OMG! CONDI (and BUSH & Now SCOTT) Still Thinks IRAQ = 9/11

Sigh.


As I said above, there is a great deal of evidence now suggesting real atrocities by American guards.

Believing this is not the same as believing that terrorism is ok and supporting Bin Laden etc.

Believing American guards capable of consistent atrocities, based on evidence from numerous witnesses, and in agreement with the US military's own - belated - investigations is not th esame as believing radical Islamists incapable of atrocities. Clearly they have committed many.

In other words, believing A is likely is not the same as denying B.

Why is this so hard?

Yet, repeatedly, some on the right persist in saying they are.

It really isn't hard to grasp. Surely?

I remember footage of the hundreds of men rounded up during hostilities.

Some of our men were killed by them after hostilities ceased. I can't remember if they were rushed and shot with their own guns or fragged from a large crowd sitting on the ground--or both in separate incidents.

I don't think anyone sitting in their home was kidnapped by the US Army.

I think Gitmo is full of bad guys.

I think we treat them within the bounds of Geneva Convention, even though they don't officially qualify--except for some rogue guards and interrogators. I stand our service people up against any in the world as to good guys to bad guys ratio.

But, I can see how you may believe some innocent people may have been rounded up. I just don't share that particular belief.

The other part of this is that believing American guards, on good evidence, to be capable of consistent atrocities does not mean believing that all American guards have committed atrocities.

I say again, Lash, you appear to believe that no suspected (you seem never actually to say "suspected" - you appear always to assume guilt) Islamic terrorist should ever be believed. THIS seems to me to be denying assumption of innocence.

How many detainees would it take to say they had been abused for you to consider the possibility tha they might be speaking the truth?


You ask Set about detainees.

I am unsure if you mean only G'tmo.

I can tell you that many people are in American detention in Iraq and Afghanistan who were picked up fro mthe street on some suspicion - whether vague or well informed.

One of the Afghans killed by guards in Afghanistan appears to have been universally regarded, even by his captors, as innocent and simply unfortunate.

See the military report of same in NYT.

I was speaking of Gitmo.

What is consistent 'atrocities'?

One guy beating detainees once in a while?

As I said-- there are bad guys among good guys in every facet of life. Of course, there are some bad guys interspersed in the Army. Don't look now, but you've got some bad neighbors interspersed with your good ones.

To try to malign the US Army as a whole over this is preposterous. Shoulds we discredit you and all your neighbors over the bad apples?

Lash, for two thousand years, no adult male Pathan has left his village without being armed. How is one to tell the terrorists from the rubber-necks? In Afghanistan and Pakistan--in Kandahar, Islamabad, Herat--in all the cities, are people whom we consider blacksmiths, who manufacture Kalishnikov assault rifles one at a time. Many Afghans still use Lee-Enfield rifles of World War Two vintage, and manufacture the ammunition at home.

Twice in the 19th Century, the English invaded Afghanistan. On the first occassion, General Elphinstone brought a force which, with wives, children, camp followers and support personnel, numbered 40,000. When he decided to retreat, the Pathan tribesmen swarmed around the column. Three men escaped, an English surgeon and two Hindu soldiers. That was the worst of it, but such events occured again and again.

You really can't tell the players there without a score card, and that nation has been in a civil war since 1963, and it is awash with weapons. After the Russians evacuated in 1992, and the Marxist government collapsed, the Taliban moved quickly to take control of all of the armored vehicles in the Kabul region, which is how a minority, religiously fanatical university student movement took over the country.

No insult intended Lash, but without a great deal of study, its really difficult to understand the insane chaos which has reigned there since the time of Alexander. He invaded in 330 BCE with the largest army he had commanded since he had defeated the Persians. He marched out four years later after having lost more troops than in any other campaign he fought. He required 100,000 reinforcements to replace the destroyed garrisons, protect the supply lines and replace his losses, before he could invade the Indus Valley (Pakistan). Because he finally defeated all of the tribesmen, one tribe at a time, they still respect him. They don't respect anybody else.

I have little doubt that most of those swept up were fighting men. Whether or not they were terrorists, however, or supporters of the Taliban, or even gave a rat's ass about the Taliban, is an altogether different story.

Looking back at Vietnam the atrocities were so commonplace they were no longer viewed as atrocities (that includes myself) We either rise above or sink below, the choice is ours alone to make.

