Oh yeah, this guy was a real asshole, all right.
It is only surprising that the Ghanans didn’t chop off his head, right? :rolleyes:
Regards,
Shodan
You first, pal. You’re not immune from uncocnscious homophobia if your sole tactic is to toss in irrelevant references to homosexuality and NAMBLA to derail the discussion. Being gay does not determine the opinions you think I’m allowed to have.
Why, from speech given by The Great One, of course!
Not to get into a “What did you know and when did you know it”, but I’m still confused. When you used the term pranks, were you referring to the original photographs and investigation that we knew of, or were you referring also to the allegations of rape, beatings, and torture? I can see, in someone’s twisted mind, that the original stuff was “pranks”. Neither you nor I would use that term, but someone would. But referring to rape, beatings, and torture as “pranks” is so far beyond the realm of understanding I cannot even fathom it. That is why I assumed your prank comment and your later demand for proof, were done without knowledge of the allegations. In more basic terms, I’m giving you an out. If you tell me that you didn’t know about the allegations when you posted that stuff, fine. Then I’ll let you go on with your discussion of levels of proof, what is acceptable, etc, and bow out. However, if you knew about the allegations and still referred to them as “pranks” (even if only in the mind of the soldiers who committed them), and still demanded proof or a retraction, well, then we’re in a different, more upsetting ballpark. I just want to know your state of mind when you posted those comments.
Either use this measuring stick consistently, or chuck it in the garbage. Would you have used this logic in regards to SH pre-invasion?
WHICH “men and women” are we supposedly condemning? C’mon, name names. Tell us who your opponents in this thread have been condemning for rape, murder, etc.
Or maybe you could just develop the common fucking sense that tells the rest of us that having sex with prisoners, videotaping other people who are raping teenage boys, and beating people to death is, like, wrong. Even if we don’t know the names, ranks, and serial numbers of the people responsible.
[sub]“Disingenuous pigfucker” . . . I like that one, Shayna.[/sub]
If you’ll take a moment, gobear, you’ll note that threemae, and not I, brought up the subject of homosexuality and NAMBLA. Nor would I do so. Perhaps my response to your baseless accusation wasn’t the right way to go about it, but nobody posting here is that ignorant. It’s accurate to point out that gays and lesbians have been unfairly tarred with a very large brush, and it’s also accurate to point out that asserting anti-Semitism is an integral part of Arab political discourse is unfairly tarring Arabs, and Arab society, with the same overly large brush. Sure, we see a lot of Arab anti-Semitism here because that’s what the news broadcasters show; it’s what gets the high-profile coverage. That doesn’t mean it’s universal, or even fundamental to Arab political discourse.
Uh huh. And what’s old Halfbrain Wrinklehead’s source?
You’re a callous little bastard, gobear. Cold.
I earnestly believe from what I have read from the BBC and other news stories that Mr. Nick was a humanitarian, probably moreso than anyone involved in this conversation because he actually did something about it. His family describes him traveling home from other third world countries emaciated because he gave away his food. Although his father (and I) disagreed with Mr. Nick, he supported the war because he viewed it as a chance to bring democracy to a nation oppressed horribly.
He had experience traveling in war zones and developing countries. Aparently the risk was too much, but the alternative is to sit at home on a comfortable chair in internet message boards talking about horrific this and the inhumanity that. He used what money he had to enter the country, do his job, and then tried to get out. Until he was arrested by Iraqi’s supported by the Coalition and then transferred to a jail run by the coalition so that he missed his flight out of the country. Remember, Iraq was a dramatically different place on March 13th than it is now. That was before the other four contractors were killed and mutillated, before Falluja blew up in regards to Al’ Sadr’s militia.
You have made yourself a pretty vocal supporter of gay rights. I, Olentzero, and the majority of the SDMB agree with you on that. You’re a member of a group that has been demonized and sterotyped against unfairly by idiots that would rather look at a few egregarious examples than understand that the vast majority of gay people do not support disgusting and idiotic goals like NAMBLA.
You’ve also learned nothing. You turn right around and do the same thing to Arabs.
You know what, I’m glad that you’re American and not Arab. I’m gad that you’re on my “side.” Because I think you’re the type of self-righteous idiot that views the other "side"as a group of like-minded evil-doers just waiting to fuck you over at every turn. If you were born in the Middle East, I think you’d be a terrorist.
After rereading the articles, it appears that I have misnamed Nick Berg as (First Name) Nick.
Instead of Mr. Nick, those should all read Mr. Berg. No disrespect intended.
You have been condeming the soldiers and contractors who are “having sex with prisoners, videotaping other people who are raping teenage boys, and beating people to death”. None of the allegations has been proven, nobody has been charged with these crimes. If they did it, condem all you want, however you’ll have to get in line behind me.
