If soldiers in the US Army are breaking the Geneva Conventions (and, by extension, the UCMJ) on orders from civilian contractors, it shows that command is breaking down. Brutus, try to get this through your skull: We’re seeing the bad apples that were dumb enough to take photos of their handywork. I take it you’re not claiming that there are no smart bad apples out there ?
It’s fucking appalling. These assholes broke every rule in the book. They could just as well have wiped their ass with the uniform they are so manifestly unfit to wear. And the guy who whines about getting no “rules and regulations” is a reservist - he’s an officer in a correctional facility in civilian life. Yeah, poor guy, how should he know how to run a prison ? I sure as hell hope he gets a chance to inspect Leavenworth from the inside, for a long, long time.
This’ll do wonders to win hearts and minds. And my countrymen are out there as well - a big fat thanks for nothing from this pissed-off Dane. :mad:
We like the idea of the honorable soldier, but sometimes it just isn’t true. Those that aren’t honorable can cause a lot of damage. Here in Canada, our entire airborne unit was disbanded because, among other things, the torture and beating to death of a youth in Somalia. This can happen to any country. It sucks when people use it as an excuse the bash an entire nation’s military.
Something else that gives me the feeling that there may be a lot more of this going on than Brutus reckons is that, according to CBS:
Thus this is only being investigated because the torturers were damn fool enough to allow them to be photographed doing the torturing. How many other times has this happened without there being a camera present?
The BBC is reporting an almost complete lack of reporting of this story in the US media , both print and broadcast, even though the original programme was shown two nights ago.
I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. Everybody has acknowledged that this is surely not a common thing, but it’s not supposed to happen at all, so they’re asking if the setup of the current military in Iraq might have contributed to this.
I’m more concerned about the pattern at this point.
Data 1. Accusations of torture in GITMO
Data 2. The stories about turtore of captive in Afghanistan two christmases ago
Data 3. New accusations (with evidence) of torture of captives in Iraq
If it was just rogue soldiers on a one-off situation I’d be less concerned. But with the established pattern I think it’s time to look for a larger cause for this.
Ah, nobody mentioned it, so he (and others) jsut could not guess that this might not be a nice way to behave? It seems he was aware of the existence of the Geneva Convention though. Well, I hope that “defence” is not accepted.
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Well, I’m glad he is appalled: I think most of us are appalled. And Tony Blair thinks it is “regrettable” (OK, he is, apprently appalled too).
Regrettable??? Heck, forgetting to send some far remote cousin a birthday card is “regrettable”. Torturing prisioners needs a different description, but it’s really hard to think of a suiable one right at this minute.
(Bolding mine). Well, the bits in bold would seem to cover it, and should be easier to remember than the average shopping list. Of course, they shoudl also be pretty obvious to any humanely moral person.
A quick look online at quarter of 9:00 EDT: cnn.com has it at the top of the side stories. The Boston Globe - boston.com - has local news at the top of the page but the story in its world news. Our fair and balanced foxnews.com hasn’t any mention at all. Michael Jackson is SO much more important.
Perhaps it’s time to trot out lame legal excuse for mistreating prisoners #4: they were insurgents, and therefore ‘illegal combatants’ - thus they’re not covered by the GC.
Great for salving guilty consciences; not quite so good for PR or humanity.
Most of the US papers listed in Google News are headlining something along the lines “Soldiers Blame Superiors”. “Family Say Their Soldier Boy Is A Good Boy”. “A Big Intelligence Officer Did It And Then Ran Away”
Looks like the buck is on its way up. It probably won’t stop until it slips off the edge of Dubya’s desk and into the wastepaper basket. After all, who’s going to care about this come the elections???
The ironic thing being that the “civilian contractors” are illegal combatants, too. Not that that stops the Bush administration from using them in droves. Maybe they figured that since they’re specifically excluded from the protection of the Geneva Conventions, it was only fair. Or, umm, something like that.
As my father once told me, “Son, if you turn the lights on and see one rat, there’s twenty.”
There is no excuse for this. None. The people who did this are terrorists themselves, and the repercussion from this on our own captured men and women will be horrific.
Just when you think things can’t get much worse in Iraq, just when you think America’s standing in world opinion can’t get any lower, we get this.
I’m now getting past disbelief to the point of sheer incredulity. Short of somehow managing to accidentally nuke an Iraqi hospital, can we actually botch this glorious liberation campaign up any worse?
Sorry, but a reference to a page that is updated continuously doesn’t really prove anything. Does it? Did you count all 599* listed? I certainly didn’t. I just noted a general difference at the time I looked this morning.
My point was that the story is developing along certain lines. It’ll be different again by the time you next look.
*No, don’t bother checking, it’ll be a different number by now.
