Ban on torture overruled in Pentagon

by ignored_one 15 Replies latest social current

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  rem

  CG,
  
  I believe you are confusing Afghanistan with Iraq. The Afghanistan government was clearly harboring and providing aide to Osama Bin Laden - the head of Al Queda, the group that masterminded and executed the 911 attacks.
  
  As for Iraq, I can't claim to know all of Bush's motivations, but I believe a regime change was needed, and for reasons having nothing to do with terrorism, WMD, or oil. Bush may not have been the right man for that job, though. :)
  
  rem
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  ApagaLaLuz

  I'm sorry kinda confused, am I supposed to be surprised that this is once again coming from a staunch supporter of Cruel and unusal Punishment?
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  nilfun

  Oh, those pesky memos.

  Prison torture scandal deeper than just a few bad apples? Interesting article sheds more light on this.

  Beating Specialist Baker
  by Nicholas D. Kristof

  The prison abuse scandal refuses to die because soothing White House explanations keep colliding with revelations about dead prisoners and further connivance by senior military officers ? and newly discovered victims, like Sean Baker.

  If Sean Baker doesn't sound like an Iraqi name, it isn't. Specialist Baker, 37, is an American, and he was a proud U.S. soldier. An Air Force veteran and member of the Kentucky National Guard, he served in the first gulf war and more recently was a military policeman in Guantánamo Bay.

  Then in January 2003, an officer in Guantánamo asked him to pretend to be a prisoner in a training drill...

  A must-read. Get the rest of the story here: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1745
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  patio34

  Thanks Nilfun for that link. The original story was in the NY Times on 6/5. I've bookmarked the Vets for Common Sense site. That's such a sad story . . .

  Pat
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  Richie

  Partisan Media Ignores Saddam's Atrocities

  June 16, 2004

  (...challenge the press, and the left, to confront the horrors we ended in Iraq) RUSH: Deborah Orin has a piece today in the New York Post that is going to make you mad. Made me mad. Even though it doesn't surprise me, it made me mad. Permit me to read excerpts. The column title is, "Reporting For the Enemy." Deborah Orrin of the New York Post. "The video only lasts four minutes or so ? gruesome scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over. Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade ? all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.

  American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it. No surprise, since no newscast would air the videos of Nick Berg and Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl getting decapitated, or of U.S. contractors in Fallujah getting torn limb from limb by al Qaeda operatives. But every TV network has endlessly shown photos of the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib. Why? AEI scholar Michael Ledeen says, "Because most [journalists] want Bush to lose." "The Pentagon has lots of Saddam atrocity footage ? but is loathe to release it, possibly for fear it would be taken as a crude attempt to blunt criticism of Abu Ghraib. So the world sees photos of U.S. interrogators using dogs to scare prisoners at Abu Ghraib. But not the footage of Saddam's prisoners getting fed ? alive ? to Doberman pinschers on Saddam's watch. (That video's been described by former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.) Former Pentagon official Richard Perle raps 'faint hearts in the administration,' saying they've bought into the idea that it's 'politically incorrect' to show the horrors of Saddam's regime.

