Randall, don’t talk to me about Texas. That prison system could well be the worst in the nation. Oh, thats right Texas always wanted to be number one. God bless Texas

Randall, I apologize. I started that 8:53 post just to provide information. But the more I the more I thought about the prisoner situation the angrier I became. Texas was the first thing I saw so I vented.

Back from the gym, endorphins are good.

On NPR yesterday good old Rumsfeld was quoted as saying that there’s still a ton of pics and videos that are much worse that haven’t been released to the public yet. He was warning that if they are it’ll make things that much worse and he stopped just short of saying they should be suppressed, but you could tell that’s what he wanted to say. Instead he just made an idle threat by telling the Congressional committee he was testifying to that they’ve been forewarned.

I wonder if Rummy’s talking about the bogus rape photos that actually came from porn sites and were circulated as anti-American propaganda by some Arab news agencies?

I daresay it wouldn’t be the first time he made claims that later turned out to be bullshit.

Who’s to say these photo’s are legit?If they are .........SHAME!!!!Are we no better than the scum we’ve been ridding this world of?Sure war does strange things to the mind,but in this case was the evil,cruelty there already?Damn,this is Americans we’re seeing...What the hell is wrong with them?

Iraq did not have WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction)!  Bush knew that.
Iraq did not harbor terrorists!  Bush knew that.
Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11, the Saudi’s did!  Bush knew that.

This war is just another example of all the idiotic things the U.S. Oil companies will do to get their hands on more oil that doesn’t belong to them.
This girlie-boy, GW Bush, with a Napoleon complex should go back to doing the one-and-only thing he was good at… being a cheerleader!

>>>Who’s to say these photo’s are legit?

Jessie. The photos held by the military are almost certainly authentic. General Taguba obtained them, on site, during the course of his investigation. The use of photograhs in interrogation was policy, and the sessions were staged. Photo analysts at the New Yorker say that some of the pictures were taken in staged sequences and, in some cases, with two cameras in use.

>>Sure war does strange things to the mind,but
>>in this case was the evil,cruelty there
>>already?Damn,this is Americans we’re seeing

On this mornings Face the Nation Bob Scheiffer observed that war places the young soldier is in an environment that isolate him or her from the family and the culture that provides instruction on values and behavior, and also provides some feedback on whether one is on course or not. Combat offers the soldier the opportunity to deviate from the standards of human decency and affords the temptation to do so. The military teaches the soldier how to shoot and how to try to servive, but provides nothing to prepare him or her to deal with what I just described. This insight was based on his experience as a journalist in Viet Nam.

>>What the hell is wrong with them?

That is the $64 question. (I just dated myself.) First there was an abject failure in the chain of command--At All Levels. For orther important factors see the first part of Linux Rules at May 8, 2004 10:40 PM.

As to the second part of his post, there has to be collaboration between the government of the Oil companies. There is a great deal of convincing circumstantial evidence that indicates the truth of that statement. Going further gets into conspiracy theory.

There are a lot of dots that go back to the Bush family’s ties to the Saudi Royal family, the investors in GWBs failed oil companies, and BCCI.
Somebody even broke the law by showing Prince Bandar the invasion plan before Shock and Awe.

I find the whole situation very dis-heartening.  As a friend of America I had really hoped that perhaps I had miss-judged Pres. Bush and co. and you would make it to a troop pull-out with minimum casualties and not looking like the bad guys.  So unfortunate. Was there anything to their plan beyond “Let’s invade Iraq” they’ll love George dub-yu!
I guess it’s good that the US isn’t a member of the International war crimes tribunal, now the grunts go to jail and get kicked out of the military while the officers get a stern talking to.  Will anyone in real authority be held accountable.... I think not.  If Donald Rumsfeld really was accepting responsibility he would have resigned.  It’s so easy to say “ I accept full responsibility” when you know there will be no reprocusions.

Yes it is easy, which is why Janet Reno “took full responsibility” for Ruby Ridge and Waco with absolutely no consequences for herself.

In Japan, when they take responsibility, they’re SERIOUS - get out the little sword, kneel down…

Not Rumsfeld.  His idea of taking responsibility is to say “please rout the whiners to me so I can ignore them from a higher level.”

I think anyone who is really going to go against our own government for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is out of their right mind. It says only good things about our soldiers to think that after they see some of these very same men kill their best friends infront of their own eyes that the worst they do is put filthy underwear over their heads. If you baby’s are going to keep complaining about the abuse of these prisoners, then maybe it would take something along the lines of our government releasing images it has. I would like to see if this abuse seems so bad after you see the images our government didn’t release of innocent people dismembered all over our very own streets, or innocent contractors tortured, mutilated, burnt and then hung in public squares. How about seeing the latest video of an American decapitated torturously while being alive. Now, is the humiliation of foreign prisoners who many times end up being guilty of atrocious grimes really that important to make us loose sight of what is happening to our own people?

