[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
Times like this-I’m NOT proud to be an American. (gasp!)
[/QUOTE]
But you still know that you’re free, at least. Right? Right?
The CIA, MIA, NSA, and the entire United States Executive department had just spent several years stepping on their dicks. No, not proportionate. Clog Dancing in Cleats on their dicks. It was absolutely imperative that the Al Queda operatives in Iraq be located and punished. Finding them was far more important than minor considerations like decency, honor, or the fact that the entire target of the search didn’t exist.
Fuck a bunch of towel heads, they don’t deserve decent treatment! I need the right answers! Kill a few of them, that ought to get us what we need. If not, we can always go get some more and kill them.
It’s the American Way.
I would despise a nation that did this to anyone I loved.
Oh, wait, my nation did it.
Why do I hate America? Why don’t you?
Any person who held elective or appointive office during the War in Iraq is guilty. Any person who subsequently voted to reelect any person who held elective office since them is guilty. You and I are complicit in torture. Us. We did it. Oh, we weren’t brave or honest enough to do it ourselves, we coerced and perverted a few good men, and had them do it.
The difference between us, and the greatest villains in history is a matter of efficiency.
Tris
weeping again.
The most remarkable thing about Abu Ghraib and the omipresent “torture scandal” is that the information has been released very quickly and practically in real time with relation to the events themselves as compared to historical analogues where information trickled out decades later from those who participated in the events or from declassified information from the government itself.
[QUOTE=Cisco]
The point is, when else do we know for sure that Americans did these things, especially institutionally.
[/quote]
The period 1899-2008 C.E., less so during say the '20s and a lot more so during the Cold War. Notable instances include the occupation of the Philippines (first instances of water boarding by the U.S. AFAIK), Vietnam, the School of the Americas and dozens of Latin American countries over several decades during times of civil war and upheavel, and our material assistance and cooperation with regimes which torture (Middle East, north Africa, SE Asia) for the purpose of either terrorizing local groups which may be hostile to our puppet states and/or so we can ship people we want tortured over there (i.e. extraordinary rendition).
And then of course there were trivial historical footnotes which were nonetheless morally questionable, like say MKULTRA.
[QUOTE=Muffin]
Thus the anticipation that Bush will veto the CIA anti-torture law. Somehow it is OK for the CIA to torture people.
[/QUOTE]
Of course it’s OK for the CIA to torture people. Or to teach the natives how to torture effectively so we can use their services later. If the CIA couldn’t torture we’d have to invent a new organization with these aims and means.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
The difference is we have long claimed to be a nation with principals and ethics. We have claimed to be better. When we get caught doing this crap it shows we are liars and our credibility is gone. We knew other nations did this stuff. We loudly proclaimed that we did not. That makes it different.
[/QUOTE]
Not really. Torturers say they don’t torture, as a general rule. But you are correct in pointing out, whether you meant to or not, that this perception that over the last century “America doesn’t torture” is a belief primarily held inside America and not in, say, Indonesia, or wherever.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Probably so they could take them out later and reminiscence. So that they would have more than memories to gloat over. Probably, in quite a few cases so they could take them home and share with friends and family.
[/QUOTE]
No cite right now, but I remember reading that the photos surfaced because they were part of an active underground which happily traded and circulated these photos. The reason for all the posturing with thumbs-up and so on is that they were showing off for each other. These photos are rather like the trophies that serial killers often take.
[QUOTE=chorpler]
It’s somebody giving the thumbs-up next to a purple-black decomposing corpse.
[/QUOTE]
What I want to know is how that corpse got a hold of a CAT jacket. Was he given that by his captors, or did he own it prior to his imprisonment? Is Caterpillar funding the insurgents with clothing and possibly other equipment?
Ugh.
We don’t torture is a belief held by George Bush. He and his neocons have defined it away. torture is always one step more than I am willing to do. Do more , change the definition.
[QUOTE=marshmallow]
The most remarkable thing about Abu Ghraib and the omipresent “torture scandal” is that the information has been released very quickly and practically in real time with relation to the events themselves as compared to historical analogues where information trickled out decades later from those who participated in the events or from declassified information from the government itself.
[/QUOTE]
Presumably because there are so many people now with digital or cell phone cameras and access to the Internet?
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
What I want to know is how that corpse got a hold of a CAT jacket. Was he given that by his captors, or did he own it prior to his imprisonment? Is Caterpillar funding the insurgents with clothing and possibly other equipment?
[/QUOTE]
That’s a good question. I presume he was dressed like that*, since the prisoners surely weren’t permitted to wear their own clothes all the time.
My big question is, who is that decomposing corpse? As I recall, there were two people killed in Abu Ghraib from leg-beating-induced blood clots. Is he one of them?
- ETA: by the guards, I mean, not when he arrived.