posted
I suspect that the release of the photo/videos will be postpone until most of the public isn't interested anymore.
I should say, though, that blocking the release of these photos is pretty politically sound - I doubt that if a democrat was in office and these abuses happened that he/she would act substantially different than Bush.
Posts: 367 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
Er...didn't mean to post just the link only.
My question is, should the Bush admin be forced to release further media that, purportedly, might have evidence of the rape of women and children?
If it does have that kind of evidence, it will basically kill much, if not all, if the goodwill we have in Iraq and be a huge recruiting tool for insurgents and 'terrorists', probably costing many American and Iraqi lives.
On the other hand, if they don't release it, then this takes away motivation for the state to keep such things from happening.
Frankly, I have to come down on the side of releasing the photos. While it may hurt in the short term, in the long run, it will specifically help us to conduct our operations even more ethically than we have been, generally encourage the state to be more ethical in how it treats prisoners, and help us to be a better country all around!
quote: My question is, should the Bush admin be forced to release further media that, purportedly, might have evidence of the rape of women and children?
Frankly, if it shows that the US was any way involved in anything close to that, I think the President should resign. I'm horrified that it's even a possibility under discussion.
Do you have sources for that? Apparently, I've been living under a rock.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Then again, I thought Clinton should have resigned on January 21, 1999, so. . .
(That way, Gore could serve out the last two years and still be able to run for two terms on his own. I think if Gore had been President for 2 years, he would have won the election.)
(And I thought that Clinton should have resigned back then. And when he didn't, I thought Gore should have resigned in protest.)
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Thanks Stormy. I found a quote from Lindsey Graham from the Boston Herald.
quote: Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the scandal is ``going to get worse'' and warned that the most ``disturbing'' revelations haven't yet been made public.
``The American public needs to understand, we're talking about rape and murder here,'' he said. ``We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience; we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.''
posted
I'm surprised more people don't seem interested in this. I'm surprised more people aren't demanding more information about it.
I've thought about this and if it's true, I think that the entire West Wing should resign(President, Vice President, Cabinet members, advisors etc.,) along with the Joint Chiefs.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I've wondered if the first round of courts martials done with the Abu Ghraib abusers wasn't done to soften the blow of something worse.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
From my perspective, it is specifically the administration's actions in dealing with the scandal that would make these images and videos so cateclysmic if they wree to be released. They should not have set up an environment that encouraged these things to occur. They should have taken steps to prevent them from occuring. When it became clear that they did occur, they should have been honest about it, instead of counting on being able to cover it up.
It's like "Through our actions, we've gotten the country into a point where releasing this stuff would be really bad, so we shouldn't have to release them." I don't think you screwing up and trying to cover it up, thus setting up a situation where people finding out you screwed up is going to have a really damaging effect is justification for being allowed to prevent people from knowing that you screwed up.
On the other hand, yes, this really is going to hurt us. The war for hearts and minds is the most important one that we're now engaged in and the proof that our soldiers were raping and murdering prisoners and that our government then tried to cover it up instead of conducting an honest investigation is going to be a really bad thing. I'd accept very significant concessions from the Bush administration (I have no idea what this would actually entail, but Rumsfeld would be gone and sanctioned) and a full, expeditious, and open investigation into both Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo by third parties in lieu of forcing them to release this stuff. But that's never going to happen. The Bush administration will try to fight this instead of taking responsibility and the images will come out and spark more hatred of America and somehow this will be the fault of the people who called for the truth to be told.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
This whole situation disgusts me if it is true. Raping women and children? I am doubting the part about children being raped but I dont deny the possibility.
Isnt a huge part of the Army and other military branches about integrity? And who on earth was video taping this sick stuff, why would they ever think it was okay to do this to someone?
I can understand putting someone through a stressful situation, such as lack of sleep and a bizarre schedule so you can get information out of them, but what they did is not something we should tolerate, even physical beatings would be better than some of the things our soldiers did. This sort of action makes me ashamed, but I know there are many other things our soldiers are doing that are good.
