Blame for abuses in Iraq

[kallend 1,647]

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>We seem to be putting forth a "meet the new boss, same as the old
> boss" type of image over there.

Yep. That song seems especially applicable to Iraqis nowadays:

(c) The Who

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 1,647]

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>Without thorough training and constant monitoring, it ALWAYS
>happens in detention facilities.

Yep. Which is why I find it a bit hard to believe that "it's just a few bad apples," and as long as we make an example of the people in the pictures it will all be fixed. We need to make sure that whatever failure that allowed such a system to run without supervision gets fixed, too.

According to that liberal rag the Wall Street Journal, The ICRC reported abuses and shooting of unarmed prisoners to Bremmer and Sanchez months ago.

Where exactly DOES the buck stop nowadays?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[billvon 2,427]

>I think dishonorable discharges are enough for the enlisted folks.
> For the leadership there might be the need for some brig time.

Depends. One soldier killed an inmate; I don't know that a dishonorable discharge (which is what he received) is just. For the others I would tend to agree.

>It takes tremendous discipline to face that same enemy when he's
> naked and blindfolded and NOT say "You're not so tough now, are
> you! This one is for !"
> Whap!

Yep, but that's a cycle that has no end.

>As to the pictures, they are proof that the soldiers didn't think they
> were doing anything wrong, that, at least, there was valid
> rationalization for it. That's weird, huh? But I know it's true.

That _may_ be true; it may also have been that they were just good at rationalizing that the bad thing they were doing was OK due to X, Y and Z, or it may be that they knew it was bad but just acted anyway. The military has to rationalize doing some horrible things; indeed, much of their training is to ensure they act rather than think when ordered to do something. Which is a primary reason that a military prison needs oversight.

[Casurf1978 0]

There are more pics and videos, but according to some the public should not view them:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told congressional investigators that videos and "a lot more pictures" exist of the abuse of prisoners at the prison. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe."

I guess we really do need a "big brother" to tell us what is ok and not ok for us to see. Thank God for that.

[PhillyKev 0]

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Everybody is totally entitled to THEIR OPINION. In my first post in this thread, it is/was my opinion.

This was supposed to be opinion? Seemed like you were trying to state it as fact.

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They (Iraq) have been at the forefront of running terror in the Middle East for many, many years.

I was just pointing out that you are basing your opinions on incorrect "facts"

[Deuce 1]

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it may also have been that they were just good at rationalizing that the bad thing they were doing was OK due to X, Y and Z,

That's it. And it's endemic in our society. When I was growing up, there were a lot of After School Movies about how the kids of divorced parents acted out doing bad things, and criminal things and how it was not their fault because their parents split up. Later it was adult children of alcoholics and on and on.

The military is reflective of our society as a whole. I wonder, what would our generation do when forced to confront eating in a soup line, like our grandparents (US) did.

I enjoy your reflexive thinking, Bill.

[Beerlight 0]

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Everybody is totally entitled to THEIR OPINION. In my first post in this thread, it is/was my opinion.

This was supposed to be opinion? Seemed like you were trying to state it as fact.

Quote

They (Iraq) have been at the forefront of running terror in the Middle East for many, many years.

I was just pointing out that you are basing your opinions on incorrect "facts"

oh, ok.... Really though, I'm full of shit most days! Today, a little more than normal.......

[sburkart 0]

Normal people are capable of strange things.

11 years ago me and another Red Cross volunteer were making a delivery to a church/shelter during the Great Floods. A guy hopped off a fork lift, the forks of which were at about chest height (that's a no-no BTW), and walked over to the back of the truck he was unloading when we noticed the forklift start rolling downhill right at him (parking brake off- another no-no.).

Our shouting alerted him in time to get out of the way of the forks. which plowed into the back of the truck where he had been. The young guy I was with turned to me and said "I would have laughed my ass off if he had gotten impaled." Freakin kids...

I guess if blame is to be assigned in the Iraqi abuses you could point a finger at dumb youngsters. Every army ever uses them. They are as capable of laughing at scenes such as the above as they are of blowing themselves up in a resturant, or abusing prisoners.

Certainly the lack of oversight is a major factor (whatever happened to the notion of "cover your ass", anyway?) but that'll all come out in the wash.

[base283 0]

base283:
I am interested in your above statement. do you have any links to justify your statement?

