posted
Are you sad and ashamed towards the people who tortured and killed Americans and dragged the bodies through the streets and then hung the corpses off a bridge? Or you are more sad and ashamed because we kept people up for long hours?
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Undoubtedly, DarkKnight, individual and groups of USemployees had engaged in maltreatment of prisoners before, but always in direct*disobedience of official policy.
The problem is that approval of the torture/mistreatment methods was discussed at the top level of the USgovernment. Which when combined with the types of torture/mistreatment actually used&alleged very much makes it appear as if those methods discussed at the top level were deliberately disseminated and "wink wink" approved by the DubyaAdministration.
* Even if it hadn't been in direct disobedience, having done evil in the past does not justify committing evil in the present or future.
posted
Good thing you snuck the word 'alleged' in there. I'm sure you have proof for your "wink wink" that President Bush completely authorized everything that happened to a few prisoners. Or no, wait, it's Dubya, and you just need to accuse Dubya and that is enough proof.
Posts: 1918 | Registered: Mar 2005
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DK, of course evil on both sides make me sad. I am ashamed of what was done by our country and in our name.
Also, for the record, I didn't bring the President into the conversation. You did. And I find it offensive that you are trivialize what we did you human beings by "kept people up for long hours". I suggest that if you think this is all that happened, you might want to do some research.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Evil on both sides. So we are the same as them? We have committed the same evil acts that have been to us? Did we break bones? Cut off heads? Burn? Electrocute? Drag their bodies through the street? I think you might need to do a little more research before you make the equivalency between what we did, and what was done to us.
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I refuse to let my standards of behavior or the behavior I expect from those who act in my name be defined by the lowest example. Our evil actions are not justified by theirs. It is no excuse.
And, aside from dragging bodies through the streets and cut off heads, yes, we did.
I can't help feeling that if you loved your country as much as you claim to you would expect better of us.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Please consider what I say as coming from someone who is much closer to your own politics than, say, kmbboots or aspectre is...
As an American, you should be ashamed and angry of torture done to prisoners held in our custody. Whether or not it was done under lawful orders-whether such an order would be lawful or not is debatable.
As an American, you should realize that people have rights, even non-Americans, and some of those rights-some of the most important ones-don't factor in whatever the scumbag may or may not have done.
'What was done to us'? How many Americans, exactly, have been tortured by Arabic terrorists? No one has said that we are the same as them. Suggesting that there is 'evil on both sides' is not a statement of equivalency, it's a statement of similarity. Since we're all homo sapiens, we're always going to have some things in common, as much as it would be nice to disregard our enemies as totally Other.
Yes, there are many worse forms of torture than those that have been (provably) laid at the USA's doorstep. I am even ambivalent about sleep-deprivation as 'torture' at all. But there are other things that are now part of the public record which you are blithely dismissing, smug in your self-righteousness that basically comes down to, "They're a whole lot worse."
That is not the way an American should think about how Americans treat their prisoners.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Because all we do is feel ashamed of ourselves and say how terrible we are. We just keep talking about how bad we are, how evil we are. We make mistakes, we do bad things BUT we do far more good than harm. It's getting to the point where you can't even say America is a good country anymore. If Moussaui just claims he was tortured that will be good enough to make it true. Just like claiming we flushed the Koran was enough to run with the story. Insurgents
I truly can understand the longing to feel only good things about the US, truly I can. I cry for the days when my love for my country could be uncomplicated.
But we require citizens, not cheerleaders. Putting your fingers in your ears and refusing to face our problems is harmful to the country. It is like denying that a beloved spouse has a disease. It takes courage to face, but refusing to see the problem only lets it get worse.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
DarkKnight, what is that in response to? I'd assume that it was a response to Rakeesh, but it doesn't really seem to address anything he said.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Mostly agree with Rakeesh's well assembled statement.
The atrocities of Abu Gharib cause me grief because those soldiers are for all intents and purposes, ambasadors of the United States. They represent what we are, and they betrayed that office. I expected nothing less then immediate dismissal for the lesser offenses and criminal proceedings against the more vagrant offenders.
That is all I expected of the Bush administration. I do not hold Bush accountable for the actions of soldiers at the ground level, I hold him accountable for how the military is run though, and that includes dicipline.
