quote:And we currently can't say anything bad about America -- or even recommend a bit of soul searching -- without being blasted as unpatriotic or downright treasonous.
Can we PLEASE give this a rest. Considering the amount of criticism in this country for the war, I think it's no longer a credible charge, even if it ever was. Not that some people aren't using patriotism as a club in the ongoing debate. It's just that it's clearly not stifled dissent, anymore than those oh-so-eloquent "Bush is an idiot, anyone who supports him is either a dupe or a greedy person trying to protect his own piece of the pie" rants have quieted the other side.
I would remind you that there are those of us who support The US efforts in Iraq and, in spite of the mistakes that were and will be made there, think it was the right and appropriate thing to do, and who are most decidedly not bigoted and ignorant and, quite frankly, I would appreciate it if you would take those implications back.
I would LOVE to.
But my roommate actually used the line "kicking arab ass" exactly, and we've even had people here, albiet not the most intelligent people here, say very similar things. Two people in particular come to mind. Out of the people who are support Bush I know, maybe 20% of them do it because he is killing Arabs. No exageration, no lie. The plain and painful truth.
Obviously its not 20% of the supporters on hatrack, maybe more like 0.1%. We are spoiled here on hatrack however. Its a running joke that we are smarter here on hatrack then the average person, and its funny because its true.
Smart people very rarely get glimpses into the mind of the average idiot, because they surround themselves by smart people like themselves. This is magnified even more on this forum.
Now certainly there are honest intelligent people who support this war still. I bet you dollars to donuts that at least 90% of them are republicans, or Bush supporters in general. Not because of the war, but because of a social or domestic issue. That he cut their taxes for one.
Now I never said that the groups I named were the only groups of supporters, I just said that they were a large proportion of them.
There are obviously some supporters who are not stupid or bigoted and don't think that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 (my roommates line when pressed "He had to have had SOMETHING to do with it."). And out of those people, there are perhaps a handful that would have supported this war under Clinton, or someone else who was not a conservative.
Perhaps the only person off the top of my head who fits this scenario is aka (though I am not 100% sure she supports the war), but I am sure there is maybe one or two more on hatrack.
And before you say that I would have supported it with Clinton and not Bush, perhaps you will remember I supported the war on this very forum a year and some change ago. I argued to my friend Tom that it was necessary because Saddam had WMDs. I trusted Colin Powell. I stopped supported the war when I found out I had been decieved. I lost so much of my trust in my government, something that a lot of young people do at some point. I lost my idealism.
I would have done the exact same thing if it was Clinton, except that he wouldn't have done that. (One lied about getting a blow job and got impeached, the other lies about reasons to start a war killing thousands and gets nothing. If you cannot differentiate the two, don't argue that point, go do the human race a favor and remove yourself from the gene pool)
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I support the war in Iraq, and the continued effort to bring democracy to that country.
Torture and abuse of prisoners is obviously wrong and sickening and has to stop. Because this is America, we will see that it stops. These people will be prosecuted. If we were a dictatorship, we couldn't even talk about this. We would never have heard about it. The strength of America resides in just this sort of thing. Openness, honesty, rule of law.
I just listen to the people who were there, who have been there, during Saddam Hussein's regime, during the war, and now afterward. For instance, John Burns of the New York Times. Everyone who loves Iraq is glad Saddam Hussein and his sons are gone. Everyone who has been there fighting the huge problems that exist, wants to go back.
There are orcs on both sides of every war. They were on both sides of WW1 and WW2 as well. I'm just now reading Tolkien's letters to Christopher about that. He was involved in fighting both. War sucks, for many reasons, including the opportunities it affords for abuses like this. Rooting out this sort of thing and eliminating it is as much a part of the battle as any other.
Someone very wise once said to me that we aren't totally the good guys, you have to give up that idea, but we're still a whole lot better than the bad guys. I'm so glad this story broke, because it means we are that much further along in the battle.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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Well, Dag, Xav is just echoing another old American project - except when the State engaged in its experiment in controlling breeding, it was class-based, rather than selecting according to ideological beliefs.
There are three heroes we should all be thankful to --
1. The MP who reported the abuse to authorities (apparently the only one).
2. The individual, presumably in the military, who made sure the photos got out so that keeping the abuses secret would not be an option.
3. The individual, also presumably in the military, who released the internal investigative report on prison abuses to journalist Seymour Hersh, making sure the public knew how long the military has known about this, what they've found, and making sure it gets to be public - as it should be.
Today, on Hardball, Rumsfeld says he hasn't seen the report yet.
Why do I have a hard time believing that? Rumsfeld's strikes me as the type who would have demanded to see a copy as soon as he heard about it just so he could figure out how to do damage control.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I think I'm more upset if he's telling the truth. You're the Secretary of Defense, and you haven't read this report yet? I'd think you'd free up an hour or two to take a look at the thing.
Has the MP been identified? How much do we know about how long he was there, etc.? Part of me would like to think we could have owned up to this and faced it without having the pictures be released, but I guess that's unlikely, eh?
It's not inconceivable that Rumsfeld hasn't seen the report yet. There's a certain chain-of-command and set of procedures for things to go through in the military, and while it's no doubt working its way to him, sometimes that does take a bit of time. Especially where the Army is concerned.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Rumsfeld is perfectly capable and willing to streamline those chains when it's something he needs.
