Parting shot... If OP and others who want to harp on old "crimes" committed by Americans who aren't even there anymore, and they do that by highlighting the attacks on Talil and what used to be Abu Ghraib, then... Whi doe this not get any mention? Wave of seven car bombs tear through Shiite areas of Baghdad http://www.independent.ie/world-news/wave-of-seven-car-bombs-tear-through-shiite-areas-of-baghdad-29436419.html Iraq is still a mess. When we left AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) was on the ropes, all but wiped out. Since then it's made a resurgence. Why the concern about a former prison, but no concern about scores of innocent people being blown up after dinner? Like I said earlier. I know why. G'night.
i think this is the last go. I was down to debate the issues, but then got irked by TREE asking me for my resume every time. but yeah, so long as that goes, meh. otherwise NS and TREE has a nice ring to it, but I need to emphasize that I want to be first billing on that. If anyone has to spend an ungodly amount of time on these parts discussing things (hey i love it 55% of the time, but I'm just wired like that), I want the name brand. and a klondike bar.
Not a military hater here. Family has served since The Revolution and on both sides of the Civil War. Can you not see that your argument is damning in and of itself. The "widespreadness" of the torture is not what is at issue here. The fact that the US government openly and blatantly tortured while relying on a tortured legal construct that ignored precedent, US law, and international law to justify and even brag about that torture. The issue is that it was done at all, not how much. Sorry, but that is a huge fallacy that you are relying on. The same argument has been made about subjects since time immemorial and used to justify all kinds of horrible stuff. Go read the congressional testimony from the 1900-1930's about lynching and you will see the same sentiments. Oh, please. Nobody gives them a pass. They are assholes and idiots without any moral compass who use selective religious teachings or the naked pursuit of power to justify the cruelty they inflict. We are not them. We are the United States of America. We are better than they are and we should be held to the highest standard.
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He says he didn't know anything. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. He offered his resignation knowing Bush wouldn't accept it. Rumsfeld did become the sacrificial lamb after the 2006 midterms. (Wow, has it been that long since he stepped down?)
Rimrocker pretty much has stated my thoughts on the matter. While I respect the military and those who served in Iraq as a matter of principle we do hold our military to a high standard and certainly expect their behavior to not be even in the ballpark of what Saddam's troops and Al Qaeda. That said Treeman is right that the current breakout isn't really a US issue since the prison has been under Iraqi control since 2006 and nearly all US personnel have withdrawn from Iraq.
Wikipedia has been found to be of good quality and reliability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia
What our people did at Abu Ghraib *pales* in comparison to what Saddam did, what AQ did/does, and what most of our enemies tend to do. It doesn't even come close. Most of the crap that has come out has basically been childish, stupid, inappropriate pranking. Putting panties on their heads. Making them stand in a pyramid formation. Scaring them with dogs. If you are REALLY getting your panties in a wad about that crap then I can only say that it's silly, and it's simply and excuse for people (read: Leftists) to try and equate us with our enemies. "See, we're no better than they are". Those adjudicated as guilty of real abuse are always treated extremely harshly, because the US military does take it seriously. And those cases are actually very few and far between. Over a million US military members have served in Iraq, and only a handful of them went bad. Does that tell you nothing? Wake me up when REAL American rape and torture rooms are found, and we start seeing decapitation videos of our victims ending up at the victims' families homes. Er, no, they DO get a pass from the Left side of the aisle. They consistently have. But of course, it was Bush who was running the show, and the opportunity to paint both Bush *and* the US as evil is simply too great to pass up for most Leftists. I repeat, I have yet to see any true outrage from the Left over our enemies' atrocities. HRW will issue an occasional obligatory report on their activities, but there is never any real outrage, much less a call to arms, from the Left. That tells me that they don't actually care.
Great job, Iraqis. Their prison guards always were incompetent. I would bet $$ that the guys who escaped were the same ones we had at Bucca. Before we left Bucca I asked one of the Iraqis we were training what they were going to do with all of the AQI and takfiri we would be turning over to them. We all knew that they could never be released, as they were religious nutcases and psychopaths to a man and would simply return to killing again if they ever got out. His response was that they'd probably just kill them all when we left. Sounded fine to me. Sounds like they should have done it. This is really going to come back on them.
hi treeman. This point always strikes me as odd, whether it's from/for the left or from/for the right. I think in politics we get the most outraged when we see people who represent us and spend our tax dollars doing things we don't like or even find immoral. (See, for example, the hatred of our current or previous POTUS.) And in terms of debate and discussion, in general, we all agree (I think) that atrocities by foreign dictators are atrocities and are roundly condemned. So there's not a lot to discuss. The "lack of outrage" applies everywhere you can look, from DPRK to Rwanda to Cambodia before that, and so on. But that aside, I think this is completely a troll thread. I for one appreciate your perspective from having served on the ground in Iraq but more than anything I greatly appreciate your service period.
