just like when the kids trash the empty model home in the real estate development, and make a videotape that later gets them on America’s Dumbest Criminals,
Why the fuck do people feel the need to preserve evidence against themselves???
Excuse me, not preserve eveidence CREATE evidence…
Ah, but they HAVE FUCKING NOT.
-The NJSP is not the GOP.
-According to you, the SS stole the design from the NJSP, not vice versa.
-While it may be a nice-looking cut, the color leaves much to be desired.
If you did that in my house, the one thing I would insist you do is leave. If you left enough bucks, I’d call it even and never want to see your face again.
Yes, we do have an obligation to fix what we’ve broken, as best we can, but we first have to do what the people there most want us to do. The only question there has been whether that means “immediately” or “as soon as you *allow * us to have a real government of our own”, whenever that is. That isn’t on the schedule yet in any meaningful way, despite this token 6/30 date.
Jonathan Chance:
Yeah, but I also think that those who the US might want to colonize would fight like mad. After all, there aren’t too many places in existence that haven’t already been colonized. And memories are long. I imagine that these same thoughts have occured to most of those who have considered opening Itchy & Scratchy Land Fallujah.
Waste
Fair enough, tho I’ll fade any dollar amount and give attractive odds that Stormin Norman I was a republican…
And you would be right to want to see me leave. But it still seems kinda, well, snooty. “Just give the poor man some notes, darling, and we’ll head to a place with a decent foie gras.”
And I’m not sure that I don’t agree. But I think that we need to at least try to fix everything that we screwed up, or we’ll just be setting ourselves up down the road. I think that it carries a lot more weight that we came in and broke everything and did our damnedest to try and fix it, as opposed to breaking it and running away throwing money as we flee.
Waste
I’m going to go way out an a limb here, and naively reveal a faith in my fellow americans that probably dooms me forever to channel Pangloss, but if there is shown on tv a video of a guard inserting his dick into some boy’s ass, (however gently…) that’s going to be the ball game, ya feel me?
I just know that’s when they lose the nascar dads…
If we endorse this shit by re-electing Bush, no american will be able to hold up his head outside of the 50 states…
for euphemistic elegance, ya gotta love
“acting inappropriately with a dead body”…
Actually, I’m most intrigued by Rumsfeld saying ‘Hoo boy, there are much worse pix out there! Man, am I glad the press don’t have THOSE! Whoa Nelly!’
Jesus, man. Why not just wave a red flag in front of the press corps. I fucking guarantee that not 5 minutes after he said that some managing editor out there said, “Those pictures exist. And we’re going to find them.” and began committing resources to the acquisition of those pix for publication.
I mean…what the hell was he thinking?
I was wondering about that myself…unless he knows that they are already out.
At the least one might anticipate a demand that they be treated as “classified” and shared with those members of congress cleared to that level (I think that’s all of them…). Curious.
He does mention that it would damage the criminal proceedings if they got out. But let’s be honest with ourselves…is that going to stop an editor looking for circulation?
It’s like he stood up in the National Press Club Building and shouted ‘Pulitzer! I gotcha Pulitzer right here! Who wants it?’
By alaricthegoth " Please, let us not quibble abouth the factual accuracy of the charge below–assume (hypothetically, if you must) that it is true."
From your cite: “The allegations cannot be verified independently”
If anyone with a different point of view from yours tried something like this, you’d be calling bullshit.
So no, let’s DON’T assume that it’s true. Come back when you have some scrap of fact. Until then, there’s nothing to talk about.
Not at all.
I think we are about as far along in the process as the following analogy illustrates:
Professor of Ethics: Miss Jones, would you have sex with a stranger for a million dollars.
Miss Jones (blushing) well I guess so.
Prof. How about 10 dollars
Miss Jones: what do you think I am?
Prof: We’ve established that. Now we are quibbling about the price…
I mean, is not what is admitted bad enough?
Withal, I was using the (admittedly unsubstantiated) allegations to elicit a different point.
If what we have is not enough, what would be.?
Hence, the appropriate use of a hypothetical.
Hidden in his OP was this:
"… is there anything that is so bad that even if it were done only by some in our uniform, it would force us to concede that no moral good can arise from our continued occupation?"
If that’s the question, why start a thread with a title that contains unsubstantiated, inflammatory drivel?
I estimate we’ll have forces in Iraq for at least five, perhaps ten years. If or when individuals commit crimes, those individuals should be punished. No action by a small group of personnel should cause us to abandon Iraq to a bloody civil war, and I don’t think we’ll do that.
And this just in…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4855930/
“…Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys…”
No. No. No.
John Carter of Mars, I think that I am going to agree with you, although I suspect for different reasons than you have. For my part, I think that I am going to cling to the hope that this is slander. Otherwise, I don’t know if there is enough vodka in the world to let me sleep tonight.
Fuck me.
What divides us from being “horrible” on the level of the Nazis is the term “systematic.” The true genocide is the systematic attack on a nationality/ethnicity/alignment/whatever. We just seem to be randomly abusing, torturing, raping, and otherwise violating prisoners. The line between the two is very thin, and, of course, they are both very bad. But still, you can’t go around comparing what we are doign in Iraq with what we did in Vietnam, or what happened in Rwanda or Congo or Germany.
However, since we are America, and since we are the aggressors, we are under the microscope. We need to take every soldier, CIA agent, mercenary, or whoever else and hang them by the balls (so to speak). If it were up to me, I’d throw every person captured doing this in front of an Iraqi judge and jury.
Unfortunately, we are kist going to be uncovering more of this. Remember back when the firt scandal broke and everyone was saying, “it is an isolated incident?” Hah. Remember, for every one crime a criminal is caught doing, they commit a hundred more.
Just a general thought here; at what point does what these so called few bad apples did become acts of treason? If you think about it, chances are that they have helped to create several new terrorists, and I shudder to think of how future American POWs will now be treated.