How many soldiers do we have in Iraq? Now, what percentage of that number is even accused of some of this wrong-going? The woman in one of the pictures who has a cigaret dangling from her lips says that many of the pictures were just staged. If that is true, that means that there was, in reality, far less humiliation going on than you will be happy to admit to. The picture would then be the worst part.
I heard Franken talking about this on the rerun last night... Paraphrasing... "Since I'm an elitist, I have a friend who was in Skull and Bones. He has pictures of W's initiation. Bush has a broomstick up his butt and is giving head to a donkey. My friend says it's clear they are just letting off a little steam."
You are actively and repeatedly promoting excuses for this depravity. That makes you an apologist. It makes me sick. I would have thought that was simple enough even for you to grasp the first time around, but guess some further illumination was necessary. That's OK, I'm always happy to help the less fortunate.
More Rush... WTF? “This is a pure, media-generated story. I'm not saying it didn't happen or that the pictures aren't there, but this is being given more life than the Waco invasion got. It’s almost become an Oklahoma City-type thing.”
Oh so they just staged some photos, of humiliation, and somehow two prisoners died, and another ended up in a coma? I would be less upset if that was all that it was. But the report makes it clear that the photos are not the worst of it at all. This is one report, there are dead prisoners, there is a man in a coma. The pictures are only one part of what's going on. It isn't equivalent to someone taking revenge for a raped daughter, it is equivalent to torture, murder, forced sodomy, abuse, etc.
I live in Iraq andjust kidnapped an American soldier. I strip him and make him do degrading things. I take pictures and show my buddies. If I get caught, my defense is that the pictures were really the worse part and besides, I'm no worse then the Americans.
seriously...what does that even mean?? if you call for personal responsibility for your political opponents, you damn sure ought to demand it from yourself and those you support.
Giddy, I'll address a few of your points, and them make on of my own; 1) You are contending with the term widespread, correct? Ok, for one thing, do you know with whom it originates as it applies to this situation? The US military. 2) Your statisitical deconstruction fails to account for a few things, namely it's not the number of soldiers serving, but the number designated for guarding POWs. Much, much lower. Then add to that the fact that there are reports coming in of this being endemic, and from across the country, and UNDER THE SUPERVISION of our intelligence gathering officials, and yes, even without the military's categorization, this would qualify as widespread. 3) As far as regular soldiers, there are a daily list of complaints about abuses on Iraqis, of shaming women, barging into homes ,, beating and dragging people off without an official arrest or trial, etc. I know, we tend to assume these aren't accurate accusations...like we said a week ago about torture and abuse of prisoners. 4) Your argument about " War is hell" isn't new. You know of others who have used it to minimlize their atrocities as well as I do. You will automatically argue numbers, I will say true, but the principle of excusing it under the guise of "war is hell" is the same. I could go on, but allow me to say this, in closing. Do you remember a month or so, you and I talked about the ridiculous lengths some people in here will go to overlook, marginalize, or rationalize negative aspects of the war or the administration in an effort to support their argument? Remember, the Ostrich Brigade? I can honestly tell you that, with a few exceptions, had you told me back them that these same people would do the same athing regarding an incontrovertible, acknowledged pattern of abuse, torture, humiliation and in some cases murder of Iraqi POWs, I would have not believed it. I am stunned that some are doing this. I am somewhat more so that you are among them as, with a few exceptions, I have thought you among the more reasonable of the hard line war supporters. I agree that your behaviour on this, while phrased very diplomatically in some respects, is disgusting, and I don't use that word about people I know very lightly at all.
Guardsman Probed for Iraq Naked Soldier Photos Wed May 5, 2004 07:07 PM ET By Adam Tanner SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The head of a U.S. military police unit at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison is under investigation following charges he secretly photographed naked female American soldiers, officials said on Wednesday. Capt. Leo Merck, 32, a member of the California National Guard who commanded the 124-strong 870th Military Police Company, is under U.S. Army investigation and has been relieved of duty, they said. "He was their commander and he led them into Iraq. While he was there this alleged incident happened," California National Guard spokesman Andrew Hughan said. Merck, a veteran of the first Gulf War who worked as a financial analyst before going to Iraq, is suspected of photographing the soldiers as they showered. The Guard said complaints were made against Merck in November. His unit arrived in Iraq in May a year ago. The incident is the latest embarrassment for the U.S. occupying force in Iraq. In recent days media worldwide has aired pictures of grinning soldiers abusing naked male Iraqi prisoners at the same prison that was once used by Saddam Hussein's torturers. Merck, who is married and resides in Fremont, California, a suburb of San Francisco, is at an undisclosed location under U.S. Army control. "The U.S. Army justice system is working its wheels," Hughan said. The Contra Costa Times, which broke the story on Wednesday, quoted Spc. Myrna Hernandez, 26, as saying she saw Merck photograph her as she was showering with two other women. "I saw a guy get on all fours with a digital camera in his hands. His head was going under the wall, and we made eye contact," she told the newspaper. "I was in shock, like what do I do now?" Merck worked as a senior financial analyst at San Jose, California-based KLA-Tencor Corp, a firm specializing in equipment that finds defects in computer chips. He had an MBA degree from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. "At this time the company thinks it's inappropriate to comment," said KLA-Tencor spokesman Kern Beare. A woman at his family home in North Dakota declined to comment. Merck first enlisted in the National Guard in 1989 and had received a series of decorations and service medals.