My comment isn't based on seeing Rumsfeld as a stupid guy. I disagree with a lot about him, but he's very sharp. Given the extreme seriousness of this and the potential for added disaster to our relations in and outside of Iraq, it really is almost unbelievable he isn't being briefed on this - the report has been out for awhile and the investigation has been going on for months.
And it's within the department he has the most personal responsibility for.
Edit to add: One of the stories I read indicated that CBS agreed to delay airing of the story about abuse with the photos for a few weeks - I forget the exact reason. Knowing this was coming, I would expect Rumsfeld and others in the administration to be getting as much information as possible on the situation, if they hadn't been fully briefed already.
Chains of command and procedures are most rigid at the bottom - they get more flexible as you go higher up the chain of power, at least in matters like these.
Let's just jump to where this is eventually going to go and get it out of the way--what did Bush know and when did he know it?
Answer 1: (Usable in any situation which might reflect badly on someone)We can't possibly know what's going on. Who are we to make decisions about the war when we're not even there. And anyways, these things happen in war. You're all just obviously Bush h8ters out to undermine the country. Semper Fi!
Answer 2: Bush knew about the problems in the military prisons a long time a go. He authorized further torture and abuse because he hates Iraqis, liberty, and most of all, your dog. Party on, dude!
/snarky pessimism off
Sigh. We so need some kind of independent, investigative body that everyone trusts.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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So it's more like an Eiffel Tower of command? (I am not being facetious. I tend to have to put a visual image to things)
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Perhaps Rumsfeld is showing respect for the commanders under him by not "streamlining" ie short-circuiting the way things are supposed to work. By doing so, he's expressing confidence in the military's ability to handle the situation. Chain-of-command and the actions of those at both ends is a bit more important, especially during crises, than most people realize.
By not streamlining the process, he allows things to be done correctly, legally, so that the rights of all concerned are upheld.
If he were to skip the chain, it would imply that the current commanders are not capable of handling the situation. By trusting those below him and waiting for them to do their jobs, he's supporting the military justice system.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Also, the idea that Rumsfeld hasn't seen these reports is ludicrous in about a million different ways. Did he hear about them and just not care, or did whoever handle the reports not think they mattered enough to hot foot it over to him? Really, enquiring minds want to know.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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I'd guess I'd have to ask what you, and the reporter (since I didn't see the article about when/where the question was asked)means by "reports"?
Official investigation reports or just media reports of the incident. If he hasn't seen media reports, then, yes, that's irresponsible at best and probably a lie at worst. But if it's the official report done by the Army, I'd stand by what I said above.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2002
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When I worked with the Navy, we got requests for preliminary unfinished reports from Congress, the White House, and every level of the Secretary-level bureacracy on matters a lot less important than this. Rumsfield is lying, or sndrakes concern about how seriously we're taking this is well-placed.
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I supported this war all along. Maybe it could have been done later, but I don't think that politically there would have been enough support to do so at a different time. I never thought that there were weapons of mass destruction, they are irrelevant to the purpose of this war; to remove a sadistic and cruel dictator from power. I'm glad we succeeded, and even after hearing this, I'm not sorry we went to war.
However, this incident has completely ruined any American credibility. We can not stay in Iraq. It would be futile and counter-productive. Even if we support an interim government that government will fail, because anything associated with America will now be associated with these images in the minds of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people will not see these soldiers as individual abberrations, they will see them reflected in the face of every person in uniform.
On top of that we've placed our own troop in an untenable situation. They are peace-keepers in a war zone. The resulting American-Iraqi fighting will grow bloodier and the dead will become more innocent as Iraq unifies against a common enemy; America. We've succeeded. We've deposed Saddam and opened the way for a new, fair government.
These recent events show that our military is not capable of providing a secure environment for that democracy to grow, and furthermore, our presence there will incite violence in remembrance of these events. Remember how Iraqi's toppled the statue of Saddam when he was deposed? That's how they will now react towards Americans.
We can't just abandon Iraq after throwing it into chaos. So we have a couple of options. We hand over control to the interim government and slowly phase out the Americans there, or we give the whole mess to the UN, apologize abjectly, and send lots of money, of course withdrawing every last American soldier from Iraq.
I like Bush as a president for a good many reasons, and I think he's done a good job. I don't think that he deserves any more culpability for the torture of Iraqis than you or I, unless proof can be given that he directly ordered this. I'll even argue that any negligence on his part (outside of actually seeing this abuse and not stopping it), while condemnable, is not a direct enough cause for him to be blamed.
No decent human being expects another human being to behave this way. Unfortunately, it does happen, but no one other than the depraved individuals involved are responsible for it. Not even Bush.
But our troops are no longer capable of doing anything worthwhile in Iraq. We need to bow out now, and however much I like Bush and his presidency, I will vote for whomever will promise me that we'll be out of Iraq by this time next year. There is simply no other option. We cannot rebuild trust of this kind. It's gone, and we need to go with it.
Posts: 349 | Registered: May 2003
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That is my feeling, too. The problem is this--if we leave, I believe there will be a bloodbath. Almost certainly a civil war. Possibly a war with Iran since there is no Iraqi army to speak of right now.
So, it is my belief that we cannot leave. That we are just going to have to do whatever it takes to regain the trust of the Iraqi people. I think turning the soldiers who commited those atrocities over to the Iraqi justice system at the same time we turn over Hussein might be a good place to start. There's precedent for it in the form of the US marines in Japan who raped that 11 year old girl, and I think it might help.
quote: Those Pictures... The pictures are horrific. I felt a multitude of things as I saw them... the most prominent feeling was rage, of course. I had this incredible desire to break something- like that would make things somehow better or ease the anger and humiliation. We’ve been hearing terrible stories about Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad for a while now, but those pictures somehow spoke like no words could.
