More Whacky US Soldier Antics

[Ziggurat]

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_9069.shtml

Funny, but I don't believe that site for a second. So I'll match you:

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com

which gives a rather different picture of improving life in Iraq.

We've seen plenty of cases of supposed massacres that simply didn't happen (Jenin, anyone?). I simply do not believe the claim of the 800 dead being mostly women and children, though I won't guess who's doing the lying.

Other claims just don't stand up to basic scrutiny.

"People dying from bad water and starving to death because there aren’t enough jobs just don’t grab the attention that bombs demand from the media."

People die from bad water mostly from Cholera. And there was no cholera epidemic, though plenty predicted it. Are a few people dying of cholera? Maybe, but it was bad under Saddam as well. And the economy was much worse as well, with rampant unemployment.

Here's a basic reality check: which way are the refugees flowing? What is the currency doing?

Well, refugees are returning to Iraq, not leaving, and the currency is quite stable. In other words, the opposite of how things were under Saddam. Your article simply does not square with these obvious, and pretty damned objective, indicators of the general welfare of the country.

 

[a_unique_person]

Hey, the massacre of thousands of innocents at Jenin turned out to be true and unimpeacheble

That's right, it was so few people who died, it doesn't really matter at all. Not that we really know what happened, because the UN was not allowed to look. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.

 

[gnome]

I'm not going to take my eye off the ball to satisfy anyone else's self-indulgent sense of moral outrage.

Isn't this a false dichotomy?

Why does paying attention to our own misconduct require us to ignore the real danger?

 

[crimresearch]

And of course, the fact that the forensic medical teams who went in ***independent*** of the UN reported that not only was there no evidence of thousands of people being killed in that small area, but that there was no ***possible***way for such an event to have occured and been covered up without leaving much more trace evidence, doesn't matter does it?
(Even though the story suddenly and conveniently changed from 'Thousands of innocents massacred', to ['Dozens with guns massacred').

The fact that observers who went to Jenin after the fact and discovered that not the entire city, but only a small area of a few blocks had been razed, is also is a poor fit with the original story. (And again the story was conveniently changed after the fact to 'Other media got it wrong').

Or are Doctor's Without Borders another part of the evil Jooz/Aliens conspiracy to cover up the truth by beaming up the body parts and making phony reports?

End result for those who have to stick to reality, is non-massacre, non-story, cold hearted hype from hate mongers.

 

[Mr Manifesto]

HEY! KEEP YOUR ISRAEL/PALESTINE BULLSH!T OUT OF MY F***ING THREAD!

 

[Bjorn]

I frankly never heard this "rumor". I have no idea if it happened, I have no idea if anyone actually claimed it happened (using it as a metaphor doesn't count), and I frankly don't care.

The story came up just before the war, and lasted for quite a while. I guess it stopped at about the time we had control of the Abu Ghraib prison and never found any shredders there or elsewhere.

Times started(?) the story of the human shredder in the Abu Ghraib prison with this headline March 18:

"See men shredded, then say you don't back war".

Australian PM, John Howard explained his reasons for joining the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq March 20. His speech included this:

"This week, the Times of London detailed the use of a human shredding machine as a vehicle for putting to death critics of Saddam Hussein. This is the man, this is the apparatus of terror we are dealing with."

Fox News, July 23 2003:

Prisoners were often eliminated with a bullet to the head, but one witness told the London-based human rights group Indict that inmates were sometimes murdered by being dropped into shredding machines. Some prisoners went in head first and died quickly, while others were put in feet first and died screaming. The witness said that on at least one occasion, Qusay supervised shredding-machine murders.

FrontPage magazine December 22, 2003:

Tales of Saddam’s torture chambers are enough to make Quentin Tarantino gag – men eaten alive by half-starved dogs, others put through plastic-shredding machines feet first, to prolong their agony.

Senator John McCain, December 21, 2003:

... political opponents, real or imagined, had their eyes gouged out, their tongues cut off, were forced to watch their loved ones being raped or shot, or were fed alive into a human shredding machine.

