http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/20802.htm
So then. . . what is there to say, really?
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http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/20802.htm
So then. . . what is there to say, really?
Everyone involved is guilty. This really sickens me. Especially England. She's so lying when she said "I'm just following orders." and other similar crap. So sad.
What a friggin coward. She cant even own up to the fact that she did wrong. She keeps blaming it on her 'superiors'. That's b.s. They tell you from day one in the military to follow orders, but if that order is clearly wrong, you're in the right by refusing.
Sick. It just keeps getting sicker.
Wow, I'm beyond words.... just, terrible, unspeakable.
Take care all.
Blantant, overly sexual and grotesque activities, followed by denial of fault.
If only this surprised me... unfortunately I know my fellow Americans far too well...
Well then, whoever gave those orders is even more liable than she is. With superior officers like that, [i]she'd[i/] probably have been the one getting beaten if she'd refused.
Hmph. Just charge everyone who was a participant or party to the offences, and justice should be served. Sacking politicians won't do a damn thing; neither will flogging a few low-ranked soldiers. Those who were actually culpable, though - the ones who committed the sickening acts and the ones who ordered them to - should face the full force of the law.
Um, isn't The New York Post that crappy sensationalist newspaper? Uh..just look at the title of the article.
Anyway, it sounds preety sick, really, and this time I can say I am rather surprised. They performed sexual acts in front of the prisioners? Seriously, who could have such a crazy, sick idea? God, I'm starting to think miss England deserves to have those photos of her released, but of course, that would be a preety dirty thing.
By the way, on TV they aired the photo of the dogs biting the legs of a prisioner. Weren't those photos meant to be kept in archives and never released?
I'm getting sick of this. Everybody keeps on saying "Oh, this is horrible, this is an atrocity, those horrible Americans should know better."
Can't we just move on, or at the very least, discuss how to fix things?
^How can things be fixed when people overseas doubt the legitimacy of the soldiers purpose in Iraq...trust has been shattered due to these photos man....we cant exactly pretend nothing happened...
I really can't believe it. :(
Okay. Allied soldiers have abused Iraqi prisoners. That's wrong. Those soldiers will be punished. End of story. Any further meddling with this and 'conclusion making' regarding the legitimacy of the Allied presence in Iraq is misplaced.
So just because nobody trusts us means that we can't fix anything - that we should just give up?Quote:
Originally Posted by *ETERNAL FANTASY*
I think that many people aren't interested in the truth, but rather interested in anything that justifies their hatred of America, or furthers their political agenda. If people really cared, then they'd make a big deal every week on the news when China or Cuba executes a couple hundred "political prisoners". I think that many people don't care that some prisoners were abused, so much as they care that prisoners were abused BY AMERICANS. A bit of hypocrisy. I'm amazed that politicians and diplomats can put up with this kind of crap from the rest of the world. I'd have lost patience a long time ago.
I'd prefer they punish the criminals or whatever and stop showing pictures on the news every day. We know people did something bad, we don't need to keep beating a dead horse.
I don't see much in that article that makes me feel that England is such an evil person, believe it or not. The article claims right from the beginning that she was having sex with numerous partners; numerous consensual partners, which as far as I can tell is okay.
And if she did do anything bad as an order from her higher-ups, then her higher-ups are the ones to blame. Did anyone here see "Casualties Of War?" That's what I'm think of right now, where the platoon leader raped a girl in Vietnam and then forced his subordinates to do the same, and the ones who didn't were beaten and labeled as traitors. Who knows what kind of crap she could have been facing if she said no to that? I think we should allow her to be proven to be a rapist and a willing torturer before we start making that assumption.
