Journal Bruce Perens's Journal: Why Our Boys Tortured and Murdered Prisoners 59
Please read this article. And please pass the link around, if you agree with it.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN. -- Alan Perlis
Good, but too abstract for most people I think (Score:2)
This is good, and I agree with you, but I think some of the claims require more abstract thought than I think the average person is inclined to do. Here is something I wrote [livejournal.com] on the subject that makes a much more direct connection between the lies behind this war and the actions of our soldiers.
Re:Good, but too abstract for most people I think (Score:2)
Our soldiers learned that doing "whatever it takes to achieve success" is effectively the law of the land, even if that "whatever" includes violating nearly everything you state you're fighting
those reasons don't seem very likely... (Score:2)
"A new Battle for a new Millenium demands new Rules! If you believe in the rule of law, you're no better than the French!"
Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
"Ve ver yust following orders!" [strike-the-root.com]
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
But a fish rots from its head.
The whole administration and its endeavours - from the top down - stinks with preachy and disingenuous morality. A false morality which insinuates a message of power and predudice, with a sly wink.
"We are right." " You are either with us, or against us." "This is a Crusade. Ooops! We 'misspoke'."
Hey, if you're in Iraq, how are you getting web-access? KBR is supposed to have suspended the Interne to rank and file - Cheney's spin control partner.
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
The very idea that these soldiers acted the way they did because "Bush sucks" (to summarize your arguement), uhhmm sucks. Interesting that you can say that Bush has a "false morality", and quitely encourages abuse on the part of soldiers. Did a shrink or a pyschic let you know what's really lurks i
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDL i nk =947470
http://www.kathryncramer.com/wblog/archives/0005 49
About the recount:
Gore could have won [cnn.com]
Excerpt:
Ironically, a tougher standard of counting only cleanly punched ballots advocated by many Republicans would have resulted in a Gore lead of just th
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Saturday, May. 08, 2004
It's not exactly every day that the Pentagon warns military personnel to stay away from Fox News. But that's exactly what some hopeful soul at the Department of Defense instructed, in a memo intended to forbid Pentagon staff reading a copy of the Taguba report detailing abuse of detainees at prisons in Iraq that had been posted at the Fox News web site.
An email to Pentagon staff marked "URGENT IT (Information Technolog
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Any statistical analysis of the votes shows that Florida was a tie.
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Perhaps we should split all the close states. There needs to be some reform to make the 32 states that aren't swing states more relevent to the outcome. Just like the Senate increases representation of small states, there should be some mechanism to better help a candidate who gets 65% of a states vote. Maybe the winner of a state should get the electoral votes, plus an extra vote per 500,000 of the margin of victory. So in a state where
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
All of this ignores the fact that the United States is now capable of counting large numbers accurately.
If it were a national election, rather than the sum of the decision of a bunch of state elections, it would more accurately reflect the will of the people.
Bruce
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
I think its lame how many people don't consider that maybe other countries have better democratic representation and government sy
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Complicity includes logistical and support positions, not just combatants. Some one who ensures a proper supply of ball-point pens may feel safely removed from this [robert-fisk.com].
"I was only following orders."
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Baghdad Burning [blogspot.com]
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Screw the recount. Bush's brother made sure that hundreds, if not thousands of black voters were incorrectly denied the right to vote in Florida.
It's clearly obvious that there was blatant corruption and voter fraud going on.
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
votes? what votes? oh, those votes! (Score:1)
I'd say it's in the bag!
Four more years! Four more years!
DT
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
All of the events he mentions are well documented, and your assertion that they are not shows you to be about as informed on our countries recent history as the average American (If you like, I can provide links for you, but you'll learn more if you look for the evidence yourself.)
I reccomend you poke around the National Security Archives [nsarchive.org] in order that you might learn of contemporary American history.
It does not either explain or excuse the actions of those MPs.
Nothin
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:2)
Red Warrior is simply trying to shield his consciousness from the very obvious fact that his orders [missouri.edu] are illegal. [cornell.edu]
When it became obvious to General Zinni [signonsandiego.com] that the orders were illegal, he resigned. That is true bravery, honor, and fidelity. How many followed his lead?
Now those who did not are under stop-loss orders, and have all had their honor stained by the realities of "military intelligence." What goes around comes around.
Re:Speaking as someone currently serving in Iraq, (Score:1)
Thanks (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks for the article. It hit a chord with me.
I agree with the direction of your thoughts- I'd also suggest a couple possible additions:
We showed them that the Arabic people are terrorists with the way we've handled our War Against Terror.
We showed them that Might makes Right when Mr. Bush managed to turn a family grudge match with Saddam Hussein into a war with Iraq and no one successfully called him on it.
Take care,
RD
What goes through a soldier's mind? (Score:2)
Re:What goes through a soldier's mind? (Score:2)
So far, we've found this to be isolated to Abu Ghraib. That sits well with the suggestion that this was just some stupid country bumpkins with no respect for anything but themselves. However, as the article also suggests, this is not likely to be an isolated incident, and it will certainly get worse before it gets better.