Someone claimed it happened, indeed. Since Saddam and sons were cruel enough even witout the shredder, I guess it was just too good a story to try verifying it, much like the incubators.

 

[evildave]

Ah yes, I didn't recall the figures correctly. But seeing as how Saddam didn't restrict his killing to those years alone, I'd venture that 100,000 is not a bad estimate. And 7yes, I was a little too flippant: I did not mean to say that this figure was all (or even mostly) due to chemical weapons, rather that arguing that what we did is as bad as what Saddam did has no basis in any rational moral analysis. The fact that these Kurds died by conventional weapons does not somehow absolve Saddam of any guilt.



I hear this kind of argument a lot (the idea that we're so hypocritical because some other country besides Iraq did something bad and we didn't invade them). But it's only used as some sort of vague implier that since we did something wrong in the past (though it's never specified exactly what we should have done), invading Iraq was therefore wrong. But of course, there's no real line of logic to connect these things, either given or even implied. It's an intellectual ruse, a slight-of-mind, nothing more. I've seen it time and again, with countless other examples of how bad we supposedly are, but I remain unimpressed by the lack of any coherent argument about what we should be dong now.



Actually, that's not at all what the US gov't is claiming. They're mostly classified as enemy combatants, a term which includes terrorists but also Taliban soldiers. And back to the whole slight-of-mind thing you're playing, you say that this is "telling", but you don't say WHAT it's telling. That implies something nefarious or corrupt, but of course what exactly this tells us is left unsaid, so that it does not need to be defended.

OK, let me connect the dots for you.

Iraq killed lots of Kurds. Turkey killed almost between 25% and 50% as many Kurds, according to which number between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraq killed. Either way, Turkey is up to genocide every bit just as much as Iraq, especially considering how far out of their way Turkey occasionally had to go to kill them. The U.S. is still "good friends" with Turkey, BTW, just as it was "good friends" with Iraq throughout their campaign of killing.

Both Iraq and Turkey would claim they have good reason to kill kurds. Either 'terrorists' or 'combatants'. Doesn't matter.

The U.S. is imprisoning, torturing and killing peoiple for what it considers 'good reasons'. The U.S. is imprisoning people by the thousands. Calling them 'illegal combatants', which is what they call terrorists.

Just because you arbitrarily label people something like "terrorist" or "illegal combatant" doesn't mean you automatically get to throw away all of their human rights. Whether you plan to kill them, or "only" torture them indefinitely. If the U.S. government labeled your mom a 'terrorist' (or 'illegal combatant'; the terms are interchangeable), would it be OK to torture her indefinitely?

I cite Turkey because that number of 23,400 'terrorists' seems like a very, very high number within any population group. An unsupportably high number of 'terrorists' to be killing, really. Of course, if the number's quite padded up with women, children, bystanders, etc. then that would seem like a more realistic number. Or maybe all the Kurds really are 'terrorists'? On another side note, if these Kurds all really are 'terrorists', remember back in the first Gulf War when the U.S. supported the Kurds? Wouldn't that be supporting 'terrorists'?

 

[aerocontrols]

HEY!

I know how you feel, man...

 

[Bottle or the Gun]

And that's my point. We are increasingly seeing an incompetant military. Someone should be taken to task for turning the US military into the embarassment it is at the moment. There are too many 'undisciplined individuals' for my liking.

It is no one administrations' fault.

The current military has no real mission, that's the problem. I was in the service when the russian threat was down-graded. (It was exlained to me like this: Russia was a threat because we had 4 days to respond and make our counter-move if they started moving supplies to Siberia, etc. We were a threat to Russia because we only needed 3 days to get into positionand they stayed tense because we were faster. Once their infrastructure collapsed it would take them 7-10 days to start ramping up, and with them telegraphing their punches so slow, we had all the time in the world to head them off at the pass)

Suddenly, there was no mission, no way to justify a budget or training, no equipment...nothing.

All attempts to create an atmosphere of urgency to keep the big military-industrial economy going have failed, so along comes 9/11 and Homeland Security, the bastard children of years of cut backs, lack of vision and complacency.