It's important that the abuse was done by American soldiers because America is supposed to be the standard of righteousness, or at least it's presenting itself that way. Hell, America has deployed troops into this country with the express purpose of making Iraq into a model citizen. How are we supposed to trust that the right thing is being done more often than not? If we simply ignore this and say, "well, it's over and done with, and besides, China does it all the time," does that really rectify anything, or does it just solidify the idea that America is an evil tyranical empire, the very idea that empowers so many terrorists?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Unne
Unne...eh...a big deal was made with the execution of three cuban guys last year. Well, I don't know about USA, but here in Spain both Saramago and Mario Benedetti, along with many other left winged intelectuals (Ana Belén, Jorge Volpi, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Luis Eduadro Aute or Gabriel García Márquez, for example) did condemn the executions. In fact, they spoke against them more than they do in reference to this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Unne
Yep, it was never legitimate anyway.Quote:
Okay. Allied soldiers have abused Iraqi prisoners. That's wrong. Those soldiers will be punished. End of story. Any further meddling with this and 'conclusion making' regarding the legitimacy of the Allied presence in Iraq is misplaced.
However, this images of torture put in doubt the supposed "humanitary action" we are being fed. Those images, however, also serve to open the question if it was in fact just a "bunch of soldiers" who did this or a larger bunch, or who was involved. Or also how reports were made a long ago and where ignored. And...you know, it's not that simple.
Unne: I don't think China or Cuba ever claim that they're pro-human rights. All we can do is put pressure on them to change their minds. I think that people are never going to be to make a big deal about executions of political prisoners unless they know about it. Those two countries aren't exactly renowned for their freedom of information.
I agree with LH on the rest.
I'd prefer they punish the criminals or whatever and stop showing pictures on the news every day. We know people did something bad, we don't need to keep beating a dead horse.
What will that achieve, exactly? What will happen if the same thing happens again? I'd say there's got to be a pretty big investigation of what happened, and, most importantly, *why* it happened, and then for implementation of new practices. The more embarrassed people feel, the better; it'll help prevent it re-occurring somewhere else.
We're Americans. If you don't keep showing these images, we'll forget within a month.
If only I were joking...
I understand the sentiments of DocFrance, Unne, and the like, but I think what LH said really rings true: America is supposed to stand for something, supposed to not have these sort of acts occur on our watch. If we are going to say that we'll bring democracy to other countries and "liberate" people, we ARE going to be held to a higher standard because we brought it upon ourselves. When you're the sole Super power in the world, you are held to a higher standard than the rest of the world, whether it's fair or not.
This situation must be fixed the right way, completely, or else, we risk only further alienating the rest of the Middle East, and will loss a lot more credibility with the rest of the world, though we've already lost enough.
Take care all.
Have you seen "Comandante" by Oliver Stone? Fidel does claim to respect human rights, then again, I doubt he does (I am not sure if he does, it's impossible to find non biased information about that country, and I have tired, but everything was so contradictory I gave up). Then again, I wonder what country respects human rights. Mine dosen't. It seems like human rights is just a paper politicians use to accuse each other.Quote:
Originally Posted by Burtsplurt
I say let the abusers get abused by the abusies.....
Thats justice there :D
The more pubicity, the better, no matter how disturbing. We have a right to know what happens over there. It does involve us and our world policy/image, after all.
As it stands, it appears we've knocked over Saddam's rule so we could just take over his job. It's the way it's appears to me, and I'm sure it's appears that way to other countries, too.
This doesnt need to be written off and forgotten. "They did wrong, get over it." is not an option. This shows a disturbing trend in our military prison system. How many other prisons are hiding the same things? What about Guantanomo Bay, where Rumsfeld himself said the prisoners have no Geneva Convention rights?
I'm not saying we should just forget about it. But this is the fourth thread made on the same exact subject. We're really just beating a dead horse, because almost every post has been exactly the same.
And two of those threads were duplicates because the posters didnt see that we already had a thread on it. This is an expansion of what we were talking about in the last thread.
Yeah, that's the only reason I made an entirely new thread, because it is different than what we've been talking about in other threads.
And I know that some people might question the Post's journalistic credentials, but is that really a legitimate reason to dismiss something like this? With all that's happened in the abuse scandal thus far, is it really a stretch? Either way, it's hard to ignore.
Really, how much of the same thing do you have to see? Remembering what happened is all well and good, but it doesn't need to be the top news story again and again, especially when nothin' new has been said. At least wait until something big happens, like the soldiers get jail time or Rumsfeld resigns or somethin'.
