So I'm thinking more and more...

[Xodiac]

...that the whole idea of a "war on terrorism" is stupid. The reason is, declaring war on an ideology instead of another nation proses a HUGE number of very important issues that were not defined or even dealt with when the "war" was declared.

First of all, when war is declared on another nation, it is very clear who the adversary is: violent combatants affiliated with the opposing nation. "Terrorism" is not a political organization, so there should be stict, guidelines clearly outlining what constitues an enemy combatant in this war. There is no clear, legal definition of a terrorist, and that is a huge problem.

Second, traditional wars have clear conditions for victory, an official representing the opposing political faction can sign a treaty ending the conflict. Since the United States has not even bothered to clearly define the enemy, it is difficult to see how they could set clear conditions for victory.

Let's think for a moment about our nations' track record declaring wars against something other than a political body.

War on Poverty.......Failed.
War on Drugs.........LOL Quit wasting my tax money you dicks!
War on Terror....because it has worked so well for Isreal so far. No, wait...

[Xodiac]

BTW, this is after reading this on reuters:

AGHDAD, Iraq - In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
ADVERTISEMENT

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the
U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release — without charge — last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in
Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of abuse at
Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and
Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.

Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.

But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Building for the Long Term

Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the
Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.

The same day,
President Bush said the
CIA's secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.

Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.

Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.

Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons — unknown in number and location — remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.

"If you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you have absolutely no way of clearing your name," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York. "You can't have a lawyer present evidence, or do anything organized to get yourself out of there."

The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends — as it determines.

"I don't think we've gotten to the question of how long," said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the
U.S. Navy. "When we get up to 'forever,' I think it will be tested" in court, he said.

The Navy is planning long-term at Guantanamo. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.

[PETA]

As a generality - I agree. Its a vague bogey man that stands for specific threats.

The policy needs a new name and clearly defined goals, rules and methods.

[Dionysos]

Yea, let's get back to something with well-defined objectives, like the war on drugs!

[kalamu]

Originally Posted by Dionysos

Yea, let's get back to something with well-defined objectives, like the war on drugs!

he already said the war on drugs was a bad idea.

how about not waging war on anything... now that right there is a novel idea.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Dionysos

Yea, let's get back to something with well-defined objectives, like the war on drugs!

http://www.csdp.org/publicservice/halsted.pdf

speaking of that brilliantly conceived and executed policy

[Xodiac]

Hah, that's awesome! After the psychadelic drug craze of the 60s and 70s followed by the "shamefulness" of the conservative (drug-wise) 80s and 90's, I think society is moving toward less of a hard line approach to drug use. The baby boomers all did it in while it was popular and just don't want to admit it, generation X doesn't seem to care either way, and my generation seems to be pretty pro-legalization.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by Xodiac

Hah, that's awesome! After the psychadelic drug craze of the 60s and 70s followed by the "shamefulness" of the conservative (drug-wise) 80s and 90's, I think society is moving toward less of a hard line approach to drug use. The baby boomers all did it in while it was popular and just don't want to admit it, generation X doesn't seem to care either way, and my generation seems to be pretty pro-legalization.

conservative drug wise in the 80s and 90s?

Miami Vice was not popular because it made cocaine look unglamorous


I am Gen X and we are enthusiaticly apathetic about a hardline on drugs.


As others have said, with our budget on interdiction, enforcement, incarceration, prosecution et cetc etc - we could buy all the drugs in the world and flush them.

Anyway - the debate about the foolishness of the policy isn't even really a debate any longer. Its a matter of some one having enough guts to say enopugh is enough and focus on treatment and health rather than jail. California has a working program that may be a model for decriminalization but it should go further.

[Xodiac]

That's one of the reasons I'll probably end up voting for:

AUSTIN – Independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman said Wednesday he favored legalizing marijuana to keep nonviolent users out of prison and said he would push to release those already in prison for the offense to free prison space for more violent criminals.

"I think that's long overdue," Friedman said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think everybody knows what (U.S. Sen.) John McCain said is right: We've pretty well lost the war on drugs doing it the way we're doing it. Drugs are more available and cheaper than ever before. What we're doing is not working."

[Funkenstein]

http://www.dallasdancemusic.com/foru...=1#post2484868

It's a long vid, but the heart and soul of is detailing the build of EU sanctioned thought for a central repository of network traffic between/of users that each individual government would have access to.

Building the invention and then seeing what problem you can solve with it is what the speaker likens it to. Even a technical nerd describes how fundamentally flawed a process (like declaring the war on terror without "defining" it first) like that is.

All the rest are just digs at his own government and ours.

Still valid stuff from across the pond, though.

[G Joob]

Donate to Marijuana Policy Project

They do more shit to end the drug war, which is really a war on marijuana. Marijuana is going to be legal to grow, sale and toke in Nevada this november because of them.