Did you just make up this data or have you been watching FOX?
From today’s (11 May)Los Angeles Times.
This is the lead paragraph in the story:
“Coalition military intelligence officials estimated that 70% to 90% of prisoners detained in Iraq since the war began last year ‘had been arrested by mistake,’ according to a confidential Red Cross report given to the Bush administration earlier this year.”
I may have missed it if someone has already posted, but I think on an NPR program tonight, there was offered that there have been an estimated 300 deaths of persons who are NOT soldiers, NOT private contractor/military types, but totally private persons(NOT Iraquis), much like the unfortunate MR. Berg, who have been killed in Iraq since this began. Most of them are not Americans, as I recall in the interview. That’s perhaps why you don’t hear about it. Mr. Berg is one of hundreds of private people who have had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This doesn’t excuse his captors and their heinous deed.
But, in the US, this is one of the few instances of a private person’s death bringing up such feelings in Americans. Where are your feelings for the hundreds of other Nationalities who have been killed(but not in such dramatic fashion)?
Another example of focusing on the micro and not the macro. We Americans are good at that. Unfortunately.
Is this that complicated? Ants, what part of the following argument are you having trouble with: even if a bunch of murderous thugs commit these kinds of crimes, it’s not okay for us to do the same. There’s no relative morality stuff at work here. It’s obviously wrong to murder people, and it’s obviously wrong to beat and sexually abuse prisoners.
This is absolutely befuddling to me. Some of the same people who said we should invade Iraq to make it democratic are now suggesting we should nuke it? This is awfully remeniscent of “we had to destroy the village in order to save it,” isn’t it? Jeez. This isn’t even a political thing, as manhattan’s insightful posts show. This is simple human rights here. With luck, these murderers will either be captured and jailed forever or killed in battle. The soldiers who beat and tortured the prisoners at Abu Ghraib will not face anything nearly as harsh.
Yeah, a whole week’s coverage of a true story is pretty awful, isn’t it?
Would you please enlighten me as to whom “these people” refer to specifically?
I’m throwing this trash into The Pit.
It’s been moved to the Pit - good. AH - you are an ignorant, miserable excuse for a human being, just the sort who would have been a gleeful concentration camp guard in Belsen or a torturer in Iraq - for Saddam. I sincerely hope that the universe works on the principle of ‘you reap what you sow.’
We are meant to be better than the terrorists but people like you reduce the moral highground to the same foetid swamp.
Scum.
Thanks, Czarcasm, it was gonna be pretty hard to continue this discussion in a civilized manner.
Hail Ants, I’m sure you’re upset. This is absolutely horrifying. To me, I guess it doesn’t seem that much worse than the daily list of yet another soldier or two or five dying. On the other hand, Emily hadn’t heard about the story until she saw me re-reading the NYT article and she almost cried. Either way, this is an almost indescribably sick act committed by people who barely qualify as human.
What I don’t get is why the rest of this argument is so fucking complicated. These guys weren’t in Abu Ghraib, they specifically said they were fucking TAKING REVENGE for what happened there. The vast majority of those prisoners were innocent people, and while we didn’t beat them all to death, rape, sodomy with objects and sicing dogs on people is pretty fucking scummy all by itself. Saddam Hussein is the last person we should be comparing ourselves to excuse our behavior, especially considering the whole ‘liberating Iraq from tyranny’ thing. :rolleyes:
Since tagos already mentioned Belsen, I’ll refrain from a Nazi analogy- but the behavior of one’s enemies (even if it’s much worse) doesn’t give you a “Commit Atrocities Free” card. It’s not that fucking complicated. Unless you’ve totally given up on the simple premise that democracies aren’t supposed to hold themselves to a SLIGHTLY higher standard than terrorists and murderous dictators, one wrong can’t excuse another.
You know, he’s got a point. Cold blood would be pretty viscous, wouldn’t it?
Ok, but he already got impeached. Now it’s Bush’s turn.
I assume you meant me (HA). Well, since this is now in the Pit I’ll end by saying this:
The point of my OP was to point out that the prison ‘scandal’ is the US at its worst. And it is several orders of magnitude less than what happened to this American civilian. Or what happened in Fallujha. That for all the accusations, true or false, The West is still unmeasurably morally superior to the Arab world. And there’s nothing wrong, or racist about pointing that out on these occasions. Its just the truth. And that truth has been sorely lacking these past few weeks regarding the prison photos. This horrific video (I felt) made that obviously clear.
And let me also say, no I don’t beat my dog. In fact, I don’t have a dog, but two cats.