Seeing those naked, helpless, hooded men was like being slapped in the face with an ice cold hand. I felt ashamed looking at them- like I was seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing and all I could think was, “I might know one of those faceless men...” I might have passed him in the street or worked with him. I might have bought groceries from one of them or sat through a lecture they gave in college... any of them might be a teacher, gas station attendant or engineer... any one of them might be a father or grandfather... each and every one of them is a son and possibly a brother. And people wonder at what happened in Falloojeh a few weeks ago when those Americans were killed and dragged through the streets...
All anyone can talk about today are those pictures... those terrible pictures. There is so much rage and frustration. I know the dozens of emails I’m going to get claiming that this is an ‘isolated incident’ and that they are ‘ashamed of the people who did this’ but does it matter? What about those people in Abu Ghraib? What about their families and the lives that have been forever damaged by the experience in Abu Ghraib? I know the messages that I’m going to get- the ones that say, “But this happened under Saddam...” Like somehow, that makes what happens now OK... like whatever was suffered in the past should make any mass graves, detentions and torture only minor inconveniences now. I keep thinking of M. and how she was 'lucky' indeed. And you know what? You won't hear half of the atrocities and stories because Iraqis are proud, indignant people and sexual abuse is not a subject anyone is willing to come forward with. The atrocities in Abu Ghraib and other places will be hidden away and buried under all the other dirt the occupation brought with it...
It’s beyond depressing and humiliating... my blood boils at the thought of what must be happening to the female prisoners. To see those smiling soldiers with the Iraqi prisoners is horrible. I hope they are made to suffer... somehow I know they won’t be punished. They’ll be discharged from the army, at best, and made to go back home and join families and cronies who will drink to the pictures and the way “America’s finest” treated those “Dumb I-raki terrorists”. That horrible excuse of a human, Janis Karpinski, will then write a book about how her father molested her as a child and her mother drank herself into an early death- that’s why she did what she did in Abu Ghraib. It makes me sick.
Where is the Governing Council? Where are they hiding now?
I want something done about it and I want it done publicly. I want those horrible soldiers who were responsible for this to be publicly punished and humiliated. I want them to be condemned and identified as the horrible people they are. I want their children and their children’s children to carry on the story of what was done for a long time- as long as those prisoners will carry along with them the humiliation and pain of what was done and as long as the memory of those pictures remains in Iraqi hearts and minds...
Another post which shows clearly (to me) why we shouldn't leave
quote: Remember the days when every time you hear an Iraqi talk on TV you had to remember that they are talking with a Mukhabarat minder looking at them noting every word? We are back to that place.
You have to be careful about what you say about al-Sadir. Their hands reach every where and you don't want to be on their shit list. Every body, even the GC is very careful how they formulate their sentences and how they describe Sadir's Militias. They are thugs, thugs thugs. There you have it.
I was listening to a representative of al-sadir on TV saying that the officers at police stations come to offer their help and swear allegiance. Habibi, if they don't they will get killed and their police station "liberated". Have we forgotten the threat al-Sadir issued that Iraqi security forces should not attack their revolutionary brothers, or they will have to suffer the consequences.
Dear US administration, Welcome to the next level. Please don't act surprised and what sort of timing is that: planning to go on a huge attack on the west of Iraq and provoking a group you know very well (I pray to god you knew) that they are trouble makers.
Oh and before I forget.........Help please.
I have to confess that I am really angry at this administration right now. There have been many, many reports from many different sources about how the military was not given adequate manpower and training to occupy Iraq, how other offers of help from third party sources for food and water, etc, were turned away for various reasons.
If we leave and Iraq collapses and/or it returns to a dictatorship, then I think everything we have done will have been for nothing. Zero. Nada.
I hope and pray that somehow we can pull our collective asses out of the fire with this one.
I'm so depressed and angry about this. If anyone comes across any links that have any kind of positive news about Iraq, please do feel free to post it, not to erase what has happened, but just to give me some kind of indication we aren't going to lose the country to the wolves. You don't have to post it now, but if anyone sees anything positive, slap it in here or make a new thread about it.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Regardless of whether or not Bush should be blamed for this, America is now less safe because of the war in Iraq. Americans, military and civilians alike, will pay for this with their lives.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: May 2000
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I honestly didn't think that the Army allowed "preliminary, unfinished" reports to be released to anybody, but I guess you learn something new every day.
Posts: 471 | Registered: Jul 2002
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The title for the thread still applies, I'm afraid. Big news today is that - we can all feel relieved - 7 soldiers have been "reprimanded."
The military and government reps are contradicting themselves - on the one hand, they're saying they're confident they've got a handle on the extent of the problem, but the investigation - including the death of someone during interrogation - is still ongoing.
There are almost too many stories to link to - but I'm glad that more and more are coming from American news sources.
The LA Times (registration required) has excerpts from the report described in The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh.
quote:In general, U.S. civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc….), third-country nationals and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib. During our on-site inspection, they wandered about with too much unsupervised free access in the detainee area…. Several interviewees insisted that the MP and MI Soldiers at Abu Ghraib received regular training on the basics of detainee operations; however, they have been unable to produce any verifying documentation, sign-in rosters or soldiers who can recall the content of this training.
