New Prisoner Abuse Photos: Now It's The Navy's Turn

The BBQ Pit
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I will preface my remarks by saying I am one of the most notorious “Dubya-Bashing” Dopers here at the SDMB and one of the many liberals here too.

Excalibre
You referred to the US military personnel at Abu Gharib prison as *those worthless pieces of trash. *
Hmm your tone sounds a bit harsh. Let me think, would I rather be led around naked on a leash by Lyndie England OR get myself beheaded ? Hmmm that’s a toughie. It has been a while since I’ve had a good beheading. Nah !!! I’ll take the leash treatment.
The folks that serve in the military I would think are more aggressive than the average civilian. (NO offense intended in that remark). Add to that fact, these folks are in a foreign country whose many citizens are out to kill them. So, after spending a good deal of time in Iraq is it really surprising that the US Military personnel would have some hostile feelings toward any Iraqi prisoners?
Some Dopers are surprised to see highly qualified and highly trained Navy SEALs also acting in such a manner. Well, Navy SEALs are only human too.
When I see photos like these, I am not so quick to chastise the people who took them, posed in them, etc. My first thought is “Where the fuck are all the officers that are supposed to be in charge of everything ??”
Also, the US Military was sent over there to fight by a US President who “pussied out” when it was his turn to fight in a real war.
Many of the people who joined the military had to join for a variety of reasons (patriotism, help getting a mortgage, college education, learning a skill, etc). In short, the people who joined did not have the luxury of having a 100% guaranteed pampered, cushy cradle-to-grave existence.

As for the Navy wife who uploaded those photos to the 'Net, I hope she has learned one very important fact. NOTHING that is on the Internet should EVER be considered private. Even with sophisticated public-key
encryption technonlogy, if it is on the 'Net - it is vulnerable.

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Cite? :smiley:

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I thought this was about real abuse like cutting heads off.

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wolf_meister: *When I see photos like these, I am not so quick to chastise the people who took them, posed in them, etc. My first thought is “Where the fuck are all the officers that are supposed to be in charge of everything ??”
Also, the US Military was sent over there to fight by a US President who “pussied out” when it was his turn to fight in a real war. *

There’s plenty of chastisement to go around in a situation like this. Just because officers are culpable for allowing enlisted personnel to do this sort of thing, or the President is culpable because the buck stops with him (irrespective of whether or not he’s a chickenhawk), doesn’t mean that we should excuse the servicepeople immediately responsible for the abuse.

w_m: *Many of the people who joined the military had to join for a variety of reasons (patriotism, help getting a mortgage, college education, learning a skill, etc). In short, the people who joined did not have the luxury of having a 100% guaranteed pampered, cushy cradle-to-grave existence. *

In the first place, your argument doesn’t quite make sense: nobody has to join the military just because they’re patriotic. In the second place, excusing servicepeople for violating regulations about the treatment of prisoners just because they may have had some hardships in their lives is what I believe they call “the soft bigotry of lowered expectations.”

How would you feel if an Iraqi civilian tried to argue that we shouldn’t be quick to chastise insurgents for beheading hostages, because the insurgents have suffered a lot and they’ve seen troops kill their family members and they’re naturally aggressive anyway and their leaders have failed them and they haven’t had a pampered existence? Sorry, but that sort of palliating excuse is simply not acceptable. It is not excusable to decapitate hostages. And it is not excusable to torture or abuse prisoners.

Yes, I know that beheading hostages is much worse than (non-fatally) abusing prisoners, but the principle is the same: these are things that civilized people should not try to excuse, even if we understand that some of the contributing factors weren’t the offenders’ fault.

Anyway, how the fuck is it supposed to look to the rest of the world when the US goes around saying that we stand for liberty and democracy and individual rights, and that Saddam’s torture of prisoners was a horrible and monstrous thing which justifies our invading his country to get rid of him…and then we can’t keep our own soldiers from torturing and abusing prisoners? Not even our most elite troops?

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Actually, I dont’ think there were a hell of a lot of instances of U.S. troops torturing Japanese troops in WWII, and believe me, the actions of the Japanese and the Germans toward civilians and (in the case of the Japanese) captured soldiers during WWII left them deserving nothing, NOTHING in the way of mercy once captured. Still, the American soldiers didn’t engage in torture because they were better than the Germans and the Japanese.

Sad to see all that capital amassed by the moral courage of U.S. troops in WWII and Korea squandered so pointlessly in Iraq.

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By the twisted and tortured definition of ‘torture’ that you people seem to want to apply, ya, there was all sorts of it going on in WW2, even by our boys. By a reasonable definition of ‘torture’, you are correct, there were not many instances of it, neither then nor now.

I don’t see ‘torture’ in these pictures.

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Ding ding ding!

We have a winner!

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Jesus christ all the Monday morning q-backing on our troops is nausiating.

You weren’t there.
You don’t know the story behind the pictures.
I can tell you right now that if this shit happened on an actual SEAL mission (which we don’t even know for sure yet) as is purported you’ll NEVER know what happened and that’s how it should be.
You don’t know shit except that the AP wanted a hot story and wrote this fucker up to be sensational as fuck.