 

[Ziggurat]

Originally posted by evildave
OK, let me connect the dots for you.

Iraq killed lots of Kurds. Turkey killed almost between 25% and 50% as many Kurds, according to which number between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraq killed. Either way, Turkey is up to genocide every bit just as much as Iraq, especially considering how far out of their way Turkey occasionally had to go to kill them. The U.S. is still "good friends" with Turkey, BTW, just as it was "good friends" with Iraq throughout their campaign of killing.

You missed my point completely. No surprise. Maybe you actually believe you have a point, but you don't. Because you cannot lay out what you think the US should have done. Does Turkey's crimes mean we cannot do something about Iraq's crimes? Does Turkey's crimes mean we should have invaded Turkey as well? Apparently it would be too much to ask for you to actually have a position on this. But without such a position, the fact that Turkey committed crimes as well cannot be used to conclude anything about whether or not we should have invaded Iraq. Your "position" represents nothing more than a resolve to remain irresolute (to paraphrase someone else). Which is why I frankly don't care what you think. Take a real position and maybe we can have a debate. But what you're throwing out doesn't consititute a position at all, merely an incoherent diatribe.

Just because you arbitrarily label people something like "terrorist" or "illegal combatant" doesn't mean you automatically get to throw away all of their human rights. Whether you plan to kill them, or "only" torture them indefinitely.

Vague, unsupported assertions. Nobody is being tortured indefinitely. We don't do that because quite frankly it does no good. Torture produces unreliable information and taints your own soldiers, making them less useful. from a purely cynical viewpoint, there's still no reason to believe systematic torture is happening.

The North Vietnamese, for example, did not use torture for information. They used it for propaganda. But it should be obvious that we can't do the same. That won't shut up the conspiracy theorists. But maybe you consider imprisonment itself torture. If so, well, sorry for not caring.

On another side note, if these Kurds all really are 'terrorists', remember back in the first Gulf War when the U.S. supported the Kurds? Wouldn't that be supporting 'terrorists'?

Wow, what a prime example of what I was talking about: this isn't about taking any real position (and in fact taking this position would contradict things you've said elsewhere), it's about trying to poke holes, any holes, no matter how absurd or contradictory, in someone else's position. You seem to have defined yourself as being in opposition - you have no plan of action, you have no real idea of what we should really be doing (now or in the past), you're just merely convinced that everything we're doing now must be wrong. Because, like, it's Bush, and he's like, bad. Torture! Torture!

 

[Bottle or the Gun]

I don't know what they are whining about. Iraq still has a great percentage going for them!
from: The Onion

 

[Skeptic]

What we're doing is on a par with the gas attacks,

This deserves some special "most idiotic statement of the month" award.

No wood chippers, though. You'd think that they'd find at least one of the things and parade it across the media, with even more colorful stories of people being fed in alive, begging for mercy than when they spread this rumor.

..not to mention all those tall tale about gas chambers in Auschwitz, with colorful but implausible stories by so-called "survivors", while there isn't a single film of those chambers in action in real time! You'd think they'd have found it by now...

Remember, folks: when you do some atrocious evil, COVER YOUR TRACKS. Don't photograph or film it. That way, in a few years, idiots like "evildave" will tell others how it never happened, that there's no hard evidence, that it's all an invented fantasy designed to unfairly smear the Nazis or Ba'athists or whomever.

You get to BOTH do the crime AND play "innocent victim of vicious propaganda", all for the cheap, cheap price of merely not documenting your deeds!

I think that they needed something "fresh" to outrage people, so they wouldn't *think*. The gassings

... in Auschwitz...

were old history by...

... 1961, so they invented the Eichmann trial! Anything to keep the horror fresh, so the brainwashed masses wouldn't *think* about Nazi Germany in an *objective* way.

Everyone had seen the dead babies and bloated carcasses.

Yes (yawn), it's just a few hundred thousand of (yawn) dead innocents. Why keep mentioning the same old stuff? Maybe Saddam had changed since ordering that massacre? Perhaps he became a nice guy.

