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Post by Bertine Louise on May 21, 2004 18:59:15 GMT -5
I don't know what's scarier... the sight of the lifeless face or the sight of the face broadly smiling... The other famous girl Lynndie England that was smilingly pointing at stripped Iraqis is my age! I wonder, could I go that far? War can bring out the worst in anyone..
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Post by no name on May 21, 2004 19:04:43 GMT -5
War can bring out the worst in anyone.. Indeed . . . .
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Post by Guarp on May 21, 2004 19:16:42 GMT -5
Well, I should expect some higher moral standards from an American. You cannot compare the practices of your own military with terrorists. it hurts me to see such a girl being amused about a guy who died of his injuries and could have been saved if they paid attention to his wounds instead of hanging him in chains on the wall with a paper bag on his head.
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Post by Bertine Louise on May 21, 2004 19:19:50 GMT -5
Uhuh, but can you still claim that Americans are somehow morally superior? Isn't it striking that there are so little differences between the pics?
In the end evil seems to be something all humans have in common...
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Post by bub on May 21, 2004 19:21:55 GMT -5
what I find odd is how a handfull of idiots can turn the rest of the world on the US military. But then again how could we expect less when you have media who want to get bush out of the white house and will do all they can to meet their goal even to the point of showing these photos over and over again and add biased comments all along the way. oh well! english.aljazeera.net/
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Post by bub on May 21, 2004 19:24:46 GMT -5
Uhuh, but can you still claim that Americans are somehow morally superior? Isn't it striking that there are so little differences between the pics? In the end evil seems to be something all humans have in common... So a handfull of americans equals all americans? What i dont get is the promotion that all us military people act this way. Oh, and these people were not tortured. Their human rights violated, yes. But no, they were not tortured. For real wartime torture read your history books.
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Post by Bertine Louise on May 21, 2004 19:25:16 GMT -5
what I find odd is how a handfull of unlearned persons can turn the rest of the world on the US military. But then again how could we expect less when you have media who want to get bush out of the white house and will do all they can to meet their goal even to the point of showing these photos over and over again and add biased comments all along the way. oh well! english.aljazeera.net/You missed my point bubby boy;) This is not so much about Americans. This is about humans in war situations transforming into animals. I find it therfor hard to accept anyone's claim on moral superiority.
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Post by bub on May 21, 2004 19:26:50 GMT -5
unlearned?
I typed stoidi (backwards).
You can't even say I D I O T S on this board?
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Post by bub on May 21, 2004 19:30:03 GMT -5
You missed my point bubby boy;) This is not so much about Americans. This is about humans in war situations transforming into animals. I find it therfor hard to accept anyone's claim on moral superiority. Sorry, I don't buy the idea humans in war situations transform into animals. I also do not buy the idea those who we are fighting against are at the same level of morality as we Americans. I think the issue is not moral superiority but lack of morality by those on the other side.
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Post by no name on May 21, 2004 19:41:23 GMT -5
Well, I should expect some higher moral standards from an American. Of course -- and see what happens when some in our military descend to the level of the terrorists. And the difference is -- the guilty will be punished for their wrongdoings; this wouldn't happen in the world of the Islamic terrorists. news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&u=/ap/20040521/ap_on_re_us/prisoner_abuse_one_day_1&printer=1WASHINGTON - Many of the worst abuses that have come to light from the Abu Ghraib prison happened on a single November day amid a flare of insurgent violence in Iraq (news - web sites), the deaths of many U.S. soldiers and a breakdown of the American guards' command structure.
Nov. 8 was the day U.S. guards took most of the infamous photographs: soldiers mugging in front of a pile of naked, hooded Iraqis, prisoners forced to perform or simulate sex acts, a hooded prisoner in a scarecrow-like pose with wires attached to him.
It was unclear Friday whether most or all of the new pictures and video published by The Washington Post depicted events on Nov. 8. At least one photo, showing Spc. Charles Graner Jr. with his arm thingyed as if to punch a prisoner, is described in military court documents as having been taken that day.
When Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits tearfully pleaded guilty Wednesday to abusing prisoners, he described fellow soldiers committing an escalating series of abuses on eight prisoners that included stamping on their toes and fingers and punching one man hard enough to knock him out.
Sivits is likely to testify about the events of Nov. 8 at courts-martial for other soldiers charged with abuse. Three of them declined to enter pleas at hearings Wednesday: Sgt. Javal Davis, Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II and Graner.
The abuse came during Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and reflection. The abused Iraqis, Sivits said, had been suspected of taking part in a prison riot that day. They were held at Abu Ghraib on suspicion of common crimes, not attacks on U.S. forces, said Col. Marc Warren, the top legal adviser to Iraqi commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.
The day of abuse — a Saturday — capped what had been the worst week for U.S. troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Nearly three dozen had been killed in a surge of attacks that left some other soldiers frustrated and frightened. Insurgents had attacked the Abu Ghraib prison and other U.S. bases in the area with mortars several times in previous weeks.
The day before, insurgents had downed a Black Hawk helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade near Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown of Tikrit, killing six. Sixteen soldiers had died five days earlier when a shoulder-fired missile destroyed a Chinook transport helicopter near the flashpoint city of Fallujah.
