I love you.
Show me, I hadn’t heard of that.
The fact that they’re facing court martials should speak for itself. They are, in fact, bad apples, which is why it makes the news every time shit like that happens.
I never said it was a huge mark of achievement to be better than them, I said at least we’re not beheading our POWs and broadcasting it all over our damn country and acting like death is actually comparable to being humiliated. The guy wasn’t even in the fucking military, like he had anything to do with how the captured terrorists/Iraqis are being treated. It’s called stupidity and ignorance. Yeah, the dudes that got beat to death were definately wronged, but the difference is that we prosecute that shit, whereas you see 5 city blocks of Iraqis cheering in the streets every time an american gets wasted. You tell me, is there a moral boundary?
gah, triple post… :fungah:
I’m not so ignorant as to believe that everyone should think the way I do, but common sense should factor into it at some point. For example, certain aspects of honor are very important to me, and I would die without hesitation to defend that honor. However, we’re not talking about a man who put his life on the line in defense of his faith or honor, we’re talking about a guy who was there to help rebuild a place and getting decapitated for reasons out of his control. Yes, he shouldn’t have been there, but that doesn’t change the fact that his death was wrong. It was just as wrong as our own soldiers beating Iraqis to death, because that is both death and dishonor, killing a helpless victim. There is no excuse for either side, regardless of how you might look at it.
EDIT: Whether they be American or foreign to me, it pisses me off when people get wasted wrongfully, so if I offend anyone with my…offensiveness, then sorry.
What I’m saying is that just because they think of it as all Americans, doesn’t mean that we have to talk like that. You said that they see it as all Americans so we might as well say “we.” I’m saying that we should say them since it isn’t every American, just a very small portion.
Also Kagon, I agree that what is happenining in Guantanimo Bay isnt the best, and I don’t like it. I’m just pointing out that it doesn’t break any laws. The way I see it, we are a super power, we should set the example. Guantanimo Bay isn’t the best way to set an example.
Before SK gets on me about setting the example. I don’t think that we should ahve gone to Iraq. Fuck, Bush was planning on going months before, he just tried to create a bunch of bullshit reasons to get support and approval. However, we shouldn’t be suprised that Bush is full of bullshit. Afterall, you can’t spell “bullshit” without Bush.
I didn’t mean it as much for us to seriously say “we”, it was more of making a point. I guess I should just word myself better next time.
Go here - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/27/60II/main614063.shtml - and click on “Prisoner Photos.” Number 10 is of a dead body. At least 25 such deaths are known, as mentioned here: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040504/ts_nm/iraq_abuse_usa_dc
They’re facing court martials, but their superiors, who allowed and condoned their actions, and will continue to do so, are not. They’re prosecuting the smallest cogs in the machine. The same site I linked to above has a quote from one of the torturers, who says that intelligence agencies approved of his methods and encouraged him. These guys were not secretly abusing prisoners. They were doing it openly and videotaping it for three months. If the people in charge weren’t supportive of that, why would those guys take pictures and videos, which could easily have fallen into their superiors’ hands? There’s no way that they could have gotten away with it for that long. But the fact is that the abuses were known about by the authorities since January at least (and human rights organizations were talking about them even earlier), and nothing was done until CBS released just 15 images, out of the thousands now believed to exist, after sitting on them for a month. In fact, one prior investigation of similar practices actually recommended that they be continued. If CBS hadn’t done that, those guys would still be doing those things now with the full knowledge of the brass. The court martials are happening because the brass are afraid of looking bad.
Like it or not, those cheering Iraqis are in their own country, and cheering against an occupying force that invaded their country without any provocation whatsoever, causing tremendous bloodshed in the process. We charged into this war willingly, but Iraq got dragged into it, and those Iraqis are cheering at the country that forced the war on them. Because of that, every time we’ve killed an Iraqi, we’ve committed something fundamentally similar, though less obviously bizarre, to the Abu Ghraib torture. If Iraq ever invades us, then you can start talking about their lack of morality.
