Jesus christ, are you trying to look stupid? Of course their needs to be a trial first, but there’s no way Abu Ghraib could happen without someone, somewhere breaking the law. Someone needs to go to jail, we just don’t know who and for how long.

Apparently, the incarceration of the rogue MPs doesn’t satisfy you. But you just can’t back up the tumbrels to the White House gates and start loading in the suspects. The United States vs. Someone, Somewhere is not a case that will go very far in the courts. You need to bring sufficient evidence against a specific legal entity. When you find one, please write about your discovery.

There was an article in
The Guardian claiming that some Bristish officials see US official statements as a deterrence to achieving
a resolution with Iran.
The US has brought itself down very low.

Yes. Scary as that may sound, the U.S. has less moral authority than Iran. Everything they are accusing Iran of doing, the U.S. has also done, and much worse.

It is possible for both sides to be wrong, but in this case one is more wrong that the other.

“and American officials need to go to jail (sentence first; trial later).”

Jesus christ, are you trying to look stupid? Of course their needs to be a trial first, but there’s no way Abu Ghraib could happen without someone, somewhere breaking the law. Someone needs to go to jail, we just don’t know who and for how long.

To repeat, in bold, the US has lost the moral highground to nations like Iran.

The only way to regain it now, it for people to go to jail.

America has ceded its moral authority to a terrorist-enabling Iran, and American officials need to go to jail (sentence first; trial later).

Who appointed these unnamed moral arbiters? Oh, they’re self-appointed. Now I understand.

You seem to have a predisposition to believe other Emirs. Why not this Emyr?

No, I have a predisposition to disbelieve anything any government says in a case like this.

First of all, you’ve fallen for the trap that the people captured by American and British troops were terrorists. In five years there’s been 1 conviction, and his was given just nine months in exchange for saying he wasn’t tortured. Hundred were releases without a single charge being brought against them. These people were innocent, and had been the entire five years they were stuck in there.

I do agree that Iran is not good nation and the captive are likely being mistreated, but the US and its allies have no moral highground to stand on.

To repeat, in bold, the US has lost the moral highground to nations like Iran.

The only way to regain it now, it for people to go to jail. But that’s never going to happen as long as people like Michael van der Galien, Bryan, et al, continue to attack those who point out how far we’ve degraded over the past 6 years.

after all we have gone through these last years how you can say with such assuredness that the marines were in Iraqi waters? Don’t you have a tiny bit of skepticism when it comes to what our governments tell us?

Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of two British boats seized with 15 sailors were changed by Iran to make it appear they were in Iranian waters, Britain’s UN envoy said Thursday.

“It was only when we point out that the detention (of the 15 British sailors and marines) was inappropriate and in our view unlawful that the coordinates were then changed by the Iranian government to be coordinates within Iranian waters,” British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said.

You seem to have a predisposition to believe other Emirs. Why not this Emyr?

WASHINGTON – As the Western media turns its attention to the fate of 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters over the weekend, the status of five Iranian officials captured in a U.S. military raid on a liaison office in northern Iraq on Jan. 11 remains a mystery.

Even though high-level Iraqi officials have publicly called for their release, for all practical purposes, the Iranians have disappeared into the U.S.-sanctioned “coalition detention� system that has been criticized as arbitrary and even illegal by many experts on international law.

Hours before President George W. Bush declared that they would “seek out and destroy the [Iranian] networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq,� U.S. forces raided what has been described as a diplomatic liaison office in the northern city of Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and detained six Iranians, infuriating Kurdish officials in the process.

The troops took office files and computers, ostensibly to find evidence regarding the alleged role of Iranian agents in anti-coalition attacks and sectarian violence in Iraq. One diplomat was released, but the other five men remain in U.S. custody and have not been formally charged with a crime.

