Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Frodo on June 01, 2004, 12:07:11 AM
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http://amconmag.com/2004_06_07/article.html
Wonder how the king of cut and paste missed this one?
Or maybe he didn't, but it didn't fit his Dubya worship agenda?:p
Cheers
Frodo
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Give Ripsnort a break, he was too busy shooting himself in the foot by posting the glowing references Bush received by the Italian PM - unfortunately, due to leading a somewhat sheltered existence he didn't realise that the last thing one would want is Mr Bellasconi telling the world what a great guy you are.
I don't however think Bush is a bad person, he's weak, lazy and not very bright - but he's manipulated by truly evil men who quite frankly should be tried as war criminals.
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June 7, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative
For Shame
What becomes of a country that loses its capacity for repulsion?
By Paul W. Schroeder
We already know the administration’s strategy for damage control on the latest erupting scandal in occupied Iraq, the abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war. The tactics have served more or less successfully, at least in America, to cover up and survive every earlier scandal and fiasco of this administration at home and abroad. President Bush has already raised his hands in holy disgust, pronouncing the actions contrary to his and the country’s principles and the Army’s policy, the work of a handful of miscreants whom Donald Rumsfeld solemnly promises to pursue and punish. We are already hearing the predictable excuses employed by defenders of corporate corruption, high-paid criminal athletes, and this administration—“This does not represent us or America and its values,” “mistakes have been made,” “no one claimed we or democracy are perfect.” A few obvious culprits will be punished, a few mid-level superiors reprimanded or demoted, dangerous questions held at bay at hearings, a commission possibly named to study the problem, administrative changes promised, and then the administration, denying involvement and responsibility, will move on to other things to distract the public.
They must not get away with this.
Not only is this episode more sickening and shameful than others that have already stained the occupation of Iraq. Not only will it have an even more shattering effect on America’s image and ability to lead abroad. Not only does it end any surviving hopes that Americans can be seen by Iraqis and other Arabs and Muslims as liberators, models, leaders, and friends. It reveals as nothing has before the true character of this venture and of the whole policy by which this administration has chosen (allegedly) to fight terrorism and evil in the world. It ought finally to force every American, even the most loyal and patriotic, to face what this country under this leadership has done and is doing in this war. Where is it leading us?
This was not an isolated incident caused by a few bad apples, a shocking but minor and exceptional digression in an otherwise heroic and humane enterprise. This fish that now stinks to heaven began to rot long ago from the head down.
Consider when this happened—in October to December 2003, five to seven months ago. Think about how long many in the Army and outside have known about it; how long the official report investigating it has been in preparation and circulation; how long and often rumors and reports about this and other incidents of abuse of prisoners or civilians have appeared in the foreign press, especially the Arab press our authorities seek to control or repress. Yet in all this time, and to this day, all the higher officials in the Army, the Pentagon, and the White House responsible for policy insist they knew nothing about it. It is not a question of whether there will be a cover-up. There already has been—we are now beginning to learn the extent.
Consider why it happened—not in the superficial sense of why it was allowed to happen rather than prevented, but in the deeper and more important sense of what concrete purpose this abuse served, where it fit into what overall policy. These incidents were not simply a case of a few reservists getting their sadistic kicks or a result of indiscipline, bad chain of command, or other incidental administrative snafus. That would be bad enough and would constitute one more indictment of the incredible levity and mismanagement demonstrated by this administration in the war and occupation. Anyone who knows anything about the history of war and military occupations knows that this is precisely the sort of thing likely to happen, and that if one’s goal really is liberation and winning the hearts and minds of those occupied, this kind of conduct has to be prevented at all costs.
A historical aside: in the summer of 2003, when the Iraqi insurgency was just beginning and the administration still hotly denying its existence, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice insisted that the problem was merely last-ditch resistance by fanatical dead-enders like Nazi resisters in Germany in 1945. The assertion was false, of course—no civilian resistance worth mentioning developed in postwar Germany—but easily buried and forgotten under other more important administration untruths and deceptions. A different resemblance between the two occupations, however, is now dismayingly germane. By far the worst problem the Army faced in 1945 in the relations between troops and German civilians was American soldiers raping German women. The fact has gone relatively unnoticed except by historians, both because Americans at home closed their eyes to it and because it was overshadowed by far worse and vaster Soviet crimes in the Eastern Zone. Yet the Army and the Pentagon should have learned from that experience and from military history everywhere how grave the danger of this kind of conduct was.
