Andy Rooney said it, and I’ll repeat it. If you want your oponents to surrender, let the troops know that they’ll be treated well.
Personally, I think some pics featuring fat, happy al Qaeda prisoners chowing down on Froot Loops would go a long way to bring hold-outs out of their caves…
Just for clarity–one can never be too sure what you’re really claiming–nobody has actually claimed this is mistreatment, right? And if not, why on earth is this in the Pit?
Thermobaric detonation, or MRE. . . The very air sucked out of my lungs and replaced by a hot flaming gas, or an MRE. . . Tasty gruel for 6 - 12 more months in a dimly lit cave with rationed potable water but all the 7.62mm ammo I can have, or an MRE. . . No TV, no access to the real world, nor actual daylight, or an MRE . . .
That would make a hell of a ‘got milk’ commercial. A bunch of Al Qaida are hiding in a dirty grimy cave. The whole wall is covered with boxes of lucky charms. One pours a bowl then tries to milk a goat into the bowl. The goat dies and falls over. The commercial ends as they are running screaming from the cave throwing their guns and shaving their beards as they past smiling marines into an American military camp with a big milk tanker truck in the background.
I might be mistaken, but I think I saw some lazy reporting cited above. Didn’t the Department of Defense make a big thing about them honouring the detainee’s religious proscriptions and thus ensured they weren’t being served MREs with meat products? I really don’t recall seeing any MRE with “vegetable stew” as a menu option.
I believe this is actually a rant against the earlier reports of Amnesty International and others investigating mistreatment of the prisoners.
Question, though: The OP mentions 300 of the prisoners gaining weight. How many prisoners are housed at Gitmo? If that’s a majority of them, then talk of “mistreatment” of the prisoners is moot. If that’s a small percentage, though, it doesn’t really mean anything.
So, lacking any other cites for the detainees having gained weight, I am forced to conclude that either the Corpus Christi Caller Times made it up, or that the source for the blurb (which is not mentioned in the article) made it up. In other words, I’m getting a definite whiff of Spam a la mode.
Do me a tiny little favour next time you quote me and comment on it: read what I posted and all of what I posted. I am obviously aware that there are vegetarian MRE. I clearly made the comment that I had not see VEGETARIAN STEW MRE. Every MRE I saw with “stew” on it, was a beef stew MRE.
Monty, do us a tiny little favor and be a little more clear in your posts. Your original post could easily be read to imply that there were no vegetarian MRE’s at all. Your reference to no Vegetarian Stew option should have noted that, while there are vegetarian MRE’s, and there are stew MRE’s, there is not a vegetarian stew MRE. I, for one, would have come away from your post thinking there were no veggie MRE’s at all.
And you are correct, I checked here http://www.dscp.dla.mil/subs/rations/meals/vmres.htm and there was no stew option for Vegetarian MRE’s. There is a Vegetarian Stew meal in the Kosher section, but apparently that’s not an MRE.
Excuse the bleep out of me, cheese. From now on I shall add “I DID NOT MEAN TO STATE ANYTHING I DID NOT STATE HERE” just for your sake to each and every posting.
Actually, I shan’t. I trust those with at least a semblance of a working knowledge of the language to understand the language.
Out of idle curiosity…exactly WTF did you think I meant by “MREs without meat products?” Did you think I meant “air?”
Amnesty International have always got a knot in their collective shorts. The Taliban and Al Qaida folk at Gunatanimo are prisoners, not guests. As far as I am concerned, fuck 'em. Feed 'em dog food. It’s better than what they were getting at home and better than they deserve. Do you think for one moment that if the tables were turned their leaders would give a damn about the dietary needs of Alliance prisoners. Or, for that matter, do you imagine there would even be any Alliance prisoners except for those held as bargaining chips?
Do you think that Bin Laden or any of his henchmen would spend one dime to accomodate the special needs of any prisoner, much less the millions we have spent housing, protecting and feeding these assholes?
And before you accuse me of racism, I have nothing but compassion for American Muslims who are being harrassed by bigots who see only their style of dress. The people being held in Cuba are prisoners of war (or criminals, depending on your point of view) That issue has no doubt been addressed elsewhere, and I am not concerned to take it up now. They have the right not to be tortured and not to be starved. I don’t think they are owed any accomodation whatever beyond that.
I don’t understand what december is ranting about. The military for feeding the prisoners, the prisoners for gaining weight or The Red Cross and Amnesty International for not intervening?
Even after I put it through my patent December Evilleftometer[sup]TM[/sup] I still don’t get who or what december’s mad at.