who got detained in Iraq and Afghanistan, but only a select few got brought to gitmo.
I’m more inclined to believe that the people of the US military bureaucracy were acting in good faith, and had a legitimate reason to believe these people were working for the enemy vs hearing the same story you hear from 100% of unrepentant convicted felons. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, they have the wrong guy”
I’d also like to remind people who don’t believe the people of US bureaucracy were acting in good faith that it’s these same people who will be working in whatever new giant gov service you want created. Might want to consider that next time you argue for government mandated/required/etc anything. If you don’t trust them to do the right thing in this case, why do you think it’ll be different in your case?
In all likelihood those guys are actual bad-guys and did what we think they did and more.
The problem is we ought to follow certain principles when we incarcerate people. Provide evidence, prove it in court and allow the defendant to defend themselves against accusations. Otherwise we're in kangaroo-courts/Soviet show trial-land.
There likely was a trial, or something like it, but until we can ensure the safety and protection of the people who helped us convict these people it’s been deemed more prudent to keep it secret.
Horseshit. Even the officials in charge don't claim this. Even if they did, you can't have a "secret" just trial. The task of keeping it secret makes it impossible for the defense to have any sort of decent representation, much less gather evidence in their defense. Any "secret" trail is inherently one-sided, but again literally no US official has claimed they've been granted that much, in fact the lack of any trail has been acknowledged and even cited as a reason they can't be moved to a facility in the US.
This type of hyper aggressive response doesn’t lead to constructive conversation. Please reconsider the tone of words/punctuation you’re using and remember the humanity of the people you’re talking to. If you wouldn’t talk like this in a face to face discussion with a stranger try using different language in your online dialogue as well.
I identified your comment as what is was, then proceeded to explain exactly why it was that. Any "hyper aggression" your reading is your in your own mind and I assure you I would have responded the same way face to face with pretty much anyone.
Frankly it wasn't a good faith argument. Even if you somehow didn't know that one of the core issues with Guantanamo was that people were being held indefinitely without trial, a 30 second Google would've told you that, and a couple minutes of research would have told you that it was established specifically to avoid the need for a trial or anything resembling due process.
In other words the idea that Guantanamo Bay detainees "likely" got something resembling a trial is horseshit.
You're scolding this person for their impassioned comment but should also maybe self-reflect a bit. Maybe this person is upset because you're casually throwing out baseless, unsubstantiated claims.
If you want to have a constructive conversation about real life events, you may want to have more evidence for your claims than "I’m more inclined to believe" and "There likely was..."
I’m scolding them for using profanity in the first word of their first sentence. There is no way to have a constructive dialogue with someone when they show that much anger off the bat. That sort of hostility just breeds more venom which won’t lead anywhere productive. If we’re just hear to air our grievances. Then it’s fine, be angry, show that emotion. Feats of strength are next. Someone can bring out the festivus pole.
But I don’t think that’s what this forum is about. If his problem really is my lack of evidence he should say that instead of spewing obscenities.
....hearing the same story you hear from 100% of unrepentant convicted felons.
I wouldn't put too much into dismissing such things. Have you seen the how the US locks folks up using fake "science", and then refusing to reverse the charges when evidence proves them innocent? Sure, not everyone is innocent, but enough folks are wrongfully convicted, it seems, that anyone saying this might just be telling the truth. We (Americans) should be more prudent when locking people up.
Considering this, yeah, I think the US has locked up innocent folks for years on end without trial. Sure, some are guilty, but probably not guilty enough for a decade or so of actual torture.
The line is the mantra of criminals since time immemorial. It’s not a US invention.
But, I would invite you to spend some time in any US court house where criminal proceedings are being held. You will find that 99.999% of convicts are very guilty (with proof anyone in the room can verify and would agree is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt) of the crimes they’ve committed. While I agree that .001% is still too high a percentage when talking about convicting innocents. It’s truly the height of hyperbole to claim there’s a chance it might be true for anyone who says it.
The national institute of science conservatively estimates that 4% of those given the death penalty are innocent. 61% of death row inmates who are later exonerated by evidence involve false and coerced confessions.
Given how poorly we do when it comes to the death penalty, you'll excuse me if I doubt your 99.999% guilty numbers for other crimes.
