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Sun 9 May, 2004 12:58 pm
Should we all agree that any government official, appointed or elected, should resign who blames the Media for the exposure of the Iraq prison torturing as Rumsfeld did during his testimony before the congressional committees? In fact, he repeated several times that the trouble started with the illegal publishing of the photos and the report by the Media.
And I mean anyone from the President down to the guilty PM.
BBB
Give that Bee a cigar!
In addition, following official policy, there should be a public trial and appropriate punishment. :wink: After those who make the laws should live by them.
Sam
Er - is that supposed to mean it is bad that the photographs ended up in public hands, Tarantulas? That somehow the evidence is tainted?
The major refrain (along with "it was just like fraternity hazing") from the right seems to be that the person who released the photos and the memo is the real villan. Just how pathetic an argument this is does not need to be pointed out.
Hi Tarantulas,
Seeing as I don't know much about you, I have to ask; Do you work in law enforcement? If so you know the proper procedure for handling prisoners and the protocol for their treatment. Right?
So it's been twenty some years since I had to learn the Geneva convention rules for the handling and treatment of POWs but I still remember the basics. You do not beat, rape or humiliate them. You treat them in a humane way, while providing sufficient security to prevent them from harming anyone else or themselves. They get the same as a soldier,"three hots and a cot" Oh yes, they are allowed clothing too.
At the very first sigh of deviating from the Geneva Convention rules someone was DUTY BOUND to stop it! No one did the right thing. It makes me ashamed to have been in uniform. Sure doing the right thing can get you busted or worse but you have to belive that the truth will come out in the end, just as it has now.
I don't think Mr. Lawson was attempting blackmail the Army. I think he wanted those in charge to take responsibility for what happened. When you are in command all of the actions of all the soldiers in your command are your responsiblity. No Excuses. It takes guts to say, "No, this is wrong don't do it, and that's an order." Like they say no guts no glory. There is surely no glory now only shame.
Sam
Tarantuals is a sherriff reservist, so no, he isn't really in law enforcement.
As a sheriff reserve he should have had proper training. As for leaks to the press... The best way to get rid of infection is to open the wound and clean out the infection and necrotic tissue. Right now, not later when it's too late. My dad taught me respect the rank first then the person. If they deserve it. To paraphrase the Queen of Hearts, Heads should roll.
Any one in uniform has a duty to the people they serve. A duty to obey lawful orders and make the right decisions. Not a directive to be sheep and follow any judas goat to eventual slaughter. All i can see is lack of true leadership from the top down. Not just in the military but in government as well. Too many of our leaders are following personal agendas and not doing the right thing regardless of personal opinion
Sam
Sam1951 wrote:Hi Tarantulas,
Seeing as I don't know much about you, I have to ask; Do you work in law enforcement? If so you know the proper procedure for handling prisoners and the protocol for their treatment. Right?
Hello Sam,
I'm a Sheriff's Office volunteer, as you can see by my profile. I do consider myself to "work in law enforcement," but the only training I've received in prisoner handling is some "on the job training" on how to search an inmate who's returning to jail. I've never seen inmates being mistreated or been told to treat them as anything other than fellow citizens. I've heard stories of inmate mistreatment in our jails, and the perpetrators are always fired and prosecuted. As a side note, the Sheriff has never been asked to resign due to any isolated incidents of mistreatment, and I believe requests for the Secretary of Defense to resign as a result of the prison abuse are opportunistic and unrealistic.
Sam1951 wrote:So it's been twenty some years since I had to learn the Geneva convention rules for the handling and treatment of POWs but I still remember the basics. You do not beat, rape or humiliate them. You treat them in a humane way, while providing sufficient security to prevent them from harming anyone else or themselves. They get the same as a soldier,"three hots and a cot" Oh yes, they are allowed clothing too.
At the very first sigh of deviating from the Geneva Convention rules someone was DUTY BOUND to stop it! No one did the right thing. It makes me ashamed to have been in uniform. Sure doing the right thing can get you busted or worse but you have to belive that the truth will come out in the end, just as it has now.
I don't think the isolated actions of a few bad apples should make you "ashamed to have been in uniform." You did your part the best you could, and you should be proud of that, as should millions of current and former servicemen and women. The people who abused the prisoners were in violation of multiple laws and regulations, and they should be punished to the maximum extent of military law. I think any reasonable person understands this. And I believe that the people who committed the abuses knew in their hearts that they were doing wrong, even if they weren't specifically trained in prisoner handling procedures.