I'd like to point out, however, that this is all sideline speculation from people who don't really have much, if any, connection to the events themselves, and only have superficial connect
Re:What goes through a soldier's mind? (Score:2)
I'm disappointed (Score:2)
Re:I'm disappointed (Score:2)
Re:I'm disappointed (Score:2)
You're right, the buck does stop with the President, but that doesn't mean that he's directly responsible for what happened, nor does it mean that it's his fault. A LOT more work needs to be done to argue that.
As far as I've seen, the president is doing a good job of taking that ultimate responsibilty and the proper channels are being utilized to deal with the peo
this has been a problem for a lot longer than Iraq (Score:2)
One becomes like the person they hate most. We saw this when the US faught communism and they had all of those not so nice McCarthy hearings. We saw this when the US govt overthrew democratic governments for being too close to "the enemy". We saw it when the pictures of troops murdering civillians in Vietnam. So we see it again now.
The real problem is that the US answers to no one and they know it.
Clever... (Score:2)
There was a great article [nytimes.com] in the NYT recently summarising the Stanford prison experiment; folks, if you haven't heard about it, che
Re: (Score:1)
Guantanamo? (Score:2)
-molo
Re:Guantanamo? (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Guantanamo? (Score:2)
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Guantanamo? (Score:2)
It'd take me a bit to dig it up, but they used 'torture light' techniques on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. There's a personal account by someone they released (who was originally being slightly mistreated in a Taliban prison before we decided he should be mistreated a little worse in our prison instead) because they couldn't manage to get anything on him, not even a traffic ticket.
I also mention it in my LJ someplace. :-)
It was similar in style. Degradation and humiliation instead of outright gross physi
Re:Guantanamo? (Score:2)
The PATRIOT act is about domestic affairs, while the Guantanamo activies are all about captured foreigners. I agree, the abduction (not arrest) of Jose Padilla and the holding of foreign nationals without charge or trial is from the same cloth. However, the PATRIOT act is not what is claimed to give the government the powers they are exercising in Guantanamo. Perhaps this is a subtle point.
-molo
In regards the debacle of the last "election" (Score:2)
In general, courts do not act sua sponte (on their own motion). They respond to the motions of the parties in suit by granting or denying particular relief requested.
Boies did not ask for a statewide recount of ballots, a request that would have been hard to deny the propriety of. Ins
fabulous article (Score:1)
Brilliant and concise distillation of what is most wrong with these modern United States, especially regarding the Bush administration.
However, I do not believe that most of those things had any substantial contribution to the war crimes comitted.
The same anything-goes-when-fighting-terrorism attitude that gave us the PATRIOT Act and the two recent illegal, unprovoked and unjustified invasions, may have also justified these soldiers actions in their own mind.
But I think the largest underlying cause is
Re:What can one say? (Score:2)
I can't see how they did it with direct orders. Following illegal orders is a crime. There are some things that decent people do not do.
Your reasons more significant for Generals (Score:1)
Bruce,
I don't feel that these reasons you cite contributed as directly as you suggest to our boys' and girls' torturing of prisoners. While they no doubt made it easier for those GIs to justify or rationalize their actions, the more significant factor in their behavior is human nature.
We already know that under the conditions that were set for the American jailers, this outcome was all but assured -- PATRIOT Act, voting scandals, hypocritical Bush government or not. I quote from an article in the [time.com]
what you can do about it (Score:2)
Here are some good links to cast far and wide:
www.DrivingVotes.org [drivingvotes.org]
www.BushDraft.com [bushdraft.com] (see my JE for more info.)
Highly Intuitive (Score:2)
Bruce,
I think the list you compiled is very insightful and telling
of a broader picture that--sadly--nearly half of Americans do
not see--or worse--openly accept. However, I do believe it to be
the case that the list you compiled functions best as a list of
grievances and offenses committed by Mr. Bush and the people close
to him and should act as a list of reasons not to re-elect him and
as a basis for present or future censure against him; but not as a
direct line of empirical reasoning drawing the conclu
thoughts.... (Score:1)
Re:thoughts.... (Score:2)
Thanks
Bruce
Re:thoughts.... (Score:2)
#1 Putting Them Down: Irish terrorism largely stopped when the Irish people were given more freedom and the economy improved (largely as a result of that freedom). Palestinian violence dramatically increased as troops rolled in to the occupied territories and made economic activity almost impossible. It's clear that guns alone are not a complete solution. A complete solution must include respect. Not respect for the terrorists themselves, but respect for the people that the terrorists claim
Hmm... (Score:2)
A few of those are non-sequiturs, and you're missing a very important one: This administration considers 'support our troops' to mean 'put our boys in harms way, but not 'give them decent health and disability benefits'. It's a pretty important point that those have actually been *cut* recently.
Why it happened... (Score:2)
But I have to disagree with you here. The fact is that the military does not condone this type of action and as such it is out of the norm. I don't know where they got their ideas but those ideas were wrong. I don't much care for the Bush administration but saying that they caused it removing the blame from where belongs, ie firmly on the heads of the perpentrators.
Uh oh... (Score:2)
Re:Uh oh... (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Uh oh... (Score:2)