Well, well, well. Kinda puts the so-called ‘abuses’ and ‘Geneva Convention violations’ in perspective, doesn’t it.
Let me remind everyone that these poor abused prisoners were not innocent citizens pulled off the streets of Baghdad. They were captured fighting (i.e. trying to kill) US soldiers.
So the prison guards had a little fun with them by using their pathetic, backwards, ignorant culture against them. Oh heavens to Betsy, did they make you stand all nakey in front of a girl? Oh gee-willikers, did they put a dog lease on you or leave a bag over your head? Is your wittle self-esteem all cwushed?
I retract any statements I made before about their treatment being wrong. These worthless scumbags deserved everything they got & more. They deserve to be spit on, pissed on, shit on, having their little schlongs laughed at by a woman.
Because these are the same people who literally just butchered a totally innocent civilian alive for a camera and had fun doing it.
They don’t even deserve the dignity or expense of a bullet to the head. They should be chained en-mass to an iron girder and thown into the sea.
Cite, please? Or would you just prefer to clarify that you believe in some racist notion of collective guilt, i.e., that every Iraqi/Arab/Muslim/whatever is responsible for the actions of the handful of assholes who killed Mr. Berg?
errrrrr…yes, many of them were pulled off the streets of Baghdad, Basra, etc
Isn’t that CHILD ABUSE?!?! Even if you don’t care about whether this was illtreatment of the prisoners, what the fuck suggests that a young child should be forced into the equation?
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Re the OP: haven’t you ever heard of the term “cycles of violence”? This is how evil works. It gains its power by getting two sides to hate and abuse each other, each feeling it is “justified.”
They kill Berg, you kill them, they kill your dad, your uncle lobs a grenade, they suicide bomb your favorite restaurant.
All this ticked off for one man killed? I’m glad that the Iraqis aren’t as pissed off for the thousands of totally innocent civillians that we killed (more than the civillian death toll here in 9/11 BTW).
Do you have a citation for this? What’s come through official channels is that many of the detainees are, in fact, innocents. Some of the ill-treated people are children.
Rape and murder.
Rape and murder.
Don’t forget the rape and murder. Rape and murder are just some of the “little fun” that the “guards” had.
Do you have a citation for this? Some of the ill-treated people are children.
You are, at absolute best, factually incorrect. The victims of the torture scandal were legitimate POWs – some soldiers, some not, but all POWs. The persons who beheaded Mr. Berg were al Qaeda affiliates.
Actually, being barbaric is the other guys’ job. See, when you engage in torture under U.S. command, you are prosecuted. When you do it under Hussein’s command (or al Qaeda’s), you are promoted.
It sure does!
The beheading has made crystal clear the sorts of behavior we countenance when we abandon, through incompetence or design, the moral high ground of adherence to the letter and spirit of the Geneva Convention.
We do crap to them. They do crap to us. It’s the return to a law as old as Hammurabi (#196).
The newer laws are better and cut down on human suffering, even during war. Perhaps the sudden lack of credibility that infuses our expressions of moral outrage could be repaired by rededicating this country to the rule of enlightened international law. Heck, we could go crazy, stop stonewalling, and actually work towardsputting some teeth into the international convention on torture.
Nobody was claiming that what the U.S. did was the worst bunch of acts in the history of the universe. And nobody cliamed that Al Qaeda was a decent bunch of dudes: hell, they beheaded Daniel Pearl as well.
So… what’s your point? I don’t understand people’s palpable glee at Berg’s murder, this elation of “ha ha, now we can show everyone that they are worse, so what we doesn’t matter anymore.” What sense does it make? Don’t people realize how they look gloating over an insane act of violence?
Whoa … so when we dropped the A-bombs in Japan to stop WWII we didn’t understand barbaric? We sure did. We knew exactly what we were doing when we dropped those bombs and it was completely justified … killing a viscous enemy. It is not the other guy’s job, it is ours. We are now at war with these animals who cut a man’s throat while he is alive until it breaks off. Sorry, we should A-bomb these cockroaches too! I won’t even try to understand, as you suggest, this “difference.”
One group does something terrible; and a somewhat similar yet separate, unrelated group is blamed. I wonder if someday I’ll cease to be surprised how quickly and easily this happens.
Just curious: Suppose five guys in Chicago brutally kill somebody. It would then be justified to do whatever you want to random inmates in Chicago prisons, I suppose?