"abuses" of Iraqi POW's

Originally posted by Fico:
t's a shame that people like Jessica Lynch got a decent treatment in a hospital were medicines and attention where scarce

Was this before or after the Iraqis raped her unconscious body???

Originally posted by Rob_Gee_a.k.a _Guiny:
I think those Iraqi prisoners of war are alot better off then the murdered coaliton and American soldiers/contractors that were killed by their captors. Human rights groups don't say shit about that, but the second an American does the smallest thing, those human rights groups who are also American jump all over it……damn assholes!!!!!!!!! They wanna see torture, I'll show their dumbass's what torture is. I also don't think any U.S. soldier/contractor should get jail time, reprimanded yes, but not jailed. If we forgive and forget (which we will eventually do) the terrorists that murder our guys then we shouldnt ruin one of our peoples lives for not letting an Iraqi get more then four hours of sleep at a time.

Thanks Guiny, you remind me why people like George Bush govern this country when I'm all out of answers. Count yer blessings cos' you will probably never be at the other end of the abuses perpetrated by this and other administrations…but what comes around goes around.

Originally posted by Dupek Chopra:

Originally posted by Fico:

Was this before or after the Iraqis raped her unconscious body???

It's the first time I hear of such a thing. Are you running yer gob or has this been documented some place??? the 15 minutes I saw of her on tv seemed to suggest otherwise..

Originally posted by Fico:
It's the first time I hear of such a thing.

Then you had better clean the wax from your ears.

well, we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction or terror ties, so america turns to removing a terrible dictator that tortures and murders his own people. it doesn't bode well when it seems apparent that prisoners are murdered and tortured under the liberation. sure, this may be blown out of proportion in our eyes, but does that matter? i think if we put some people in jail, fired a high level d.o.d. employee or two, things will blow over. doubt it will happen though. even if higher level officials didn't know about it, they had subordinates that did. we are not at war with the iraqi people (only a quarter of these people are actually ever charged.), we need them to trust us.

Good points there, folks. It's not as bad as it could be, you should see some of the other war atrocities, they tortured our troops – yeah, let's torture them just a little less, let's commit atrocities that just aren't the worst….

We are NOT a nation of an eye for an eye ('cept of course in death penalty-crazed Texas – see a pattern?). We are supposed to be civilized and seeking freedom for the world's citizens (why we are somehow blessed by [our] god to do so still eludes me, but that's what we do…).

I don't care if the torture makes the Iraqis hate us more, but what about the rest of the world? Oh yeah, we already told them to fuck off. Then what about ourselves?

If you don't think we should be holding ourselves to the highest standard, I'm even more afraid of where we're headed as a nation and a people than I thought I was.

All that said, I can't say that I see a reason at this point to blame this on the Bush administration per se. Sure, they're mostly all neo-con war mongers, but they weren't there and may not have known what's going on in particular facilities. The soldiers involved have violated international law, and there should be proceedings to deal with those violations.

Originally posted by Dupek Chopra:

Originally posted by Fico:
t's a shame that people like Jessica Lynch got a decent treatment in a hospital were medicines and attention where scarce

Was this before or after the Iraqis raped her unconscious body???

Sadly, stories like Lynch and Tillman are used far to ofter as pro-war propaganda by the powers that be. Though, I have to admit, the Lynch story has always been a little vague to me. But I guess I should have seen the TV movie made about it all, right?

Originally posted by Fico:
[/qb]

Thanks Guiny, you remind me why people like George Bush govern this country when I'm all out of answers. Count yer blessings cos' you will probably never be at the other end of the abuses perpetrated by this and other administrations…but what comes around goes around. [/QB]

I guess if Sadaam Hussein is on the ballot, you'll be voting for him. Be glad Bush is governing this nation or else you might have already been hung for insulting your leader like Hussein woulda done. I do count my blessing cause i was over there at one time and luckily didnt get ambushed or caught. But i guarentee i'd rather have happen what the Americans did to the Iraqi prisoners and not happen what the insurgents do to us. Hangin' burnt from a bridge just doesn't do it for me.