The larger point is not, however, that they failed to prevent the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. It is that they allowed and indirectly encouraged it, in pursuit of a wider and supposedly more important mission. This operation was an integral part of intelligence gathering by both military intelligence and private firms hired by the government for this purpose. The abuse was thus deliberate and purposive, intended to make prisoners psychologically ready for interrogation.
Consider further the context of that interrogation and intelligence gathering. The aim then was not simply or mainly to root out pockets of resistance and ongoing subversion or new terrorism and thereby pacify Iraq and protect American lives. This was the time when the administration was frantically bent on finding proof of the stocks of weapons of mass destruction and the alleged pre-war links to al-Qaeda that were advanced (as we now know, falsely) to justify the war. It was also part of a more massive program of detention of supposed evildoers in Iraq, numbering 10-12,000 by different accounts, an unknown number of them still held without charge or notification to their families—a little-known story with its own cargo of abuses. It fits into the broader pattern of the so-called War on Terror in which the United States covertly and overtly supports a Gulag Archipelago of detention camps and interrogation centers over the Middle East and Central Asia, either on its own bases or on the territory of other regimes, mostly repressive ones, with whom America works.
Consider the ethos behind this massive effort, and how it characterizes and shapes the administration’s entire view of the world and foreign policy. It flows seamlessly from the prevailing Ollie North or (to borrow a phrase from Professor George Lopez of Notre Dame University) Dirty Harry Callahan theory of international politics. It’s a dangerous world out there; hordes of fanatical evildoers are bent on committing unspeakable crimes against us. If we play by the rules they despise, we will lose. We must play dirty to win, and ultimately only winning counts. The end and the unquestioned fact that we represent the forces of light and they the forces of darkness justify the means.
Consider the incentive structure this collective mentality held at the highest level of government creates for people down the line called on to wage this kind of campaign on the ground. Consider what it means to reservists, thrown into a situation for which they are wholly untrained, to be instructed to induce in prisoners a suitable physical and psychological readiness to yield information they were doubtless would save their country or their fellow soldiers’ lives. Consider what it means for military intelligence officers to know that their promotion and careers depend on coming up with the right stuff; for so-called civilian intelligence agents to know their paychecks and their company’s contracts depend on the results, and that nobody higher up worries too much about the methods used to obtain them. Consider what it means for a general commanding a large system of prisons to be told not to obstruct this critically important job of intelligence gathering, knowing that her career is on the line.
Consider also what it says about the administration as a whole when, on top of the many previous outright lies, false promises, failed predictions, abrupt changes of course, and multiple evidences of bad or no planning, corruption, confusion, and failure that have already plagued the occupation of Iraq, this supremely ugly scandal breaks, and no one at the highest level—not Richard Meyers or Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld or Rice or Cheney or Bush—takes responsibility, resigns, is fired, demoted, or even publicly reprimanded. In a government like that of Japan or some other countries, a sense of shame alone would suffice to bring about resignations; in an earlier era it might have meant suicide. But to this crew apply the words that brought Sen. Joe McCarthy down in 1954: “Has it come to this, at long last? Have you no shame—no shame at all?”
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Consider finally what it must say about the American public, or at least a major portion of it, if this does not at last produce an overdue and overriding sense of revulsion against leaders and a policy that have led their country to this shameful pass. The Republican slogan in 1996 was “Where’s the outrage?” That outrage, understandable given the disgusting though essentially private misdeeds of President Clinton and important in the 2000 election, today seems strangely absent on the Right. Liberals can now ask conservatives, “Where’s the revulsion?” What must it mean if good, loyal, religious, family-values conservatives—the segment that George W. Bush overwhelmingly commands and that this journal appeals to—find even this degrading spectacle something they can swallow? What if at least a sizeable contingent does not deliver to Bush in November the message that Oliver Cromwell addressed to the English Long Parliament in 1649: “You have been here too long for any good that you have done. In the name of God, go!”
The 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote in an essay that a sign of malfunctioning of the digestive system was the inability to become nauseated or to vomit upon eating spoiled food, and that the remedy was to take an emetic. The disorder that offended him then was spiritual, the failure of Danish Lutherans to share his revulsion at a complacent established church that he believed was betraying real Christianity. His analysis and advice apply in a different way to Americans today. Anyone who does not feel revulsion against this administration for what it is doing and has done in Iraq and elsewhere has something seriously wrong with his political digestive system.
