Has it really come to this? We're giving Bush credit because he hasn't dropped chemical weapons on US cities. I mean, how low can you set the bar?
With Bush, as low as you can go. It's all good as long as he hasn't lied about oral sex. Lying about stuff that gets Americans killed, that's cool apparently.
No, I'm just drawing a contrast (not a comparison) to President Bush with the great but imperfect US Military and Saddam Hussein with his throng of perverts, criminals, psychopaths, and thugs who did this kind of crap with impunity across decades. I'm not sure how much I believe about the reports that these were almost randomly picked Iraqis. If true, that is detestable. ... but thank you for trying to understand!
To those of you who still think this was not a big deal - the Bushies almost admit making a mistake in public. Of course it's only the State Department, the other guys have their head too far up Bush's rear end. I guess it would be a little embarrassing to put our own country on the list of human rights abusers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64194-2004May3.html In U.S., Seeking To Limit Damage By Robin Wright Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, May 4, 2004; Page A18 The Bush administration is struggling to develop a damage-control strategy to counter the mounting global backlash against the United States after revelations that U.S. military and intelligence personnel abused Iraqi prisoners, according to U.S. officials. The search for a strong response follows a review of international reaction by the State Department's Intelligence and Research Department that revealed devastating fallout and criticism well beyond the Islamic world, from Brazil and Britain to Hong Kong, U.S. officials said. "It's very, very sobering," said a State Department official briefed on the INR review. He requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "It's like the song by the Who, 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.' That's the widespread perception we have to deal with." U.S. diplomats around the world have sent troubling cables back to Washington including angry commentary in editorials and government condemnation of the abuse, with warnings that the graphic photographs of naked Iraqi prisoners with their gloating jailers could seriously affect U.S. standing and broader foreign policy, U.S. officials said. Many U.S. embassies have asked for guidance on how to respond, they added. "There are certainly a lot of people who are very disturbed by the pictures and the reports that are coming out," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. The administration has rushed to get top foreign policy officials to condemn the abuses. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, was hastily added to the Sunday talk show lineup, and Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, appeared on morning programs yesterday. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who will assume responsibility for Iraq after the handover of power on June 30, is to appear on CNN's "Larry King Live" tonight The effort to produce a convincing explanation of what happened at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison comes as the State Department prepares to release its annual report accounting for how the United States supports human rights and democracy around the world. The report is due out Wednesday. . . . The international outrage has been so fierce that the current approach of blaming a few individuals is inadequate, U.S. officials say. "We're now realizing that we can't expect the Pentagon to handle all of these criticisms and requests to focus on the public affairs disaster this has caused," said the State Department official, who is involved in the strategy discussions. "We're frantically working this issue and trying to come up with a strategy," he added. "We need to beat this back. People want not just words but action . . . to deal with this international firestorm."
Torture commonplace, say inmates' families Luke Harding at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, where stories of US guards routinely abusing prisoners come as no surprise to Iraqis Monday May 3, 2004 The Guardian For the families standing in the dusty car park of Abu Ghraib prison yesterday, the revelations of torture and abuse came as no surprise. Every morning, relatives of Iraqi detainees inside the US prison, just west of Baghdad, gather in the hope that their loved ones might be released. They rarely are. The photos of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees may have provoked outrage across the world. But for Hiyam Abbas they merely confirmed what she already knew - that US guards had tortured her 22-year-old son Hassan. Breaking down in tears, Mrs Abbas said US guards had refused to let her in. She had so far only managed to see Hassan once - two months ago - following his arrest last November. "He told me: 'Mum, they are taking our clothes off. We are nude all the time. They are getting dogs to smell our arses. They are also beating us with cables.' "It's completely humiliating," Mrs Abbas said. "My son is sick and suffering from hypertension. During the interview the American soldiers were standing so close to us. My son was crying." Her son had been detained in the Baghdad suburb of Al-Dora, after a gang broke into their house. What did she think of the Americans now? "They are rubbish," she said. "Saddam Hussein may have oppressed us but he was better than the Americans. They are garbage." Yesterday other Iraqis gave similar accounts of what goes on inside Abu Ghraib, once a centre of torture and execution under Saddam. The US military