I don’t know if you guys have heard about the torture incidents perpetrated by British and American soldiers and mercenaries, but I could not be more thouroughly disgusted. Please leave any thoughts you have regarding the matter here.
stupid. its stupid. i heard that there are pictures on the cover of newspapers with it. i am also thoroughly disgusted
I am not a violent person ordinarily, nor am I a fan of capital punishment, but honestly, I think the perpetrators deserve no less than death for what they did.
well i can’t comment on the american side but for the british it is looking more and more like a sick holks(sp) either way the damage has already been done and i’m sure there will be a lot more clahes between the forces and the iraqi civilians.
Here is a link to the text of the investigation on the U.S. side.
There was an MP Battalion in charge of the prison. They had an earlier investigation with prisoner abuse while the unit was in Kuwait that resulted in the prosecution of some soldiers. The gist of the report is that the Battalion Commander was pretty worthless. There was a Military Intelligence Unit that encouraged the guards to “soften” up the prisoners. They are going after the MI Battalion Commander and some individuals on that side. In the MP unit, they are going after the Commander, his XO, the Operations Officer, Sergeant Major and a few others. Also, the Company Commander, First Sergeant, and a platoon leader. The individuals that did the abuse are being prosecuted. Going up to higher, the Brigade Commander (a 1-star female general officer) has been relieved. They may press charges. She has a lawyer and has been going on the news talk shows. The Brigade Judge Advocate (legal advisor) was ineffective. A few other Colonels on the Brigade staff are being relieved.
The report faults most of the officers for not following up on anything and not checking on what they were responsible for. The investigators don’t pull anything about most of the officers lying to the investigators.
There is some recognition for individuals that did the right thing and resisted pressure, overcame the lack of discipline or guidance, and reported the abuses.
I think this is the most disgusting thing I have ever heard. I am a patriot and I love my country and have the upmost respect for the men and women fighting right now, but this is just fully unexceptable. I have heard on the news that these sick freaks are being tried as war crimenals which I think they fully diserve. The worst part is the Iraqi soldiers didnt treat our pows that bad in relation to other conflicts (vietnam, japan). Thier is no excuse for this kind of behavior! I mean, I understand maybe hitting them a little, sometimes you get in that war fighting mode and you have a hard time getting out of it, but urinating on them, threating to sodomize them(sp). Thats just sick!
I’m gonna say something bold after hearing this: God bless America! :o
Why? BECAUSE it made front pages, BECAUSE there’s an investigation. It’s a terrible and disgusting thing, but there’s JUSTICE. Under Sadaam, many were tortured and killed, likely under worse circumstances. No investigations, no reparations. Of course, I don’t want these kind of things to happen, and it can create pretty much no goodwill with other Arabs, but human rights abuse happens all over and remains unpunished. Let’s not let some bad apples spoil the whole bunch.
^^^^i agree
This isnt justice! I dont mean to flame you or anything but you are right about people being tortured under Sadam but for 1 did THESE people do the torturing 2 even if they did Sadam would have done much worse if they didnt.
They aren’t being treated as “war criminals”. They are being investigated and if necessary, prosecuted as criminals under the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice). Those are the regulations that govern conduct within the military. It won’t be a “military tribunal”. It will be a Court Martial.
…and there were some prisoners from the first Gulf War that were treated worse. There was a British SAS soldier that described his treatment in the same prison.
It is what NQE1 said – it IS being condemned, it IS being investigated, their WILL be justice.
These losers may well have lost us an already difficult war.
We entered that country to remove b******* like that, they just ruined our credibility.
To me it’s not he most disgusting thing, but it comes darn well close, simply because they are doing the same that we went in to stop.
However if anyone tries to turn this into a political charade (which they will) like both parties did with the 9-11 commision, it’s going to get very ugly.
Kerry has a press conference at this moment and he is doing as you said.
Maybe the US reaction and prosecution will end up being used as an example for what should happen and it can be turned into a positive about how a democracy handles mistakes and abuses.
I thought Kerry was an idiot before.
I abhor him now. :<
It’s a grim fact that this whole thing is not about W-M-D. It is about O-I-L.
Before this whole thing started, meetings were held to divide the oil resources of the Arabian peninsula between the oil interests of America (including billionaires named Bush and Cheney) and … you guessed it … the United Kingdom. The “mistakes” made after World War I with the replacement of the Ottoman Empire would be “corrected,” to the enrichment of all.