“They have disappeared. I don’t know if they’ve gone into the enemy combatant system,� said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University who served in the White House under former President Jimmy Carter. “Nobody on the outside knows.�

superdestroyer says: Actually it is important that the British Marines were siezed in Iraqi waters because it shows that the Iranians are criminals.

after all we have gone through these last years how you can say with such assuredness that the marines were in Iraqi waters? Don’t you have a tiny bit of skepticism when it comes to what our governments tell us? Just a very very brief reminder:

tons and tons of WMD
Nuclear programs reconstituted
yellow cake
Private Jessica’s heroism
Pat Tilmans death
remarkable progress in Iraq
last throes of insurgency
“fixing the intelligence”
didn’t leak Wilson’s name
Scooter Libby’s felony convictions for perjury
didn’t talk to White house on US Attorney purge
surge is working

yada yada yada….. if you want to believe what your government tells you without question at this point there is nothing more I can say other than authoritarian governments around the world love citizens like you.

Actually it is important that the British Marines were siezed in Iraqi waters because it shows that the Iranians are criminals. I wonder if those judicial activist in Germany who want to put Rumsfeld on trials will not go after the Iranians for piracy? Somehow I doubt it.

I also suspect the British Intelligencia of backhanded racism. They do not expect the Iranians of being able to act civilize but then demand perfections of anything that the U.S. or Great Britian does.

Better? No?

Marlowecan Says: British comics have been mocking Christianity and Judaism happily for decades. One does not mock Islam however…

British comedian’s have, for decades, been Christians and Jews, ergo… Christian and Jewish jokes.

Someday Muslim jokes (of the Monty Python variety) will herald the arrival of Muslim acceptance into western culture.

I’m confused about your outrage over Terry Jones’ recent article. You didn’t include any quotes from him, so when I first read your post, I thought to myself, “Of great! What stupid mean-spirited remark did some celebrity say now?” Then I read the article written by Terry Jones. In fact, fearing that I had missed something, went back and read it again.

There’s no question that Terry Jones was being condescending in his article. The problem is–he wasn’t mocking the British soldiers. He was mocking the British and American governments–pointing out their hypocrisy. That’s why he referenced Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay. Some might argue that it was inappropriate for him to inject humor into such a serious situation, but then, that’s satire. I’m sure John Swift offended plenty of people when he wrote A Modest Proposal.

I don’t understand what about the article angered you so much that you would advise Terry Jones to “keep his mouth shut.” If Terry Jones’ article sounded stupid or offensive, it didn’t sound half as stupid as comes out of the mouths of politicians and pundits on a daily basis.

Frankly, I found the comments at HotAir far more offensive than what Terry Jones wrote–which is hardly suprising. HotAir is a rabidly partisan blog that is bent upon attacking anyone who attacks the Bush Administration, his policies, the War in Iraq, or the War on Terrorism. Malkin pretty much lost any credibility she ever had when she attempted to justify the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII in her book “Defense of Internment.”

99% of the time, you’re such a reasonable guy, Michael. You seem more knowledgeable regarding American history and politics than most Americans that I know. But do you really want to include yourself in the company of the likes of Malkin and HotAir? These are not people who believe in civility. Theses are not people who believe in civil liberties. These are not people who believe in holding government accountable for its mistakes.

There are so many things that government (both Democrats and Republicans) are doing wrong. But for Malkin and her fellow warbloggers, attacking celebrities who speak out against their government’s policies is a bigger priority, I suppose.

I nominate Michael for a one man rescue mission, he’ll show us how John Wayne he is, go get em Michael!

Yes, there have been a great many appalling things occuring. However, while moral relativists like Jones may see no difference between people being held in Gitmo and the howls of the Islamists’ “Allahu Akbar� as they behead screaming innocents on video…there is a difference.

You are aware that, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 95% of those arrested in Iraq were innocent and that many of them were abused and tortured in our custody. You do know that right? Moral relativists? Please.