Originally posted by Shadrach:
Where's the cover up? No one at the White House is denying that it happened.

Asked about a meeting with Rumsfeld yesterday in which Bush reportedly admonished his defense secretary, the president said, "I told him I should have known about the pictures and the report." In addition to the photos showing Iraqi prisoners being mistreated and humiliated, the military in March received a report from an Army major general detailing the abuse at Abu Ghraib and recommending disciplinary actions and other remedies.

I don't recall anyone being hung for insulting ANY American president. I don't think the notion of NOT hanging someone for insulting the president started with the Bush administration.

Originally posted by Rob_Gee_a.k.a _Guiny:

Originally posted by Fico:

Thanks Guiny, you remind me why people like George Bush govern this country when I'm all out of answers. Count yer blessings cos' you will probably never be at the other end of the abuses perpetrated by this and other administrations…but what comes around goes around. [/QB]

I guess if Sadaam Hussein is on the ballot, you'll be voting for him. Be glad Bush is governing this nation or else you might have already been hung for insulting your leader like Hussein woulda done. I do count my blessing cause i was over there at one time and luckily didnt get ambushed or caught. But i guarentee i'd rather have happen what the Americans did to the Iraqi prisoners and not happen what the insurgents do to us. Hangin' burnt from a bridge just doesn't do it for me. [/QB]

Originally posted by Rob_Gee_a.k.a _Guiny:
I guess if Sadaam Hussein is on the ballot, you'll be voting for him. Be glad Bush is governing this nation or else…

Right wingers are complaining about Kerrey's purple heart? But they clam up when it comes to his silver star.
February 28, 1969 â?? For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving with Coastal Division ELEVEN engaged in armed conflict with Viet Cong insurgents in An Xuyen Province, Republic of Vietnam, on 28 February 1969. Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry was serving as Officer in Charge of Patrol Craft Fast 94 and Officer in Tactical Command of a three-boat mission. As the force approached the target area on the narrow Dong Cung River, all units came under intense automatic weapons and small arms fire from an entrenched enemy force less than fifty-feet away. Unhesitatingly, Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry ordered his boat to attack as all units opened fire and beached directly in front of the enemy ambushers. The daring and courageous tactic surprised the enemy and succeeded in routing a score of enemy soldiers. The PCF gunners captured many enemy weapons in the battle that followed. On a request from U.S. Army advisors ashore, Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry ordered PCFs 94 and 23 further up river to suppress enemy sniper fire. After proceeding approximately eight hundred yards, the boats again were taken under fire from a heavily foliated area and B-40 rocket exploded close aboard PCF-94; with utter disregard for his own safety and the enemy rockets, he again ordered a charge on the enemy, beached his boat only ten feet from the VC rocket position, and personally led a landing party ashore in pursuit of the enemy. Upon sweeping the area an immediate search uncovered an enemy rest and supply area which was destroyed. The extraordinary daring and personal courage of Lieutenant (junior grade) Kerry in attacking a numerically superior force in the face of intense fire were responsible for the highly successful mission. His actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Where's Bush's purple heart eh?

Originally posted by redsock:
Sadly, stories like Lynch and Tillman are used far to ofter as pro-war propaganda by the powers that be.I guess I should have seen the TV movie made about it all, right?

I got the info from here.

and here.

Originally posted by Rob_Gee_a.k.a _Guiny:
Be glad Bush is governing this nation or else you might have already been hung for insulting your leader like Hussein woulda done.

Actually Bush is working on this as we speak – he and Tom Ridge and Michael Powell and the rest of the fundamentalist posse….

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
- Sun Tzu

The war in Iraq is a Win-Win for one country, Saudi Arabia. Infidels die. Iraqis die. Win win.

It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Then what has Bush/Disney to fear?