Why being right on WMD is no consolation to Iraqi scientist labelled enemy of America Chief link to UN weapons inspectors held in solitary confinement for year Jonathan Steele in Baghdad Wednesday May 5, 2004 The Guardian By any measure Amer al-Saadi ought to feel vindicated. The dapper British-educated scientist who was the Iraqi government's main link to the United Nations inspectors before the US invasion repeatedly insisted that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction years earlier. David Kay, the American inspector who headed the Iraq Survey Group and was sure he would find such weapons when he went to Iraq after the war, now accepts Dr Saadi was right. So does Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, who up to a month before the war still thought Iraq might have had WMD. Yet, astonishingly, Dr Saadi does not know of their change of mind or of the political fallout their views have caused in western countries. He is like a lottery winner who is the last person to be told he has hit the jackpot. Held in solitary confinement in an American prison at Baghdad's international airport, Dr Saadi is denied the right to read newspapers, listen to the radio, or watch television. "In the monthly one-page letters I am allowed to send him through the Red Cross I cannot mention any of this news. I can only talk about family issues," says his wife, Helma, as she sits in the couple's home less than half a mile from US headquarters in Baghdad. Barely three days after the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down by US troops in central Baghdad Dr Saadi approached the Americans and became the first senior Iraqi to hand himself in. It was the last time his wife saw him. He was sure he would soon be released, Mrs Saadi says. He was a scientist who had never been part of Saddam's terror apparatus, or even a member of the Ba'ath party. Interviews CIA interrogators have repeatedly interviewed him. Had there been any WMD to discover Dr Saadi would have had an obvious incentive to reveal their location once the regime had collapsed. But from the reports of the Iraq Survey Group it can only be assumed that he has maintained his line that they were eliminated long ago. Dr Saadi is described officially by the Americans as an "enemy prisoner of war". This allows them to detain him indefinitely without access to a lawyer or visiting rights from his family until George Bush declares the war to be over. Whether he is still held out of spite or to hide Washington's embarrassment is not clear. He has already been in custody for more than a year. His CIA interrogators have finished their work and apparently feel awkward about his continued detention. "My handlers have appealed to higher authorities for my release but it seems it's political and God doesn't meddle in politics," Dr Saadi wrote in one letter. "It would speak well for them if they admitted they were mistaken. They would look human," Mrs Saadi says. German by birth, she and her husband have always conversed in English. They were married in Wandsworth register office in south London 40 years ago last October, when he was studying chemistry at Battersea College of Technology. The prison letters she shares with the Guardian reflect the tenderness of a long and successful partnership. Despite the censorship they resonate with affection and occasional whimsical flashes of humour, as well as periods of depression. "Leave the brooding to me. I have time enough. Be constructive," he urged her in one letter. By a second cruel stroke of fate, she was in the UN headquarters last August, seeking help for her husband, when a suicide bomber blew it up. Twenty-two people died, including the woman she was talking to when the upper floor caved in. Mrs Saadi was unconscious for 48 hours and awoke in a US military hospital. The couple's children have lived most of their lives in Germany. "We didn't want them to develop under the regime. He never saw his children grow up. It breaks my heart," Mrs Saadi says. She spent 20 years bringing them up in Hamburg and making only short visits to Baghdad. Dr Saadi was not allowed to go abroad except on official business. The regime urged him to divorce her but he refused. In prison under US custody he is not even allowed pen and paper, except to compose his one-page Red Cross letter. He does crosswords by filling in the blanks in his head. His wife sent him a computerised chess set but was not allowed to provide replacement batteries when the first ones ran out. He has been teaching himself German. "If it were not for impressing the grandchildren, I wouldn't bother," he wrote last year. Last month he joked about Paul Bremer, the top US official in Iraq. "Bremer I found out from the German lessons I am giving myself is a man from Bremen! Yet another German!" Dr Saadi is kept in his cell all day except for an hour of exercise in a supervised area. His wife was able to send him running shoes. Conditions In October he wrote that his conditions had slightly improved: "The awfully sagging bed has now a wooden board, and a plastic chair is provided instead of the back-breaking sitting on the floor on the very low bed which rolls you towards the centre with your bottom nearly touching the floor." With a British PhD in physical chemistry Dr Saadi is essentially a rocket scientist. Now 66, he was awarded a scholarship from the defence ministry under the Iraqi monarchy