Baldimo wrote:dlowan wrote:Lol- actually, the UN seems to feel, and deal with, the outrage itself.
Unlike you.
Hmmmmmmm?
US soldiers have been court martialed and put in prision. How does the US not take care of the mess SOME soldiers made.
Just as a side note, I still don't think it was torture.
I rest my case.
Many of you folks still seem unprepared to admit any wrongdoing. (Actually, that is not fair - it is a small minority of the right here who think like that - I just get so irked when I see it happpening, that I see your numbers as bigger than they are)
The UN, at least, accepted the actions of the soldiers in the Congo as sexual crimes, set up an investigation, and acted.
How has the UN NOT cleaned up the mess SOME soldiers of SOME member states committed?
And - actually - it is far harder for the UN to act given the complexities of the command structure, than it is for a state like the US to act against its OWN soldiers, which it took god's own sweet time to do - and failed to act until the thing hit the international media, and continued to hit it. NOW we are hearing of more and more murders of prisoners by US gaolers - 26 in Afghanistan alone, as far as I know, to date.
AND - the Abu Ghraib torture took place as part of an illegal invasion of a sovereign (if appallingly ruled) country (ably assisted in its awfulness by previous US support) NOT as part of a legal peace-keeping operation.
There is good reason to believe the mistreatment of US prisoners continues - as there is good reason to believe the torture outsourcing continues. Is anyone aware of the UN currently running sexual abuse camps, with UN hierarchy support and protection?
The behaviour of soldiers can suck, anywhere, any time. This is life.
I hear some of you defending the actions of your criminals in uniform - I do not hear the UN doing so for its criminals. I do not hear anyone here supporting the actions of those UN soldiers. There were threads about this at the time. There was outrage expressed. You guys just like to think that only Americans ever get condemned. You create a false either/or thing, which exists mainly in your own heads - (except for a few left nuts, ably matched by the right wing nuts - who use everything to advance their own idolising/bashing agenda.)
It is good that the US has court-martialled a few offenders, and that Bushco have backtracked in their public support of US interrogation techniques considered as torture by the US itself, until your government changed the rules for a time. It is good that a few soldiers are being tried for murder of an Afghani prisoner, and others for the murder of an Iraqi prisoner. I doubt this has solved the problems. (Not that the US is alone in such treatment - the countries in the ME who are your allies - like Egypt, Saudi Arabia etc. - are notorious torturers - as, sadly, are numerous countries worldwide - I think the US just attracts more attention for it because of the circumstances in Iraq and Guantanamo, and the export of torture to allies in the ME - and because of your country's position of loudly condemning it in others.)
I have no doubt the UN will be smirched by more misconduct by some of its soldiers in the future - and be guilty of weakness and dumb mistakes.
As far as I know, though, the UN has not condoned and deliberately practiced sexual abuse as a policy. I believe the US has done this with mistreatment of prisoners - including deliberately setting up an institutution like Guantanamo in order to evade its own laws about such things, as well as the outsourcing of the worst of its torture activities to allies, and continues to do so.
PS Finn - I have not the foggiest what you are talking about with your one world government, (except I know it is a conspiracy theory of some on the far right) nor what relevance it has here.
