Soldiers horrifically abuse Iraqis

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by Sister Golden Hair
And what might that be? What do you suggest?

That the punishment not stop at the reserve forces but goes up to whomever knew about this and did nothing... even if it means the president himself.

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Sister Golden Hair

Let me put it this way: when the world shows that they care about the atrocities committed on Americans, (Berg, 4 mutilated contractors, WTC, etc...) when they show, shame, disgust, outrage, instead of the (OH WELL) attitude and dancing and celebrating in the streets, maybe then, I will feel differently. Because, I would like to know why these atrocities are less important or apalling than any others.

AFAIK, everyone of those events that you have mentioned was widely condemned all over the world- hell, even Hamas and Hizbullah have condemned the killing of Berg

I am not saying that. I am saying, don't be so quick to lay the resposibility at the doorstep of the entire country. The fact that a few Americans did this whether by their own choice or through a chain of command, does not represent the beliefs of the over all military, the over all government, or the over all population of the United States. I realize that it puts the US in a bad light, but only narrow mindedness will misplace the blame.

And yet, even though the murder of Berg by a few Muslims was widely condemned in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, your response was to call for genocide of the entire population.

How did you fell about the picture of the Iraqi prisoner beaten to death by American interrogators? There's plenty of (OH WELL) attitude being shown by some on the American right-wing.

[Radagast The Brown]

I think there's a bit of over-reaction. The soldiers must be punished - the hardest way possible, if you want. Even the ones who knew and didn't tell.
But how many did the tortuer? I don't think that they were more than 20. How come that 20 soldiers reflects all of the American nation, suddenly? I don't get it... you make such a big deal of it. Judge the ones who are responsible for it, send them for all life to jail or kill thme - and that's it. Not that many soldiers tortured Iraqis, right?
I don't see any reason to be ashamed of the acts of such a minority.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Originally posted by GrayMouser
AFAIK, everyone of those events that you have mentioned was widely condemned all over the world- hell, even Hamas and Hizbullah have condemned the killing of Berg



And yet, even though the murder of Berg by a few Muslims was widely condemned in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, your response was to call for genocide of the entire population.

Funny how I seem to have missed all this condemnation. As for genocide, at that point when I said 'bomb them' I was angry and if you read the back posts you will see that. They seem to be pretty good at killing themselves off anyway.

How did you fell about the picture of the Iraqi prisoner beaten to death by American interrogators? There's plenty of (OH WELL) attitude being shown by some on the American right-wing.

I find all of these atrocities to be disgusting and horrible, my point is, is that it is too bad that everyone doesn't. The US is hated by a lot of the world, so the world hardly grieves over deaths of Americans. I hear on and on and on about the abuse of these detainees by Americans, and will continue to hear it for months and probably years, while the Berg murder and the murders of the 4 contractors is hardly mentioned and will eventually fall silent, but, that's okay.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Originally posted by Radagast The Brown
I think there's a bit of over-reaction. The soldiers must be punished - the hardest way possible, if you want. Even the ones who knew and didn't tell.
But how many did the tortuer? I don't think that they were more than 20. How come that 20 soldiers reflects all of the American nation, suddenly? I don't get it... you make such a big deal of it. Judge the ones who are responsible for it, send them for all life to jail or kill thme - and that's it. Not that many soldiers tortured Iraqis, right?
I don't see any reason to be ashamed of the acts of such a minority.

Well put RTB. I agree.

[Ultimatejoe]

SGH, has it ocurred to you that the people you see dancing in the streets or celebrating acts of violence DON'T represent a majority? GrayMouser mentioned something which I had also encountered; that Muslims and Arabs all over the world condemned the beheading. Either we're lying or you don't care. I'm pretty sure that I'm telling the truth.

The fact is that the minority is often the most visible in these situations. Everyone uses this fact to criticize the Western Media's portrayal of the Iraqi Occupation; but those same people are reluctant to admit that it the sword cuts both ways.

[Sister Golden Hair]

SGH, has it ocurred to you that the people you see dancing in the streets or celebrating acts of violence DON'T represent a majority?