This is absolutely a troll thread. The OP is trying to imply that we had something to do with this and trying to dredge up old wounds. I am not saying that everything that was done at Abu Ghraib was peachy keen. It never should have happened, and it was rightly dealt with severely by the military. Changes were made to the system to reduce the odds of it ever happening again. There's really not much more you can ask for after that. But it has been blown out of proportion, and if does pale in comparison to actual torture committed by our enemies. I am simply trying to put it into perspective. But yeah, this is a troll thread. I wish I could negative rep OP for starting it.
here is a quote from that "leftist", republican senator lindsey graham... http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500257_162-616338.html yeah, a bunch of low-level privates went to prison while the people who actually authorized such techniques got in no trouble at all. cheney, rumsefeld, alberto gonzales and john yoo should be prosecuted for war crimes. but no...lets just go after a bunch of military prison guards who were just doing what they were told. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo
Who did not elaborate. Alternate thread reply: "Newsflash: Lindsey Graham is an overdramatic attention w**** who carelessly makes claims he can't back up"... You are also a liar. Nobody authorized the crap that happened at Abu Ghraib. You are talking about enhanced interrogation techniques, which A) were duly authorized, B) actually worked, and C) were ended when they became controversial. Abu Ghraib was a case of a bunch of bored, stupid, frustrated prison guards who decided to do some dumb crap and take pictures of it. At that time they also had very little oversight. After that episode the SOP was completely overhauled and as I said all detainee operations were put under a microscope. I'll just lump you in with the rest of the Leftists who don't have a clue what they're talking about and can do nothing but try and twist my words and post wikipedia articles. Troll.
And just to preempt, I am well aware of: http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/48349:sanchez-authorized-torture-at-abu-ghraib Leftist rag. And: http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/12/the-architect-of-abu-ghraib/207485/ Leftist rag. And: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2807365 Uber-Leftist forum. And: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1870503,00.html Leftist rag with Leftist columnist. It goes on and on. It's all about the enhanced interrogation techniques, which do not amount to torture. The Abu Ghraib guards went beyond what was authorized. Don't conflate the two.
treeman, the fact that you've said there aren't people in gitmo who have been detained for no reason makes you unreliable (off topic, but not even sure why you brought it up, just had to reply to that ridiculous claim). That is just ridiculous. There are a large amount of people there who have yet to have a trial. Just stop..
No, everyone was brought there for a reason. They aren't simply random people they are pulling off of the street. That reason may range from some nugget of intelligence to being caught building or planting an IED, but every single one of them is there for a reason. Whether they are adjudicated as guilty or not is a different question. And as I said earlier, quite a few of them have been released only to be caught again on the battlefield. Gitmo is reserved for the special ones. The rest get just get a blanket and a bunk at a TIF. Your OP was ridiculous. You tried to imply that the US had something to do with the attack/prison outbreak, and you presented false information regarding what happened at Abu Ghraib. This entire insult of a thread is an abortion that missed its time. If you want to post a news bit about the breakout and assault, then fine. It is newsworthy because the 500 or so monsters who were broken out are going to end up wreaking havoc across both Iraq and Syria, and possibly beyond. But all you care about is the injustices perpetrated by a handfull of prison guards nearly a decade ago. Like most leftists you give the *actual* terrorists a pass. I have to ask why? Are you a supporter of the jihad, too?
I will give a post about my personal experience in detainee ops in Iraq, and why it probably relates to this episode. I was at Camp Bucca, Iraq, from 2007-2008. I was trained as a forward observer but the military was critically short of MPs and trained other units to fulfill their duties; I was attached to another artillery unit that was assigned such duties (not much use for artillery in Iraq, as artillery missions were almost rarely sanctioned). Camp Bucca was probably the largest detainee (prison) compound in the world at the time. I was there during the surge and at peak we had close to 30k detainees. The facility itself was broken into over 30 different compounds, each housing a different type of population. My first compound was Compound 23, which was split into two "quads" (I know, it makes sense...) with approximately 400 detainees in each quad - one side was a moderate Sunni quad and the other was an Al Qaeda in Iraq quad. Our second compound was Compound 29, which was a high security compound sectioned into 8 quads (yes, it still makes sense in the military way), each with about 60 detainees. We had takfiri quads, AQI quads, Shiite quads (Special Groups, Sadr's people), and the really bad foreigners (Egyptians, mostly). Our unit did not have a MOS trained S2 NCO when we deployed. Because I had a college degree, a security clearance, and some knowledge of Arab and Islamic culture they made me the S2 NCO, and I did that off and on for about half of the deployment. I had SIPRnet access, and I got to read the detainees' capture packet files. I know the things those motherfudgers did. They were EVIL. These are people who built car bombs and drove them into hospitals. They strapped explosives onto small children and sent them into places of business to kill people. They used women, children, the elderly, mentally ill as pawns in their efforts to blow people up. I got to interview some of these people. It wasn't called "interrogation". It was cordial, no one ever touched the detainee, no one threatened them, no one made them uncomfortable in any way beyond me telling them that I could maybe help their family to get some money or other assistance, or I could possibly assist them in being released, or I could make sure that in their next review (their cases were reviewed every 3 months) they most certainly would NOT be released. THAT is what it was like. You people have watched too many movies. The reality is far different than what you think. Yes, bad things happened. It was a war. But most of it was like what I just described. I have probably read the capture packets of some of the 500 or so who were broken out. I may have even talked to some of them (via terps, of course). These are the guys that we all knew could never be released if the war was going to end. Now they are free. They are going to kill people, lots of people. These are the worst of the worst. These are the guys who saw peoples' heads off with rusty knives chanting "Allahu Akbar!". The group suspected of freeing them has ties with the "rebel" groups in Syria that we are not going to be funding. Fantastic plan, BTW, arming and funding people with associations to AQ... This will not end well.
