before I suffer my frequently endured slide into the pit, may I point out that the spread ass cheeks in question belonged to no doper, unless some doper is an elected official in mufti, in which case, I except from my condemnation any such ass-cheek spreading representative.
It goes without saying that I didn’t vote for the man from Crawford myself.
And I suppose it is some consolation that he had to steal the election as opposed to actually being elected.
And yet.
The whole Iraq adventure, from its early days in the summer of '02 when Andrew Card came in and said no one goes to market with a new product in August
this has been a war crime just like the sudetenland. When you trump up an excuse to invade a country it is a war crime.
So the thing is, we have already heard guys say
We were (just) folowing orders"
But there are orders you are not supposed to follow…
[QUOTE=Zagadka]
I wouldn’t put my money on that. It’ll go underground now. It will be less, certainly, but maybe they just won’t keep taking pictures and video of it, and be sure to “dispose” of the witnesses (victims)
[QUOTE]
I just got a bone deep conviction that the pix and videos were an integral part of the “process” and not just a perverted trophy taking.
I think it was like "check it out habib-not only did I shove my flashlight up your ass, but I am posting a picture of it on the internet where the whole world will see it…
Honorable sentiment on your part, but I’ll be damned if it’s the way I feel. I mean, I know it’s not the fault of myself or anyone I know, but god DAMN… it’s like I awoke to find my right hand up and strangling somebody.
Maybe that’s the scariest bit of all. There but for the grace of (a metaphorical) God, I can’t help but wonder, go I? Is it possible that these monstrosities were done by people who left the States as, well, people? Is this what war does? I don’t know what’s harder to accept: that normal people could be warped to the point of such malignity, or that people could be capable of such things to begin with. Either way, I got the shivers. And it ain’t cold in Tallahassee.
[tinfoil?]
The photographic evidence makes everyone pictured potential targets for blackmail.
[/tinfoil]
It’s not systematic.
Hmmmmm.
One part of the prison becomes a special detention for “hard cases.”
Who chose the prisoners?
Who chose the marines?
The specific humiliations used were very carefully targeted to seem less offensive to non Islamic, non Arab eyes, and quite specifically horrifying (worse than death or beatings) to Islamic Arabs. Is this the sort of premeditated psychology usually associated with Marine Grunts? You can believe it if you want. But it smells like the CIA to me. I am sure the actual agents were “civilian contractors” or some such plausibly deniable villains.
Not systematic? They even planned the exit strategy if they got caught!! How systematic does it have to get?
Who are we trying to delude? Ourselves?
No thanks.
George W. Bush.
He is in charge.
Didn’t Milosovich say “I didn’t know?”
Have we decided that just telling your Intelligence leaders to make sure I don’t know makes anything acceptable?
End this war now.
Tris
While it may be the case that these “specific humiliations” do “seem less offensive to non Islamic, non Arab eyes, and quite specifically horrifying … to Islamic Arabs,” what do you base the case for this being necessarily(?) " very carefully targeted"?
gum, I too appreciate your support. Please don’t see alaric’s statement that we, as a people, are responsible for this as us being too hard on ourselves. It’s more like one of the realizations a parent makes before cleaning up a mess his child made. “George shouldn’t have crashed the family car, but if I had spoken up louder my wife wouldn’t have let him take it when he had been drinking. (sigh) I guess I better bail him out of jail, but if he thinks he’s going to drive any time soon…” It is an understanding that we, the electorate of the United States, are responsible for our current government being in place and driving drunkenly all over the world.
Looking over your Constitution (a guy can find ANYTHING on the internet!) I see it lacks an inspirational preamble and jumps right into the boring rights and processes*. That is too bad since our own Preamble is the best part of an otherwise dry document and is the only part of the American Constitution that was chewed on by a bad Canadian actor and that many people can sing.
-
- Adding of course the whole succession thing that every country in Europe should have written down fifteen-bleeping-hundred years ago so they could’ve missed a bunch of stupid and bloody wars
I’m honestly a little taken aback that people are surprised about this.
Of course this sort of shit happens. It has nothing to do with your nationality, or the country you were born in, or the fact that you are on the ‘good side’. Disgusting, brutal, inhumane shit like this happens in wars. It happens to people on both sides, nobody is immune.
This doesn’t reflect on the average American, IMO. It reflects on humanity, the brutality of war, the mental gymnastics some people can do to enable them to carry out this shit.
Don’t try to explain away a few ‘bad apples’ while saying everything else is fine and it will not happen again. It will. Insist that next time, ALL options are explored before resorting to warfare. Because this sort of shit happens in wars, and is unavoidable.
I think that’s what I was tryibng to say, but did you mean the perps or the victimns?
nevermind.
you said everyone…
jesus, this story is moving fast
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/Iraq_abuse_death_040507-1.html
the photographs show a 52-year-old former Baath Party official, Nadem Sadoon Hatab, who died at the detention center last June after a three-day period in which he was allegedly subjected to beatings and karate kicks to the chest and left to die naked in his own feces.
well, this guy, in any case, was not qbout to answer any questions on account of the pictures…
Actually, I find this situation very encouraging.
30 years ago (say, during 'Nam) this sort of thing wouldn’t be a big scandal. It points to now, we are progressing. What was acceptable is no longer kosher. Ever warfare CAN be civilized.
Because I find it unlikely to be a coincidence.
Tris
Kind of like William Paley’s watchmaker analogy proving creationism?
I agree with Essured and Tris on all points: war does these things to people, it was ordered by the intelligence folks, and I’m quite certain it goes a lot higher than the few grunts who’ve been charged so far.
SimonX, that wing was under the charge of the intelligence folks, and off limits, if you can believe it, to the CO of the prison, Karpinski, or so she claims anyway. I find it highly likely that it was policy because if you look at the photos, there’s at least one that shows a corridor full of soldiers, where Iraqis are stacked up in the middle of the corridor and everyone else is just going about their business like nothing unusual is happening. That means everyone was in on it, because no way it would have been this blatant otherwise. They had no fear of getting caught by anyone - which, BTW, goes a long way towards explaining why they took pictures.
I don’t know what creeps me out more, the revelations coming that even more atrocities were committed in the name of the United States in those prisons, or the prediction that the Bush-apologizing nutjobs will use unspeakably lame excuses like “Hey, it’s not so bad, we’re not throwing anyone into ovens yet” to dismiss them.
Thanks to Bushco, we Americans are now stuck in a really deep hole. I don’t know how we’re going to get out, but I’ll bet it starts with throwing this Administration out on its ass…
System behind the torture?
Regarding the issue of whether or not the abuses were “isolated,” as opposed to “systematic,” there’s a disturbing article in today’s Guardian. A few excerpts:
With R2I techniques, apparently, Special Forces soldiers are themselves exposed to these sorts of abuses for training purposes. However, even under training conditions the techniques can be experienced as severely distressing:
The article goes on to note:
Finally, with regard to the R2I style itself:
It seems probable to me that these techniques were implemented in Iraq (and possibly elsewhere), and, under conditions of isolation, extreme stress, and lack of expertise, they simply spiraled out of control.
For my money, yes, it is a coincidence. Remember, it was a reluctance to allow Americans to be tried before it that drove American resistance to the creation of a permanent war crimes tribunal, way back during the Clinton years.
No need to reinforce the tinfoil over this.