last week claimed that "no more than 20" US soldiers had been involved in abusing and humiliating inmates. The vast majority of US guards were not involved, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt suggested. Yesterday, however, Abu Salem, who spent six months inside Abu Ghraib between August and February, said abuse by US guards went on all the time. Mr Salem, 41, said he had also known about the practice of US soldiers posing for pictures with Iraqi prisoners for five months. "This didn't take place in the general camp but in individual cells," he said. Naked Mr Salem said he had been in the jail shortly before a visit from the International Red Cross in January. Until then, detainees in the prison wing had been kept naked. "The night before the Red Cross arrived, the American soldiers gave them some new clothes. They told us that if we complained to the Red Cross about our treatment we would be kept in prison forever. They said they would never let us out." Mr Salem said he had come to the jail, a short drive from the town's chaotic vegetable market, to try to find out what had happened to his three brothers. They were still inside the prison, he said, behind its outer fence and a vast razor wire- topped inner wall. Generally, detainees were only tortured in the days immediately after their arrest, during interrogation, he added. Many of the allegations made by Mr Salem and other former detainees yesterday correspond with the damning internal US army report into Abu Ghraib obtained by the Guardian and the New Yorker magazine. Yesterday the mother of one detainee, Samira Hassan, said the latest allegations were horribly familiar. Her 22-year-old son Abbas had been arrested three months ago while walking past a US military base in the Baghdad suburb of Amariya. She finally managed to see him in prison two weeks ago. "He told me they are using electric shocks against the prisoners and taking off their clothes. He also told me something I can hardly talk about - that the Americans are raping the Iraqi men. "This is terrible," Mrs Hassan said. "This is shame for us. We have a different culture and different religion. They should not do that. "We are not talking about one case but of thousands of cases," she said. "The Americans said they would bring us freedom. Is this what they mean?" Not all the detainees inside Abu Ghraib were young men, it emerged yesterday, or even very plausible resistance fighters. Several relatives wearing flowing white dish-dashes had turned up to try to visit Qahta al-Salim, a prominent 70-year-old sheikh from the Sunni town of Samarra. Mr al-Salim had been in American custody for four months, his son, Mutashar Qahtan, said. US soldiers arrested him at his home after a neighbour claimed he supported the resistance. "My father is an old man. He has a heart complaint. The first thing they did was to make him stand up for 12 hours," he complained. "They then took him to Tikrit and finally to here." Mr Qahtan said the allegations of abuse by US soldiers were "nothing new". He said he spent 47 days last year in US custody in Tikrit. "Personally they didn't do anything wrong to me," he said. "But I saw for myself what they did to others. They forced a group of prisoners to stand naked on the roof for seven days. They also told us that all Iraqis were sugar." There are around 8,000 Iraqi prisoners in US custody, held in camps across Iraq without trial or access to a lawyer. A tiny minority of those detained are high-ranking members of the former regime. Victims Relatives, however, insist that the majority of "security detainees" are innocent, and claim they are often victims of random arrest following attacks on coalition forces. Either way, the images of torture and humiliation would merely serve to fuel the armed struggle against US occupation, Majid al-Salim, the brother of the imprisoned sheikh, said. "The Americans are driving people into the arms of the Maqawama [resistance]," he said. "We now look back at Saddam's era with nostalgia," he added. "He was a good leader. There was security. We hope he comes back." Courtesy of http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1208408,00.html
Why is this called for? Would your sarcasm still be on target if you found out that half of the offending soldiers where Democrats? And the comment about US being on the human rights abusers list... if we tried to hide this but more importantly, if our government condoned it, then we'd deserve to be on the list. The pictures, and actions, are just sick.
Cohen -- that's an excellent point. i said here before that one thing that is great about America is that it airs its dirty laundry...it exposes it for everyone to see.
It doesn't matter what their party affiliation is. In every matter this administration has managed to blame the Clintons for everything that has gone wrong during the Bushies' administration. Even when Paul Bremer six months before 9/11 says the *Bushies* haven't done anything to stop terrorism, now he has to say he was mistaken and it was the Clintons that didn't do enough and there was nothing the Bushies could do. The apologists ran out of fig leaves. Even now the Bushies are spinning this as isolated *without* bothering to read a three month old report of pervasive abuses. Comparing the world press to the US press is a joke. The US media is stepping over itself saying, hey, maybe some of these guys deserved this. Yes, that is what they are saying on Fox. These guys in the current administration can't take responsibility for anything. And they ran on a platform of bringing accountability to the White House. Anybody running against these clowns could use that as their platform.
