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Post by timfarney on Nov 5, 2009 8:12:43 GMT -5
I don't know the details of this case, but assuming that this "cleric" was a leader/aider/abetter of terror, there was sufficient evidence of that and we shared that evidence with the Italians, I'm going to come down on the other side of this one. International terrorism is, as the name implies, an international criminal movement. We can't fight it by defeating the armies of sovereign states and occupying foreign nations. That is just plain stupid. This is the way we can fight it. By going in and taking out terrorist leadership wherever they're hiding. By going in and blowing up the training camps, wherever they happen to be. By cooperating, internationally, to defeat something that threatens us internationally. I know there are a lot of "ifs" up there in that first sentence, but if they apply, the Italians shouldn't be trying us, they should have been with us.
Then again, those "ifs" may not apply. And the CIA is not exactly the most trustworthy organization on the planet.
Tim
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Post by sekhmet on Nov 5, 2009 9:36:25 GMT -5
Anyone who has had real Italian food can afford to be a snob about the stuff served up in North America. Mind you Giacomo, there are places where the food is quite wonderful and Italian. I am addicted to one such place in London, south of here. It happens. Olive garden - not so much, but compared to McDonalds or any of the other cruel food substitutes, not so bad.
I guess I'm a food snob too.
As for picking up foreign nationalists in foreign states and delivering them to other foreign countries where they allow torture ... pretty f. u. if you ask me. If those particular agents aren't welcome in Italy any more, who could possibly be surprised except those who think that their country is above the law.
I guess I'm a snob about international law too.
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Post by knobtwister on Nov 5, 2009 10:34:15 GMT -5
Isn't illegal to out a CIA agent. We should try Judge Oscar Magi in absentia for treason. ;D
Don
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Post by Greg B on Nov 5, 2009 10:36:59 GMT -5
Actually you all can keep eating at Olive Garden all you want. If you want to boycott, you should boycott the good stuff Wait a minute, you mean real Italians don't eat Bologna Alfredo?
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Post by RickW on Nov 5, 2009 10:53:08 GMT -5
I married someone who is half Italian - so we're pretty much snobs about it, too. We don't have Olive Garden here, which sounds good - though it is probably better than MacD's.
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Post by theevan on Nov 5, 2009 11:09:30 GMT -5
Olive Garden sucks terribly. The endless salad is edible though. The only thing worse is Johnny Carino's. Ugh! Our local immigration pattern was almost entirely Sicilian so what we call "Eye-talyun" around here is quite different from others might call Italian food. There are a few really good places, but you have to know 'em.
I grew up eating good Italian. We had daily help, a Mrs. Zego, who was an immigrant from Northern Italy. She grew vegetables in our back yard and made all sorts of wondrous homemade things in our kitchen. Her raviolis were to die for. You never knew what they'd be stuffed with.
Yep, it was even better than Chef Boy-ar-dee.
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Post by knobtwister on Nov 5, 2009 11:33:31 GMT -5
I generally don't like Italian food. Most all of it is red sauce, starch and a dead animal. There was a resturant here about 10 years ago that did northern Italian food which seemed more like French cooking it was very good.
Don
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Post by Doug on Nov 5, 2009 11:38:17 GMT -5
I don't know about eyetalion but starch and dead animals is real food.
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Post by omaha on Nov 5, 2009 12:09:46 GMT -5
We have a diminishing number of old Italian restaurants that don't really serve "Italian" food. Around here, an "Italian" dinner is a salad slathered with oil, a big basket of rolls from Rotella's bakery, a little bowl of spaghetti with excessively sweet red sauce, another little bowl of over-cooked green beans, and a huge steak. One of the biggest, and still very successful, is just a few blocks from my plant. This is above their front door: No kidding.
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Post by Greg B on Nov 5, 2009 12:22:49 GMT -5
That's a lot of bull.
No really, that's a bull, and there's a lot of it, and stuff
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2009 12:32:47 GMT -5
I don't know about eyetalion but starch and dead animals is real food. besides, eating a live animal is pretty gross, too.
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 5, 2009 12:37:48 GMT -5
Not only gross but physically challenging, at least for anything bigger than a turkey. First you chase it around the house, then wrestle it to the ground. . . . Done properly, it's actually a weight-loss regimen, since it often results in a net expenditure of calories. Just ask Zogg.