Perhaps I should have made it a little more clear that I was venting when I talked about inflicting more harse abuse in those prisoners (I kinda felt it was obvious). I don’t really think that should (or ever will) happen. But I felt someone should sometimes want it to. I guess I shouldn’t have put this in GD to begin with. Was on the fence, took a risk & lost…
But let me also say, there is something wrong with people who see a video of a man about to be butchered alive and morally equate it in any way to photos of prisoner harassment. Maybe there’s worse to come, maybe not, but that’s all I’ve seen so far.
Later…
I think you missed my question.
Yeah… and that moral superiority goes bye-bye when you start torturing people. After that, you’re just splitting hairs about how the torture is carried out.
There are more photos you’re not seeing, as I think other posters to this thread have pointed out. There are investigators about prisoners who were beaten to death. I guess being beheaded alive is worse, but how morally superior does it make us if we just beat people to death instead of chopping them up? I think what we need, Ants, is for you to come up with a definite scale of how bad each of these different things - rape, sodomy with chemical lights, attacking naked guys with dogs - give them each a point value and we’ll figure out just what kind of behavior allows what kind of response. Here’s the thing, though: if we’re allowed to torture Iraqi prisoners, they’re probably allowed to do the same to Americans. So keep that in mind when you’re saying that their behavior excuses ours, 'cause I think it works both ways.
What you expected to just waltz in there and ‘liberate’ them, and have them not fight back?
Damn, Bush et al are a lot stupider than we first thought!
When you go to war… People die! You’ve killed thousands of their people, but when they touch one of yours, suddenly it’s too far?
If an American had’ve beheaded an Iraqi, you probably wouldn’t have heard about it… so until you know that you have not committed the same atrocity, you could be just the same as the enemy. And that, my friend, makes you a HYPOCRITE 
Cheers.
Engine.
Oh I laugh so hard!
The west created “morals”, so how can you judge the countries by it. It’s just like picking an apple and calling it superior to someone else’s apple… when all they have is oranges! They’re two totally different cultures, so you can’t compare, and don’t try to. It’s degrading to the country and it’s people. You are superior to no race or people.
Cheers.
Engine.
I’m finding the whole “well, what we did wasn’t as bad as what they did” business rather disapointing; not the least of my reasons is that it totally ignores cultural context; sure, the kind of abuses to which Iraqi prisoners have been subjected might seem relatively trivial to a bystander of generic western culture, but to the Iraqis themselves, they may appear outrageous and unforgivable.
I’m not saying that it is objectively ‘better’ to have your head cut off than it is to be stripped naked, urinated upon, and forced to perform simulated sexual acts, just that these things might well look a lot more shocking and evil from the other side of the fence than they do to our jaundiced western eyes.
Woohoo! Oh sweet logic and common sense, you are a site for sore eyes 
Mangetout you are god. More than god, you’re god’s landlord. Now he has to explain to YOU about the hole in the ozone layer! “I swear Mangetout, that hole was there when we got here!”
New Law:
the longer discussions of the actions of coalition forces continue, the more likely it is to see the “Saddam was worse” arguement.
If a certain culture feels that forcing a man wearing panties or to rollick about with other naked men is worse than having your fucking head cut off, then said culture is fucked, and in dire need of updating.
I don’t think anybody here on either side would disagree with you. I also don’t think any thinking person can look at the pictures from Abu Ghraib and say “they’re all a bunch of terrorists and murderers, who cares?” when
1- their guilt is not established
2- a soldier from an enemy army is not necessarily a terrorist (when your country is invaded by a much larger and richer nation’s military and they are dropping bombs and shooting, shooting back wouldn’t seem a terrible idea, really- no doubt that will be interpreted by some as “Sampiro is glad that Americans are being killed!”, but it is certainly not how it’s intended)
3- to me this is the most important part so I’m going to caps- REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE PRISONERS AT ABU GHRAIB MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF, THEY HAD BEEN RENDERED HELPLESS! THEY WERE NOT A THREAT TO THE GUARDS AT THE PRISON. Whether you are a Christian, an atheist or a member of the Church of the Golden Sleestak (aka Our Lady of the Skylons, Reformed), how you treat the helpless over whom you have control is a pretty damned good indicator of your morality.
Now all this in mind, I can still say that beheading a helpless man is ALSO bad and yes, in fact it is worse, and I can even say that I would be very happy to read that every last one of the men responsible had been found and killed. I do not see this as inconsistent with the ability to say “the guards at Abu Ghraib were scum”.
Let me put this straight with you, if you seriously feel that you’re better than someone else, then you’re fucked and in dire need of updating. GROW UP YOU ARROGANT MORON.