I’ll tell you what. If you don’t like the way things are going over there then get the fuck up off your couch, or get your kids up off their couch, or your grandkids and get them to join the service so you/they can show us how it “should be done”.

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How so? This is some nasty shit that’s being done in the name of my country. We Americans deserve to know the reasons that people hate us.

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Let’s remember that we have a presumption of innocence. There’s no visible torture in any of the five pictures. We see people under restraint and one bloodied person. We have no backstory.

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There’s certainly major breaches of the Geneva convention. Unless you want to argue that parading somebody at gunpoint or while covered in fresh blood, while soldiers take photographs, and then distributing these photos to civilians, is not degrading or humiliating treatment.

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Tell me, what is wrong with taking photographs of captives? Nothing: they might want to have photos to give to naval intelligence for identification or whatever. How do we know that the subject of the fith picture was not captured in that state? We don’t. Leaving photos on your camera which you take home is a breach of security and the wife’s posting them was an act of arrant stupidity.

The SDMB’s prime objective is to fight ignorance: don’t add to it.

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My, my, that’s a broad brush you wield. People hate us for the war in Iraq? Riddle me this. How many troops were there in 1979? They hate us for being top-dog. And the Isreali support adds just a little bit.

Can anyone make a case that the Mullahs would be more open the the West (NOT just the US) if America pulled all support for Isreal?

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Oh, please. Look at this photo If it’s for ID purposes, then why the second camera in frame (which hardly looks like offical Navy-issue), why do it by torchlight, why do it at gunpoint? And in any case, forcibly taking photographs for intelligence use is a breach of the convention: “Every prisoner of war…is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number”.

If he was, then the required priority is the provision of medical attention.

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I hate to say this. I want a war where there are rules that everyone plays by, but being war, we’re not playing dodgeball on the playground.

When your enemy breaks every “rule” you agreed to, you forego any and all agreements. Especially when the other party never agreed to the “humane” rules of war.

War is hell it was said, and I wish people never had to experience one again. But we’re talking about humans. The only species to actively prepare for massive fighting amongst each other. World Peace is a noble cause to support, and I’d love to see it happen. Sadly, it won’t. War has been a part of human development since the first caveman figured out how to use a bone to club his neighbor to pad his own food supply.

War is what propels (for better or worse) man to make strides in technology to make all our lives better. Out of bad comes good, and all that.

Again, I would prefer there never be a war again. But until we have everyone signed on, it’s inevitable.

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No you don’t. They’re not “rules” - they’re laws. The US troops are bound by them, whether or not the enemy respects them.

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You really think the gov’t purchases some sort of magic gov’t-only cameras?

Torchlight is a useful source of, you know, light. That said light is mounted to his SIG sure as hell doesn’t matter to reasonable folk.

I hate to bore you with mere facts, but when you are finished sobbing for the fate of this poor photographed terr, you’ll want to look up Article 4, Section 2 of the GC. To summarize: These fuckers are not PoWs in the legal sense of the word, by no stretch.

Ya, because he looks like he is dying. :rolleyes:

I wager that the US Navy SEALS know damned well better how to fight a war than you sniveling surrender monkeys. So of course, I will trust them to fight as they see fit, preferably with little or no interference from you guys. (who seem hell-bent on neutering Allied forces whenever possible.)

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I really don’t understand why people try to talk Brutus out of his dreams telling him that the US military is about

**GO! GO! GO!
INVADE! INVADE! INVADE!
ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!
KILL! KILL! KILL!

USA 1! USA 1! USA 1!**

and can do no wrong because … Well, you know: USA 1! USA 1! USA 1! and all those that the USA invades, attacks, kills is only lowly non-US scum. Unternmenschen, so to speak.

Why complain about mistreatment of scum when they should be kiising the hands of the invading Heros that they weren’t finished off at once?
Like for expample that US Hero who said proudly to an “embedded”…mm… “reporter” in Fallujah: “We entered the house and I saw a man sleeping there and I shot him dead…”.

Say for yourself, isn’t that much better then posting pictures on the internet or letting yourself get filmed while shooting a defenseless man?

Entering an unlocked house, shooting its inhabitant while he sleeps… I find that a very good tactic for winning hearts and minds of an invaded nation. You can’t say the sleeping man felt anything, can you? He was mercyfully finished off while completle unaware.
Salaam. A

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Brutus said

What’s this supposed to mean ? It appears that you think that prisoners other than POWs do not have rights, or fewer rights.

Please be so good as to draw up a list that is recognised in international law as being acceptable to torture and abuse.

Furthermore, since this all has to be done in an international law framework, please be so good as to list which abuses and torrtures are acceptable to those you deem not to have rights, and how these should be applied, and by whom and of course, under whose overseeing scrutiny.

Just hate to believe that we are protecting the rights of persons who actually dont have any under law y’know.

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OK, let me put this in real simple terms for you. Anarchists see no need to follow the laws set in the US. Are they given a pass for causing mayhem because they don’t adhere, nor recognize, the laws (rules) set by American society?

Being outside the US, this may be a loaded question for you. I don’t know an equivelent for UK citizens.