The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by other government agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib called these detainees "ghost detainees." On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of "ghost detainees" (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine and in violation of international law….
The news is beginning to fill up with interviews on ex-inmates of the prison, increasing calls for independent investigations (including by the Iraqi coalition govt), and reports that there were many complaints of abuse going back many months which were dismissed by the U.S. as "politically motivated."
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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The reprimands are not aimed at anyone suspected of carrying out abuses - they are for failure to supervise correctly. Nor is there any hint that this is the extent of punishments to be meted out.
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All I can say is that I knew we should have gone UN from the start, and said as much. My position hasn't really changed, except that I hope no one else goes through needless suffering on either side. I hope this idiocy is curtailed/ended ASAP, and that includes the various kidnappings.
No, we can't pull out; at best, with a UN coalition, we can cycle out some a decent percentage of our troops. That's what I hope for.
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Now there's accusations that Bremer knew about the problems as early as last November, and yet failed to act. Here's what the recently-reisgned Iraqi human rights minister had to say:
quote: "In November I talked to Mr Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security prisoners, but I failed," Turki told AFP on Monday.
"I told him the news. He didn't take care about the information I gave him."
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I feel I can express support of our troops without endorsing the actions of each individual. Or if it is the case that our system encourages this sort of thing, I am appalled because of my love for our country and gratitude to the military.
But I don't think the perpetrators will be punished based on the larger picture of making Americans more hated. Ironically, it was before this story broke that I heard an Egyptian quoted as saying Americans have never been more hated.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:The reprimands are not aimed at anyone suspected of carrying out abuses - they are for failure to supervise correctly. Nor is there any hint that this is the extent of punishments to be meted out.
Dag,
You're right. It's just that I'm as sickened by this today as I was on day one. I haven't been heartened by the administration's response so far, which I would term "underwhelming."
Cynicism is easy for me. I lived through the Viet Nam era and sincerely hope we handle this one with more integrity than Nixon handled the My Lai Massacre.
Excerpts:
quote:Two tragedies took place in 1968 in Viet Nam. One was the massacre by United States soldiers of as many as 500 unarmed civilians-- old men, women, children-- in My Lai on the morning of March 16. The other was the cover-up of that massacre.
quote:Meanwhile, the rampage below continued. Calley was at the drainage ditch on the eastern edge of the village, where about seventy to eighty old men, women, and children not killed on the spot had been brought. Calley ordered the dozen or so platoon members there to push the people into the ditch, and three or four GIs did. Calley ordered his men to shoot into the ditch. Some refused, others obeyed. One who followed Calley's order was Paul Meadlo, who estimated that he killed about twenty-five civilians. (Later Meadlo was seen, head in hands, crying.) Calley joined in the massacre. At one point, a two-year-old child who somehow survived the gunfire began running towards the hamlet. Calley grabbed the child, threw him back in the ditch, then shot him.
quote:The strongest government case was that against Lt. William Calley. On November 12, 1970, in a small courthouse in Fort Benning, Georgia, young Prosecutor Aubrey Daniel stood to deliver his opening statement: "I want you to know My Lai 4. I will try to put you there." Captain Daniel told the jury of six military officers the shocking story of Calley's role in My Lai's tragedy: his machine-gunning of people in the plaza area south of the hamlet; his orders to men to execute men, women, and children in the eastern drainage ditch; his butt-stroking with his rifle of an old man; his grabbing of a small child and his throwing of the child into the ditch, then shooting him at point-blank range. Daniel told the jury that at the close of evidence he would ask them to "in the name of justice" convict the accused of all charges.
The Conclusion:
quote:After thirteen days of deliberations, the longest in U. S. court-martial history, the jury returned its verdict: guilty of premeditated murder on all specifications. After hearing pleas on the issue of punishment, jury head Colonel Clifford Ford pronounced Calley's sentence: "To be confined at hard labor for the length of your natural life; to be dismissed from the service; to forfeit all pay and allowances."
IV.
Opinion polls showed that the public overwhelmingly disapproved of the verdict in the Calley case [OPINION POLLS]. President Nixon ordered Calley removed from the stockade and placed under house arrest. He announced that he would review the whole decision. Nixon's action prompted Aubrey Daniel to write a long and angry letter in which he told the President that "the greatest tragedy of all will be if political expediency dictates the compromise of such a fundamental moral principle as the inherent unlawfulness of the murder of innocent persons" [AUBREY LETTER]. On November 9, 1974, the Secretary of the Army announced that William Calley would be paroled. In 1976, Calley married. He now works in the jewelry store of his father-in-law in Columbus, Georgia.
The bright side is that it looks like we've improved enough as a society that there is little evidence of sympathy for the alleged perpetrators of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. For reasons that still bewilder me, Nixon found the pardon of Calley to be a politically safe thing to do at the time. Worse, he was right. The action didn't hurt him with his supporters at all.
Maybe it's that we've grown - or maybe it's just the photos.
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quote:But I don't think the perpetrators will be punished based on the larger picture of making Americans more hated. Ironically, it was before this story broke that I heard an Egyptian quoted as saying Americans have never been more hated.
Actually, I believe it was America (not Americans) that he said was more hated than ever, if that makes any difference. Not that we should be surprised at all by that hatred, given Bush's policies towards the rest of the world. Very little of this is all that unforseeable.