Geez, you guys--Saddam kills a few hundred thousands of innocents with nerve gas once and can't get a fair shake from the biased media any more! You keep bringing up this SAME OLD STUFF!

And who was the schmuck who actually PHOTOGRAPHED the corpses, anyway? Didn't he get the "if the photograph doesn't exist, they'll be saying it never happened in a few years" memo?

Saddam really should cut his hand off... or something... which *cough* *cough* he naturally never did, it's all evil propaganda. I mean, all you've got is a few one-handed liars CLAIMING to be tortured by him. Where's the REAL evidence???

Of course, the propaganda and lying doesn't help the government's case.

Yes, they should really back up from that stupid "holocaust" story while they still can.

 

[evildave]

Wow, what a prime example of what I was talking about: this isn't about taking any real position (and in fact taking this position would contradict things you've said elsewhere), it's about trying to poke holes, any holes, no matter how absurd or contradictory, in someone else's position. You seem to have defined yourself as being in opposition - you have no plan of action, you have no real idea of what we should really be doing (now or in the past), you're just merely convinced that everything we're doing now must be wrong. Because, like, it's Bush, and he's like, bad. Torture! Torture!

What to do?

What is there to do? We're F*CKED, thanks to our retarded president and his despicable love of arbitrary warfare and torture.

We can't stay and occupy Iraq forever. We can't just up and leave. We've got a lot of the Iraqi population hating us now, and we're busy winning more converts to the "hate" side by continuing human rights abuses, such as killing, abducting and torturing people. Whatever government we leave behind there won't last a year, probably to be replaced by something that makes the Iranians look friendly. I'm sure that will all be fine as long as Haliburton collects its cash from the government. Oh, and now there really IS a big, fat terrorist presence in Iraq because we opened the floodgates for it by destabilizing the region.

Iraq won't be 'another Vietnam'. We'll look back on Vietnam as pleasant memories of the good old days.

 

[evildave]

Amnesty International's Iraq Page
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/irq-110504-action-eng

http://news.amnesty.org/mav/index/ENGAMR510772004
USA: Pattern of brutality and cruelty -- war crimes at Abu Ghraib

United States of America
Amnesty International's concerns regarding post September 11 detentions in the USA
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510442002


http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engAMR510532002


The Red Cross's Iraq Page
http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/iraq?OpenDocument

Protecting life and dignity: "No war is above international law"

Iraq: ICRC explains position over detention report and treatment of prisoners
http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList322/7EE8626890D74F76C1256E8D005D3861

How the ICRC transmitted the report to the detaining authorities:
The report in question was handed to Mr. Paul Bremer and Lt-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in February 2004; various aspects of its contents had been discussed with the Coalition authorities at different times and at different levels during 2003 and included in documents submitted to them; "I won't go into the details but ... they don't concern only issues of water and food but also clearly of treatment."

On feedback from the authorities and the impact of the ICRC's reporting:
On a number of occasions the ICRC was assured that its findings were being taken very seriously, and that measures would be taken; in later visits there were indications that some of the material problems had been addressed; however, more remained to be done, particularly given that "we were dealing here with a broader pattern and a system, as opposed to individual acts..."

On questions of treatment raised in the leaked report:
Some of the elements the ICRC found "were tantamount to torture.... I think you will have different definitions of what torture amounts to; what we feel, and I think what you see from the photographs...is that there were clearly instances of degrading and inhumane treatment."

On the dilemma of confidentiality and maintaining access to prisoners:
The extracts of the leaked report shows how the ICRC approaches detention problems; "there were situations that remained unacceptable and difficult and there were others that were worked on – and that is the kind of approach that we have.... in terms of reputation it is certainly valued by many people – first and foremost by the people we visit..." The ICRC believed that its visits made a difference – "Had we not [thought so], we would maybe have come to another conclusion and taken other measures..."

 

[Skeptic]

You know, evildave, it's really surreal, the difference in your position between the good guy (Hussein) and the bad guy (Bush).

