What the hell is that, a reasonable argument? First you people throw shit at me for two days and now you want to discuss things?
Methinks you shat on yourself.
Go wipe.
I’m not really familiar with how British troops are trained, but I think there is probably always some dehumanizing of the other that takes place. I am more likely to agree with the second part of your statement. In my own opinion, we used to take pride in thinking of ourselves as “the good guys.” Now there is a lot of pride in being, for the moment, the most powerful nation in the world. That is not a good sign.
Keep in mind, though, that hundreds of thousands of Americans have protested the war from the beginning and that most American Dopers are not supporters of our current White House Administration’s foreign policies. Some polls are now showing that less than 50% of Americans now believe that we should have gone to war in Iraq. We don’t all think with one mind and the same is true for our troops. It was a US soldier that was haunted by the photos he was shown who reported these injustices to his commander.
New Iskander, your thinking perpetuates the problem. The torturing is the result of hatred. If you harbor the hatred and nurture it, and if you would find pleasure in seeing your enemy tortured, then the biggest difference in you and Saddam is probably opportunity.
Finally, one of the prisoners named al-Shweiri was interviewed and said the following:
Even this victim continues to look with contempt at half the population of his country.
Then what the fuck is a “Christ Executioner” and why are they worthy of scorn. As for the Mossad crack, you obviously don’t know a single fucking thing about me, and that’s where I’ll let it rest.
Originally posted by Zoe
Jesus! Did he say that? So, When all this shit is over and the prisoner is a free man, I'd love to have a word with him.Dan Norder:
You know, I’ve wondered that myself. Some of the photos look like something you’d find in a magazine buried in the back of an adult bookstore in Amsterdam, sandwiched between “Dog Love” and “Latex Fetish Octogenarians.”
But NI, apparently, would defend these acts, even if they turn out to be real. He would reduce them to mere “pranks,” common even in the US, and have us believe that they are acceptable because the victims might have deserved it.
And now he tries to hide behind his pathetic partisan posturing, demonstrating for the whole world what twisted, sick puppy he really is. It churns the stomach.
New Iskander:
I’m sorry. Don’t you mean, “Time to post another idiotic, content-free pile of steaming nonsense?”
You see? That was, indeed, exactly what you meant.
Thought so.
You wish, don’t you, you pathetic, bleating little cunt?
Here’s hoping the remainder of your stay here at the SDMB is as unpleasant for you as this thread has been, until you finally leave this place and never darken our door again.
Really. Go fuck yourself.
Your door?
Well, if it’s true and the SDMB door is indeed yours, the resolution should be simple. Refund my subscription and I shall leave. If you don’t have authority to do that, Shut Up!
And yet, in practical terms, it’s irrelevant whether they’re real or faked. They’ll be circulated in the Muslim world as further proof that the West really is hellbent on debasing and destroying their culture. The genuine photos of torture and sexual humiliation will give them the veneer of validity.
How long will it be, I wonder, before we see photos of captured servicemen, civilian contractors, or aid workers being subjected to what’s depicted in the torture photos? How huge will be the raging howl for vengeance against the Islamic scumbeasts who dare to do this?
To what circle of Hell will this spiral descend?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this already happened just over a month ago.
The four mercenaries from Blackwater were savagely killed, Bush swore revenge, and so something like 120 coalition troops and 1300 Iraqis died to slake George’s thirst for vengence.
And at the end of all that, the US handed Fallujah over to one of Saddam’s guys. It was all so fucking pointless.
That was what I meant to say. The combination of both makes them much more vulnarable for the tactics that dehuminize “the other” in their minds.
I know that. I’m even rather convinced that the rest of the world - and especially the Arab/Islamic world - has seen much more news coverage of these protests then the US population itself. There was a lot of emphasis on that in Arab news coverage in an attempt to soften the “crusade” idiocy of Bush The Divinely Inspired. The same counts for the media coverage of the demonstrations all over the globe.
I had once a thread on GD asking why there were no such world wide demonstrations going on upto this day. And especially in the USA. I think we had an ongoing disagreement there because someone brought up that there were indeed demonstrations. For all kind of things including “some against the war” .Those “all kind of things including some against the war” were however not what I had and have in mind.
Polls never impress me one bit 
The rest of what you said is obviously true as it is only normal. Yet what seems also to be the case is that this scandal was known already for months and that the news coverage of it was delayed on specific demand of the US government.
First of all I would like to read the entire interview in the original version = before translation. We all know what can get lost or can be added, willfully or not, when translating. (And I would add: the more when translating a text into a language of an other language group).
Hence I also don’t know what was referred to with “feel like a woman”.
