Barrack Obama will need to keep the stick handy if he is to survive the first six months of testing.
Diplomacy and talking is considered weakness/cowaredly by these factions.
The tests will escalate.

Calling it a Sensitivity Training Center is brilliant! No less a personage than Barack himself has identified the issue facing the terrorists (militants? freedom fighters? Minutemen?) as a lack of empathy.

Hugh, Steve, thank you.

And Happy Thanksgiving!

I can only laugh. It will be quite amusing to watch the contortions of the MSM as they justify Obama for continuing the same policies they excoriated Bush for.

What is the over/under on a Republican Congress and Obama impeachment by June 2011?

Gitmo is too good for these murderers.
Death is too good for these fanatics.
Hell, on the other hand, seems just about right.

I wonder if the NY Times or Human Rights Watch is going to be bothered about these murderers not respecting the Geneva Convention rights of the kitchen staff.

"...have chosen to treat each attack separately, and not as part of a global war."

This is a common tactic used in any instance where one wishes to avoid the truth of a whole matter. Address a series of actions or facts as unconnected or unrelated incidents (or as politicians do, deny categorically.) It helps in erasing the lines that connect the dots.

"Barrack Obama will need to keep the stick handy if he is to survive the first six months of testing."

"Gird your loins!" ~ Joseph Biden (October 19, 2008)

I get the distinct feeling that Obozo's default response to Islamic terror committed against the US will be to drop to his knees and open his mouth.

Some folks require regular, harsh incidents to concentrate the mind. The rest of us know and remember reality with no effort at all.

I know I'm not the only one who remembers 9/11 and thinks of the GWOT every single day. Thanks again to those who serve to protect us.

This is s conundrum! I am very much afraid that the fires and explosions in the hotels may have destroyed important evidence The Hague will need to mount an effective prosecution for these alleged acts. What to do?

But you don't understand! If we weren't such a bunch of racist fascists, the islamists would be petting bunnies and handing out flowers! And this just proves what evil people we are!

I flat guarantee you'll be hearing that shortly, if they aren't selling it already; it's so much more pleasant than facing the fact these dirtbags want us converted, dhimmi or dead(and would prefer dead). And it lets the believers flagellate themselves and feel noble about their condemnation of, well, everyone except the enemy.

Some people just refuse to believe that there are others out there that want to kill us, and until they are confronted by those others, in a life or death situation, they will never belive. Unfortunately, by then it's often too late for them.

As for sensitivity traing, it's strictly a CYA move by the university or company, only the most naive believe that Death by Powerpoint classes will change anyone's atittudes. It also comes down to the leaders at the lowest level both instilling a professional and respectful atmosphere, as well as telling the thin skinned to toughen up against purely imagined slights.

"I wonder if the NY Times or Human Rights Watch is going to be bothered about these murderers not respecting the Geneva Convention rights of the kitchen staff."

Racist!

Just kidding, of course. The Left loves terrorism and loves jihad. The Left considers these victims mere collateral damage in the destruction of Capitalism, the extermination of the Jews, and triumph of the Left/Islam.

May G-d curse every Leftist.

It's racist to call Obama a reneger.

...many Americans seem to have an emotional need to deny the war on terror out of existence the way they might use a remote to change an unappreciated TV channel.

Where the MSM is concerned there is a political need as well as an emotion one. Thus the near non-stop lying and distortion by our self-anointed moral and intellectual betters for nearly eight years. In fact, the meme from the Far Left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) is that these attacks "prove" that the Bush administration has failed.

Some conservatives have taken great pleasure from the fact that the Messiah has appeared to flip-flop on Iraq and Gitmo. I would point out that even if the Chosen One were to adopt the Bush policy chapter and verse (which He appears to be doing) we cannot assume he would be as successful. The Chosen One - like the MSM and the rest of the Democrat Party - is completely unserious about Islamofascism. Like the Indian government they think it is a law-enforcement matter. Competence does matter, and the more the MSM hyperventilates about the Messiah's supposed high intelligence the more I am convinced that he is dumber than Gomer Pyle (except that fictional Pyle actually served his country in the USMC, while the Messiah has only served Himself).

The issue of concern with Guantanamo Bay is not that "we're being mean to known terrorists". The issues are:

- The indefinite lock-up of people, about whom we don't know if they are responsible for any terrorist acts or plans; and

- The application of torture to find out. (Don't forget: The reason that torture is a bad idea is not just that it hurts, but that it produces unreliable information. If someone started to torture me, I would confess to having strangled to death my great-great-great-great grandmother, 5 minutes before her birth. Impossible? Yes. Would I confess to it? If it would stop the torture...)

As it turns out, effective interrogation is one of those skills, like groundfighting or the secret language of horses; that is nearly lost every generation and has to be regularly relearned by governments and organizations and people.

Effective interrogation requires both kindness, rapport, threats, intimidation, A certain limited knowledge of certain facts by the interrogators, and occasionally actual harm to make good on the threats.

As has been mentioned, you can't just torture someone and hope to come up with the right facts because if you hurt someone enough they will say anything. One has to know something first, so as to determine truth from lies when asking about topics that you already have some knowledge about - then you can punsh lies and reward truth. Gradually one gets details that one didn't know, and one has to have the team outside verify them in the real world. Lather, rinse, repeat the cycle.

Unfortunately, that kind of interrogation takes longer than you can fit on an hour-long television show.

Why aren't the perpetrators of school shootings sent to Guantanamo? Why aren't child rapists tortured and executed without trial? If someone is videotaped murdering someone else, why have a trial? Why don't cops just shoot them dead at the scene of the crime?

Because we believe in laws, the constitution and due process. Why this is a debatable point is beyond me. It's not the heinousness of the act that should shape society's response. This is not the time of Hammurabi.

Right-wingers are barbarians masquerading as defenders of "classical values."

I love these comments, but I feel obliged to answer the guy who thinks I'm a barbarian masquerading as a defender of "classical values."

"Franglosaxon" seems unable to distinguish between acts of terrorism (which is a form of warfare) and ordinary crime.

Perpetrators of school shootings, child rapists, murderers, etc. are regular criminals, and are not trained combatants engaged in an organized struggle to achieve defined goals or victories of a military nature.

The constitution and due process apply to them (assuming the school shooters aren't shot by the cops first in the heat of battle), if they are in the United States.

That answers this question:

Why aren't the perpetrators of school shootings sent to Guantanamo?

But there's an additional answer. They can't be sent anywhere, because they're usually dead. If the rest of their victims are lucky, it's because the "cops just shoot them dead at the scene of the crime."

It's called the heat of battle. Also defense of others. And, yes, even self defense!

I'd hate to think that only barbarians are in favor of such things.