Beerlight
Nope, no specific links. Maybe I can find it in the same links that said that Kuwait/US were "lateral drilling"
Fair.
"lateral drilling" ,reservoir, kuwait

http://www.tanganyikaoil.com/s/Syria.asp

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4093.htm

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/12-14-00.html

base283:
Ok, the world is still waiting for the WMD´s. where are they at? How could they show proof of WMD´s if they didn´t have them (the logic train says)?

Beerlight
Oh comeone now, do you really believe there were NO WMD's in Iraq?!! Seriously, he gassed how many Iranians and Kurds? I guess those weren't WMD"s?

base283:
3000 is my propagandized guess until I made this search http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/12-14-00.html
now I have no clue.

base283:
22.7m population/6.4bn world pop is equal to 0,03%
How does your math view this? How can this minority cause the downfall of the world?

Beerlight
Kinda like OBL can, eh? Takes very few freaks out there to change the course of something, don't you think? Method used against USS Cole?

base283:
not to diss the dead but 17 killed in suicide bombing. This method is a bit old. What did these suicidal killers change the course of? Do you really think that the Cole incident defines the “downfall”?

base283:
I am Asking questions and relating to the Propaganda That I Hear. I have no stance on anything,
So would it be too much to ask that you give me the propaganda spins to support your views?
I just spent an hour researching this theme, be fair and do the same.
I think that the internet is like the bible in the sense that one can transpose it to say what one wishes. I invite you and others to do it. so please don´t take ANYTHING that I quoted or linked to as my belief. I am just a small insignificant mouse caught between the rolling wheels of Propagandi trying to figure out wazzup.
take care,
space

[nigel99 144]

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Oh comeone now, do you really believe there were NO WMD's in Iraq?!! Seriously, he gassed how many Iranians and Kurds? I guess those weren't WMD"s?

Do your research - the chemical weapons that he did that with were supplied by the UK government and the distribution systems supplied by the US government. In addition to this I believe there is solid evidence to support the fact that the US including Rumsfeld himself continued to support Saddam after the kurdish attrocities.
Additionally about 4 years ago Powell made a statement with the Egyption's to the effect that "our policy on Iraq means that they are unable to continue their WMD programs". Finally Robin Cooks autobiography lists the fact that it was well known that the unaccounted chemical & anthrax stocks were something like 10 years past their effective use by date and that Iraq did not have the capabilities to regenerate the Anthrax the USA has the capabilities - the original supplier...

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[b1jercat 0]

Well there you have it, Rumsfeld had a hand in the former abuses and will probably take the hit for the latter abuses, George might even ask him to fall on the sword.

blues

jerry

[TheAnvil 0]

Right wing meda....FOX news hatred yet again. And Taranto as well. I fully see your position on FOX news COMMENTATORS as quoted here, but really can't see your WSJ jibe.

This whole incident is disgusting. I really have trouble giving the Muslim demonstrators abroad (and here) any credibility when they failed to demonstrate against atrocities far worse than humiliation at the same facilities by Hussein's henchman. It shows they don't really care about the atrocities themselves - just hating America and making her look bad by any means possible. (not to imply that these incidents don't show America in a poor light)

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[Gravitymaster 0]

And now a few words from the Left:

AN ARMY OF SCUM

Or, We're Looking For a Few Good Homosexual Rapists
NEW YORK--Now it's official: American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS. Like the Germans during World War II, they cordon off and bomb civilian villages to retaliate for guerilla attacks on their convoys. Like the blackshirts who terrorized Europe, America's victims disappear into hellish prisons ruled by sadists and murderers. The U.S. military is short just one item to achieve moral parity with the Nazis: gas chambers.

"Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees" by soldiers, freelance mercenaries and professional torturers under the command of CIA intelligence officers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, according to an internal government report. The detainees, about 60 percent of them assumed to be innocent by the Americans themselves, were routinely beaten, sodomized "with a chemical light or broomstick," urinated upon, tied to electrified wires and threatened with death, stripped and forced to perform homosexual sex acts on each other and U.S. troops. Don't be fooled by military apologists who insist that these American SS are nothing more than a few bad apples. Seymour Hersh, who has read the army's internal report, quotes Major General Antonio Taguba as saying that U.S.-committed atrocities are "systemic, endemic throughout the command structure...[The soldier-torturers] were being told what to do and told it was OK."