Sam1951 wrote:I don't think Mr. Lawson was attempting blackmail the Army. I think he wanted those in charge to take responsibility for what happened. When you are in command all of the actions of all the soldiers in your command are your responsiblity. No Excuses. It takes guts to say, "No, this is wrong don't do it, and that's an order." Like they say no guts no glory. There is surely no glory now only shame.
Sam
As a former Navy man with a Secret clearance, it bothers me to see a classified report made public. I don't understand why parts of the report are classified and other parts unclassified, but that's not my call to make. I don't know if the pictures were classified or not. The reason I posted what I did was to show one person's opinion about how they were released. Without any specific information about their origin, I can't form an opinion about how the press came into possession of them.
I just hope more classified things find their way into the media. IMO with this administration it is only way to get at any truth.
Tarantulas
Good points... Couple of things to remember.
After the Vietnam fiasco returning soldiers received some bad treatment due in part to the actions of some. Remember William Calley (spelling?) Eight years later I was refused service in a restaurant. Why? I was wearing a field jacket and jump boots.
Bad apples? I don't know. Sheep maybe. Now it's damage control and working out how it happened.
I had a secret clearance too. I respect the need to keep some things out of public view. Not this, too many military embarrassments are swept under the carpet. No paper work, they never happened.
I'll have to finish this later. Billie and I are taking Mom out for dinner.
Later
Sam
Through Arab, And American, Eyes
Through Arab, And American, Eyes
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, May 10, 2004
Tom Fenton, in his fourth decade with CBS News, has been the network's Senior European Correspondent since 1979. He comments on international events from his "Listening Post" in London, and other parts of the world as well.
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A picture is worth more a thousand words. Words can be twisted, interpreted. They mean different things to different people. But a picture can speak for itself, and no amount of words will erase the images from Abu Gharib prison.
Of all the depraved digital photos of prisoner abuse at the hands of their American captors, the one that has burned itself into the archives of our collective memories is the hooded, cloaked, figure of a man with cables dangling from his outstretched arms. He has become an icon of the War in Iraq - like the naked Vietnamese girl with the napalm burns running down a road, who became an icon of the War in Vietnam.
I found myself looking at the picture of the Iraqi with the outstretched arms while reading a newspaper in a bus full of Arabs on the Persian Gulf. You could hardly open a newspaper in the Arab world without seeing it. But I felt ashamed, as if I were looking at pornography. What were the other people in the bus, the non-Westerners, thinking? They had all seen the same picture in their newspapers and on their televisions.
Their newspapers spoke of "shocking pictures of sadistic acts against hapless prisoners" and "violations of all human norms committed by a superpower on the people of a nation under its occupation." The editorial of one Saudi Arabian paper, Al Jazeera, insisted that "what the world has seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg."
Later in my hotel room, watching the televised testimony of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the top military brass before the House and Senate committees, I listened to thousands of other words. The focus was sharply different.
Rumsfeld and his officers were talking not so much about what had been done to Iraqi prisoners, but what the pictures had done to the American army's image. The victims were the men and women of the armed forces. Their honor has been stained and their lives further endangered by the sordid acts of a small number of rogue soldiers.
The unspoken thought that seemed to run through the hearings was that what went on in Abu Gharib prison was not the problem. The problem was the pictures.
There has been a huge outpouring of anguished American editorial comment about what the revelations of prisoner abuse have done to America's image in the Arab world. The truth is that America's image in the Arab world was already so bad that it could hardly get any worse.
The Arab "street" reaction seems to be that the pictures only prove what they have been saying all along: American soldiers are not liberators and the Iraqi people are the victims of this war.
There is, however, another point of view in the Arab world. It was expressed in the Persian Gulf newspaper, Al Khaleej. An Arab analyst pointed to the muted response to the revelations from Arab governments and says that should not come as a surprise.
There are, he said, countless political prisoners in the Arab world, and he remarked that "what has happened in Abu Gharib is probably similar to what is taking place in Arab prisons. The only difference, of course, is that pictures are available in one case and not the other."
He went on to say that "Western democracy is to be admired. If it were not for democracy, such crimes would never have been exposed. Hats off to the American media as it pursued the policy of bringing out the truth." And the writer expressed the hope that some day, the media in the Arab world will be free to expose their own violations of human rights.
For Americans who are deeply distressed by these horrible pictures, that thought is a consolation, even if only a small one.