What they did was tie his hands up over his head, secured with wire to the ceiling of his cell, and then they proceeded to beat him.

They hit him on the legs, taking some pleasure in his cries of "Allah", as they did it.

They did it, the striking, the hitting, the beating, until the flesh on his legs was pulverized, much like the meat of a chicken breast when you pound it until it is flat.

If he had survived his ordeal, he wouldn't have been able to walk again.

Luckily, his heart and lungs gave out from his agony.

By the time he was at the point of death all of his interrogators, says the NY Times, believed him to be an innocent.

Can these people be called interrogators? Or are they just torturers, agents of controlled terror?

I was just blocks away from the Trade Center, my wife was on the last train to pass under Tower I. We were lucky, we only thought the other might be dead. We smelled the smoke and ash, and felt the the terror and grief of the attack for months after. We mourned every missing person on every poster, every fireman lost, every cop, and stock broker, every waitress and busboy from the Windows on the World and turned our eyes away from the pictures of people falling to their deaths.....

Do not defend us, I ask, this way.


Joe(Are we so panic stricken?)Nation


And I finally see the light regarding Lash's theory of the unknown.

We do not know just how many other meetings there may have been between Osama and Saddam because there has no evidence thus far given,

and we do not know just how many other Afghan farmers died hanging from their wrists in dark crying Allah, Allah, Allah

because we do not count the enemy dead
because we do not the collateral dead

(I wonder how our God wonders
at our not hearing the cries of His name)

but there is, thus far, no evidence given.

I got it locked the second time I made fun of Saddam in his underpants!!!! Oooooooh...guess the weas....er, hamsters got upset. Boink.

I thought I got it locked! And over NOTHING I might add. Maybe it WAS you and your bad self, JW! You know we can't abide...ignoring sensitivities' in these environs.

Saddam may be sensitive that his sack is now nestled between his knees.

O! How he has been brought low...

I don't even know the "McG Incident". Wonder if it was juicier than mine... Likely.

I've seen Paris...
I've seen France...
I've seen Saddam in his underpants!!!!!

Have you READ the leaked information from the military's investigation?

Consistent atrocities means extremely abusive behaviour to many prisoners by at least a solid subsection of guards over a long period.

This includes people who died from abuse.

Once again you make that odd leap from naming the fact that extensive abuse has occurred to maligning the whole US army.

You hav eno basis for making that leap, except what appears to be your defensiveness about acknowledging that there has been abuse.


Pointing out that a which is a subsection of b has done x is not the same as saying that all b's do x.

What remains moot is how complicit your military structures are in the abuse and how high the knowledge of it went - or at what level any orders to do it came from.

I'm waiting for evidence and reliable information.

I prefer the specific charges to be made against named individuals.

Not some vague, damning accusation against the entire Army, or shadowy 'solid blocks'.... That is highly unfair to many decent, brave young men and women.

They can do it to the military but you had better think twice before you do it to Muslims.

Not all Muslims are world wide terrorists but all world wide terrorists are Muslims.

Like the size of my brush?

It's easy to brag about the size of your brush when you're at your keyboard and no one can really see it.

Chalk another one up for David Duchovny!

If I wasn't at work I would bust out my web cam. I got the fish lens on it!

Lol Lash! I rest my case. You simply will not look at reality. Nemmind. That was clear from before the beginning of this thread.


Well, some are getting charged - so I guess you will get some names. Some are already in the report.

Does the same rule about having your havingg specific charges and names of every Muslim in American hands apply before you will consider that they might be terrorists? No?

Had your prejudices applied there would never, by the way, have been any investigations into Abu Ghraib or the atrocities uncovered elsewhere in American prisons.

Kind of Catch 22, no?

Never believe a prisoner or a hundred prisoners - always believe the American.

Luckily even your government is more balanced and responsive - to world opinion, if nothing else. And some soldiers have been prepared to stand up and name the abuse.


You must believe Americans to be superhuman. Would you have the same problem in attending to evidence about soldiers and guards from any other nationality?

Offhand, I cannot think of any country whose history is free from atrocities - have Americans in the 2000's become miraculously immune from the shackles of humanity, such that they will never do wrong?

Cloud cuckoo land is, I believe, the name of the place where such things become true.

I sincerely hope you enjoy your sojourn there.

Lash,



Who is doing the investigating? The people who are accused of doing something wrong? That has a low chance of ever finding out the truth, and you know it.

Cycloptichorn