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Anyone who does not feel revulsion against this administration for what it is doing and has done in Iraq and elsewhere has something seriously wrong with his political digestive system.
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A person who presumes to diagnose someone else's political digestive system as "seriously wrong" because it disagrees with his own is neither qualified to diagnose nor be considered with any sincerity.
Getting awful tired of liberals......
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still trying to make a mountain out of that molehill ?
better hurry up and release a couple more "horrific" photos, ur story er "scandal" is growing cold ... :rolleyes:
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Schroeder's just trying to jump on the band wagon....only problem is the wagon's been rolling and he's left sitting on the tail-end, just barely. Talk about beating a dead horse. Good grief!
heheh...how ya like them metaphores: two in as many sentences.
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Hey guys, check out the following sites:
http://www.hrw.org/photos/2003/iraq
http://massgraves.info/
http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2004
You should save your outrage for something that really matters, rather than the humiliation of a handful of Iraqi thugs by a few idiot guards.
Shuckins/Leggern
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you're right.
it doesn't matter that these people where abused by Us soldiers. I mean Saddam did this and worse. if Saddam did it then it must be OK. :rolleyes:
you guys talk about these victims as if they deserve it because of the atrocities of Saddam Hussein. I thought the latest justification for this invasion was to put a stop to atrocities committed against the Iraqi people, not just replace one abuser, with another.
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I didn't say the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was RIGHT. I implied that it was a matter of scale.
I haven't seen this kind of outrage on these bbs or from the media over Saddam's atrocities. I cannot remember seeing a single video on any of the major networks about the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq.
If you didn't check out the media research site, go back and do so now, and then convince me that the media is giving equal billing to both events.
Shuckins/Leggern
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Originally posted by Yeager
Getting awful tired of liberals......
No kidding... The American Conservative is just another liberal screed. ;)
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Originally posted by Shuckins
I didn't say the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was RIGHT. I implied that it was a matter of scale.
Shuckins/Leggern
right and wrong is not a matter of scale. no matter how big the other guys wrong it doesn't make yours any less so.
the reason this is a bigger story is that we are the violators here, it is our job to correct our behavior. we can't change our problems unless we know about them.
this story doesn't need to be put to rest until every American understands what happened and just how wrong that is. from the number of people who seem to think it wasn't 'that bad', or 'so the embarrassed them a little', or 'they did worse to us' (without any sort of proof or trial to connect those who where abused by us and those who committed crimes against our citizens, other than they happened to live in the same country).
every one of us needs to know what happened, it needs to be investigated thoroughly to determined how far the involvement, knowledge of (without taking action to expose it), and consent (whether directly or implied) went in our command structure and gov't.
and those who are found to be involved should face criminal charges for their involvement.
we need to stop down-playing the seriousness of this situation by playing the pre-school game of getting caught doing wrong and then pointing out the crimes of others as if that has any bearing on your behavior.
it's not our job to police the world, but it is our job to police our own people and our gov't.
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I was appalled by the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. I am satisfied the problem is being corrected.....
I know that crappy things happen in war and that this country has, by and large, done a tremendous job, our military -has done a tremendously excellent job executing missions against terror in spite of these and other setbacks.
The neolibs wont let this regrettable issue go no matter how far beyond them it is. It is obvious that the neolibs are using this as a weapon to use against the country and the military. Typical liberal shame. Let it go before you neolibs run it into the ground and it loses all relevancy.
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Originally posted by Shuckins
I didn't say the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was RIGHT. I implied that it was a matter of scale.
I haven't seen this kind of outrage on these bbs or from the media over Saddam's atrocities. I cannot remember seeing a single video on any of the major networks about the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq.
If you didn't check out the media research site, go back and do so now, and then convince me that the media is giving equal billing to both events.
Shuckins/Leggern
wow.. is this guy for real??
They should have equal news time? If they are equal or at least almost equal, by our own words of justification, shouldnt some other power in the world invade Iraqi and overthrow the american government there??
Amazing the stances that are taken on this board to justify what happened..