When it comes out that the US tortured prisoners, you rant (in effect): "it is FAR MORE HORRIBLE than you imagine! It wasn't 17 tortured prisoners, there might have been 86 of them!"

But when discussing Hussein, you warn us "not to exagerrate": "hundreds of thousands of civilians? Oh, c'mon, Hussein only killed 100,000 AT MOST that year. What's the big deal?"

Yes, the two are absolutely equivalent, no doubt about it. If the US keeps its horrific torture statistics up, it should catch up with Saddam's not-a-big-deal yearly number in, oh, only 4000 years or so.

Yet for you, the US is JUST AS BAD--if not worse--than Saddam.

You realize you're insane, don't you?

 

[evildave]

Unsunstantiated and 'vague'?

Detailed bullet points of abusers
http://www.nbc4.com/news/3446575/detail.html

U.S. no longer seeking War Crimes Immunity
http://www.napanews.com/templates/i..._full&id=235C04D8-ACFC-4A1D-8FFB-ED50087E894F
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/753005.cms

Soldiers to be charged:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~6439~2231069,00.html
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-3039562.php

A hearing today
http://www.wvec.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D83DKS8O0.html

Rumsfeld ‘Okayed’ Prisoners Torture, Show Documents
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=062204112428

Washington, June 23 (NNN): American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally okayed the use of aggressive methods to frighten Guantanamo Bay detainees, according to newly-released documents to Tuesday.

The methods approved included stripping prisoners, forcing them into stress positions and harassing them with dogs, the documents satated.

However, the methods, approved in December 2002, were rescinded weeks later.

The Bush administration has released hundreds of secret documents which it said show interrogation methods in Cuba fell well short of torture.

The released documents show that in December 2002, Rumsfeld approved harsh interrogation techniques for Taleban and al-Qaeda terror network suspects at Guantanamo, only to rescind many of those weeks later and approve less aggressive techniques in April 2003, reportedly after military lawyers claimed they went too far.

The methods he originally approved included forcing a prisoner to stand for up to four hours, light deprivation, isolation from others for up to 30 days and interrogations lasting as long as 20 hours.

Prisoner abuse sets new stage for memo
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/nation/8998766.htm

 

[evildave]

You know, evildave, it's really surreal, the difference in your position between the good guy (Hussein) and the bad guy (Bush).

When it comes out that the US tortured prisoners, you rant (in effect): "it is FAR MORE HORRIBLE than you imagine! It wasn't 17 tortured prisoners, there might have been 86 of them!"

But when discussing Hussein, you warn us "not to exagerrate": "hundreds of thousands of civilians? Oh, c'mon, Hussein only killed 100,000 AT MOST that year. What's the big deal?"

Yes, the two are absolutely equivalent, no doubt about it. If the US keeps its horrific torture statistics up, it should catch up with Saddam's not-a-big-deal yearly number in, oh, only 4000 years or so.

Yet for you, the US is JUST AS BAD--if not worse--than Saddam.

You realize you're insane, don't you?

Alas, Saddam Hussein isn't the one being tortured, is he? I don't care what happens to Saddam (Though if he's still alive when they topple the U.S. installed government, guess who has an even chance of being nominated?)

Nope. Just plain Iraqi citizens. Grabbed off the street for being nearby when U.S. troops raided households.

Of course, being the sort of patriot you are, I'm sure that random arrests and torture fit with your image of what America should support.

 

[Luceiia]

You know, evildave, ...

You realize you're insane, don't you?

Read Cujo by S. King. King's depiction of a rabid dog is interesting...and quite similar to what I see many of the "Torture! Torture!" psychos spewing forth.


Luceiia

 

[Mr Manifesto]

Read Cujo by S. King. King's depiction of a rabid dog is interesting...and quite similar to what I see many of the "Torture! Torture!" psychos spewing forth.


Luceiia

Yeah, little ol' rabid us.

 

[crackmonkey]

I think we need to view Dave's posts for what they are - desperate pleas for help.