We just lost the war in Iraq w/ a picture

"Let your yes be yes, and your no be no." -- Jesus Christ


how disappointing. how depressing. how freaking shameful.

 

Giddyup it's not a comparitive issue. The fact that Iraqis kill Iraqi civilians has little or nothing to do with whether or not torture, murder, and mistreatment of prisoners is ok, or whether or not the U.S. cares about collateral damge.

As far as a kid getting his guts ripped out by an RPG, that's bad as well, but that's whithin the accepted practices of war. That kid died with his honor and dignity still in tact.

Torture = bad. It doesn't matter what else has happened to us, or anyone else, it doesn't excuse torture.

 

I didn't say that I accepted it. I said that I accepted the reality of it. It has been proven to recur historically, no? People who lose control deserve to be prosecuted. I've said nothing different than that. It's just not my focus.

It is avoidable theoretically, however let's put you in combat and see how those theories hold up. In reality it is very difficult to avoid.

 

This is the part of Batman's retort that my remarks were addressing: "...we're basically no different than the ones we're fighting."

It is a comparative issue because our basic values are different.

I don't approve of what happened in these prisons but I can justify it casually in the same vein that I could "justify" a father who guns down the man who has raped and left for dead his 11 YO daughter. War is hell.

 

but if these aren't put into practice, who cares what our values/ideas are?

seriously, if this were happening to US troops by Iraqis we'd be hearing them called "animals" and we'd all be talking about tearing them up for it, and getting our guys out of that nightmare.

this is a war of ideas as much as anything else....we're trying to convince a huge part of the world that democracy is a good thing..that americans can be trusted...that we're not the Great Satan. The enduring image of this war to the Arab people will be of these torture chamber pictures. That's what we've left them with. The fuel for more hate, which is the fuel for more terrorism and death. Great. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

 

Yes, war is hell. That's why we ought not to enter into it lightly -- why we ought not to enter into it if there's any way to avoid it. This was an elective war. We're seeing now, if we didn't know before, why we don't do those as a rule.

Your analogy is the reddest of herrings. Nobody is suggesting that this was a case of revenge but you. Likening a father avenging his daughter's rape to picking up random curfew violators or whatever off the street and sticking light fixtures up their asses in order to humiliate them is just despicable. There's no evidence the people who were savaged in those jails were even soldiers, let alone that they ever committed the sorts of acts that were committed against them. They might have. But the people who violated them didn't do so because they knew or even suspected that. They did it because they were Iraqi. And we're their liberators?

I repeat this not because Bush or any of the neo-cons make these assertions but because you do (they actually disagree with you for the record): If we ARE better than them, the best case you could make to them after these heinous acts is that it is by degrees. And that's the best case you even attempt to make. When we've supposedly gone there to show them a better way, that rings hollow as hell.

I'm not going to argue with you as to whether the worst Americans are worse than the worst Iraqis. It's a moot point and it's supposed to be a given that we are not. Your recent posts have been nothing more than an argument against war in general. You've completely dodged how this stuff is perceived by the people whose hearts and minds we're trying to win. And if you don't understand that winning their hearts and minds is a million times more important than planting a flag on their land, the whole conversation's fruitless.

 

This is an unbelievably ridiculous rationalization and the kind of attitude that led to this horrific scandal in the first place. You want to have it both ways- I dont "approve" of this behavior but I can "justify" it. "War is hell".


Tell me how the old lady described below is like the rapist of an 11 year old girl.

The Associated Press reports from London that "U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey."


Would you be so understanding if these were American prisoners being abused in this way because "War is hell"?

 

Sy Hersh from last night on O'Reilly ...

First of all, it's going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I've had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn't want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.

There was a special women's section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It's much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.

Worse and worse.

-- Josh Marshall

 

You gotta love these armchair peaceniks who haven't seen their friends and comrades killed along with innocent Iraqi citizens by roadside carbombs detonated by those professing to do so in the best interest of these newly-dead-- except for the American.

max: I don't disagree with anything you've said. However, they hated and were killing us before these events. How much worse can these sad revelatiions make things? I also hasten to point out that our basic values are being upheld by the vast majority of our service men and women. There are these exceptions (and here's where the value of comparing comes in).... our exceptions are but a weak example of their standards (i.e. die for the cause and kill as many as you can earning martyrdom for the dead Muslims and death to the infidel).

gifford: Why do you think there is such a thing as the Geneva Conventions? Historically, our soldiers kept prisoner have been treated horribly as have all soldiers throughout history. Think of the Chinese or the Japanese.

Batman: Tell me a war that wasn't elective?

 

There are a couple of things I want to address here, even though some of them already have been addressed.

Our basic values are supposed to be different. But those are just a bunch of hollow words unless our deeds match our values. What has been happening to prisoners in Iraq demonstrates to all that the values aren't different. That's why it's such a crime. I'm not even talking about what it did to those in the prison, but what's it's done to our values. If we want to stand for values we need to stand for them. When actions like this betray our values it becomes not only a crime against those tortured in the prisons but a crime against the U.S.A. and the values that we are supposed to stand for. These actions are in direct violation of those values and that's why it's more serious. If we went around preaching torture, murder and mistreatment, then we'd be living up to our values. But that's not what most of us believe in, or what the country was founded on. This is what's being destroyed.