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I am actually pretty encouraged by the reactions, both official and public, to these abuses. First, I think the deplorable side of human nature makes such things nearly unavoidable in war. Second, I think that most nations, both past and present, that discovered such goings-on in their military wouldn't have felt like it was such a big deal. I definitely believe that our current enemies would have seen no problem if they found out their own forces were doing such things to U.S. soldiers, and in fact would have cheered.
But in the U.S. (and in some other countries too, thank goodness), we see it happening and are disgusted, and outraged. We vilify those responsible, and criticize our leaders for not taking steps to prevent it, or not taking the swift and decisive action we believe necessary in response. As a result, changes are made and grievances are addressed. And at the same time, our collective values and views on right and wrong are aired out and reinforced in all our citizens, especially the young.
The things we do are important, but the way we feel about the things we do is even more important. The near-universal reaction to this by the U.S. citizenry shows we are on the right track.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Torture and abuse of prisoners is obviously wrong and sickening and has to stop. Because this is America, we will see that it stops. These people will be prosecuted.
This is what I don't understand: Since when should we be so proud off the way that we officiate prisons in the United States, and we have many distinct advantages in the United States that should safeguard the dignity of prisoners. But no, abuses are still staggering. These aren't aberrant events, they merely fall in the realm of what many consider an acceptable level of atrocity. This is the Rodney King beating on a global scale, and I don't know if anybody remembers those riots, but blacks in Los Angeles had fewer legitimate claims about the oppressing powers the Iraqies do now. I'm just confused about when we started believing that our prison system is competent. Of course I'm not surprised. Of course, I don't think that it will get substantially better. The American capacity to learn from our mistakes is so far outstripped by our righteousness and ability to reason away our actions. *shakes head* The Pentagon isn't going to attack this with even a fraction of the tenacity with which the FBI sought out to kill Tim McVeigh. Nobody is going to root out this evil at the core. We will just brush off the dirt and eat the damn apple anyway.
I don't want to hear that it "had to happen." These acts didn't have to happen. This could have been avoided if we had substituted thought and care for energy and hubris. The behavior of the guards in the prision is 100 percent the President's fault and perfectly forseeable. Yes, I said 100 percent the President's fault. Since he didn't surround himself with the caliber of staff who would have thought of the reasonable possibility-- or heaven forbid have the idea himself-- that such human rights abuses were probable, then he is negligent. _________
We used to hear about Arafat going after one of the terrorist leaders and arresting them to ward off any Israeli retaliation. We all considered Arafat half-assed and sympathetic to the terrorists because he didn't do anything systemic to stop the spawn of new terrorists. I don't know what makes Bush any less so.
quote:
Terrorism-
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
I don't know to what extent that the White House's threat of Iraqi force was unlawful, that's still being decided, but the White House sure tried to intimidate or coerce the American people for ideological and political reasons. When Condoleezza Rice says that we need to go into Iraq or else there is going to be a mushroom cloud where New York used to be, I consider that a threat.
posted
"The behavior of the guards in the prision is 100 percent the President's fault and perfectly forseeable. Yes, I said 100 percent the President's fault. That he didn't surround himself with the caliber of staff who would have thought of the credible possibility--"
You've got to be kidding me? Until the President personally selects every person in uniform for our armed services, this statement is completely ridiculous. Statements like this just demonstrate the blind and often unjust malevelent attitudes that have been fostered against G.W.
Though it is obvious that I personally like him, I have to say that there are plenty of valid critiques to make about him and the administration without this kind of stupidity.
Posts: 181 | Registered: Jan 2004
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This is NOT 100% the President's fault for allowing it. He may be in some part to blame, since he did unilaterally choose to fight this war, and since I think it should be clear that this sort of thing was a possibility when he did so, but that's a far cry from being totally responsible. He didn't MAKE the soldiers do what they did. I'm certain is was mostly their initiative, so most of the blame really should be on them.
I mean, you might as well say the American people are 100% to blame. After all, we elected the leadership who started the war in which this all happened. But I don't think it would be fair to lay blame like that on all of us, any more so than it would be fair to lay all the blame on Bush.
I blame Bush for his political decisions. I don't think we can blame him for the initiatives of his men. Not 100%.
posted
I agree, Xap. But he will be responsible for the adequacy of the response. The response must deal with the people who actually commited the abuse, the people who allowed it to happen, and the system that failed to prevent it.
posted
This was a reasonably forseeable consequence. Before the war began, there were questions about soldier's qualifications concerning anything besides making war. The suspicious and specious training of the troops has come up again and again, the consequences of the soldier's actions outside the battlefield where always just lopped off in the "price of war." We sent Achilles into war and then are upset that he misbehaves during the offtime. No, this was forseeable, and the President should be held accountable.
I completely agree with you. You have summed up my feelings while I have been reading this thread. I concur!
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I agree with Irami, as far as the parallels between the pows and our prison system go.
And by the way, in case anyone doesn't know, or didn't get it from the link within the link I posted, many of the people in Iraqi prisons are there simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time; because someone lied about them to the coalition; because the coalition has been VERY persistent in finding answers from people as to where Saddam and his henchmen were. Don't for a second think that all the people in those photos were in that prison because they had some kind of fair trial and were found guilty.
I say this, yet at the same time, would it have been possible for the coalition to go more slowly and be more conscientious as to the 'rights' of the Iraqis? I don't know.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
We have known as a country that America's choices in this war have been under heavy international scrutiny. We have known also that America has been portrayed as a source of evil and hypocrisy and corrupt power throughout the middle east for decades. It should have been obvious that we have a moral and political imperitive to be on our absolutely best behaviour when it comes to dealing with the Iraqi people whether or not they are "prisoners of war". This is doubly so when the prisoners' guilt is still questionable.