I am not an American I am Australian, However I do remember September 11.

And hearing the abuse of the Iraqi’s does not even move me, Remember September 11 Americans. Remember

Tom

Hang on, Ken!
So, you’re saying that these prisoners were the same ones who murdered coalition forces or contractors?
How do you know that? And why does that makes it okay to abuse them?

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

“I would like to see if this abuse seems so bad after you see the images our government didn’t release of innocent people dismembered all over our very own streets.”
If you’re talking about Sept. 11 2001, then that wasn’t done by Iraqi people, so why say it?
Or are you one of those people who can’t tell the difference between ‘all them towel-heads’??

Oh for fuck’s sake!
Tom’s another one who seems to think all them ‘sand-niggers’ look alike…

A proto-theocratic government failing the grade on absolute morals is not something one should overlook.

With the policy of abasement and the abuse of prisoners in Iraq - whether it was officially sanctioned or even ordered or not - the US has lost the last pretense of having the moral high ground.

Of course we still have the moral high ground.  Our tortures were not quite as bad as Saddam’s tortures.  I’m sure the Arab world will weigh the difference reasonably and see that we’re really acting in loving Christian restraint.

You know what’s scary?  That Limbaugh thinks that kind of activity is EVER okay, EVEN in a fraternity.

I’m sure as soon as the rape photos come out, he’s gonna think that’s okay, too.  I’d like to “blow off steam” by ramming a splintered two-by-four up his Christian moral ass.

ken said:

Now, is the humiliation of foreign prisoners who many times end up being guilty of atrocious grimes really that important to make us loose sight of what is happening to our own people?

You really don’t get it…

decrepit gets it:

Of course we still have the moral high ground. Our tortures were not quite as bad as Saddam’s tortures. I’m sure the Arab world will weigh the difference reasonably and see that we’re really acting in loving Christian restraint.

Most Americans have no idea how those photos are viewed by Muslims, because they refuse to consider anything but their own narrow worldview.  A gal on another board I frequent TOTALLY gets it:

This is a culture that is ultra-misogynistic. For the most part women do not appear without a head covering, many do not show their faces. And here we have, circulating around the world, photos of American service women smirking at naked Muslim men. And not just naked Muslim men, but naked Muslim men put into homosexual-suggestive poses. To this culture, in many respects, killing these men would have been more acceptable. Because disgrace, in this culture, is worse than death. Can you comprehend what that means?Terrorists could not have wished for a better weapon to use against the U.S. (and Britain as well) than these photos in regards to gaining new recruits.

There’s no winning a war that’s based on who has the better invisible friend.  Religious fanatics of any stripe are a threat to world peace and invisible men have no place in 21st century governments.

Christians set out to put people out of business and ruin their lives for mocking their religion and Jesus (see http://laptoplobbyists.com), and yet they can’t see how those photos would enrage and enflame Muslim extremists to the point that they’d retaliate by publicly executing an American.  Boggles the fucking mind.

GeekMom at May 12, 2004 09:21 AM

You know what’s scary? That Limbaugh thinks that kind of activity is EVER okay, EVEN in a fraternity.

I spent two or three days writing a petition and sending it to the companies that sponsor Rush and to the media folks that carry his show*. Basically I deconstructed his two short statements from the 3rd and 4th of May (lies, possible slander, insults, and incoherence), and asked the addresees if they really wanted to associate their brand names with Rush.

To date I have recieved three replies.
[list]From Geico.We have indeed reconsidered our advertising on Mr. Limbaugh’s program. While we never “sponsored” Mr. Limbaugh’s show we have run advertisements in his show for several years. That will no longer be the case. We also found his remarks concerning the treatment of Iraqi prisoners outrageous and inappropriate. We have decided to cease all advertising on his program.[/list]
[list]The folks at Oreck said that they were just marketing their vaccumn cleaner and that they did not endorse the particular media in which their adds appear.[/list]
[list]eharmony politely explained the first ammendment and offered to get me a date.[/list]

At this point, one out of three--well that ain’t bad.

* Contact information is available at http://www.topplebush.com/boycott_rush.shtml

Thanks for the link VernR, ever since Rush began with this idiotic and highly offensive idea of torture and humiliation as harmless college hazing I have wanted to send his advertisers a piece of my mind.