Or maybe you could stop trying to claim that I have ever said any of these things is not wrong. You can repeat “Dave says it’s not wrong” until your face falls off, but that dosen’t make it true when Dave has said no such thing, and you cannot point to a post where I did. Who, exactly, is the disingenuous pigfucker here then?
Hamlet, you nailed it when you said:
I would never refer to rape, sodomy and murder as a “prank”, I can’t imaging how sick in the head someone commiting these crimes would have to be to think of them as pranks to themself. If these allegations are proven, I could never believe that an individual could delude himself enough to consider them pranks. I was refering to the atrocities that we have evidece of at this time, not the allegations of worse which are pending.
Anytime you feel like answering my question Dave. Will you apply your logic to allegations pre-invasion?
OK, so I took a look around and found that this particular hadith comes from a collection known as Sahih Bukhari. There are two things of note here:
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Sahih Bukhari lived and worked two centuries after the death of Muhammad.
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The very first paragraph on that website describes the ahadith as “The reports of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds”.
In other words, the Sahih Bukhari doesn’t seem to be a very reliable source for citing anti-Semitism as a fundamental part of Islam.
I have no idea how many more books of ahadith are out there, but if they’re all “reports” of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds, I wouldn’t trust them much either as definitive sources for anything regarding the views of Islam.
This is not to say that people don’t use them and interpret them in their own ways for their own purposes (doubtless the men who killed Nick Berg had found something in the ahadith to justify their act) but to point the finger at Islam as being responsible is well nigh groundless.
Nope. I still don’t get it. Simply put, did you or did you not know about the allegations of rape, torture, and beatings in those two posts? My interpretation was that you didn’t, because I didn’t want to imagine that you would refer to them as pranks. You used the words “what we’ve seen so far” which, to give you the benefit of the doubt, could mean only the initial, released photographs. It would also explain why you so vehemently requested proof or a retraction. But, if you did know about the allegations, it would be rather foolish (and other adjectives) to consider that someone could refer to them as pranks and to demand proof of something you already knew existed, and then get all snarky when cites are provided. I would rather believe you posted out of lack of information than some other, more vile attribute. So, did you or did you not know about the allegations of rape, beatings, and torture when you dismissed “what we’ve seen so far” as possible just being “pranks.”
So we’re back to the claim that nothing has happened because nobody has been charged. Even though the people who have actual access to the evidence–you know, that evidence that has been withheld from the public, and which we therefore cannot provide to you in response to your ever-increasing standards of proof–have told the public, both on and off the record, that rape and murder have been committed against prisoners held under U.S. custody.
Schmuck.
Good g-d, you’re thick! Make fun of my bolding and italicizing and underlining to your heart’s content, but obviously you need a fucking map drawn or you’ll continue to weasel out of what’s been presented to you over and over again in this very thread.
And the transcript of the hearing can be found here, where you will see that Rumsfeld is quoted correctly in the articles, as he states:
Seeing as how one could hardly call merely placing hoods on guys or stacking them up in a naked pyramid as physical violence, blatantly sadistic, cruel, inhuman or vividly horrifying, you will just have to take the word of Senator Graham when he says, after seeing the evidence and hearing the testimony, that they’re talking about rape and murder.
If Berg died because he was naive, then it was because he thought he was going into an Iraq that should have been: an Iraq that could have been without a completely botched, undermanned, underexecuted occupation. An Iraq that might have been if we had killed Zaqawri when we had the chance. Or not just tossed out all the plans and expert advice on how to do things. Or botched the international lead up to war we needed to give it legitimacy.
Berg sounds like a true humanitarian who went to Iraq hoping to help heal a wounded country. But when he got there, he didn’t find what he was looking for: he found a chaotic police state that ended him up in jail (possibly illegally) and was so unlike what he had expected that he was planning on leaving as soon as possible.
Oh, and by the way, the abuses at Abu Ghraib may have broken in the U.S. only recently. But they were widely rumored and talked about among Iraqis. Why do you think that the prison was one of the most attacked sites in the entire country? But let’s not do the terrorists’ work for them, like Jonah Goldberg does, in giving creedence to the idea that Al Qaeda needed any excuse to kill an American citizen. When regular Iraqis turn their backs on us even more, or do terrible deeds of revenge, then we can blame Abu Ghraib.
Is anyone going to post the link or just keep referring to it (like all the news sites) without actually telling anyone where it is. I can sort of understand NOT posting a link, but it is a bit annoying for every news source to refer to a militant muslim website without giving a URL, then to read the SDMB with everyone suggesting they’ve seen it but not posting a URL.
I for one have no desire to see it, but I’ve heard you can find it on salon.com
Check your e-mail.