Its one thing to believe the end justifies the means, but there is still no end in sight.........
dude
AoM
add: excellent article .. thanks for the post .. 8)
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Originally posted by Yeager
... Let it go before you neolibs run it into the ground and it loses all relevancy.
too late
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Dude,
Are you implying that they DO deserve equal coverage? That the humiliation of the Iraqi prisoners, as detestable as it might be, is somehow on a par with the massacre of 300,000 innocent Iraqis by Saddam's government? Don't you find it a little strange that the media has given far more coverage to the prison scandal than to the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq?
Or will you suddenly discover your outrage over Saddam's atrocities after the November elections come to the conclusion you hope for?
Shuckins/Leggern
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Originally posted by Shuckins
Dude,
Are you implying that they DO deserve equal coverage? That the humiliation of the Iraqi prisoners, as detestable as it might be, is somehow on a par with the massacre of 300,000 innocent Iraqis by Saddam's government? Don't you find it a little strange that the media has given far more coverage to the prison scandal than to the mass graves being unearthed in Iraq?
Or will you suddenly discover your outrage over Saddam's atrocities after the November elections come to the conclusion you hope for?
Shuckins/Leggern
the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is more newsworthy than the mass graves. at least to American audiences.
Saddam is no longer in power, he's not an American, and his victims where not Americans, so while it's a horrible thing and by no means should it be forgotten or ignored, it simply isn't as news worthy, or as important of a topic to American viewers as is actions by our fellow Americans
also with an election coming up it's critically important that this is handled as thoroughly, quickly, and as publicly as possible. that they take the investigation as far up the chain of command as the evidence warrants, with out regard to who may or may not be "off limits".
our elected officials represent us to the world, they set policy's for our armed forces behavior over-seas. if elected officials or their appointees, encouraged, knew-about, or even suspected these things where going on, the American voters have a right to that information, for consideration, before the time comes to decide if you want these people representing you an further.
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Originally posted by capt. apathy
...., and as publicly as possible....
well, you got this part right anyways...
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Originally posted by capt. apathy
the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is more newsworthy than the mass graves. at least to American audiences.
Saddam is no longer in power, he's not an American, and his victims where not Americans, so while it's a horrible thing and by no means should it be forgotten or ignored, it simply isn't as news worthy, or as important of a topic to American viewers as is actions by our fellow Americans
also with an election coming up it's critically important that this is handled as thoroughly, quickly, and as publicly as possible. that they take the investigation as far up the chain of command as the evidence warrants, with out regard to who may or may not be "off limits".
our elected officials represent us to the world, they set policy's for our armed forces behavior over-seas. if elected officials or their appointees, encouraged, knew-about, or even suspected these things where going on, the American voters have a right to that information, for consideration, before the time comes to decide if you want these people representing you an further.
How can you conceivably convince yourself that what happened in those prisons is even remotely comparable to Saddam's attempted genocide? How can you possibly believe that the situation would have been any different had Kerry, Clinton, Carter, Johnson, or even JFK been in office? What do you suppose happened to prisoners that we took in Viet Nam? War is a nasty, brutal affair, and GC or no GC, this sort of thing is always going to happen, whether its us, the Brits, or the French that are running the camp. You may not like it, I may not like it, but that's really beside the point.
(On a semi-related note, it seems to me bizarre (in an it's-ok-to-kill-unborn-children-but-not-dolphins kind of way) that many people (like the too-PC-for-Berkeley Euro-accented commentators on NPR) who are up in arms about the "humiliation" of the Iraqi prisoners seem not too upset by our wetwork in Gitmo, because the Iraqi prisoners are covered by the GC but those in Gitmo are not! Come on! It's either acceptable to extract information by pain, humiliation, or other unpleasant means, or it's not.)
I'll grant you that the (unwarranted) publicity that this has received will make it a bit harder for the US to take the moral high ground, but I don't think anyone was buying that act anyhow.
I'm no big fan of "W", and I'll agree that there are lots of things that are "critically important" to informing the American public's view of the candidates in the upcoming election. But this is not one of them.
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In his absence, I'll act as a quick surrogate for the ripster....... :D
Here ya go.... IMO, right on the money... ;)
Regards,
Badger
June 02, 2004
Leftist Traitors: Calling a Spade a Spade (http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=7706&mode=print)[/url]
Posted by Minnie Hanover
One can no longer deny the obvious. Leftists are in the throes of a major mental meltdown. A meltdown that is beyond their usual bizarre world where sexual dysfunction, conspiracy theories, hatred of proven facts, and indeed complete moral collapse are considered normal.