The International Red Cross temporarily pulled out of Iraq on Nov. 8 because of the violence, which also had included a deadly car bomb outside the aid group's Baghdad headquarters on Oct. 27.
Three Iraqi prisoners escaped in the four days before Nov. 8 — and an additional half-dozen detainees escaped on that day, according to the military's internal report prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
The pressure was on to get information from prisoners to help stop the attacks.The rest of the article is at the above link. Due to the action of a few, the whole military is erroneously held up as evil, brutal, or whatever. This gets rather tiring. Especially when just the opposite is true.
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Post by bub on May 21, 2004 19:46:46 GMT -5
yes, I think your point is vaild.
The difference is that the US will make those who did wrong pay, while if it was the other way around the bad guys would most likely go free.
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Post by no name on May 21, 2004 19:49:19 GMT -5
What i dont get is the promotion that all us military people act this way. EXACTLY!! Wholesale condemnation of the entire military does nothing but diminish their morale and work against their efforts. People maybe don't think about the fact that if we truly wanted to, we could have obliterated the entire country of Iraq. But that is not what we're about -- this was not the goal, and it is not what we did. Some "war experts" are saying that because we left Iraq as intact as we did, this is part of the reason the insurgents have been able to fight us as long as they have . . . . in other words -- we should have destroyed the country, then we wouldn't be having these problems. I don't really buy that argument -- but the point is, with the power that the U.S. has, it should speak pretty clearly to people that because we didn't destroy everything and everyone in our path, this is proof that our goal is not on the same level as those of the terrorists.
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Post by bub on May 21, 2004 19:52:28 GMT -5
Is that not the goal of many within our borders?
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Post by no name on May 21, 2004 19:59:56 GMT -5
Is that not the goal of many within our borders? I would tend to agree with you . . . . . The U.S. is helping to rebuild Iraq and is paying restitution to the families of those innocents who were accidentally killed or injured during the war. And I ask this -- when has Al-Queda offered to rebuild the areas of destruction they caused in our country? When have they offered to pay restitution to the families of the innocent people who died? The answer: they never have, and they never will. Yet in some corners, we are compared as being the same, or worse than the terrorists. Please.
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Post by no choice on May 22, 2004 10:15:51 GMT -5
I tell you what's going on....half of us here in the US were dragged without choice into a war that was the dang Presidents personal vendetta. I'm sick of that dumb burro.
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Post by Just Here on May 22, 2004 12:20:57 GMT -5
Oh, and these people were not tortured. Their human rights violated, yes. But no, they were not tortured. For real wartime torture read your history books. So the US is not up to your high standards of torture? This is from the report that the military published. Perhaps this sort of thing would not be torture for you. I know personally I would view it as such. a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;
f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.From the same report: An extensive CID investigation determined that four soldiers from the 320th MP Battalion had kicked and beaten these detainees following a transport mission from Talil Air Base.
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Post by Just Here on May 22, 2004 12:42:55 GMT -5
what I find odd is how a handfull of unlearned persons can turn the rest of the world on the US military. But then again how could we expect less when you have media who want to get bush out of the white house and will do all they can to meet their goal even to the point of showing these photos over and over again and add biased comments all along the way. You are, of course, right. If the media had not published these they would have never seen the light of day. Think about it - Rumsfeld had the report. But according to his statement: “The problem at that stage, was one-dimensional. It wasn’t three-dimensional. It wasn’t video. It wasn’t color.”
“I think I did inquire about the pictures,” he said, “and was told that we didn’t have copies.”The man who directs the largest military machine in the world could not get 3 CDs copied. Reports from his own people as well as the Red Cross and because there were no photos he was not interested. Of course, the report was just words. No pictures. Seems like someone could have read it to the illiterate in the administration. Call me crazy but a few phrases like: "Positioning a naked detainee on a box . . . with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes and male organ to simulate electric torture"
“Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees”
“Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick.”[/i] paint a pretty vivid picture of what was going on. But it is, of course, the media who is at fault fo showing the photos. Right. Unlike the administration, others in the world can read and understand without pictures. Once again we see the defence of "we did not torture them as badly so what is all the fuss about?"
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Post by Just Here on May 22, 2004 13:27:24 GMT -5
unlearned? I typed stoidi (backwards). You can't even say I D I O T S on this board? What a shame. I guess you will have to do your character assination elsewhere. Of course only an imbecile would not think a little and use words like cretin and schmuck to describe the simpletons in the Whitehouse!
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Post by no name on May 23, 2004 18:17:55 GMT -5
But it is, of course, the media who is at fault fo showing the photos. Right. Actually, that's not what bothers me so much as the total lack of balance in portrayal of our military; this leaves a false impression in the minds of the public that the majority of our military men and women behave in this manner, which is not true. There were several positive stories that have occurred recently pertaining to our soldier's interaction/involvement with the Iraqi people . . . . these stories are not being focused on. They are either very briefly mentioned or are totally ignored in favor of splashing abuse photos all over the place. This is demoralizing to our troops, and they do not deserve this type of treatment. I believe bub’s attempt to use the word i d i o t s was to describe the soldiers responsible for the abuse of prisoners in Iraq. Character assassination, huh? Wasn’t it you who talked about not ridiculing people . . .
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