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Post by timfarney on Nov 5, 2009 16:31:15 GMT -5
Yeah, like I said, I didn't know the details of the story. Unfortunately, I can't say I'm at all surprised. Still, if the foreign national is a known terrorist and the nation he's in won't arrest or extradite him, I have no problem with some nation who will deal with it going in and getting him and bringing him to justice. Seems like we fell way short on the justice part. Bush administration, eh?
Tim
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2009 19:29:05 GMT -5
For good or bad, a particular assasination of a known terrorist will always be tolerated, and long as it's a clean job, and the nation responsible has credible deniability. Similarly, I doubt anyone would inquire very heavily if a suspect were strapped into a dentists chair in a "ticking time bomb" case. We could look the other way.
But, when torture, kidnapping, murder and mahem become an official policy, or cottage industry, of a major power, folks aren't going to look the other way. When the official policy of that country condones and rationalizes that stuff, we have NO right to expect any friends.
If they have the right guys, I'd just as soon have the sleazy bastards out of society. i'd like to see a president with the balls to turn over the sociopaths and deviants who Do that sort of stuff, even if they do claim to be following orders. Screw 'em. Maybe they'll have a nice vacation in Spain, or somewhere, and get their asses extradited.
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Nov 5, 2009 22:30:03 GMT -5
Aren't there some bigger issues here, both for the US as a country, and for the guys who got convicted? I don't really know, but I assume we have treaties that deal with harbouring convicted criminals and their extradition. I'd be very surprised if we didn't have some sort of understanding with Interpol, on the federal level. And even if we don't, any of those guys go to Canada or... as soon as they hand their passports over, they are toast.
Actions have consequences, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Mike
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Post by sekhmet on Nov 6, 2009 0:36:25 GMT -5
Let us not forget that the CIA has kidnapped several Canadian citizens who had the nerve to fly over the US and sent them to handy countries like Syria for "rendering".
One of them, Mahar Arar, has now proved that he was tortured and was not a terrorist or associated with any terrorists. He successfully sued the Canadian government for allowing and aiding and abetting his "rendition" and has in hand a written apology as well as some millions of dollars by way of compensation. He is, however, still on the US no fly list and so is every member of his family. Just this week he was denied the right to sue the US government as well for his "rendition". He spent two years in a Syrian gulag and was tortured brutally at the request of the US.
The CIA gets it wrong.
So, the people who were kidnapped in Italy and secreted out of the country by CIA agents - what happened to them? Were they guilty?
Does the US think that they have an overriding right to ignore the sovereignty of every country on the planet while they fight "international terrorism" which is as vague a designation of "enemy" as ever I've seen. If the US wanted the people extradited for grounds then they were obligated to go through the Italian government.
But the problem is the grounds, usually, isn't it? Reasonable grounds have been fashioned out of vague suspicions recently. And I don't suppose that Italy was interested in arresting people on the notion that they might have been terrorists, lacking concrete evidence. If this is not the case, then I really don't see why the US simply didn't ask that Italy arrest the suspects.
It is remarkable, given that Italy obviously feels negatively about the CIA activity in their own country, that she didn't make a much bigger fuss about it than she did.
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Post by knobtwister on Nov 6, 2009 10:00:19 GMT -5
Wasn't there a child rapist movie director that spent the last 30 years in France because there is no extradition treaty with the US?
Don
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Post by Supertramp78 on Nov 6, 2009 10:15:55 GMT -5
I think it should be noted that after four years in prison, we eventually let the guy go. Guess he wasn't a real bad guy after all. Oooops.
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Post by j on Nov 6, 2009 10:52:57 GMT -5
TO be totally frank, this story isn't completely crystal clear to me: two high-ups in the Italian Secret Service were also involved in the investigation and were the first to lose their position when this broke out. Now, there is a certain phenomenon with the "politicization" of judicial courts in Italy (what we call "Red Judges"), so I'm really not sure what's going on here.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2009 12:38:50 GMT -5
Aren't there some bigger issues here, both for the US as a country, and for the guys who got convicted? I don't really know, but I assume we have treaties that deal with harbouring convicted criminals and their extradition. I'd be very surprised if we didn't have some sort of understanding with Interpol, on the federal level. And even if we don't, any of those guys go to Canada or... as soon as they hand their passports over, they are toast. Actions have consequences, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Mike Interesting thought. I suppose a foriegn head of state could resist US demands to extradite a criminal/terrorist unless the US plays by the same rules?
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