Just as those few soldiers don't represent the beliefs or feelings of the entire US.

[Ultimatejoe]

That's exactly my point. Nobody is suggesting that all Americans are torturers, at least nobody here. The people who do make such wild accusations, like Al Queda, represent an equally small portion of the world.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Here is a post made by Beor in the "Teacup Cafe" answering a question asked by Hector. I thought I would post it here as a sort of soldier's POV.

Originally posted by Beor

Hector, no I havent tortured anyone, nor have I seen it done. That whole thing really pisses me off, because we have worked so hard to be so nice to these Iraqis who blow up our friends, and then something like that happens, and all the hard work we have done goes to ****, and no one cares about the fact that things here are improving, all they care about is that a few people who are not the norm are doing things that I never thought anyone who is a soldier would do. It kind of goes against everything being a soldier stands for, at least, the way I see a soldier being. Idiots.

[hectorberlioz]

and I admit, I made a bad joke, so dont kill me

[Mercutio]

I suggest you all read this article .

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Cirdan
You know what I'm tired of? People who think criticizing the actions of the GOVERNMENT, not the COUNTRY, makes them unpatriotic. Anyone can be a flag waving follow-along. I takes real thought and strength of character to say, "I love my country, but what the government of my country is doing is wrong." The most patriotic act is to speak out against injustices commited in the name of the country. Patriotism is NOT "My current regime-right or wrong".

Patriotism is standing up for the core values on which the country was founded. Patriotism is speaking out against slavery, segregation, and attacks upon the rights we hold most dear.

The soldiers acted in a way that way encouraged and condoned by the chain of command. It refelected the political impetus of the government to show results quickly, by any means necessary. The military to steps to avoid restraint by rejecting legal oversite of the facility. They are working hard to find credible deniability.

*claps*

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by Nerdanel
Do you mean the Palestinians that danced on the streets after 9/11? Wasn't that fake?

http://usuarios.lycos.es/urbanlegend...mber11/cnn.htm

[Mercutio]

Originally posted by BeardofPants
http://usuarios.lycos.es/urbanlegend...mber11/cnn.htm

Is that reliable (more reliable than CNN)?

It also said "A Nostradamus prophecy about the fall of 'two brothers' predicts the imminent start of World War III" (supposedly linking twin towers with brothers, and then the iraq/terror war as WWIII)

and "Several domain names related to the September 11 were registered before the attack" (that supposedly predicting it or something).

[Hemel]

Originally posted by Radagast
Well put. With regard to your earlier point about my feeling responsibilty for the actions of the British military, that's true, I cannot describe the intense relief when I found out that the British torture photos were fake and the editor who published them sacked.

Hmmmmm. I'm not too sure about this one. I dunno, but somehow the thoughts of the Hutton enquiry and its results are in my head here ....

And yes, The Mirror newspaper says that they were hoaxed - but who hoaxed them and why? I leafed through a copy in the supermarket today, and though it was only a brief look, the impression I got was that though they are maintaining that the pictures were hoaxes, they also seem to be stating in an inside page that there isn't enough contra-evidence to stand up in court. And seem also to be wondering why, if they were fakes, a couple of British soldiers had previously been believed to have said they were genuine.

In the past this paper allegedly been under pressure from Downing Street (ie where the PM lives) and from 'institutional shareholders' (what's that mean, I wonder?) because of its anti-Iraq war stance (though I think, as far as the shareholders were concerned, there were other issues as well, namely falling circulation).

But .... in the meantime, there was a report on Ceefax (BBC teletext) that there have been discusssions about whether Tony Blair is now a liability to his party (which he denies) and what would happen were he to need to be replaced (which are apparently discussions that happen as a matter of course. But I wonder why they are being reported now ....)

Now, like you, Radagast, I really would like to think our soldiers hadn't been involved in this torture stuff. I really would. But what's worrying me is ... if they weren't - or even if they were, come to think of it - does all this stuff above imply something far worse?