If only for the political expediency of it, Bush should have enough sense to know that punishing the "bottom-line" perpetrators of these crimes isn't going to cut it. There should be serious and career-ending consequences right up the chain of command. No commander in charge of such a facility should have the excuse that he was unaware of what was going on in his very command. And Bush himself is clueless when he can speak (as he did last night) of our Iraqi occupation having closed the torture chambers of Saddam's prisons when those very same prisons have become torture chambers under his own rule.
posted
According to latest news reports, the private corporations involved in prisoner interrogations still haven't been contacted by the military or other government representatives about allegations of abuse.
But guess what? It might not matter if private contractors are involved - they might fall outside the paramaters for being held accountable.
Part of that is because the "privatization" of this war really is unprecedented - at least when it comes to matters such as handling prisoners, interrogations and other intelligence. Above the law, but beneath human decency - by P.W. Singer
quote:That private contractors are interrogators in U.S. prison camps in Iraq should be stunning enough. This is incredibly sensitive work and takes our experiment with the boundaries of military outsourcing to levels never anticipated. But even more outrageous is the fact that gaps in the law may have given them a free pass so that it could be impossible to prosecute them for alleged criminal behavior.
Most people by now know that in an attempt to fill the gap between the demand for professional forces and the limited number deployed by the Pentagon, an array of traditional military and intelligence roles have been outsourced in Iraq, all without public discussion or debate. There are 15,000 to 20,000 private military contractors operating in Iraq, outsourcing critical military roles from logistics and local army training to guarding installations and convoys. This outsourcing to private companies represents a sea change in the way we fight a war.
However, until the last few days, not many Americans were aware that private firms were also providing interrogators and translators in the prisons. According to recent reports, the Army's investigation on the abuses committed at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad in November and December named Virginia-based CACI International Inc. and San Diego-based Titan Corp. Titan, however, denies having contracts that involve working with prisoners.
The Army investigation discovered such depraved behavior as making prisoners perform simulated sex acts and form naked human pyramids and putting "glow sticks" in bodily orifices. The perpetrators even took more than 60 photographs, including one showing an Iraqi prisoner standing on a box with his head covered and wires attached to his hands and genitals. He was told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. One civilian contractor was even accused of raping a male juvenile prisoner.
The Army has responded swiftly and correctly, at least with regard to its soldiers. Seventeen soldiers were relieved of duty and six face court-martial. As Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit said: "We're appalled... they wear the same uniform as us, and they let their fellow soldiers down... . These acts that you see in these pictures may reflect the actions of individuals, but, by God, it doesn't reflect my Army."
But although the military has established structures to investigate, prosecute and punish soldiers who commit crimes, the legal status of contractors in war zones is murky. Soldiers are accountable to the military code of justice wherever they are, but contractors are civilians - not formally part of the military and not part of the chain of command. They cannot be court-martialed.
Normally, an individual's crimes would then fall under the local nation's laws. But, of course, there are few established Iraqi legal institutions - that is why we are running prisons in Iraq in the first place - and, besides, coalition regulations explicitly state that contractors don't fall under their scope.
In turn, because the acts were committed abroad, and also reportedly involve some contractors who are not U.S. citizens, the application of U.S. domestic law in an extraterritorial setting is unclear and has never been tested. This appears to leave an incredible vacuum.
So far, none of the contractors involved have been criminally prosecuted. As for the contractor accused of raping a prisoner in his mid-teens, Central Command spokesperson Col. Jill Morgenthaler told the British newspaper the Guardian: "We had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him." It is clear that our policies on military contractors must be updated.
The timeline I picked up from the news states that the Military guards were all trained MP's, but not trained guards. They sought supervision from their superiors, but the civilian "interrogators" wanted the superiors to keep away from their interrogations. Why? Because what they didn't know they couldn't be court martialled for.
The Superiors assumed that the Civilians would give the gaurds guidelines on what to do. The Civilians assumed the military would give them guidlines.
The result, bored tired scared soldiers totally unsupervised, with just the weakest of directions, but the civilian contractors, to "keep the pressure on them" were left on their own.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Just heard my first honestly stomach-turning commentary from an elected official on all of this. Hardball had Senator Inhofe from Oklahoma (member of the armed services committee) on his show.
He said things along the lines of if he'd been one of those prisoners in the photos the thing he would have been thinking is how grateful he was he wasn't being dealt with by Saddam Hussein's goons (who obviously did much worse stuff).
He also implied that it may have been justified as a technique to gather intelligence to save American lives.
posted
I was thinking of posting something related to that previous post, but I don't want anyone to think I agree with that idiot of a senator.
The abuse of those prisoners was wrong. The actions of those people was wrong. It is all so far below what we believe is acceptable that everyone agrees that it is terrible.
Yet it is still 10,000 better than the treatment of prisoners under Sadaam Hussein.
Where our soldiers, at their worst, humiliated captives by laughing at their naked bodies. Hussein and his sons humiliated their families by laughing at their mutilated naked corpses.
Our soldiers are being disiplined for threatening to use electric shock. Their careers are over. Hussein's soldiers were promoted for abusing electric shock. Their careers were made on the bodies of other muslims.
These fools using our name had a reign that lasted a few months. Husseins reign of terror lasted decades.
What happened in our name must not happen again. Those who are guilty need to be punished.