OB, you tell me if you would rather be brutally murdered and displayed across the world or embarassed. If you say embarassed then there is seriously something wrong with you and anyone else who believes it. Also, in my opinion you and your proclaimed muslim beliefs are those of a fucking idiot. The prisoners seen in the photographs are captured for a reason, they are not innocent. Maybe you should also look into how many of these people ended up giving up information by various forms of humiliation. There is a huge difference between HUMILIATING prisoners of war and killing innocent people. If you say these americans are not innocent, then how about the innocence of the children admitted into childrens hospitals when these disgusting people walk in and blow themselves up, killing innocent children, many of whom are even of their own race and religion.

Ken you’ve got the perceptive ability of a slug, it seems. I guess we could say you’re sluggish when it come to matters like the war on Iraq and modern terrorism.

“A Red Cross report disclosed Monday said coalition intelligence officers estimated that 70-90 percent of Iraqi detainees were arrested by mistake and said Red Cross observers witnessed U.S. officers mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners by keeping them naked in total darkness in empty cells...Among the evidence were burns, bruises and other injuries consistent with the abuse that prisoners alleged, it said...These methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence in a systematic way to gain confessions and extract information and other forms of cooperation from person who had been arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have an ‘intelligence value’… Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property,” the report said.

We have killed thousands of Iraqis while liberating them and have imprisoned 10,000 more. We invaded their country and though our leaders say we are following the values of a Democratic society, recent news suggests we are heavy handed and repressive in our actions.

To date we have spent less than 2.8 billion of the 18.4 billion Congress provided 6 months ago for the rebuilding of Iraq. None of the $793 million allocated for health care has been spent so far. Yet Bush said at the time the funds were urgently needed to save Iraq.

You won’t see videos (not without a fight at least) of American soldiers killing innocent Iraqis, because this is the information the government wants to repress. On the other hand Abu Musab al-Zarqawi chose to show an execution to protest our mistreatment of Iraqis. Nicholas Berg’s violent demise is an ongoing story and you may very well be surprised with the twists and turns this story takes. We may not be as blameless for his fate as you seem to think we are.

How do YOU know that these prisoners were guilty, any of them?  If tortured, is it possible that you might confess to crimes uncommitted if it meant the torture would stop?

If I were you, I would try to keep an open mind. You’ll have to start from scratch though as it seems you have this messy puzzle perfectly figured out.

What I find aggrivating about Ken’s post is the fact that he used children as a scapegoat for sympathy.

The main problem with our occupation of Iraq is that it’s primarily a military occupation - we have the place under martial law, and are getting killed and killing every single freakin’ day.  To fix this situation, we need to let the Iraqis form their own situation at this point.  We need to establish some sort of order without a military presence fucking things up and making us look worse than we already do being there in the first place.

OB, you tell me if you would rather be brutally murdered and displayed across the world or embarassed. If you say embarassed then there is seriously something wrong with you and anyone else who believes it. Also, in my opinion you and your proclaimed muslim beliefs are those of a fucking idiot.

Ken, YOU are obviously a fucking idiot.  I am an Atheist; how the fuck did you get that I have “proclaimed Muslim beliefs” out of what I posted?

There’s no winning a war that’s based on who has the better invisible friend. Religious fanatics of any stripe are a threat to world peace and invisible men have no place in 21st century governments.

I think the militant Muslims are just as fucking cracked in the head as evangelical Christians.  And if the American Powers That Be who allowed, and even staged those photos of Muslims in sexually explicit poses, being subjugated by women, didn’t expect swift and harsh retaliation from Al Al’Qaeda then THEY are the fucking morons.

Imagine how much MORE outraged Christians would be if Nick Berg had been dressed as Jesus when he was killed, and the Al’Qaeda guys had taken the time to sodomize him first while pissing on a crucifix or a Bible for your viewing pleasure.

Believers get all kinds of tweaked when their beliefs are mocked.  Today the militant Muslims are just more violent and more willing to die for their invisible friend than most hardcore Christians are.  It’s tragic that so many innocent people have to be hurt or killed over a bunch of other people’s delusions.

Kens limited point of view is so very frightening.  It is the same line of thought that leads to: Let’s invade Iraq the people will rise up and rejoice that american capialism has some to save them from their deeply held rligious beliefs that are so obviously wrong to everyone who doesn’t agree.

We should start a pool on how long before Iraq is in a civil war with an Iranian sponsored theocracy in the south with Kurds inciting revoution in Turkey in the North?

You have to remember that these men and woman of the armed forces are seeing their friends and family being killed daily by these very prisoners
they are asked to guard.I am wondering how many others out there in the Cyber world could not want Vengence on these people.I can say I couldnt do it now sitting in my Comfortable home within the US but would I change in their world.Only God knows.