Huh? How is saying that we hold our troops to a high standard of discipline and we expect our policies to be civilized and humane and then demanding accountability when they aren't hypocritical? So if we just ignore it and excuse it as boys (and girls) being boys it will just go away and our enemies will never bring it up?
It is simply inevitable that some of our troops will fail to live up to that standard. So, the question becomes how do you handle the news of their transgressions. Do you adopt the Durbinesque approach of drawing a repugnant moral equivalence between the Kentucky National Guard and the SS Death's Head Units in order to score political points? The Durbinization by the opposition is troubling and goes far beyond the typical Pavlovian salivations of the Bush-Is-Hitler crowd.
I am sure about that. I also don't see that containment = 9/11. There are a lot of factors that deal with 9/11, the most prominent being a charismatic leader bent on creating death and terrorism, plus other terrorists willing to lay down their lives. Of course their are other factors, but I don't believe containing Saddam was one of them.
While Bush is Hitler is more appropo of what Durbin said than our military is Hitler, it still isn't quite on the money. But that aside the Bush-is-Hitler crowd are wrong though they do have more similarities to rest their case on than the Democrats-are-Hitler crowd, if we are going to start making these generalizations about folks. I would rather we didn't make them, but we can if you wish, and the conservatives will still lose.
I think the troops that killed the cab driver are being charged with murder. I also think that those who broke the law at AG are being charged. The problem is, you want the top people in the administration to take responsibility for every thing that every soldier does. I don't recall LBJ resigning from office because of the acts of some troops in Vietnam. The adminitration has never condoned the rape or murder of anyone AFAIK. The laying in feces thing is more akin to panties on the head than to torture. The mistakes are being made at lower levels of the military, and that is where the corrections are occuring.
The phrase "mountain out of a molehill" keeps coming to mind. These occasional misdeed are being manipulated in an effort to curtail the war effort. They are receiving far more attention than they deserve and it is facilitating the enemies task of discouraging the US.
then he's an idiot and so are you for reiterating the comparison. laying in your own feces is not the same as a policy of extermination.
Yes the people directly involved are, and I agree that is a good thing. However the problem is that there is a culture out there that says it is ok. When it happens repeatedly like this it is best to start from the top down. When a man who writes a memo justifying torture and saying the Geneva convention is too quaint, and other folks are telling soldiers to 'soften up' detainees. I've said before that not all soldiers are like this. The administration could make the best of it. They could honor the soldier who reported the abuses at AG, make the guy a hero and make big public spectacle of how that behavior is for the terrorists, and that we are above it, and cleaned some house nearer the top, instead of solely blaming the soldiers at the grunt level. Once the leader sends the message that it won't be tolerated it will stop. Instead they try and downplay the whole thing, deny it is happening, blame the media etc. for as long as possible then it blows up in their face when more and more reports come out. They need to change their policy.
Calling me an idiot now? lol. Well that is a good argument. Of course I'm not the one who believes comparing abuse to abuse is comparing abuse to a policy of extermination. You are trying to blow Durbin's comments way out of proportion. I will defend what Durbin said, because he was correct. Once again you would rather attack the message than the messenger. Way to get things done, take care of business and shine a positive light on democracy. It really sets a great tone for those who hope to win over by not dealing with the abuse problem and poicy, but instead go after the messengers and anyone who dares to criticize. Durbin didn't say that Bush was like Hitler, or Pol Pot or even mention anything bad about the military at all. What he did is say that a policy that allows the kinds of treatment coming from the FBI report to the kinds of treatment prisoners received under those regimes. I asked you questions concerning Durbin's statements and Bush's policy. You answered none of them, and resorted to name calling.
Has any American leader said anything but that? Has any leader denied that every one of these reported "events" did not happen? No, not at all. Yet still the harassment from the left continues. Again, mountain out of a molehill and it is aiding the effort of our enemy.
In one instance the administration attacked a news agency and then had the presumption to tell them what kinds of stories they should write. In other instances they keep maintaining that nothing happened. They have ignored the Cab driver instance. They have also not changed the policies that allowed the kind of treatment from the FBI report. Only in the AG instance did they aopologize, and it took them a long time after the story broke, and again they didn't do anything but go after the grunts. But you are right. They haven't ignored them all In the case of our attorney general they actually rewarded him, even after he wrote the memo justifying torture. Look at all the events there, and tell me how serious it looks like the administration is about cracking down on this kind of thing. It may be a molehill to you, to have the good name of our nation shamed, but it most certainly is a mountain to me. Never before have American Presidents allowed these kinds of policies. We are supposed to be the good guys.
I'm still waiting on you to take such offense when Rick Santorum of the Republican party made the comparison. Sorry, your one-sided offense doesn't come off as sincere.
Where do things stand NOW? Gonzalez's report was written when? You cannot expect the Adminstration to comment on the report of every possible transgression. AQ's manual teaches them how to report false transgressions.... oh, and they also fight disguised as everyday citizens. Isn't that thoughtful? I daresay that every other American presdent involved in an ongoing war effort either allowed this kind of behavior or deliberately kept himself or was kept uninformed by his staff. The media certainly wasn't doing newsbreaks on every mole or hickey on the war effort.
Yeah....what did Saddam have to do with 9/11? Even Bush never said there were terrorists in Iraq connected to 9/11 when he was planning the attack. Just the "threat" of WMD's.
Durbin said precisely this. you need to go back and reread the statement. as i said, as long as you try and defend the indefensible, you're no better than durbin. it isn't necessary to auto-rebut every point a republican makes to remain a good democrat, or american.
I think this is a very important point you raise. Criticism of the war is not, or should not be, a criticism of soldiers in general. Soldiers who commit crimes should be identified and charged and punished just like any other criminal and as such those who uncover those crimes are doing a service to the armed forces and to mankind just as anyone who exposes injustice and crime is doing a service for mankind. They should be applauded, not attacked. Further, those who wish to cover up such crimes become complicit in the crime, so when basso and others suggest that the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib should not be reported they are making themselves a party to the atrocities and war crimes committed there, particularly the ones that are yet to happen. Any soldier there now who is tempted to abuse his power and commit an atrocity on an innocent Iraqi will know that he has allies like basso back in the US who will fight to cover up his crime. With respect to the war in general, soldiers are doing what they are ordered to do. This is their job. It’s not their choice to be in Iraq, therefore it’s the people of the US and of the world who have to protect them by holding the government that ordered them there accountable for its actions. Suggesting that this government should not be held accountable is perhaps the ultimate betrayal of those soldiers and their families, and yet we hear repeatedly from some people that to criticize the government is to “not support the troops.” Nothing could me more opposite from the truth. In a perfect world such people could be brought up on charges of accessory to murder. These people are NOT supporting the troops as they claim. They are killing them, and maiming them, and killing and maiming thousands of Iraqis too. If you want to support your troops then stand up for them and stand up to the government that sent them to slaughter and be slaughtered for the sake of its own political agenda.
I agree it isn't necessary to rebuke every point, which is why I said I agreed with you about having positives stories about the military to print. Durbin said that if people looked at the pictures and read the FBI report without knowing where it came from they would think that it came was from NAzis, Soviet Gulags, or Pol Pot prisons. The debate in which he brought this up in was one on the policy that allowed things mentioned in FBI report. Not one thing in there is about the military and putting the military down or comparing them to anything.