Let me tread very lightly while trying to make my point because I don't want anyone to misunderstand what I'm trying to say.

I have some experience on this subject. My experience is in the form of having trained military aircrew in interrogation resistance techniques…basically, to not tell the bastards what they're trying to find out, other than your name, rank and serial number.

I don't know why these prisoners are in captivity, and that is a huge question that needs to be answered. If they are just thugs that needed to be off the streets then the photo's show inhumane treatment, there's no question about it. If the prisoners are of military value…if they know shit that the US is trying to find out…then what you saw in the photo's is pretty much how it is in that situation….to try to humilate and degrade to the point of submission and co-operation.

Please don't anyone for one minute think I'm defending, excusing or condoning what went on.
I'm just saying that's what happens during interrogation.

One technique I remember was to hose them down with cold water and leave them outside to shiver for a while…then take them to the interrogation room and have them undress thinking they were getting dry clothes, only to have a woman come in the room once they were naked to ridicule his manhood, which had obviously suffered "shrinkage"…so what you see that woman doing in the pictures is pretty much the same thing. Another was to keep them blindfolded until they are being interrogated, and while they are sat outside with the blindfold on, pour warm water on them from a teapot and make a noise like you're peeing on them, not pleasant, but effective in degrading and humiliating. The one thing that was never done is the gay human naked pyramid thing, that seems to me that they got out of hand and the senior officer on duty must be held responsible for letting it happen….and not only that, counter-productive because they now know they are not the only prisoner. Isolation was key to breaking them down. Make them think they're all alone.

I'm afraid that's just the reality of war…it's ugly and in this case completely unnecessary….the war I mean.

As for the Geneva Convention…that's all very noble and all, but it's basically used as a guide book, not a rule book.

Mank, your explanation makes complete sense, and that was my initial thought – the photos I've seen do not necessarily depict prima facie torture or abuse, but the ensuing uproar and apology by Bush, and criminal charges filed against some of the involved solders, led me to believe the actions were improper. My argument has been with the defense of abuse and torture of Iraqis as appropriate quid pro quo behavior (regardless of this particular situation).

This treatment is done by all countries all the time. It's just in this case, the US got caught on film…..which begs the question, who let the camera in the proceedings?

Again, not defending anybody….just asking from a military interrogator perspective.

Different perspective from the Irish Times - apologies for the length but it's a subscription site

We can guess the response in the US if the heaps of naked, captured Iraqis, their legs akimbo exposing their anuses and their genitals to jeering American soldiers, had been women; and we can be equally sure of the consequence if the abusers of these female captives had been men, writes Kevin Myers.

The outcry would have been deafening, and the US military would have been convulsed from top to bottom. The male commanding officer on whose watch these crimes occurred would have been sacked and sent home in irons, and the men responsible for the sexual abuse would have been court-martialled, with long terms in the brig awaiting them.

But of course, the victims were men, and their visible tormenters were mostly women, and so the story has largely vanished in the US. CBS news over the weekend never even referred to the sex of the abusers, most American newspapers didn't carry the photographs of the naked young men being sexually humiliated by American women, and the New York Times effectively buried the story on an inside page. Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, the senior officer at the Abu Ghraib prison, has been suspended "pending an investigation", and six soldiers responsible for the flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention have been merely reprimanded.

From which we might conclude that nothing very important happened. But something very important indeed happened. Arab males were photographed while being grossly sexually humiliated by American women. Sexual degradation of one sex by the other strikes at most people's vulnerability, in all cultures. But within Arab societies, with their universal reverence for personal modesty, cleanliness and bodily self-respect, for white Christian women to be leering and jeering at the exposed genitals and anuses of Muslim males is to violate profound social, cultural and personal taboos.

The US commanders should therefore have exposed the wrong-doers to the full rigour of the martial code, thereby sending out a signal to the Arab world that the invasion of Iraq was not an exercise in imperialism in which the strong would routinely humiliate the weak. Instead, the US military chose to do otherwise. It opted to maintain the morale of its forces by treating the offenders leniently. This is a disgrace. Worse, it is short-sighted folly: other soldiers have seen the price to be paid for violating prisoners, and it is not very high.