But we must insist that the world remember what we replaced. The tragedy they see in photos in their newspapers are nothing compared to the tragedies videotaped in Hussein's torture chambers.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Thank you Dan. We need to keep reminding ourselves and the muslim world of this. People will be prosecuted, not promoted over these abuses.
Posts: 1034 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer first heard of allegations that troops were mistreating Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison in January, a spokesman said Friday. The Red Cross claimed it had been warning of prisoner abuse throughout Iraq since the very beginning of the U.S.-led invasion.
In mid-January, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, announced an investigation into allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at a coalition detention facility in Iraq - prompted by complaints of a U.S. guard at Abu Ghraib who told his superiors he could not tolerate abuses he had witnessed.
The international Red Cross, meanwhile, said Friday it had warned U.S. officials of abuse of prisoners in Iraq more than a year ago, shortly after the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion.
It continued giving verbal and written reports through to November, including detailed allegations of mistreatment at Abu Ghraib.
Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the abuse represented more than isolated acts, and the problems were not limited to the Abu Ghraib prison.
"We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system," he told a news conference in Geneva.
He confirmed that a leaked ICRC report to U.S. authorities, published Friday by the Wall Street Journal, was genuine.
The newspaper said that the 24-page report described prisoners kept naked in total darkness in empty cells at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and male prisoners forced to parade around in women's underwear. Coalition forces also fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers, killing some of them.
This seems far too specific and extensive with specific sources and details to be fabricated. This is pretty ridicuolous to have allowed this kind of treatment to go on since our entry into Iraq.
Just something to caution about before you reply: Please, if you want to discuss this refrain from making generic statements of how the Red Cross is merely anti-American and therefore not credible, that's not a valid argument in this documented, specific, and long-standing case.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Nov 2003
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The main losers in all this will be the Iraqi people. I don't really like Bush, but what he said the other day is very true: The enemies of America will use these unfortunate images to remind people of their dislike for America.
Already they are being shown again and again and again on the Arab networks...
And, even as a lover of Truth and offerings to Apollo, have to question the wisdom of our media leaking this. If the American mission in Iraq is sabotaged it will mean mass death and virtual enslavement for it's people. Already the thugs and warlords are trying to carve out their own little mini-kingdoms using the Iraqi people's ignorance and paranoia against them.
I guess my thought that maybe the media could or should have keep it quiet is moot...they would have come out eventually anyway I guess.
But what is more important? Truth that may speed the failure of the mission and the death/enslavement of the Iraqi people? Or silence that may help the mission?
I don't know... both choices seem bad. But I guess the final analysis being loyal to the truth must be done. Gods what a mess. I'm glad that Bush took a hand in this personally to apologize.
A little factoid, my uncle who is a colonel in the military said that the general in charge of the investigation is a good friend of his and very cool. We can trust that whatever he finds will be the truth, embarrasing though it may be. Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Thank you Dan. We need to keep reminding ourselves and the muslim world of this. People will be prosecuted, not promoted over these abuses.
The U.S. record on this won't really assure anyone outside of our country.
The My Lai massacre was only brought to light because of the efforts of a journalist. The massacre involved the slaughter of over a hundred civilians. In some cases, children were chased down, thrown into a pit and shot.
The outcome?
One person and one person only faced criminal charges. When he was convicted, he was released from the stockade after a short time, put on house arrest for a brief period and then given a full pardon. This was Lieutenant Calley, who led the massacre. None of his men or his superiors faced criminal charges.
It's not like we have a record we can point to of dealing with these matters in an honest, open and just manner.
Edit to add: a helicopter crew came upon the slaughter. The commander of the crew had the craft put down between the soldiers and villagers, and ordered his men to fire on any soldiers who continued to fire on villagers. They called in additional rescue.
It took our government 30 years to award the helicopter crew medals for their actions.
posted
Just an additional note - please read the really disturbing analyses on the role of private contractors in interrogations. Due to the failure of the administration to adapt the contracts of these private individuals, there may be no feasible way to prosecute any private contractor involved in abuse, regardless of the degree of culpability.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:A little factoid, my uncle who is a colonel in the military said that the general in charge of the investigation is a good friend of his and very cool. We can trust that whatever he finds will be the truth, embarrasing though it may be.
Telperion,
If you're referring to Taguba, the assessment of your uncle agrees with the impression I've formed over the past couple weeks.
Thing is, according to at least one report I read last week, top brass is reported to be pretty unhappy with Sanchez for suggesting and making a case for systemic abuses. I don't think that's what they had in mind when the investigation was ordered.
quote:"We don't tolerate these type of abuses," Bush told Al-Arabiya television, a satellite channel based in the United Arab Emirates. He said there was "more than an allegation, in this case, actual abuse -- we saw the pictures. There will be a full investigation."
"We don't tolerate these type of abuses." Sure we do. We don't publicize it. The dehumanizing effects of the American prison system may not achieve such technicolor press, but sure we tolerate it. We also like it at an arms length from our children and behind very thick cement walls, but no, we will look the other way. We like these stories or inmate rape and violence to stay stories without viceral evidence.
quote:
"The American people are just as appalled" as Iraqis, Bush said in the same interview. "People in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent. They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know," Bush said.
"The America I know is a compassionate country that believes in freedom. The America I know cares about every individual. The America I know has sent troops into Iraq to promote freedom -- good honorable citizens that are helping Iraqis everyday," he said.