Posts: 473 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Pro, How do you feel about the 11th hour tactics of the administration to keep these photos and videos from the public?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote: In an unusual, 30-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday night, Mr. Cheney warned three senior Republicans on the Armed Services Committee that their legislation would interfere with the president's authority and his ability to protect Americans against terrorist attacks.
That's fear-mongering, isn't it? Basically, he seems to be threatening them. If you do this, America will have more attacks. I hated that in the last election.
From two.
quote: WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today expressed deep concern that-on the same day as the Senate majority leader canceled a vote on the entire Pentagon spending bill because of an amendment that would have banned cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment-a top figure in the ongoing torture scandal is being promoted to the number two post at the Justice Department.
That nominee is Timothy Flanigan, who also served as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s deputy in 2001 and 2002, when Gonzales was White House counsel.
"Once again, while the privates and sergeants get marched off to jail, the policy-makers get promoted," said Christopher Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "This nomination means that the nation’s top two law enforcement officials at the Justice Department, which normally would be responsible for prosecuting any wrongdoing, will be men who are up to their eyeballs in this scandal."
Seriously, is anyone surprised. This administration is, in my opinion, worse than the Nixon administration. I'm horrified by all of it. Clinton did nothing while the Rwandan genocide took place and I was horrified about that. But that is something we didn't do. These are things we are doing. It makes me sick that they are being done in my name.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote: Are there many Democrats who are complicit as well? Sure.
Oh, I totally agree. I'm more upset that the American people aren't throwing hissy fits over this.
This is exactly how McCarthy happened. The reason it took us so long to enter WWII. (Not the administration, but the actual American people didn't want to be involved.) This is how Rwanda went largely unnoticed by the American people. If there aren't pictures on their TV every night of rape and torture, they'd rather believe that it was lies and not happening. As long as we can go about our normal daily lives without any major interruptions, we just don't care about other people. We're safe, or so we think.
You see the same thing in criminal prosecutions. Even DAs don't sometimes/often don't care whether or not the person they are trying is innocent. Even families of the victims don't seem to care. They are told that this is the bad man, and no matter what evidence comes to light to prove his innocence, they still want his blood. How many times have we seen DNA exonerate a convicted murderer only to have the DA turn around and say they have the right guy, but he obviously had an accomplice?
People live with blinders on. It's easier. Ignorance is bliss.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote: Oh, I totally agree. I'm more upset that the American people aren't throwing hissy fits over this.
This is exactly how McCarthy happened.
You touch on something that I tried to get out in my previous post. I started to say something about how terrorism was the new communist boogey-man: how even if it doesn't happen here ever again, you can still point to the occurences somewhere else and scare people into compliance with whatever security proposal some wanker in state comes up with; how you can hide whatever you want because openness weakens the state's ability to defeat the monster.
The war on terror will never be won. If the war on terror will never be won, the excuses will never run out.
If the war on terror will never be won, then Americans need to come to an understanding that random death and violence are simply a fact of life that almost every other country has been living with for decades now and decide what kind of society we want to live in despite the violence and death, decide what it means to be American within the new reality and that the days of peace are over.
What this country needs is an honest discussion about what it wants and take full responsibility for those choices. The administration shouldn't have to skulk around shipping people off to other countries to do our dirty work. It shouldn't have to hide what it's doing if it has the consent of the American people. Doing so is pretty much an admission that what they are doing is outside, if not the law itself, then certainly outside the moral law and shameful, and that they have to hide what they are doing because the truth would cause them to look bad.
They say that showing the identities of those involved will compromise security? Fine. Blot the faces out, make the identities unrecognizable, but let people see what's going on and make up their own minds whether or not it's something their government should be doing.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
This makes me sick. I don't think the American people should turn a blind eye to this. The longer we wait to do something about it, the harder it will be to stop.
What about when they start declaring political opponents enemy combatants and disappearing them? I see no reason, as the law stands now, that they couldn't do this today.
Are we really going to give up our freedom, our open society, our bill of rights, and everything America stands for so easily as this?