Many other issues arise from this. Women in armies can't fight - we know that. But they can apparently humiliate prisoners in the safety of a jail. Is that what the equality agenda is all about - that women soldiers get the safe billets in logistics, administration and prisoner-guarding, with the resultant opportunities for medals and promotion, while in the front-line men fight and die, and the US military maintains the fiction that it fully subscribes to the principles of sexual equality? Moreover, was it the sex of so many of the accused which prompted the inaction to date? The allegations about the soldiers under the command of Brig Gen Karpinksi first surfaced last January. Yet she was suspended only after Sixty Minutes broadcast edited versions of the pictures last week. She declares that the abuses occurred in a wing not under her control. Maybe so; but I'm sure that if the prison's commanding officer and the abusive guards had been male, and the victims female, by this time the White House would be in rubble.

There are other questions of course. Was Sixty Minutes even right to show the pictures, knowing they would be circulated endlessly by Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite channel, and subsequently exploited by al-Qaeda? Does the world have an absolute right to see such pictures and learn such truths in a time of war? Or are such freedoms an obsolete luxury when the media are on the right of the line in the new order of battle? Because whereas the pictures from Iraq would have appalled most viewers around the world, from a cave near Peshawar, there came a triumphant laugh, and the crack of a hand slapping a thigh.

And what about the direct effects of such pictures? Did the producers of Sixty Minutes give any consideration to the consequences for US and other captives in the hands of Iraqi insurgents and terrorists? Or are such concerns beneath their lofty, preppy contempt as, safe and sound in the US, they heroically uphold the freedom of the media? Meanwhile back in Iraq, blindfolded, manacled hostages wonder whether the metal click they just heard is the shutter on the door, or the Kalashnikov finally being cocked.

We in the media seldom discuss our duty - on occasion - to withhold certain material, yet it clearly exists. When An Garda Síochána asks for a news blackout on a hostage situation, we normally oblige. How far should we practise self-censorship out of a regard for the lives of others when we have material which we know to be authentic, as the pictures from Abu Ghraib clearly are? And what if they are suspect, as the pictures of British soldiers allegedly urinating on Iraqis seem to be? It's not that I don't think British soldiers capable of such things. We know from the North, and from previous conflicts, that they are capable of much, much worse. It is almost irrelevant: doctored or authentic, should the Western media be providing propaganda photographs to a sworn and common enemy? In other words, had I been editor of Sixty Minutes, would I have broadcast those pictures from Abu Ghraib as they were? Answer: no.

do you all think other contries follow the geneva accords??? you are sadly mistaken.

you humanists should just shut up. you would do the same in their situation.

Originally posted by flawd101:
do you all think other contries follow the geneva accords??? you are sadly mistaken.

you humanists should just shut up. you would do the same in their situation.

phew thank god you are here to impart ur knowledge and wisdom on us…………….

you are an inspiration to dumbasses everywhere………….

Originally posted by Bollocks:
One technique I remember was to hose them down with cold water and leave them outside to shiver for a while…then take them to the interrogation room and have them undress thinking they were getting dry clothes, only to have a woman come in the room once they were naked to ridicule his manhood, which had obviously suffered "shrinkage"…so what you see that woman doing in the pictures is pretty much the same thing. Another was to keep them blindfolded until they are being interrogated, and while they are sat outside with the blindfold on, pour warm water on them from a teapot and make a noise like you're peeing on them, not pleasant, but effective in degrading and humiliating. The one thing that was never done is the gay human naked pyramid thing, that seems to me that they got out of hand and the senior officer on duty must be held responsible for letting it happen….and not only that, counter-productive because they now know they are not the only prisoner. Isolation was key to breaking them down. Make them think they're all alone.

Did you actually practice these techniques on captives?