True, most soldiers probably don't condone torture. But all soldiers have been tarnished by it. George W. Bush's new gulag archipelago, a string of concentration camps, military and INS prisons that span the globe from North Carolina to Iraq to Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to New York City, has been designed to give torturers the veil of secrecy they require to carry out their hideous acts as well as the tacit understanding that they won't be held accountable. The Red Cross, defense lawyers and relatives of the victims, few of whom are charged with a crime, are denied access to the detainees or even the simple confirmation that they're being held by our government.

Some soldiers, like Sergeant Ivan Frederick II, "questioned some of the things I saw," such as "leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door." But when he discussed these abuses with his superiors, he says they brushed him off: "This is how military intelligence wants it done."

As proven by the classic psychological experiments of the '50s, people put in a position of total power over another human being find it hard to resist abusing their charges. Prison guards mistreat inmates for a simple reason: they can. Wherever one controls another, sadism is inevitable. However, this tragic truism can be mitigated by creating mechanisms to ensure transparency behind bars. Granting prisoners access to attorneys, journalists and other members of the outside world, unannounced inspections by human rights agencies, recognizing their rights under the Geneva Conventions and rigorous prosecutions of criminal guards can never entirely eliminate abuse, but they're essential to prisons run by democratic societies.

We know about Abu Ghraib only because the inbred psychos who forced nude Iraqi men to pile up in pyramids were dumb enough to snap photographs as mementos of their time liberating the nation from Saddam. It's like the Rodney King video: cops beat up blacks every day, but there usually isn't a camera around.

Abu Ghraib, you can bet your bottom dollar, is merely the tip of the iceberg. Our military is structurally corrupt. Beginning in Afghanistan during the weeks after 9/11, civilian command yielded to the amoral gangster mentality of the arrogant intelligence officers of Army Special Forces and the CIA, who stand accused of massacring thousands of captured Taliban prisoners yet have never faced a real investigation. The new tone of lawlessness comes all the way from the White House, directed by a commander-in-chief who starts illegal wars without justification, strips captured prisoners of their rights under the Geneva Convention and whose smirky fingers-crossed response to the prisoner abuse scandal--"I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated...Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people"--sends a wink and a nudge to our uniformed torturers. Keep it up, boys. Keep those broomsticks busy.

Even our coalition partners are getting the message. British soldiers running a coalition gulag in Basra reported smashing the jaw and teeth of an Iraqi accused of stealing, then dumping the broken body of the accused thief off the back of a moving truck. "They did not know whether he survived," writes The New York Times.

One more Iraqi, it seems, who won't be tossing roses at his liberators.

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right," out this week. Ordering information is available at amazon.com.)

COPYRIGHT 2004 TED RALL

[TheAnvil 0]

Please tell me nobody printed this...you MUST be joking, right?

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[kallend 1,647]

In ancient times, generals whose legions embarrassed the nation were expected to fall on their swords.

Donald "We know where they are" Rumsfeld should at least have the decency to resign.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Beerlight 0]

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In ancient times, generals whose legions embarrassed the nation were expected to fall on their swords.

Donald "We know where they are" Rumsfeld should at least have the decency to resign.

WAR is HELL and Rumsfeld should definitely NOT resign. It would only weaken the nation.

[chuckbrown 0]

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In ancient times, generals whose legions embarrassed the nation were expected to fall on their swords.

Donald "We know where they are" Rumsfeld should at least have the decency to resign.

Why should Rumsfeld resign? Because it was on his watch? Well then how about everybody in the chain of command below him? Should they all resign as well? I don't hear anybody calling for the resignation of the Secretary of Army or any undersecretaries. What about the commanding general of Central Command or even the commanding general of the forces in Iraq? They was certainly closer to the incident than Rumsfeld. Why isn't anyone asking for their heads? How about the chain of command above Rumsfeld? Should the President resign? Bush is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Doesn't the buck stop at the Oval Office? Why isn't anyone calling for him to resign?

Asking for Rumsfeld's resignation is nothing more than a politically opportunistic attack on the current administration hiding behind moral indignation. Those opposed to the Bush administration would do better off harping about the price of f***ing gasoline.