They’re facing court martials, but their superiors, who allowed and condoned their actions, and will continue to do so, are not. They’re prosecuting the smallest cogs in the machine. [/QUOTE]
Sadly, that is how the military operates. The high ranks get punished, but ti isn’t public and you never find out about it. It is done in private. I have no doubt that the leaders will be punished, but we will never hear about it.
Yeah, exactly. Everyone kinda is watching us, and we’re sullying our reputation even more than we already have with such inhumane treatments as that.
It’s no different than any other nation would do. And like Infonick said, there will be many punishments that we’ll never hear about.
Once again, the point is sidestepped… I was responding to your comment about being “better” than our enemy. I consider it a massive achievement that we, as Americans (most americans, anyway…), are saddened by all loss of life, rather than cheering in hordes every time an Iraqi bites the dust. And even if you’re too ignorant to admit it, decapitating an innocent is immoral, regardless of any reasons they gave for it.
>We charged into this war willingly, but Iraq got dragged into it, and those Iraqis are cheering at the country that forced the war on them.
well, how willing it was isn’t not beyond contention.
Yay for simpletons 
But I live in Canada, so I’ll just call both Americans AND Terrorists retarded >>;
And by the way, regardless of whether or not the agressors “have the right” to do what they’re doing, if someone I loved was killed in, say, 9/11, I’d kill every suspect and any ally who tried to stop me from doing it, brutally. Whether I was right to do it or not has no bearing on whether I would do it or not, I’d have to show people that there are consequences to their actions, and really I wouldn’t give a shit if it pissed a few people off. If the American “agressors” read this thread they’d either laugh their ass off or become extremely frustrated at everyone’s uneducated convictions.
Well, that was my 2 cents. Feel free to continue talking about a war you’re not a part of, because it’s fun and we really need objective opinions that don’t matter.
>It’s no different than any other nation would do.
But we’re America man; we’re better than everybody else - remember?
Well, then, so much for the moral high ground.
Can you read minds? Can you tell me what those punishments will be, since you’re so certain that they’ll take place even though you’ll never hear about them?
Dude, we’re saddened by <i>our</i> loss of life. We’re saddened because an <i>American</i> got decapitated. While you’re talking about the immorality of decapitating an American, you’re also using it to downplay the murders of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. Also, the polls show that most Americans, while unwilling to accept many more American casualties, are perfectly willing to fight to the last Iraqi. It was the same way in Vietnam, too, and the Philippines. When the tabloid newspapers start shrieking about how dropping bombs on densely populated civilian areas is “pure evil,” as opposed to being mesmerized by the cool explosions and regurgitating Pentagon press releases, then you can make this claim.
And believe me, if America got invaded by Iraq, and some Iraqis then got killed, I really doubt that you would be “saddened” by the loss of their lives. It’s a natural reaction to an unprovoked foreign occupation to cheer when something bad happens to the occupiers. That’s why the Iraqis are cheering - because they’re the ones being occupied after a bloody war that <i>they did nothing to start</i>. That’s what really puts a dent in your moral indignation.
So is starting a war without provocation.
What is this even supposed to mean? If you mean that it wasn’t willing because half the country was against it and the neoconservatives left no room for legitimate debate on the issue, then yes, in that case it wasn’t entirely willing. But it is a fact completely beyond contention that the war was not provoked by anyone but ourselves.
>Go here - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004...ain614063.shtml - and click on “Prisoner Photos.” Number 10 is of a dead body. At least 25 such deaths are known, as mentioned here: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...aq_abuse_usa_dc
The caption for that photo only says “appears dead,” although to be fair they do quote a general who alludes to a number of deaths being under investigation, which I bet the other link corroborates.
>They’re facing court martials, but their superiors, who allowed and condoned their actions, and will continue to do so, are not. They’re prosecuting the smallest cogs in the machine.
Well I think by the time the investigation is completed there are going to be a lot more people losing their jobs if not facing indictments; especially if some of the lower-ranking soldiers accept plea bargains in exchange for naming superiors. Although I’m not sure if that’s part of military court. Especially with this being an election year, I wouldn’t be surprised if it went all the way to Rumsfeld resigning if there’s enough public outcry; although I don’t really think he was aware of the tortures, even if he probably just as likely wouldn’t have stoppd them.