For you, Ruinel ... I saw your apology thread, and was going to respond. My first reaction was 'wow! Ruinel, I love you!' I commend your courage and your honesty and your feelings in saying what you did and do

[Insidious Rex]

Well as bad as Pfc. England’s behavior was (and its just a matter of time before the alleged videos of her having sex with most of the male soldiers of the prison unit hit the internet no doubt making this whole thing even more disgusting and attention getting) looks like we are going to be seeing this kind of “dumb working-class enlisted personnel” approach to attacking the lowest ranking soldiers. And the debate here, it seems, as someone else put it “is that we have a military force of white trash, genetically challenged idiots who didn't have the training to know that it's inappropriate to sodomize POWs with a broom.” Think this will be the standard approach of the military and administration spin doctors or will we see them actually working their way up through the ranks to find out if and how far the responsibility for these events went? Yer guess is as good as mine. My opinion for now is that this was basically a lord of the flies mentality that was allowed to flourish until it got out of control.

Good ol’ girl who enjoyed cruelty
By SHARON CHURCHER in Fort Ashby. Source: dailytelegraph.news.com.au
May 7, 2004
POINTING crudely at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi, the petite brunette with a cigarette hanging from her lips epitomised America’s shame over revelations US soldiers routinely tortured inmates at Abu Ghraib jail near Baghdad.

Lynndie England, 21, a rail worker’s daughter, comes from a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, which locals proudly call “a backwoods world”. She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero.
At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong. “A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq,” Colleen Kesner said. “To the country boys here, if you’re a different nationality, a different race, you’re sub-human. That’s the way girls like Lynndie are raised. “Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you’re hunting something. Over there, they’re hunting Iraqis.”

In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.

There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furor.

Like many, England signed up to make money and see the world. After her tour of duty, she planned to settle down and marry her first love, Charles Graner.

Down a dirt track at the edge of town, in the trailer where England grew up, her mother Terrie dismissed the allegations against her daughter as unfair. “They were just doing stupid kid things, pranks. And what the Iraqis do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, do they apply to everybody or just us?” she asked.

She said she didn’t know where her daughter was being held, but had spoken to her on the phone. “She told me nothing happened which wasn’t ordered by higher up,” she said. “They are trying to pin all of this on the lower ranks. My daughter was just following orders. I think there’s a conspiracy. “

A colleague of Lynndie’s father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing. “We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis,” he said. “We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn’t kill ‘em, she didn’t cut ‘em up. She should have shot some of the suckers.”

Six soldiers from the 372nd are facing court-martial. The commander of the prison service in Iraq, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, 50, has been suspended from duty and is expected to be charged. Colleagues of the tough, super-fit officer last night described her as a woman with one mission – to raise her own profile.

Sources also said soldiers at Abu Ghraib, where Saddam Hussein was held after his capture, were often drunk – including when the shocking pictures were taken.

One colleague said: “Janis sees herself as making way for women to get to the top in the US Army. But many of her soldiers said she had been promoted beyond her ability because she was a woman. “She was out of her depth and on a mission to raise her own profile. Now, she’ll be forced to quit. “She should have been aware what her troops were doing, but she wasn’t.”

Another soldier facing charges is Staff Sergeant Ivan Chip Frederick, 37, of Dillwyn, Virginia. His father, Ivan Frederick, 76, said his son, an ex-prison guard, sent him a journal outlining the barbaric treatment of Iraqi PoWs. He said his son was a scapegoat. “He was unhappy with what he saw. There is no way Chip would do these things unless he was ordered to do,” Mr Frederick said.

Pentagon officials have confirmed that other alleged incidents of torture under Brig-General Karpinski’s regime were being investigated. A military source said: “The word is that she was told it would be beneficial if the prisoners were willing to talk. “Let’s just say a blind eye was turned to certain events.”

[BeardofPants]

Report: Rumsfeld approved operation that led to Iraqi prisoner abuse



Saturday, May 15, 2004










(05-15) 19:29 PDT NEW YORK (AP) --

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the expansion of a secret program that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, The New Yorker reported Saturday.

