Nope, you're trolling. And like those who troll, you attempt to get a thread locked when you're getting pwned.
So who is continuing the off topic discussion. Isn't this a little more then the pot calling the kettle black? Either way, you are wrong just like when on topic and you claimed Cheney admitted to war crimes which exists nowhere but in your imagination.
Nope, Diggo posted a comment I made to him in Skype,
I think that is well established. The problem came up when your comment in skype has nothing to do with the topic or parts of the conversation within the topic and instead consisted of an insult and nothing else of substance.
You attempt to repeatedly obfuscate the debate, pose fallacious arguments, move the goalposts. And, you know what? That's okay, as long as you keep the goalposts in the playing field, as long as you focus on the topic instead of tangents, focus on the debate instead of the people debating, the staff, or the company hosting the forums. Unfortunately, this is something you just can't seem to manage, and now you're working to have the thread locked.
Nothing posted by me was obfuscating anything or fallacious in the least. Because you do not want to believe something does not in any way make it false or unreal or invalid. Yes, you could read some of what I said as splitting hairs, but the fact of the matter is that I said from the absolute beginning that in order for rules of war to be valid, they have to be present and understood before the actions taken place are considered in violation of them. You might not like it, but if it is not completely understood to be illegal, then all the sudden declaring it is an ex post facto law that runs contrary to the foundation of the legal system the United States was founded with.
Ultimately, the topic is, "do you think there are any rules in war?" Rules regarding torture are associated with rules of war. You claimed those rules (specifically, the rules of torture as they pertain to the Bush era) didn't exist until recently
No, you see, you keep failing because you keep refusing to pay attention to detail. I said the rules of war existed, that the acts you claim violated them were not violations in the US until recently. There is a distinct and stout difference in positions there that you should be aware of if you are attempting to seriously debate this.
and also made it a prerequisite for someone to have been convicted of an action before it is considered a rule or law, which was a preposterous notion (laws/rules are first put into effect, then people are prosecuted)
Again, you have completely misrepresented any position I have held. I said it has to be illegal before the act was committed in order for it to be illegal after the act was committed. You bringing up situations where the army code of conduct declared it illegal for army does not make it illegal for the CIA as they are not subjected to the same subset of laws and rules. You brought up cases where civilian police got in trouble for doing those acts on citizens and people subject to US jurisdiction but failed somehow to realize the sheriffs were convicted of violating their "civil rights" not of torture or war crimes. You brought up claims that WWII enemy soldiers were convicted of torture and water boarding was referenced but failed to realize that water boarding was just one act they were accused of to make the claim torture and it was the circumstances in it's entirety that created the torture. This is even despite the fact that the legal profession including members of the US supreme court thought that the Nuremberg and IMTFE trials was wrong and ex post facto in violation of US legal principle. It doesn't even need the fact that the US representative sent to oversee the Nuremberg trials and act as prosecutor had never graduated from a legal school or held a law degree and even wrote President Truman in protest that the allies had done or were still doing many of the things they were attempting to charge and convict, while in some cases impose capitol punishment onto the axis powers.
Hmmmm. Are you saying then that the Nazis could not be prosecuted for genocide because they did not first agree that gassing Jews was wrong? Because that's what the quoted statement implies.
It is not just a matter of if they agree or not, it is a matter of jurisdictional law being implemented before or after the fact of the accused crime. This would require a sovereign nation to actually consent to the jurisdiction of any laws created outside their sovereignty. And yes, many of the accusations against Nazis were ex post facto law due to the fact that Germany was not part of many agreements implementing some of the charges against them and some where not even immortalized in international treaty until years after the war was over. That runs counter to the very principles of freedom and law built into the United States. This was even explained by members of the US supreme court concerning the Nuremberg and ITMFE trials as they objected to the US's participation in them. Politics and vengence ended up winning over legal principle and laws or rules that were not in place before the war were used to convict and even kill Nazis for acts only illegal after the act had been committed. One Nazi sentenced to death was done so in abstention without ever having the opportunity to defend himself. Does that seem like a fair and legit legal proceeding to you? Forget about what they were accused of, what if your country decided to give the death penalty during trials in which the convicted and now condemned never appeared in.
From an emotional historical viewpoint, perhaps even a perverted moral viewpoint, most of us can agree that it was probably a good thing to do. But the fairness of it all points to it not being just within the US legal system as it punishes legal acts ( even if not illegal only by the lack of a law with jurisdictional coverage making it illegal), however horrid and reprehensible they might be, before any laws making them illegal were implemented.
I might note, it is a completely separate thing to claim a broad term is illegal by law, and then push a narrow act into that definition. For instance, if not keeping your pants pulled up is a crime defined by law, changing your pants which would seemingly violate the law because one would have to pull their pants down in order to remove them and put new ones on, is not necessarily a violation of the law. Similarly, wearing a kilt or a dress would not automatically be a violation of that law even though you couldn't keep your pants pulled up if you were not wearing any. It is considered a war crime to kill civilians in an occupied territory but it is not considered a war crime to kill them in your defense when they attack your position. Little is black and white and most is left to interpretation and those interpretations need to be consistent and understood in order to maintain the legitimacy of any conviction.