There's no excuse for torture to exist. It provides no useful information, and serves only to terrorize a population. This seems thousands of times more dangerous than terrorism to me.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I'm not sure I'd be willing to say that torture serves no useful purpose. I think it depends on your definition of torture and of useful purpose.
You can get useful information from torture. If you're skilled enough, have enough time, and can check the answers you're given, you can break anyone's will.
When we catch people know, we try to force them to tell us what they want by threatening (and delivering) them with bad things. Where does this cross the line to torture? For example, if they send the London bombers to regular prision, I expect they'd be brutally beaten to death within the week. Should the authorities be able to use this as a viable threat to convince them to talk? What about prision in general, longer sentences, less comfortable conditions, aren't these ways of visiting more harm on people if they don't go along with us? Or how about, especially in time and resource constrained situation, such as on a battlefield, tell us what we want to know or we'll kill you? Torture or not? And isn't it effective and cost efficient?
I don't buy that torture isn't effective. In certain cases, the information is unreliable, but that's not an intrinsic property. The question of whether or not we should torture lies on a much wider consideration of the context. What does it do to us, to be torturers What does it do to the people the torture is being used against? What does it do to the outside world?
I think these considerations are what help us draw the line between what we should allow and what we shouldn't.
None of which really speaks to the attempted White House coverup of and support for the people complicit in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
MrSquicky, I find it really appalling that there are people who think torture is maybe okay. Seriously, you hit the nail on the head when you ask what does it do to the torturers, what does it do to all of us that we allow it to become part of our country's laws, and become hardened to the idea?
Our constitution doesn't allow cruel and unusual punishment even for people who have been convicted of the worst crimes. To subject people who are merely suspects to torture is truly unthinkable.
When you gradually harden yourself to things like this, allowing them first in marginal ways, in what seem like special circumstances, then more and more often, as the need should arise, you are doing horrendous damage to your own self, at least as much as to those who are the victims of your policies. A government which countenances such things is truly not a government we any of us should want to live under. Nothing the badguys do could be worse. If we allow rape of children, if we turn a blind eye to it, then we've already lost the war on terror and every other war. We have ourselves become the enemy, in that case.
This must be treated with the seriousness which it deserves. This must be stopped by the American people! By the time they come to get us, there will be nobody left to protest.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote: Asked about the allegations, the Foreign Office said the UK "unreservedly condemns the use of torture".
Wow, if only the U.S. government would say the same thing, I'd be happier that at least they recognize the principle. Then with enough evidence and corroboration, we could get them to stop doing it.
Don't they realize that they're handing over the victory to the terrorists by doing this? They're trying to win battles using tactics that are surely and inevitably losing the war.
This must must must must must MUST stop!!!!!!
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he is going through Army Special Forces training. "We came forward [to human rights watch] because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote: At the Aug. 30 hearing, Judge Hellerstein appeared to be soul-searching. "How can I ignore the expert opinion of General Myers concerned with the safety of his troops?" he asked that day.
His decision showed how he resolved the dilemma.
"With great respect to the concerns expressed by General Myers," he wrote, "my task is not to defer to our worst fears, but to interpret and apply the law."
I think I like this judge.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I think if "the public" were confident that this scandal is beyond politics to the larger question of human rights, there would be more outrage. It's a shame that we have such a political divide that it is difficult to know who to trust anymore. Putting it in terms of "The whole west wing should resign" makes it seem like the motive is more toward the humiliation of one side than vindicating human rights.
Posts: 383 | Registered: Nov 2003
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quote:Captain Fishback said he has refused to disclose the names of the two sergeants - one who has left the Army and another who has been reassigned - because he promised not to disclose their identities if they came forward. But he said his command told him Tuesday that he could face criminal prosecution if disobeyed its "lawful order" to disclose.
posted
I'm almost positive Capt. Fishback is guaranteed time in prison if he doesn't disclose. He's not a journalist or in any other position where he can legally protect 'sources', so to speak. He probably knew that letting his name be known was going to land him in jail. He is a brave man and a true patriot.
Hopefully, it will be a short sentence because a long sentence will make it look like the Army is trying to make an example of him, and is trying to hide something.
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