Rush weighs in... disgusting... _________________ "Folks, these torture pictures with the women torturers, I mean Marv Albert looking at those pictures would say, "Hey, that doesn't look so bad." You know, if you really look at these pictures, I mean I don't know if it's just me but it looks like anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe you can get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean this is something you can see at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City: the Movie. I mean, it's just me. ... RUSH: Really an independent here. All right, so you got these women, and they're torturing -- those pictures showed up 60 Minutes and the best we can determine these pictures were taken by the soldiers that were there. That's what we found out. Now, I'll bet you, there's a possibility, I don't know, but there's a possibility that what's happening here that this is not torture; this is part of interrogation that is to come later. This is humiliation. This is the kind of humiliation and embarrassment that is taken place to soften people up for the interrogation which happens next. This is a war, Tiffany. CALLER: Oh, my gosh -- RUSH: One of the biggest impediments to winning a war is television and pictures. CALLER: What if they did that on our soil to our citizens, would it still be considered -- RUSH: Have you heard of 9/11 and the three airplanes that flew into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and that landed in the field in Pittsburgh? CALLER: Why do we always have to go back to 9/11? RUSH: Because that's what this is all about. What do you think this is about? RUSH: Now, as to my original point that these torture photos, that you can see this on stage at a Britney Spears or Madonna concert any day of the week, I stand by it.
Due to the current love of downsizing the government, we may never punish the guys who actually gave the orders to torture - they were contractors. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/05/04/civilians_idd_in_abuse_may_face_no_charges/ . . . But the four civilian workers identified in an internal army report for their involvement in the physical and sexual mistreatment of the prisoners -- including the alleged rape of one detainee -- cannot be punished under military law, and it is unclear whether they will face any charges under either US or Iraqi laws. . . .
I'm embarassed when I read those Limbaugh quotes...and I didn't even say them! What a joke! Making light of this comparing it to a Britney Spears concert?? Seriously...that is so below the belt it's ridiculous.
I had really thought my opinion of this evil man could sink no lower. Rush Limbaugh is flat out one of the worst things that has ever happened to my beloved country. I don't care what side of the political fence you're on: the man is an ogre. He stifles independent thought and foments hatred. Along the way, he makes a buttload of money doing so. Mark it down. If you think Eugene McCarthy looks bad in history books now, just wait until your grandchildren read about Rush Limbaugh. He absolutely should be kicked out of the United States. I'm more embarrassed that his comments can fly with radio audiences than I am of those photographs.
This war is about... the War on Terror. Nope. Rumsfeld in on record as saying it isn't. This is because no links have ever been found to connect Al Quida and Iraq. WMD Nope. UN didn't find any. We didn't find any. liberating the Iraqi people from social injustices Nope. Polls of Iraqi people are quickly moving in the wrong direction when asked if they are better off now. Somebody, please tell me what this war is about. I don't understand anymore.
Somebody, please tell me what this war is about. I don't understand anymore. \ This is difficult to say as we are on about our 5th or 6th admitted reason, UN mandate, wmd, imminent threat, etc. and we have the contributinh , but never mentioned reasons of oil and Israeli wishes, who many of the neocons have shilled for. I think it is safe to say that if nothing else, it is currently about "not cutting and running" as this would hurt Bush in November 2004. I also think this is about "the Whiteman's Burden" as Bush may view it as his goal from God to bring freedom to the 'brown people" of Iraq, which seems to be the current stated reason. He view himself as being non racist since he says frequently, as if it just occurred to him, that the brown people can actually learn how to govern themselves once American Christians show them how to do it.
For some of you here's an opportunity to head over to Iraq with CACI, the contractor caught up in these shenanigans... http://www.intelligencecareers.com/news/index.cfm?current_article=367 Here's one of the jobs available... Junior Interrogators: Individuals must be trained interrogators with at least 5 years of experience in interrogation. Individuals must be knowledgeable of Army/Joint interrogation procedures, data processing systems such as CHIMs and SIPRNET search engines. Knowledge of the Arabic language and culture a plus. Position requires former MOS 97E, 351E, ASI 9N and N7 desired. and another... Intelligence Analysts: Minimum of three years analytical experience within DoD or equivalent government agencies, either All Source or HUMINT. Middle East Theater and CT experience desired. Strong automation skills required, including intelligence analytical applications. 96B/350B/351series/97series equivalents. Minimum of Associate's Degree required. What I don't get is that "inherently governmental functions" are not to be contracted out. I don't understand how, say, the Federal Highway Administration is prohibited from contracting out for FOIA Specialists but DOD can contract out for people to do interrogations or analyze intelligence. Nothing makes sense anymore.
