your reponses are laughable....do you do anything but call people whyo disagree with you "idiots" and tell them that they are wrong?
Geez, I go away for a weekend and come back to this thread? Some of you guys need to go outside and play...
Rally Cry: The Nazis Were Worse! Boy, did you nail NJRocket in his approach to Iraqis and Palestinians. You would think that he would somehow realize, after visiting the Holocaust museum, the immorality of making even Arabs and Muslims to be less than human.
Immoral and Un--American. None of our political or military leaders disagree with that assessment. Yet some here feel that they have some leg to stand on? It's really a simple. Does the end always justify the means? Simply, no. That's why we have laws to protect people's rights, that's why there's International Law and th Geneva Convention. As if the 'wrongs' could be much worse, these soldiers don't fret under the horrible acts they been ordered to commit. No, they take photos of their celebration as inhumane and degrading acts are committed on others. After hearing some of the arguments presented here, I now understand how women and children were slaugthered by American soldiers in Vietnam ... 'hey, they were housing and feeding the enemy!' You can rationalize anything if you chose to ignore morals. You're doing exactly what obl and Palestinian suicide bombers do.
Again, read the news. Many of those prisoners weren't a threat to us. Either torture is right or it's wrong. While the Jews weren't a threat to Nazis, demonizing them gave others something to rally around and help keep the Nazis in power. For them that end might have justified the means. There are always ways that some folk can rationalize actions. It's better to actually take a stand.
NJRocket where do you personally draw the line? Is there any level of abuse or torture that is too extreme to be used against people we suspect of working against the U.S. in Iraq? This is a serious question.
Many or most of the prisoners were a threat to us....and we are at war. You are comparing apples and oranges...but you probably don't see it that way. We aren't demonizing and torturing these people for kicks....but you probably don't see it that way either huh? To answer your next question... If the Jews were as much of a threat to the Nazi's as the Iraqi's are to us, (and if there was a major battle going on between the Nazis and Jews) then I would not have a problem with how the Nazis handled the situation. But you go ahead and 'take a stand' because it gives you something to do.
Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? And how do you determine this without due process? If I'm not mistaken, I read in an article that an estimated 90% of detainees were thought to be innocent and simply detained on mass sweeps. I'll try to find this link. Edit: please disregard the 90% figure. At any rate, a sizeable number of detainees are thought to be innocent... FranchiseBlade cites 60% below, I'd be interested in his source
The figure that's been asserted is that 60% of those imprisoned had nothing to do with the fighting against the U.S. So that would mean that it wasn't 'most' of them. You are correct about the pictures I've seen my disagreement with you. Many of the pictures show the soldiers apparently doing this for kicks. There were battles between be the Jews and Nazis including seiges that lasted for days in some of the ghettos. It still doesn't justify what the Nazis did to the Jews. There is no justification for that kind of behavior. You go ahead and rationalize torture as being ok, because it gives you something to do.
It has been more than obvious for some time that many of the war supporters will excuse, marginalize, or rationalize anything and everything rather than question the war or the administration. What I termed the Ostrich Brigade a few months back. This thread stands as yet another example, and I hope that people on the fence will read it. Most other posts surrounding this issue do the same. I won't even offer my criticism or interpretation of their words; they speak for themselves.
"Taguba's report described 60 percent of Abu Ghraib inmates as "not a threat to society." " From http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040505/1058602.asp
I believe in an eye for an eye. These people are trying to kill us while we try to rebuild their homeland. These prisoners aren't the clerks at local bodegas or the local bartender who everyone knows. These are Iraqi soldiers whose goal is to kill the enemy (as it should be in a war). I have never served our country and I am too old to ever do so at this point...so I don;t know the ins and outs of the military procedures as well as perhaps bamaslammer does but would imagine that this type of stuff goes on as part of war.
What are you basing this statement on?!?! The military's own report said the majority of the detainees were not even a threat to the troops! Wake up!
Vik, you'll find that most of the people arguing the pro-torture side of it have precious little knowledge of the facts and circumstances on which they comment. http://bbs.clutchcity.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77281&perpage=30&pagenumber=3
The problem is that you (collectively) have politicized everything-- calling for resignations and confessions of culpability from the top down. You have no reasonable way of dealing with this kind of event except to try and take down the house. That's why, in my opinion, you are so stringently opposed. I've tried to keep that perspective. This is a spectacle. Some of this is horrid. Some was probably fleeting. Some has been exagerated. Indeed there were abuses, but (c'mon military historian) there have been abuses such as this throughout recorded history of warfare. You have studiously avoided contributing to that line of argumentation, but neither have you negated the argument. I argued in another thread (I think) that this demonstrates the superiority of the US approach. These are mostly people problems (check history and you'll always see these kind of abuses and there have always been people at the cause). Yet, our system will out the guilty and deliver a just punishment. I'm just glad that I didn't have to be one of those jailers. War is Heaven... for you gifford!
And yet we are violating the Geneva Convention by torturing even ONE of them. Do you think the Geneva Convention is yet another "irrelevant" document?