  "But he also faults the media ? after all, AEI's briefings on Iraq have been standing-room-only, but the room was half empty for the screening of the Saddam torture video. But part of the issue is simply that Saddam's tortures, like al Qaedas tactics, are so awful that they're unbearable to watch. If I couldn't watch them myself, I'm hardly arguing that others should have to. Yet it raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. It's that we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling.'" (Italics in original) We are able to show the videos and pictures out of Abu Ghraib because they are "not that bad." I mean, they're not unwatchable, but we can't show what happened under Saddam's watch because that would repulse us and make us sick. So, we can watch and show videos and beat ourselves to shreds, but we can't see what we got rid of. (Orrin:) "In this era, a photo is everything. We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse ? so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under 'U.S. management.' Terrorism is sometimes called asymmetric warfare ? America had to adjust to new tactics to deal with small bands of terrorists who were able to turn our airplanes into weapons against us. Now it turns out that we also face asymmetric propaganda ? where the terrorists gain a p.r. advantage precisely because what they do is so horrific that our media aren't able to deal with it. The U.S. military hasn't figured out a strategic way to deal with this problem. But neither has the press." Her column goes on a little bit more, but the reason I'm juxtaposing this story along with the president's sound bite is that I think that there is a lot that the administration -- and I don't mean just the White House, but the Pentagon, the CIA -- could be doing that would more adequately, properly explain our actions; what we are encountering; how we're overcoming it, and the absolute sheer horror and terror that we dispatched and got rid of. You know, they're finding weapons of mass destruction all over the Middle East now. (story | story | story | story) They're finding remnants of Saddam's weapons. Factories that were dismantled and moved and shipped to Jordan, Syria and other places, and it's another story that the media is not really onto, just as they are not paying much attention to what went on in Saddam's prison when this American Enterprise Institute has this little newsreel of footage yesterday. Normally they get standing O's. There are only four or five journalists who showed up for this one and fewer than those four or five reported on it. Look it, yesterday I went back. I went on my website last night which I always do. I always check the website, and I relived the Bill Schneider segment from Judy Woodruff. I'm sitting there laughing myself silly. It was one of the funniest things. Bill Schneider, he's a member of the media, and he's doing a story on how a media analyst company has discovered the media is not reported the truth about the economy, (story) and I'm saying, "Here's a guy in the media who can't look at what he's doing to judge whether something's being done or not. He has to wait for some analyst group to tell you what the media is doing." Yes, Judy, the economy's recovery is a big secret, and you know why? It's not being reported! Well, this is one thing if they were saying it at a homeless shelter in San Francisco, but this is Bill Schneider the political guru at CNN saying it. It's the same thing going on with the weapons of mass destruction find. (story) The World Tribune and others are writing all about this. It just doesn't seem to interest the large elite media right now, because it just doesn't fit the agenda.

  story by, an interview with, Dan Rather. There's an interview with Dan Rather about his interview with Clinton on their website, and Rather says, I've never read a memoir like this. Why, this is great! Who knew he could write this well? He was so forthcoming and honest. I tell you what, in a five-star rating system, I'm giving this five stars. Dan Rather, reviewing Bill Clinton's book. So that's the partisan media's agenda for the summer here, and meanwhile, there's some interesting developments and news and evidence about the war with Iraq that is just being ignored -- just like the economy (story | story | story)-- is not being ignored but it's being pushed aside and not really highlighted. We all know why. Andrew in Flint, Michigan. I'm glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.

  CALLER: How you doing, Rush? I wanted to comment a little bit on the article that you were reading just a few minutes ago, the crux of it being that why -- why aren't the photos of Saddam Hussein torturing Americans [sic] being pushed as much as the -- RUSH: No, no, no. Not "torturing." Hold it. Hold it. Hold it -- not "torturing Americans." Torturing Iraqis. CALLER: I'm sorry, Iraqis. My fault. RUSH: Yes. CALLER: There's a simple reason for it. The reason is, it's expected from Saddam Hussein. That's not news. The news is: we aren't supposed to do what we did. That is news. We report on the news. You don't report on everyday happenings. That's the biggest difference. good thing. We have liberated a people, and that is what these photos and movies of Saddam's torture indicate, and it proves that we are not the bad guys and we're not horrible and we're not rotten. We had some people who made a mistake. In fact, Rich Lowry had a great piece at NRO, National Review Online, about this guy. Garner, I think his name. The fiancé and father of Lynndie England, the woman in these photos. The two perps. This guy apparently has a long history of abuse. He's been a prison guard for a long time. He's got a long history of abusing other people, human beings who are in captivity, and it appears that in much of these, the first batch of Abu Ghraib photos we got this guy was the ringleader and may have been acting is an independent contractor. I know they're trying to make the case that (sinister voice) "the orders came from the top," but believe me, this guy was doing this kind of stuff long before he ever got sent to Iraq and long before he was an MP -- you know, contractor, MP, prison guard -- in Iraq. But aside from that, the sense of proportion is being lost. You know, we have some people over there that have made some mistakes and gone way beyond the bounds that we Americans consider as right. But we're using this, some are using this to try to destroy the entire effort we've undertaken and to defeat the mission by saying we're not worthy as a country, and that's what I resent -- and if there is a way to show that what happened over there has been far worse than what's taking place now, then it's worth it to me. I don't have an innate disgust with my own country, and I'm not looking, therefore, for evidence that we ought to hate America.
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  roybatty

  I'm beginning to think that everyone here thinks war is like the G.I. Joe cartoons they watched as kids.