Those are selective stats that don’t contradict mine. How many people are given the death penalty? How many are on death row? How many crimes are actually committed on a daily basis? These are questions that your stats don’t address and are very relevant to the discussion.
Sure, that'd be a reasonable point, if you had started with that kind of information in your post. Instead you started with a hyperbolic 99.999% number and nothing to back it. Given that one would hope we'd be more careful about wrongful convictions with death penalty cases than a random bar brawl or possession charge I'm going to assert that the information I already provided is sufficient to refute the point.
I’m going to go ahead and disagree with this. The failure rate of the court isn’t whether or not convicts are guilty. It’s whether or not the constitutional rights of the accused have been violated. That rate is significantly high and totally unacceptable. You cannot just detain people without a trial indefinitely just because they’re “probably guilty”. You cannot force false testimony of children because “probably guilty”. You cannot being junk science like bite marks, lie detectors, “I smelled weed”, etc. because “probably guilty”. You cannot force a guilty plea by threatening someone’s life with an intentionally harsher sentence or death because “probably guilty”. This is royally fucked up and a multiple daily occurrence in the courts.
I appreciate you taking a more conciliatory tone (at least in the beginning), many here are just trying to getting into flame wars.
Still, I think you’d be very surprised if you actually spent any time in a court house, those examples you bring are very rare and far from a daily occurrence.
Again, I believe even one innocent person behind bars is too many, but we need to weight that against creating a culture of lawlessness and violence (which is where it feels like many large American cities, mine included, are headed).
I have spent time at a court house. It’s called pleading guilty to a minor traffic violation. A cop lying or straight up making someone’s life hell for fighting is, in fact, something that happened the day I was there. Most everyone I know has either dealt with this or knows someone in their circle that dealt with this.
> I’m more inclined to believe that the people of the US military bureaucracy were acting in good faith, and had a legitimate reason to believe these people were working for the enemy vs hearing the same story you hear from 100% of unrepentant convicted felons. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, they have the wrong guy”
They probably had a reason, sure. But you can be mistaken, or the information may not be correct.
Some people really are just "in the wrong place at the wrong time", including at least a chunk of former Guantanamo detainees. I don't know how many of them exactly because everything is secret and classified, which makes demonstrating your innocence really hard (how can you provide an alibi if you don't know what evidence was used?)
That this is also used by some guilty people is besides the point. Taking denial of having committed a crime as being "unrepentant" is a really dangerous thing to do because of course actual innocent people will claim their innocence.
Even with the best legal system with all sorts of legal protections that are biased strongly towards the prevention of convicting innocent people even if it means letting some guilty people go free, innocent people still end up in jail. When you remove those protections and add the fog of war that number shoots up quite fast.
> I find it so odd that every single gitmo detainee was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Literally no one is claiming this. It's safe to assume some, probably even most are indeed guilty. That doesn't justify imprisoning them indefinitely, without trail. It definitely doesn't justify torture. It doesn't justify a black site in Guantanamo to skirt US and international law.
Them having a legitimate reason to believe anything doesn't change the fact that the detainee should have been released with their passport of origin if no charge has been filed and/or they haven't been declared culprit.
If you’re the informant who provided the evidence against one of these guys at what point are you ok with the US publishing the court documents publicly so that his friends can come after you?
Do you know who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? It's the genocidal army of USA being thousands of Kms away from the US. If there is a criminal it's those children killers, and anyone who hide this fact. The US army and gov are in no place to punish even a legitimate criminals like the Al-Qaeda (their previous allies). In an ideal world the whole military of US would be dismantled and punished in Guantanamo (or any prison of your choice) for crimes against humanity.
As long as we can fabricate flimsy evidence that China treats Muslims badly in China then we can happily ignore the hard evidence that America is violating every single human right in America and across the world, because white woke people love pointing fingers at other nations with a superiority complex instead of looking at themselves.
First, there is abundant and solid evidence of Chinese violent oppression against Uigurs. Second, why do people (you) assert that awareness of human rights abuses in one country blinds people to abuses in another country? On the contrary, the more intolerable I find China's imprisonment of Uigurs and others, the more intolerable I find America's awful, useless wars and huge prison population. I don't get where you're coming from.