Unfortunately, the natives were clever. When the Americans appeared, they shocked their uniforms and melted into the crowds. Six months later they start shooting. Never do they present the Americans with an “army” whose GPS coords they could plug into their computers and blast-away. It’s very much the tactic that was used in Afghanistan against the Russians, for eleven years.
That oil is turning out to be very expensive.
Unfortunately, the straw-man candidate, Kerry, has alliegances to the same powers and to the same money that dreamed up this whole thing. I believe that this man’s candidacy exists only to be sure that someone really different does not gain power, so that the war can continue. (Which is why I have never in my life voted either for a Republicrat nor a Demoblican.) That man’s just another Kennedy.
The true crime of it all is that, one way or another, this war will not be stopped anytime soon. After the elections are over, http://www.sss.gov will be open for business.
From: Big Brother <[email protected]>
To: You
Subject: Your number’s upGreeting…
Be afraid. Be very afraid…
conspiracy theorist are pathetic
It’s a grim fact that this whole thing is not about W-M-D. It is about O-I-L.
L-O-L
What tuggles said.
Imagine you are the leader of your country. Imagine much of the “civilized” world already hates you, some even believe that your death is good for the world, that you are many ways a Nazi, even though you know you are not.
Now imagine that one morning you receive an intel briefing, that has info that an enemy has a plan to high-jack a number of airliners, and ram them into the largest building in your country, as well as a political and military center of your nation.
This is going to take place with in 3 months of your receiving the briefing.
You are indecisive. These men may or may not have documents which prove their culpability. Civil rights groups complain that without due process of evidence you can’t hold them. You have to go abroad to find other suspects, but since the international community is slated against you, you are no allowed to enter many countries. You are still indecisive.
And time is running out, you’ve done nothing, and the buildings are destroyed. You failed to act.
Go back in time and see a slightly different story. The intel briefing was inconclusive and problematic. The latter is caused by the fact that the intel is at best flaky.
You decide not to act, acting on flaky intel would slate even further the international community against you if nothing that proves these men were going to harm our country. You may even be charged as racist Nazi (of course some already believed that, simply because you are a traditionalist) and war criminal.
And on a terrible day, the airliners ram into several building, extinguishing more than 3000 lives.
Within a month your political enemies say you knew about it, which is true. Though remember, this threat is much more obscure that what is to come.
They say hindsight is 20/20.
You vow to never let that happen again, so a new situation arises. A country that has had, or does have, or is planning on creating WMD, and possibly distributing it to the same rats who attacked last time. He may even be creating nukes that could travel to your country. They have in the past, and are presumably planning to attack a friend in the immediate region.
Several countries around the world contribute intel to form that new briefing. What is so ironic is when you go before them to ask for their help in taking this threat out, as well as freeing the nation from the arsehat that rules it they claim they need to insert weapons inspectors. Fair enough.
But the inspectors are on a short leash, that is controlled by the man who has these weapons. Every time the inspectors begin complaining, the man with the leash cuts a little slack.
The plan and agreement by you and your allies is set so that everyone goes into the country and removes the weapons by force. But your allies have absolute veto power, and every time you say to go in at the projected, and agreed upon date, they say no. They say that the inspectors need a little more “time”.
This gives the man with the WMD enough time to destroy, sell, or remove these weapons.
About 4 months after you and you “allies” planned and agreed on to go in, you go in with a coalition that consists of many many nations from around the world. Yet a few arrogant loud mouths claim that without their support it can’t be considered an “internationally” based liberation.
A year later, with a very large majority of the most wanted being seized, you still haven’t found weapons. And based on the fact that your “allies” (most likely unwittingly) stalled for time, that the nation that had WMD no longer has it.
A small fundamentalist minority has started an uprising, and is spreading lies among the populace to try to turn them against us. Many use this against you saying the war has failed.
How worse could it have been had you pre-empted before the first airliner attack, based on flaky intel?
The same people who accuse you of pre-empting and starting a needless war, expected you to pre-empt the airline high-jackers and their bosses, which would have been much more messy.
You’re stuck quite effectively between a rock and a hard place…and to top it all off your PR skills suck.
Conundrum.
Welcome to hell.
Your name is President George W. Bush, of the United States of America.
As to Modron’s post: 3 days into the war Sadam said “The Americans will be bogged down in their own hell.” The Arabs know more about the white man’s (yes I know) psyche than we know about their cuisine.
As to ditto’s “hindsight”: I would agree with everything you said in your last post except for the fact I have foresight (experience). If Iraq had wmd (just chem or bio, forget about nukes), how, in a desert, do you decontaminate, not just the protective suits, but the tanks and artillary, the supplies on the trucks supplying food and water to the frontlines? So the whole force is confined to the Tigris and Euphrates? That wasn’t in the battle plan. And you have to factor in attrition. The force that was sent in could never have withstood the loss of 15% personnel, decontamination time and restriction, and an enemy that didn’t run because it had wmd.