[Jimbo 0]

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Why should Rumsfeld resign? Because it was on his watch? Well then how about everybody in the chain of command below him? Should they all resign as well? I don't hear anybody calling for the resignation of the Secretary of Army or any undersecretaries. What about the commanding general of Central Command or even the commanding general of the forces in Iraq? They was certainly closer to the incident than Rumsfeld. Why isn't anyone asking for their heads? How about the chain of command above Rumsfeld? Should the President resign? Bush is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Doesn't the buck stop at the Oval Office? Why isn't anyone calling for him to resign?

How about the heads of state and military officers of those countries that went in there with us? Kallend, should they be included as well?

-
Jim

"Like" - The modern day comma
Good bye, my friends. You are missed.

[chuckbrown 0]

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According to that liberal rag the Wall Street Journal, The ICRC reported ... shooting of unarmed prisoners to Bremmer and Sanchez months ago.

Here's the Red Cross report:

http://online.wsj.com/documents/wsj-ICRC_report050904.pdf (someone else who's smarter than me can make it clicky)

Just so we all get a proper sense of perspective, the Red Cross reported "shooting of unarmed prisoners" during prison uprisings and escape attempts. Didn't want anyone to think that the Red Cross was reporting that the US was executing prisoners of war.

And in case anyone is getting the impression that the Red Cross was reporting abuses to the US and the US wasn't responding to these reports, take note of the date of the Red Cross report (February 2004). The US Army's criminal investigation of the prison abuses began in January 2004. Before the Red Cross report even came out.

[quade 3]

Army Times blames Rumsfeld

Story here

Army Times Editorial here

(so, um, yeah, I guess it's just a left wing conspiracy.)

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 2,427]

>WAR is HELL and Rumsfeld should definitely NOT resign. It would
> only weaken the nation.

So you believe that people who admit to war crimes should not be condemned for admitting that?

[billvon 2,427]

>Should they all resign as well?

No. You used the expression 'the buck stops here.' That means someone bears ultimate responsibility. If you believe in the meaning behind the saying, it means that one person is responsible - and the trick is deciding who.

>Doesn't the buck stop at the Oval Office?

It used to. But nowadays it's always someone else's fault. Bush isn't responsible for his misleading statements about Iraq's WMD's, it was bad intelligence. He wasn't responsible for not doing more to prevent 9/11, it was a vauge "failure to connect the dots" in the intelligence community.

So pick your own place as to where the buck stops - it's certainly not the oval office.

[chuckbrown 0]

I agree completely that someone bears responsibilty. Where I diverge in opinion is the notion that the supervisor of a mulitmillion person bureaucracy is responsible for knowing what goes on in a stink hole prison in Iraq. Should the commanders of the units directly involved be disciplined? Yes, and I believe the Army investigation is running its course, and I haven't heard anyone chirp about a cover up. Do I believe that Rumsfeld knew or should have known what was going on at Abu Gharib, and, therefore, be held accountable for the abuses? Based on the evidence, no. No one knew what was going on until a soldier complained and the Army CID launched an investigation.

Like I said, find another topic to vent against the Administration. This one's pretty weak.

[Beerlight 0]

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>WAR is HELL and Rumsfeld should definitely NOT resign. It would
> only weaken the nation.

So you believe that people who admit to war crimes should not be condemned for admitting that?

Bill, "when" the investigation is complete (the one that was ordered), and if found in violation of the rules of the Geneva Covention, only then is punishment due.

When the reservist and contractors responsible for guarding those prisoners have their day in court, and a verdict is rendered, then everybody can/cannot point fingers......not before.

A bunch of staged photos doesn't convince me that Iraqi war prisoners were tortured. sorry....i'll wait until it's official.

Buck

[nigel99 144]

Ultimately Rumsfeld, Bush & Blair bear the responsibility. It is a total mess and as an ex CIA director said the Bush administration has been dodging legal obligations since 9/11 it is logical that the troops will do as well.

I don't believe it was a "few bad apples" - people don't publish photo's & videos if they are a couple of renegades - it takes a culture of acceptability for people to blatantly admit to things...

The whole lot of them should go (Bush, Blair etc). They got us all into this mess - I am not saying we should pull out - its too late, the US/UK should have stayed within the UN framework. Then with credible leaders who the world can deal with on a more respectable footing maybe some sort of resolution can be found.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.