Is anyone else disturbed by this not being the America he knows. I'd like to think that our President would have a sufficiently nuanced view of America not to be surprised. I'm not surprised. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. I'd like knowing that the captain of the ship knows what the hull is made of and what all of the buttons do. Instead, we have a president who proudly doesn't read the papers. We are a people capable of tremendous good and silent, blameless atrocity. The soldiers are going to say that they were just following orders, and Rumsfeld is going to say that he had heard reports but that the it's not possible to get to every one of them, and it's quite possible that everyone will obfuscate with seemingly reasonable excuses. Therein lies the virtues of a multi-layered government on one hand and authoritarian agency[the Pentagon] made up of independent minds on the other. In theory, if the soldiers aren't criminals, because they were following orders, then someone is criminally negligent. Throw Rumsfeld in jail. Bring up charges against Bush for dereliction of duty as commander and chief. Hold the people at the top of an authoritarian chain accountable. We are trying to midwife the democracy with a doctor who barely finished medical school and an RN who is typsy from cogniac and power, all the while they scorn any calls for help or advice.
"doesn't represent the America I know." Well, the America I know has a whole lot of energetic good and a whole lot of lazy bad in it. It's not triple distilled, 200 proof freedom, and though we may advertise ourselves that way to others, and maybe we have been advertising ourselves for so long we have come to believe it, but that won't change the fact that we are a mixed and varied concoction whose influence should not be so eagerly prescribed to others.
quote: Yet it is still 10,000 better than the treatment of prisoners under Sadaam Hussein.
Your math is very scary.
A> there are at least 14 dead iraqi prisoners that died while in our custody
How on EARTH could Saddam have been 10,000 times worse that MURDER??? Dan that's like saying RAPE isn't that bad compared to murder. It's almost all right for the USA to rape you, because the other guy would have killed you.
B> there are pictures soon to come out that make the ones we've seen pale in comparison.
C> Our torturers were given CORPORATE advice on how to torture and what to do.
Posts: 2752 | Registered: Feb 2001
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quote: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."
Gosh. That makes me feel better..... Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Mr. Rumsfeld's Responsibility Thursday, May 6, 2004
THE HORRIFIC abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and at other facilities maintained by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public statements of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Beginning more than two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review. Abuses will take place in any prison system. But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has been held accountable.
The lawlessness began in January 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld publicly declared that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan "do not have any rights" under the Geneva Conventions. That was not the case: At a minimum, all those arrested in the war zone were entitled under the conventions to a formal hearing to determine whether they were prisoners of war or unlawful combatants. No such hearings were held, but then Mr. Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. observance of the convention was now optional. Prisoners, he said, would be treated "for the most part" in "a manner that is reasonably consistent" with the conventions -- which, the secretary breezily suggested, was outdated.
In one important respect, Mr. Rumsfeld was correct: Not only could captured al Qaeda members be legitimately deprived of Geneva Convention guarantees (once the required hearing was held) but such treatment was in many cases necessary to obtain vital intelligence and prevent terrorists from communicating with confederates abroad. But if the United States was to resort to that exceptional practice, Mr. Rumsfeld should have established procedures to ensure that it did so without violating international conventions against torture and that only suspects who truly needed such extraordinary handling were treated that way. Outside controls or independent reviews could have provided such safeguards. Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld allowed detainees to be indiscriminately designated as beyond the law -- and made humane treatment dependent on the goodwill of U.S. personnel.
Much of what has happened at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay is shrouded in secrecy. But according to an official Army report, a system was established at the camp under which military guards were expected to "set the conditions" for intelligence investigations. The report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba says the system was later introduced at military facilities at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, even though it violates Army regulations forbidding guards to participate in interrogations.
The Taguba report and others by human rights groups reveal that the detention system Mr. Rumsfeld oversees has become so grossly distorted that military police have abused or tortured prisoners under the direction of civilian contractors and intelligence officers outside the military chain of command -- not in "exceptional" cases, as Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, but systematically. Army guards have held "ghost" prisoners detained by the CIA and even hidden these prisoners from the International Red Cross. Meanwhile, Mr. Rumsfeld's contempt for the Geneva Conventions has trickled down: The Taguba report says that guards at Abu Ghraib had not been instructed on them and that no copies were posted in the facility.
The abuses that have done so much harm to the U.S. mission in Iraq might have been prevented had Mr. Rumsfeld been responsive to earlier reports of violations. Instead, he publicly dismissed or minimized such accounts. He and his staff ignored detailed reports by respected human rights groups about criminal activity at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and they refused to provide access to facilities or respond to most questions. In December 2002, two Afghan detainees died in events that were ruled homicides by medical officials; only when the New York Times obtained the story did the Pentagon confirm that an investigation was underway, and no results have yet been announced. Not until other media obtained the photos from Abu Ghraib did Mr. Rumsfeld fully acknowledge what had happened, and not until Tuesday did his department disclose that 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accountability for those deaths has been virtually nonexistent: One soldier was punished with a dishonorable discharge.
On Monday Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman said that the secretary had not read Mr. Taguba's report, which was completed in early March. Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld told a television interviewer that he still hadn't finished reading it, and he repeated his view that the Geneva Conventions "did not precisely apply" but were only "basic rules" for handling prisoners. His message remains the same: that the United States need not be bound by international law and that the crimes Mr. Taguba reported are not, for him, a priority. That attitude has undermined the American military's observance of basic human rights and damaged this country's ability to prevail in the war on terrorism.
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