to study in Britain, which meant he had to commit himself to work for the military later. During the war with Iran, when Saddam's Iraq was being armed and helped by the west, he organised a team of scientists who developed a ground-to-ground missile with a range of 400 miles, capable of reaching Tehran. This prompted the Iranian regime to agree to a peace deal. In 1994 he retired with the rank of lieutenant general but was appointed the next year as a scientific adviser to the presidency. He regularly met the UN weapons inspectors and when they resumed their work in November 2002 he was the government's main liaison man. He became a well-known figure on TV, wearing a suit rather than uniform and speaking fluent English at press conferences. His wife insists he was never close to Saddam and last met him in 1995. In his presentation to the security council in February last year the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, attacked Dr Saadi. He described his job as being "not to cooperate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing". Dr Saadi rejected the charges and hit back, describing Mr Powell's speech as a "typical American show, full of stunts and special effects". Mr Powell admitted recently that key parts of his presentation were wrong. Dr Saadi's younger brother, Radwan, has worked in Iraq's oil ministry for 30 years and was reinstated by the US as head of its finance department. He tries to be hopeful. "The Americans are taking it case by case. There are various agencies who all have to approve anyone's release. Some detainees were released very early who were closer to the regime than Amer. It's like dealing with a black hole." Dr Saadi is number 32 on Washington's most wanted list, and the seven of diamonds on the notorious deck of cards. Ironically, he now spends a lot of time with cards, playing patience in his lonely cell.
I don't think I had much to do with the formation of The Ostrich Brigade other than being nominated for membership.... I'd like really to know what is "disgusting." The point of talking about how widespread this problem is is to refute the implication that this will cost us the war. There is an attempt to degrade the entire American war effort because of these problems which are but a slice of the whole shebang. That's why I bring up the huge numbers of soldiers who are innocent of these suspicions. The anti-war crowd is attempting to use these revelations to undermine the whole war effort. I don't believe that I am on record as disbelieving that any of this could be being done-- even a week ago. Yeah, war is hell and human beings stoop to things that those of us watching in our living rooms can hardly believe. I'm no armchair peacenik but I am an armchair chickenhawk I guess you would say. I've never served but I am more willing than others I guess to cut some slack to the men and women who put themselves in constant danger on behalf of our nation. For every grandma ridden like a burro (if it's even true) how many American grandmas lost a grandson or granddaughter to one of the car bombs which kill American and Iraqi alike. If you are disgusted by that, you need a stronger constitution.
Among other things, if you think that it's the anti-war people that are making this undermine our war effort, you really aren't listening. People from both sides of the political fence outside the actual administration and EACH AND EVERY military expert I've seen, which comprises at leat 6, have said that this at the least makes ut an uphill climb we are unlikely to be able to make, and at worst will directly contribute to more dead US soldiers, and make all of their deaths equally fruitless ( almost a direct quote). These aren't partisan guys either, these are guys on MSNBC, etc. many of whom have previously been very objective and dismissed many complaints about our actions. That's what I mean: you think that it's a partisan take to say that this undermines our war effort. That pretty much says it all right there.
We are in danger of losing something much more important than just the war in Iraq. We are in danger of losing America as an instrument of moral authority and inspiration in the world. I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today. I was just in Japan, and even young Japanese dislike us. Friedman. Well he should have thought about this when he supported the war. Is Fiedman about to jump off the war train? Why is Friedman so surprised? All the polls showed in virtually every country in the world strong majorities opposed the war, including most of the countries we paid to be in the coalition. He ends with the melodramatic plea to keep chugging with the occupation, albeit with the help of the UN and allies.: because America's role in the world is too precious — to America and to the rest of the world — to be squandered like this. What malarkey. America has lost in its unnecessary interventions before, Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs. It was not the end of our country, its power or even its influence. Though many Americans view the country as being Snow White, the rest of the world has known of America's despicable cruelty as well as its good deeds. Their opinion will return to the normal realistic view of us as we stop doing this unecessary war. I agree that we should cooperate with the UN,Nato or whomever as we withdraw and an attempt is made to clean up the mess we made.