>CBS released just 15 images, out of the thousands now believed to exist, after sitting on them for a month.
Really? Could you tell me where you heard this information? I’d be interested in reading up on it.
>I consider it a massive achievement that we, as Americans (most americans, anyway…), are saddened by all loss of life, rather than cheering in hordes every time an Iraqi bites the dust.
Well, of course. But don’t give too much credit, because we don’t have tanks or foreign military patrols at every street corner either. It’s easy to be of good moral standing when you have nothing to lose and when the problems are an ocean away.
>It’s no different than any other nation would do.
I agree. But that’s not a point to be proud of or a moral justification.
(I also like it whenever people ask SK to prove something because he always has a link or two)
>What is this even supposed to mean? If you mean that it wasn’t willing because half the country was against it and the neoconservatives left no room for legitimate debate on the issue, then yes, in that case it wasn’t entirely willing.
Yeah sorry, what I meant was something along the lines of that sentence.
>But it is a fact completely beyond contention that the war was not provoked by anyone but ourselves.
Well anyone who still believes Iraq posed a threat would disagree with you, but I don’t think there are too many of those still around.
I don’t know if Rumsfeld knew what exactly was going on, however from what he’s been quoted saying and how he’s defending the interrogations, it is silly to believe that he wouldn’t have known people would obviously do bad things. He’s simultaneously upholding Pentagon authorized interrogation methods that were the protocol that led to the pictures and events that took place while at the same time saying “oh this was so wrong” just for PR. I don’t see how you can NOT interpret that there was a high level of leadership involved through the coordination of the same events throughout Iraq and how the people directing these soldiers were given instructions specific enough so that they could be interpreted on a mass scale to give the results we all know about.
oh I definitely think Rumsfeld should probably be forced to resign over this, whether or not he had anything to do with it. And I think certain degrees of interrogation are passable, what was done to those soldiers though had nothing to do with obtaining information. I suspect a lot of the “knowledge” about this debacle consisted of knowing nods and allusions, I’d be surprised if there was much documentation unearthed about this. Although if there is, then that just compounds the number of people who are going to get implicated.
Yes, the other link refers to 25 confirmed deaths.
The administration was told back in January, and sometime in February, the military’s own investigator, one General Antonio Taguba, produced a 53-page report documenting these abuses. That was the third investigation on the subject. Rumsfeld himself basically admitted to being told about the abuses when he appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, except he tried to justify his inaction by saying, “It is the photographs that give one the vivid realization of what actually took place…words don’t do it.”
You don’t even have to go very far. It’s right in the original CBS report:
“Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes II received an appeal from the Defense Department, and eventually from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, to delay this broadcast – given the danger and tension on the ground in Iraq.”
The photographs were beginning to circulate about a month ago. CBS had time to make this report, then delayed it for two more weeks after that. That amounts to about a month of not releasing the photos.
YES! Thank you, Merlin! This is <i>exactly</i> what I was talking about.
Especially considering that the military itself concluded that at least 60% of the detainees at Abu Ghraib were innocent: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/abu_ghraib_prisoner_040503-1.html (page 2)
You know, I’d personally much rather be beheaded than tortured to death. That’s just me, though.
Oh, yeah- what one of our lovely senators (Oklahoma) said:
"I regret I wasn’t here on Friday. I was unable to be here. But maybe it’s better that I wasn’t, because as I watched the - this outrage - this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners, I was, I have to say - and I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners - you know, they’re not there for traffic violations. If they’re in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.
- Senator James Inhofe,
Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing
on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib,
May, 2004 "
All of this torture turns my stomach and breaks my heart, as does Rumsfeld, for reasons as Sinistral has already noted. I can but hope for his resignation or that some other action is taken against him, although having seen the hatred for Iraq, Middle-Easterners, and Muslims, once again swelling up in the wake of Berg’s terrible murder, he surely must stand in the favour of a good number of the American people.
This war has disgusted me since it began.