The Defense Department strongly denied the claims made in the report, which cited unnamed current and former intelligence officials and was published on the magazine's Web site. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita issued a statement calling the claims "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."

The story, written by reporter Seymour Hersh, said Rumsfeld decided to expand the program last year, broadening a Pentagon operation from the hunt for al-Qaida in Afghanistan to interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Seven soldiers are facing military charges related to the abuse and humiliation of prisoners captured by the now-infamous photographs at the prison. Some of the soldiers and their lawyers have said military intelligence officials told military police assigned as guards to abuse the prisoners to make interrogations easier.

According to the story, which hits newsstands Monday, the initial operation Rumsfeld authorized gave blanket approval to kill or capture and interrogate "high value" targets in the war on terrorism. The program stemmed from frustrating efforts to capture high-level terrorists in the weeks after the start of U.S. bombings in Afghanistan.

The program got approval from President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush was informed of its existence, the officials told Hersh.

Under the program, Hersh wrote, commandos carried out instant interrogations -- using force if necessary -- at secret CIA detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the commanders at the Pentagon.

Last year, Rumsfeld and Stephen Cambone, his undersecretary for intelligence, expanded the scope of the Pentagon's program and brought its methods to Abu Ghraib, Hersh wrote.

Critics say the interrogation rules, first laid out in September after a visit to Iraq by the then-commander of the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amounted to a green light for abuse.

Defense Department officials deny that, saying prisoners always are treated under guidelines of the Geneva Conventions.

"No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses as witnessed in the recent photos and videos," Di Rita said in his statement. "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of Defense."

Di Rita also said Cambone has never had any responsibility for any detainee or interrogation programs.

The intelligence sources told the magazine photos of the sexual abuse were used to intimidate prisoners and detainees into providing information on the insurgency. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything -- including spying on their associates -- to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends.

One intelligence official said the CIA ended its involvement with the program at Abu Ghraib prison by last fall.

"They said, 'No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan -- pre-approved for operations against the high-value terrorist targets -- and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets,"' the source said.

Originally posted by Mercutio
Is that reliable (more reliable than CNN)?

I don't know. To be honest, I didn't check its validity - it was just the first thing that popped up on google, and then I had to run to work. I'll look around and see if I can find a better source IF there is one.

[BeardofPants]

Okay, my bad. Turns out that it was false.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm

In my favour though, I HAD read an article in the NZ herald a few months back regarding the palestinian footage, and how - although taken on the day - the shadowing showed that it was taken at the wrong time. So, I was remembering this article when I looked for the link. Sorry guys, no dishonesty meant.

[hectorberlioz]

In my opinion, this whole thing is bieng overblown. Yes, bad things happened in Iraq, and there are the rotten soldiers; but here are all the bush-bashers-who've been waiting for something to like this to happen, and they're all practically jumping with joy that it somehow reflects Bush's stupidity-and so this is free frall time, and they add on to the horrors and rumors and make it all worse.
As Beor said, they've all been working so hard, then a few baddies get to the newspaper headlines, and now it seems that everyone is stereotyping all the soldiers as evil.
So, the actions made by these rotten soldiers reflects the chain of command? Thats stereotyping.
http://www.ranger25.com/Pat%20Tillman.htm

[Cirdan]

The majority of americans now disapprove of Bush's handling of the Iraq war. The abuses just come close to guarantying failure of the mission. We'll lose the hearts and minds of the Iragis ude to overcompensation of the intelligence gathering departments. The may be able to prop up a government long enough to get out before the civil war begins. The alternative looks like a cross between a Korea type commitment with a Israeli/PLO/Hamas flavor. Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives destroyed due to bad intelligence and implusive decision making. Bush is being criticized for his failures not his politics. I was never feeling "joy" about this war (unlike Bush supporters) and now it just makes me disgusted. Overblown? Maybe you should just spit on the graves of the soldiers that died thinking they were bring democracy and justice to Iraq.

In an ironic twist, Iran is suing us for giving WMDs to Iraq that were used against them in the war. The terrorist state of evil is seeking legal redress.