My philosophy on all this is based in my own experience as a missionary. We were expected to do our job, but nobody was there to make sure I did. There were of course lvls of authority and checks to make sure everyone was accountable for their performance, but it was not fail safe, you could have missionaries commit immoral acts against other people, i.e fist fighting, or carnal relations with people of the opposite/same sex. Missionaries guilty of that were interviewed, and dismissed or transferred. Nobody yelled at the mission president much less the general leadership of the church because it was not their fault, they didnt do anything wrong.
As for "They do worse, why does everyone point fingers at us?" It is hypocritical, but you should also realize that we ought not to base our acts on the acts of others. America already has a policy amongst its military, and people in that military should follow it.
I too am glad Moussaoui got life in prison, he wishes to spend his life infringing on other's freedom, he loses that freedom. Thats where it ends, no amount of physical discomfort or pain will equalize the punishment with the crime commited.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Because all we do is feel ashamed of ourselves and say how terrible we are. We just keep talking about how bad we are, how evil we are. We make mistakes, we do bad things BUT we do far more good than harm. It's getting to the point where you can't even say America is a good country anymore. If Moussaui just claims he was tortured that will be good enough to make it true. Just like claiming we flushed the Koran was enough to run with the story.
Highlighting the good things we do while minimalizing the bad things we do with the defense of, "They're much worse," does not achieve the goal you desire, DarkKnight. It does not help people recognize that America is, on the whole, a good place and has been a benefit to the world, much better than many potential alternatives.
Instead, it encourages people to focus on the bad things we do because you aren't admitting to them. It's like you and I have a fight in which I say something to piss you off and I say, "I'm sorry you felt offended...but you know, you've said much worse to me in the past." You and I aren't going to get anywhere at all because in the first place, my apology and admission wasn't real and in the second place I made it more of a retribution in pointing out that you had said worse things. We wouldn't get past the fight that way.
America will not become better the way you're going about it.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:That is all I expected of the Bush administration. I do not hold Bush accountable for the actions of soldiers at the ground level, I hold him accountable for how the military is run though, and that includes dicipline.
I do hold President Bush accountable, if not directly and personally. For instance, I would not support impeaching and imprisoning President Bush because of what individual soldiers did.
However, as Commander-in-Chief it is his responsibility to put into place a command structure and a command philosophy that makes such things impossible. Or at least highly, highly improbable. That part is my own personal opinion.
What is not my personal opinion is that the buck stops somewhere, and that place is the top. This is not simply an economic wave that rises or falls due largely to factors already decided before the President was even sworn in. This is something that soldiers under President Bush's command-however far-removed-did, and he is accountable for that in that he is their CiC.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
He'll be treated much better than the average U.S. citizen inmate. The things we already do here at home (or allow to be done) to those we have incarcerated is just as bad as Gitmo or Abu Gharab IMO. I wish the press and others were as up in arms about this as they were about the foreign prison abuses. However, it's never talked about and just shoved under a rug. People on this board have even said they deserve the rape and abuses here. And this is occuring on a much more widespread base than the other stuff. It all makes me sad.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Only one juror stood between the death penalty and Zacarias Moussaoui and that juror frustrated his colleagues because he never explained his vote, according to the foreman of the jury that sentenced the al-Qaeda operative to life in prison last week. The foreman, a Northern Virginia math teacher, said in an interview that the panel voted 11 to 1, 10 to 2 and 10 to 2 in favor of the death penalty on three terrorism charges for which Moussaoui was eligible for execution. A unanimous vote on any one of them would have resulted in a death sentence.
The foreman said deliberations reached a critical point on the third day, when the process nearly broke down. Frustrations built because of the repeated 11 to 1 votes on one charge without any dissenting arguments during discussions. All the ballots were anonymous, and the other jurors were relying on the discussions to identify the holdout.
"Wednesday [April 26] was a very intense day," she said. "But there was no yelling. It was as if a heavy cloud of doom had fallen over the deliberation room, and many of us realized that all our beliefs and our conclusions were being vetoed by one person. . . . We tried to discuss the pros and cons. But I would have to say that most of the arguments we heard around the deliberation table were" in favor of the death penalty.
posted
Sorry, I wasn't clear. In criminal trials, one holdout means a hung jury and requires a new trial.
This was a capital sentencing hearing. It had many of the same requirements of a trial: reasonable doubt, unanimity, etc., but also many differences: type of evidence allowed, not determining guilt, etc.
So I'm not sure if 1 holdout meant mistrial (which means the 11 who wanted to kill him changed their vote) or if 1 holdout means a finding that the aggravating circumstances to execute don't exist.
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