There were no wmd and the way we went in and the troopstrength we went in with are as good as proof for me. They knew there were no wmd.
%<
True enough, you make a very good point, and one I find myself agreeing with.
So, once again, it’s conundrum: leave him there and he screws you or someone else, go in and directly screw your own troops.
So then how would you suggest we go in and take him out? Had we done nothing and he attacked america would be blamed because we had intel. Just as bush is now being blamed for not stopping 9/11, even though had he done so he would have lambasted by the international community and politicions here at home for not doing anything to stop the attacks.
Anyway you go, someone gets screwed.
Royally.
I am generally not here to discuss politics, but please understand that when I say what I did, I am being absolutely level-headed. This is no “conspiracy theory” to be dismissed. I hope that all of you know by now that I am not a reactionary, and that if I could but ignore what my eyes and history tell me, I gratefully would.
Many of you have lived through one of the most extraordinary times in human history: about 30 years of continuous peace. That’s about to come to an end. And you, throughout your entire lifetime, have nothing to compare that to. Do not consider for one moment that you are immune. If you don’t exercise your rights now, you are cannon fodder.
The Internet at your fingertips is a cornucopia of information such as, http://www.positiveuniverse.org/BackgroundBriefs/USCorporationsandIraqiOil.html
Now, mind you, almost everything you read is propaganda of some sort or another, but the Google search on “afghanistan oil divide Britain” that I just did produced 22,900 hits. Start reading. When you read enough, from enough angles, the truth emerges. It is all there. How about http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/bg-srn.shtml ? You can find material, thousands of pages of it, written from every point of view not just these. The point is not whose articles you read, but that you begin to read, and to think, for your own self.
The WMD story was just that … a cover story. France and Germany didn’t buy it. (But what do they know about war being fought on their soil?) WW-1 was supposed to be over in a matter of a month. Today, large areas of France cannot be entered because of residual explosives and poison gas from that war. Do you know what the Ossuary at Verdun is for? Do you know what it contains, and why? http://battlefields1418.50megs.com/ossuary.htm Some “one-month war.”
I encourage you to read the Internet. Do you agree with me or not. And why? Come up with your own research to agree with me. Or, your own research to say that I am full of feces. It’s a free world (still) and you are free to say what you please (still…). But do not blindly accept just your newspaper; just your six o’clock news.
They're rolling out the guns again ... They're rolling out the guns again ... They're rolling out the guns again ... Johnny, I hardly knew you.You haven’t an arm, you haven’t a leg …
You’re a hopeless shell of a man on a peg,
And you’ll have to be put with a bowl to beg …
Johnny, I hardly knew you.They’re rolling out the guns again …
They’re rolling out the guns again …
But they’ll never take my sons again …
Johnny, I’m swearin’ to you.
Yes, dammit, be afraid. Be very afraid. Afraid enough to reject what you hear and demand the changes that might save your young life. Read your history. The history they never taught you. The history about how the Persian Gulf got to be the way it is. It’s all there on the Internet for you. And you are privileged to live in a country where freedom of speech still exists even among all the propaganda. But hurry. You are fast running out of time.
THE END IS NEAR!!! :o
Many of you have lived through one of the most extraordinary times in human history: about 30 years of continuous peace. That’s about to come to an end.
I am afraid you are wrong there. Let me just show a little list
Revolutionary war
ended 1783
War of 1812
1812-1815
Mexican American war
1846-1848
Civil war
1861-1865
Spanish American War
1898
ww1
1914-1918
ww2
1941-1945
Korean War
1950-1953
Vietnam War
1965-1975
Granada
1983
Panama
1989
Desert Storm
1991
Kosovo
1999
Iraqi Freedom
2003
Now as you can see only once has there been 30 years of peace (between the war of 1812 and Mexican American war)
Now the next closest? 27 years between ww1 and ww2. Now this is just the US I wont even attmept to mention how many other contries where at war during before and after everything Ive listed. I might also add that we are STILL at war with Korea. We never stoped fighting in Iraq, we are still fighting in kosovo. So 30 years of peace? HAH! The world does not know peace. Now I wont bring this into a religious discusion so I wont add any details but the world will know absolute peace soon. Maybe not in any of our lifetimes but soon. BTW it should be an honor for any American to serve his country. NO I havent YET but I am 17 and will be enlisting in the army soon.