Friday, December 09, 2005

Rice v. Pinter

Via Ed Strong.

Condoleezza Rice and Harold Pinter on the "war on terror", Iraq, torture and Guantanamo Bay:

RICE: The United States and many other countries are waging a war against terrorism. For our country this war often takes the form of conventional military operations in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

PINTER: The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East.

A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.


RICE: International law allows a state to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities. Detainees may only be held for an extended period if the intelligence or other evidence against them has been carefully evaluated and supports a determination that detention is lawful.

PINTER: Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention.

It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'.

By Rice's own admission, these enemy combatants maybe held in custody until hell freezes over or until the "hostilities" are over, which ever comes first...

RICE: The United States is a country of laws. My colleagues and I have sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We believe in the rule of law.

PINTER: The US quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent.

Let me be facetious and correct Pinter: the US cares a lot about the UN as long as the US gets its way. When it doesn't it goes it alone anyway.

RICE: We consider the captured members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates to be unlawful combatants who may be held, in accordance with the law of war, to keep them from killing innocents.

PINTER: How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice.

Condi, you sound thoroughly confused. If these people are indeed guilty of terrorist acts, then a fair trial, conviction and a long sentence would be the best strategy under all circumstances. Instead these "illegal combatants" can be held forever in poor conditions.

RICE: The United States [and its allies] will use every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists.

PINTER: We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

The idea of "bringing of freedom to the Middle East" is of course nothing more than a bit of spin to give the entire failing campaign an air of respectability, a touch of humanitarianism...

RICE: Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under US law, wherever they may occur in the world.

PINTER: At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice.


Full text of the Harold Pinter Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Keywords:
, , , , , , , , , , ,

11 Comments:

At 12:32 AM, Blogger Timmer of Righting America said...

Gert -

Nice touch - "Photoshopping" Condi's eyes. Who's the creative genius this time?

 
At 3:45 PM, Blogger Gert said...

Well, hand on my heart (honest!), I didn't think it was photoshopped, I just thought the odd angle made her look the like Devil's Child, that's why I chose the image...

Click on the image to find the source of this "liberal spin"...

 
At 7:07 PM, Blogger Timmer of Righting America said...

Gert -

If you look under her right eye, you can see the "grain" moves up toward the eye...as if the pixels (in the bag under the eye) had been stretched...which is of course what has happened here.

As a public figure, she is fair game. I did that very thing to Senator Reid's Glasses on my site - but made them so huge that it was obviously a fake. In this case with Condi, someone is just trying to make her look evil without being obvious about it.

To me, that is childish...but I guess that is the game. Cheers.

 
At 7:27 PM, Blogger Timmer of Righting America said...

BTW, I visited the website of the holder of this photo...you should visit there, Gert. I think you would like it.

www.unspun.us

Of course, I TOTALLY disagreed with this VERY liberal guy. His article on the Kyoto treaty and Global Warming was ridiculous (to me, anyway). Here was my response to his claims:

I love visiting Liberal Blogs...especially one such as yours that couches itself as "unspinning" while you in fact spin more than most. Brilliant (catch that sardonic humor?).

The Kyoto treaty would have NEVER passed in Congress, regardless of what Bush did or did not do. Global Warming is a fantasy - the overall temperature of the Earth has increased by ONE DEGREE in the last century, and that only because of the cycle we happen to be in. In fact, back in the 70's it was GLOBAL FREEZING that was feared as the Ice Age remission was slowly subsiding. "Doomday" theories....sheesh.

Having said that (before you launch into a tizzy) I am all for leaving OIL behind - for the planet and for unfettering ourselves of dependency on foreign anything.

The rest of your comments about Bush and Oil Companies, WMDs, the rest of the world blah blah blah...just too ridiculous to comment on.

Wonder if you will approve THIS comment? I think not...

 
At 9:14 PM, Blogger Gert said...

Well, I had a look, but generally speaking I don't give a monkey's where the image comes from, so I'm not going to apologise now either.

You didn't expect me to choose a flattering picture, now did you?

As regards, Kyoto and such like, I'll probably post my views separately, I think they'll surprise you...

And the spinning? That's really a matter of perspective. You're a complete spinning top as far as I'm concerned, but through the spinning I can even see reason at times. Hope it's the same for you here...

 
At 2:56 AM, Blogger crallspace said...

I would say that Condi looks more manyl than Pinter. Condi is more evil than Pinter... but that's the only way she has him beat.

Timmer, you need to take those silly, pseudo-patriotic blinders off, you fool.

 
At 10:23 AM, Blogger J.UL1R4 said...

Condi is a lying depraved bitch who is submerged in her own crap like the rest of the administration. I would hang her first. It made me ill listening to her lies last week and people rubber stamping them. That tells you a lot.

These people create their own reality, as they did to invade Iraq.

 
At 2:42 PM, Blogger Timmer of Righting America said...

Gert -

Those were my comments to the article on www.unspun.com...I was not accusing you of spin (this time ;-) wasn't asking for an apology.

Dan - You need to be quiet when the adults are talking.

 
At 10:15 PM, Blogger Kent said...

Gert,

If only you were correct about the UN.

I'd love for the United States to keep those billions of dollars worth of UN dues that are wasted each year, as well as the priceless Upper East side Manhattan real estate that serves as HQ for Kofi and his band of pirates.

If I were President, the UN would occupy an island somewhere in international waters, far, far away from American shores.

 
At 10:18 PM, Blogger Kent said...

And anyone that gives a slug like Harold Pinter more than a passing thought is a moron.

Liberals crack me up with their hypocrisy. Freedom and democracy? Oh those are great things for Americans and Europeans, but those people in Iraq? Screw them.

 
At 5:04 PM, Blogger Gert said...

Thanks for calling me a moron. I didn't really expect any better from someone like you.

On the freedom and democracy of the Iraqi people? Who was Saddam's main ally and supporter from his ascendancy up to GW I? Who felt the Iraqis would make a nice little firewall against Khomeiny? Who really didn't give a fuck whether Saddam's regime was remotely democratic or completely dictatorial, as long as it did what it was supposed to do?

Kent, you didn't give a shit back then about the Iraqi people or the Kurds or Halabja, so don't start now.

You're a myopic troll that doesn't know the first thing about history. Do me a favour and give this blog a wide birth, you're wasting my time, as well as yours.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home