Maybe he got raped and referred to this being a crime primarely against women, and then linked that to his paternalistic upbringing that teached him that men are always superior and thus that even a crime was more an insult when it was one that was primarely targetted against women.
See above. It is also not very honest to insinuate that this person is the representative of an entire population. Although I must confess that in my opinion certain streamings among the Shia are even more deluded in their interpretation of “how an Islamic woman has to behave” then the lunatical Wahabbis.
We also have to deal - in Iraq as much as elswhere -with thousands of years of cultural influences on religion. That is a vicious circle that shall not be broken and then diasppear in our lifetime I’m afraid.
We all know that there are several places on this globe where women are considered to be less then men. That you and others focuss that much on situations in Islamic nations is not a surprize to me.
Yet there are a lot of non Muslim nations who have the same attidtude, be it not that outsppoken in forcing women to cover from top to toe. Nevertheless the discrimination is blatant. I could give you some examples I have first hand information about to discuss and compare, but then we should open a thread in GD about it.
Salaam. A
With great love oppressed by two of those who seem to belong in your eyes to the contempted half of the populationn and by one little belonging to the contempted half of the population, learning fast from her mother how to do it.
Yes, in fact I was thinking about that when I posted. My thought was, what will happen to the next Westerners taken alive? Lynch mob doing to the living what was done to the presumably dead-when-abused mercenaries in Fallujah? Or to be photographed undergoing the torture our own forces inflicted on those Iraqi prisoners? And the relatives of the troops now under investigation, who are minimizing what they did: How would they react if it were their brother, wife, son, husband who was photographed hooded, naked, and humiliated by grinning Iraqis? Would troglodytes like New Iskander dismiss it as harmless pranks?
“In order to save the village, it was necessary to destroy it.”
My thoughts exactly. I’m still looking for profanities strong enough to describe my feelings, but I’m afraid that if I find them, the entire Eastern Seaboard will burst into flames.
A whistleblower. But the real disturbing story is that he had been blowing his whistle for months, and the military wouldn’t listen. It’s only when he came across actual photos of the acts that they had to stand up and take notice of what he was saying.
Frightening, isn’t it. Almost as much as what I heard on the Today show, that the commanding officer of the prison stated that there were areas of the prison that were off limits to her. How on earth does that go on w/in a military structure?
ironic as hell to me, also, is the refrain from the usual suspects about how it’s only a few members, you shouldn’t condemn the entire group etc. etc etc. Odd, when they didn’t seem to accept that argument wrt terrorists w/in Muslim faith. Especially since with the all volunteer armed forces, one has to apply and be accepted and trained etc. That’s one of the more frightening aspects to me. It may only be a few rotten apples (odd coincidence, then, that they should all be assigned to the same small group, eh? and apparently also on the same shifts), but the US forces are supposed to be the best of the best, aren’t they?
Question-as awful as this is-more in a moment-what would happen to Iraq if we just “pulled out?” I mean, the country seems to be a mess right now-I mean, wouldn’t we just be screwing them over? Sink or swim?
As for the abuse…I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said. Except that I don’t think I have ever been truly disgusted and ASHAMED to be an American.
Right now, I am. People can crow on and on and milk the crap about patriotism and anti-American leftists all they want. I don’t give a shit anymore.
I feel like vomitting.
Amnesty International has been screaming to be heard about widespread abuses perpetrated by our military for the past year and has been roundly ignored!
However, in all fairness, from digging deeper and deeper following links within links to stories about this, it would appear as though CNN has been reporting about this since mid-March, and that an investigation was started back in January.
So why was this story apparently burried so deeply? CNN did report on it, but where were the headlines? Did anyone here know about this 6 weeks ago? How did this manage to get so heavily quashed, until it couldn’t be shoved in a corner or denied anymore due to the photographic evidence?
I said that very thing in the letter I wrote to all of my Representatives in Congress:
This administration makes me ill.
More from your link, Johnny:
How anyone could still support our continued occupation of their country and think it’s the best solution is beyond me.
What are the alternatives to occupation? If we leave now, we leave the job unfinished, the nation still in ruins. Remember that in addition to the fighting, the US is rebuilding all sorts of things around the country, and protecting projects that are important to getting clean water and power to people around the country. SOMEONE has to keep doing these things.
These photos make our job harder, and they make our leaders look clueless and negligent, with all the wrong priorities. But they don’t change the reality of the situation.
Some “jobs” are best left unfinished.
Leave no virtue unsullied, leave no Iraqi unscarred.
If you don’t shut up right now, this zombie will eat your BRAINS!!!