Of course ''normal'' is a mutable concept in the quagmire of acid-based sixties ''philosophies'' in which the left cavort with their unsavory allies. Allies who just happen to be the enemies of America. What we are now seeing is the warped fruit born of thirty years of rampant liberalism, which has rendered some Americans, and many Europeans, unable to make considered judgments or tell the difference between good and evil. To the left, everything is equal and nothing has more value than anything else. Making judgments about other cultures is bad. Putting panties on a prisoner's head is the same as feeding him into a shredder.
Calling a spade a spade would mean declaring loudly and truthfully that these leftists are traitors. Instead, we play their game of pretending that people who are heartened by any incident that can be perceived or perverted into something that is bad for America, are just patriots. But, regardless of their forked-tongue expressions of mock concern for the troops, it’s obvious that they are enacting the lessons learned from Vietnam. Where once they spat upon the military, now they merely pretend not to exult when soldiers die and American civilians lose their heads. This may be the only new concept they have come up with in the last thirty years. Re-evaluating their positions is not something that people who adhere to the shopworn dogma of liberalism can abide.
When the left's venal spokespersons on television lay out their Bush hatred, replete with sneers, insults, and outright lies, the underlying rage beneath their smarmy, superior exterior is revealed. The clear signs of mental disorder are apparent in their simultaneous embrace and denial of Islamo-fascists' existence or threat. ''Feminists'' march in support of those who would either subjugate or kill them. Gays express support for maniacs who would stone them to death. And liberal Jews, in the greatest denial of all, work to aid those who would kill them and annihilate Israel. If this is not a mental disorder, then how is this possible? By not confronting them with their treason, we allow them to hide behind the falsehood that they are opposing Bush and not aiding the enemy.
Fear may be the answer to the left's dysfunction. To acknowledge that evil exists in a world that America does not control is a scary thought. How much more comforting to blame everything on the U.S., because then in the shallow recesses of liberal ''thought'' lurks the comforting panacea that it is controllable. There aren't really Islamo-fascists dying to kill us. We can fix it if we just get rid of Bush. And make no mistake about it, how they would fix it would be to withdraw from the Middle East and exalt the corrupt United Nations. A strategy of accepting a certain number of American deaths by Islamic terrorists every year would suit them fine. Just like it suited Bill Clinton with his empty bluster of punishing terrorists and the foaming Al Gore who appears to have self-destructed.
Where those who support the Iraq war see appeasement and cowardice in Spain's election results, the left sees pragmatism and good sense in rewarding terrorists by electing their preferred candidate. And if Kerry does not go down to defeat in November, this will be our future.
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lol when Conservatives call other American's traitors for disagreeing with them is the time you know they've lost the plot but have reallised their boy is going to lose big time!!!
On the other hand Ripsnort is going to be very dissapointed at not unearthing this gem!
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Originally posted by Badger
To the left, everything is equal and nothing has more value than anything else. Making judgments about other cultures is bad. Putting panties on a prisoner's head is the same as feeding him into a shredder.
This is related to what I meant by "bizarre in an it's-ok-to-kill-unborn-children-but-not-dolphins sort of way."
But I disagree with the author that in the left's view everything is equal. It's worse than that: in the left's view, things are far from equal; the scale's tipped in the wrong direction. It's hard to think of a better example of this than that presented above: If you can weigh Saddam's atrocities, including attempted genocide, against our humiliation of Iraqi POWs and conclude that the latter is more significant, you have been irrevocably brainwashed by the left's systematic injection of moral relativism into our culture over the past several decades.
I don't expect you to understand. Once you've bought into the idea that there are no moral absolutes, anything is possible.
As much as I detest what they've done to our culture, I've got to admire the lefties for their foresight, cunning, and persistence. Their 40-year investment in undermining the core values that had sustained America for the 180 preceding years has succeeded, and done so marvelously. And, as a side benefit, they've now got a captive audience that will gladly swallow whatever the media machine feeds them and come back begging for more! Bravo!
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You go right ahead and kill all the unborn dolphins you want.
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I suppose that's sort of clever. Maybe funny, even. Somehow, though, I just can't bring myself to laugh.