As for the 11 YO daughter analagy it's way off. First off the 11YO daughter didn't invade and occupy the rapists country. The U.S. did. Secondly, as has been pointed out, many of the prisoners were civilians who had nothing to do with a single scratch to any U.S. soldier.

Also look at the pictures, Giddy. The faces of the soldiers don't have determined revenge on them. They show people smiling, happy, and making a mockery of the whole thing. If someone raped a daughter of mine and I was determined to take an unjust route toward revenge, I would be very serious about it. I wouldn't pose in a 'funny' picture with me pretending like I was shooting his privates. Smiling all the while. What a great Kodak moment.

Basically it's because I care about the values that you mentioned in your post even more than I care about the lives of these Iraqis that has made me the most angry. How can we pretend that our values are different when the actions those who are supposed to represent us belie those very values. The values are very important to me. They are more important the one person's life, or a whole batallion's lives. If they die or I or any of us die with our values in tact and upheld, then we were living well when we died. If we die with our values betrayed and smeared across frames of film like this, our deaths do not serve our country and our in vain.

 

More from Josh...
_______________

There is a passage in the Taguba Report that reads as follows ...

MG Miller’s team recognized that they were using JTF-GTMO operational procedures and interrogation authorities as baselines for its observations and recommendations. There is a strong argument that the intelligence value of detainees held at JTF-Guantanamo (GTMO) is different than that of the detainees/internees held at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and other detention facilities in Iraq. Currently, there are a large number of Iraqi criminals held at Abu Ghraib (BCCF). These are not believed to be international terrorists or members of Al Qaida, Anser Al Islam, Taliban, and other international terrorist organizations.

There's a lot of jargon here. So let me try to add a little context and explanation.

"MG Miller" is Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, until recently the commanding officer of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was just recently placed in command the US prison system in Iraq.

In August and September of last year Miller went to Iraq to study and report on the prison facilities the US military was running in the country and how they were being utilized for generating intelligence by means of interrogations. He made his report in October.

[ed. note: I got some hints this evening of high-level interest in the contents of Miller's report. And I strongly suspect that we'll be seeing that report show up in print and online some time pretty soon.]

In the passage above, Taguba makes the point that Miller was using Gitmo rules as "the baselines for its observations and recommendations" for how things should be conducted in Iraq.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with what's happening at Guantanamo Bay. In my mind, the issue is not so much the particular conditions and procedures -- which are hard to determine since everything is so secret -- but the fact that the US government has tried from the first to argue that the camp is literally off-limits for law of any sort. Geneva Convention rules don't apply. US courts have no oversight whatsoever. Nothing.

That's simply beyond the pale in a democratic state under the rule of law. Everybody gets to go before a magistrate. Even if it's a hanging judge. Everybody.

Now, having said that, it's not hard to see why different procedures might be called for if you're dealing with active and hardened terrorists (though with no rule of law at Guantanamo there's really no way to know if that's even the case). But in Iraq you've got everything from petty criminals to bona-fide terrorists in detention. And between those two extreme categories you've got plenty of people picked up for various levels of association with the former regime, sympathy with various anti-American groups, insurgent violence, people picked in raids looking for intelligence, innumerable people who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, almost everything under the sun.

Many are probably, no doubt, not the most pleasant folks. But to imply, as Taguba does, that we shouldn't be applying Guantanamo rules to these folks is really an understatement. Basically, the idea seems to be that we're taking the unprecedented and extra-legal Gitmo rules and applying them as the baseline for how we're going to deal with everyone we take into custody in Iraq.

Now, we can't draw too much from Taguba's brief description of what Miller's report contains or the context of its commission. And certainly this doesn't mean that everyone in Iraq literally got the Gitmo treatment. But I can't think of a more tangible example of the corrosive effect our embrace of lawlessness at Guantanamo has had on our conduct. First we devise these outlandish rules to deal with the worst bad guys behind 9/11 and the next thing you know we're applying those brave new rules to miscellaneous bad actors who fall into our net in Iraq. What are we looking at here but the fraudulent connection between Iraq and 9/11 suddenly become flesh, as we look into our own faces and see a paler shade of our enemies looking back at us?

-- Josh Marshall

 

Have you read the report or any part of it? It wasn't just a few bad apples doing this. The atrocities were WIDESPREAD. When that happens we know there is a failure in leadership.

I've mentioned why I think not committing tortures like that are best for Americans. So far we've had prisoners taken that have been seen by doctors, locked in rooms, and admittedly some have been beaten. But it most certainly could get worse for them. And incidents like this will make it worse for them. That's another reason it's not good for Americans.

Again you mentioned soldiers having their friends shot and killed. The people being tortured were often not combat personell and had zero to do with any of that. Also the pictures don't show the grim faces of avengers.

 

Another photo... (from WAPO)

 

Yes, America Can!

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=275

 

a word from Rush...

 

Is there a link or some context? If it was posted earlier and I missed it, please point me in the right direction.

 

I heard the quote on Air America Radio yesterday. No context, but Rush did say exactly that.

 

Well then I didn't think the context would really matter since it's Rush we were talking about, but I wanted to be as fair as possible. If the murder of two folks, forcing others into sexual positions, making an elderly women carry people around like a mule, and putting another man in a coma is his idea of blowing off steam, no wonder he needed pain pills to cope.

 

giddyup, your apologist stance in regard to this animalistic torture is absolutely sickening.