I was also gonna say somethin' about everyone else holding America to a higher standard because we deserve it, but it probably is just because we're the superpower. Either way, it doesn't need to be rubbed in so much that we're just like everyone else, except with a bunch more influence. The investigations and such we need, but not the endless "news" stories.
Actually this does bring to light a lot of new stuff. Most of what has been said was not known at the time of the original reports. If you don't want to hear about it again and again, there's a lot of other, different threads around.
Why I think we should get over it:
Our military's rules outlaw behavior like the behavior those people are accused of. The Geneva Conventions are pretty clear that you can't go around torturing people, physically OR mentally. We adhere to the Geneva Conventions, officially. No one in our military thinks that the things that happened in those prisons are acceptable. People are being rounded up and court-marshalled. Everyone from the President himself straight down to the military leaders have publically apologized, repeatedly. There's apparently a world-wide investigation going on now, not just in Iraq but in every military prison, and there's now enough public scrutiny that nothing is going to get by anyone. The problem is in the process of being corrected; whoever was to fault will be done away with. It's a bad thing that happened, but I'm satisfied that it's in the process of being fixed, and I don't feel the need to keep bringing it up every couple minutes. What more do they need to do to satisfy people? Burn Rumsfeld at the stake?
Like I said, there are FAR worse things going on every single day down the street from me. There are also people being exploded by bombs all over the Middle East on a daily basis. There are countries whose OFFICIAL policy is to do far worse things than most of us can imagine, on a daily basis. The US military are not the bad guys here. I think there are bigger problems to worry about in the world.
Eh, not really, Abominatrix. It says that she had sex with other soldiers, and Congress was disgusted by the videos. When I hear of prisoner abuse involving sexual acts and all those other forms of torture, it's pretty safe to assume that some sexual acts are goin' to be happenin'. Hell, she didn't even have sex with the prisoners. And I pretty much assumed that anyone of importance in the Capitol would've seen the pictures by now anyway, and the standard answer would be "I'm disgusted." The only thing I see that's newsworthy is that one of the guys slammed his head against the wall to knock himself out. That's pretty disturbing.
And, I guess I could ignore all threads that I don't agree with, but that'd leave out a bunch of stuff, and besides, discussion, or debate, or whatever, is fun.
Yet it happened. And it may be happening elsewhere. These people, some of them are professional prison guards in civilian practice. We're discussing the issue. I don't see why we cant discuss it without 20 people going 'get over it, get over it' when there's other threads they could be participating in. It's unfair to the people who want to discuss it.
There are bigger problems? Of course. And we should deal with them all. This should be dealt with. If you're tired of discussing it, dont discuss it.
Edit: And Rei, there's a lot of stuff in there I didnt know about. And others, probably. Debate is fine, but why is cant we have it be about this topic instead of 'why we should or shouldnt stop talking about this topic'?
"Everyone from the President himself straight down to the military leaders have publically apologized, repeatedly."
I don't ever recall Bush actually apologizing for anything. He's condemned the acts, but not apologized, which isn't the same to him, because apologizing means he did something wrong, which he cannot seem to bring himself to do.
Take care all.
I don't see why we cant discuss it without 20 people going 'get over it, get over it' when there's other threads they could be participating in. It's unfair to the people who want to discuss it. --TheAbominatrix
Just giving my opinion. I don't see that it's unfair. Disagreement is a good thing.
I don't ever recall Bush actually apologizing for anything. --The Captain
You might be right about that.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...abuse_rumsfeld
Don't know how reliable this story is yet, but if it is true, we may have reached a new low. Either way, Rumsfeld has just become the new number one target for all left wingers and will probably remain so for a while.
Take care all.
Plenty of people have dismissed some of my sources because they were "too conservative." I don't see why I can't dismiss the Post for being sensationalist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Strider
The thing that makes this so bad is that if I were an Iraqi living in Iraq and several countries just invaded my homeland and then started doing things like this, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be laying out the welcome mat. If you're gonna go in and try and help then don't go around making things worse.
There are people who do horrible things everywhere, in Iraq, in the U.S. military, in K-Mart, pretty much everwhere. Everybody should be treated equally and be accountable for their actions.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...soner_abuse_12
More bombshells. If THIS is also true, then we're really getting in over our head.
Take care all.