Quote:
Originally posted by Mr 5 0
That is not always true and you should not use highly-publicized celebrity criminal cases on TV as the basis for making such a broad indictment of our justice system, one of the best in the world but - being run by human beings - not a perfect system. It's still better than most. One of the problems is that on the whole, the sheer volume of criminal cases outrun the various local, state and federal court' ability to handle them and so, plea-bargains are made and 'pure' justice is not always done. In addition, the vast majority of crimes committed in America, as everywhere, are by poor people, obviously, and they cannot afford high-powered attorneys and instead, get inexperienced and/or overworked Public Defenders who hardly know their case. That can result in bad outcomes for the defendent but I believe that the overwhelming majority of convicted criminals are guilty, even when represented by Public Defenders with weak defenses.
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While I agree that it is not ALWAYS true, it is mostly true. More often than not, money plays the biggest part of any case. I have a friend who was charged (I cant remember the actual charges brought against him) for running over his x-girlfriend (she didnt die, and he is a dumbass for doing it). While in court, throughout various stages of his trial, he spent about $12k trying to stay out of jail. That money drastically reduced his sentence to 1 year (he did 6 months cause of 2 for 1 in county here). If he had another $1k to spend at the time of the trial, he would have never spent a day in jail.
As far as being in Iraq to fight terrorism, that is all fine and dandy, AFTER we eliminate the people who came here and crashed our planes into the towers and the pentagon. I say we should have gone into Afghanistan with the force and intention that we went into Iraq with, as long as you want to use the war onterror as your justification for the Iraq war. Saddam has never came here, and killed thousands of citizens, on our land. He didnt blow up our ebassies. He didnt put a hole in the side of the USS Cole. Guess who did, the towlie who is still living in the mountains of Afghanistan. I say we should have eliminated the real threat to our freedom.
As far as the abuse goes, boo freakin hoo. Cry me a freakin river man. Aside from the guy with the electrodes on his hands (puttin god only knows how many volts into him) that the "abuse" is well overplayed. Forcing them to listen to Metallica and watch puppets. Ya, ounds real painful. Stripping them down and humiliating them, ooh, real abusive there. If those actions provided information that was otherwise un-attainable (without beating them to near death) then so be it. Get over it and move on. Dont prosecute the soldiers for using non-violent methods of getting information, applaud them. We could have beaten their fingers, toes, and other body parts with sledge hammers till they opened their mouths, but we didnt. We instead subjected them to music, and naked men. Ouch.