I think it is incorrect to lump all issues between Muslims and the West into one basket. Sometimes, we can be wrong, and at those times, self-criticism is in order.

What Jones illustrates, I think, is that when we are wrong, we might well end up paying for the mistake. We were wrong in how we treated detainees, and now we may end up paying for that error.
It would be so much easier to present the case against Iran, if the US had a clean slate.

Comparing atrocities is kind of sick. Is one water boarding worth 10 beatings? There should be no rate of exchange. Wrong is wrong.

In general, we criticize more that which we care about most, because we want it to be perfect. Self-criticism could be better described as self-love, although, as with all love, this also can go overboard.

You have not been following the end of British free speech under Blair, with the new laws against slandering religion. This is a variant of the PC idea of “appropriate speech”…and was instituted by the liberal elite to appease Islamists in the UK.

If any of you know UK comedy, you know British comics have been mocking Christianity and Judaism happily for decades. One does not mock Islam however…and liberals have been falling over themselves to suppress freedom of expression that may offend Islamists.

To reference Orwell again: when Britain faced its darkest hours, he began a period of deep reflection. Orwell was an anarchist, and despised the British empire…unlike many “parlour room Bolshies” putting his ass where his mouth was and going off and fighting in Spain. But he came to the view that while Britain was far from perfect, it was better than what Hitler or Stalin (the leading alternatives of the time) had to offer. “My country right or left” Orwell said.

Yes, there have been a great many appalling things occuring. However, while moral relativists like Jones may see no difference between people being held in Gitmo and the howls of the Islamists’ “Allahu Akbar” as they behead screaming innocents on video…there is a difference.

Today the mobs are at the British embassy in Tehran. If they storm the embassy and lynch the Ambassador, one can expect the usual suspects posting at the “Guardian”:

“Of course, we don’t condone the lynching of British diplomats, but we must understand…. look at Guantanamo Bay, and the West Bank, and Allende, and the Bay of Pigs….”

In the 1940s Orwell wrote a great essay about the “self-loathing of the intellectual classâ€? regarding how the British intelligentsia of the time universally despised British democratic values – most favouring communism, and a minority, facism…as the vital systems of the future.

Am I the only one that sees the irony in Marlowecan’s comment? It is not Terry Jones that despises “democratic values” he is trying to stand up for “democratic values”. He despises, as do I, the fact that our respective nations have decided to violate international law and conventions and have systematically engaged in secret prisons, rendition and torture. The “chattering classes” that despise democratic values are the Michael van der Galien’s of the world that try to shout down those of us that exercise our (still) free speech to stand up for those very values Marlowecan talks about and what our nations once stood for.

This was a brilliant stroke by the Iranian government, which recognizes a “slow horse” (to reference Osama’s famous analogy) when it sees one.

The UK has the world’s fifth largest economy, but the world’s 28th most powerful armed forces. Blair has no option but to wait for the daily humiliations from Tehran.

Plus, Tehran recognizes the self-loathing of the Western “chattering classes” of which Jones is a classic example.

If anyone here has been following the comments in the “Guardian” or the BBC about this story in the past days, it is remarkable how most posters defend the right of the Iranians to take British hostages.

There are numerous reasons for this right. One of my favorite was the poster at the Guardian’s blog who declared that since children are being executed in the United States as she types, Blair has no right to demand the return of the hostages. Another nice one invokes the thousands being held in secret CIA prisons. Lots reference Israel, and declare that as long as the Israeli’s oppress the Palestineans, the UK has no right to demand the return of the hostages.

In the 1940s Orwell wrote a great essay about the “self-loathing of the intellectual class” regarding how the British intelligentsia of the time universally despised British democratic values – most favouring communism, and a minority, facism…as the vital systems of the future.

Jones has to be situated in this context. Consider, for example, Terry Jones’ views on history in his various comic treatments of it in recent years such as “Terry Jones Medieval Lives” etc (medieval barbarians, good…Roman empire, bad).