Some of you are assuming as fact things that have not even been corroberated. The facts are unknown as of this time and I am reserving my final judgement until they are known. Those of you between my last post and this one who are challenging me seem to be assuming as fact things that haven't even been proven yet. I prefer to keep an open mind and wait until all is known. We have not seen any torture thus far. We have seen things which may be humiliating if we assume that those prisoners were unwilling participants in the acts shown in the pictures we have seen. I just don't think "torture" is a justified word to use. Yet.

I of course am a huge proponent of human rights which is why I support the actions which we took in Iraq to begin with.

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Have you forgotten ...

[This message has been edited by Wookie06 (edited May 07, 2004).]

Yet two cases have been ruled as homocide. I think something along the line of six soldiers have been brought up on criminal charges, and a number of officers have been "disciplined."

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Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

-R.D. Laing

No, Wookie. The facts are quite clear. Numerous US soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners and documented it, six of whom are facing court martials and six others have been reprimanded. A US soldier killed a Iraqi prisoner with a rock and was discharged from service. A CIA contractor is under investigation for another murder. More than 20 other prisoners have died in custody. A US military report documented "breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; ... beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick." Et cetera.

You don't want to accept what is patently obvious to everyone else because it challenges your beliefs.

Not true. You're final assumption, that is. As to the rest I honestly don't have time to address it all but I will say that you are assuming as fact things that are not proven to be true. Is there not an investigation currently underway? I am satisfied to wait for the results before drawing my conclusions. Odd that you seem to already have drawn them.

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Uhh, Steve (Wookie), I have to say you really don't have a leg to stand on on this issue... There are *photographs* of a prisoner with electrical wires attached to his arms, a hood over his head, standing on a wooden box. It is alleged that the reason was that he was told he would be electrocuted if he fell off. I really can't think of any reason a prisoner would volunteer to be in such a state.

Not to mention the ones with naked iraqis in a pile with grinning idiots in uniform (as opposed to sane, rational, humane people in uniform, whom I still believe are the vast majority) in the background, thumbs up.

The exact circumstances are not known, true. And I understand this can't be easy with you being a part of the armed forces, but I if you thought about the situation dispassionately you'd have to agree that there is something very not right going on in some prisons in Iraq.

Also, even if they were doing these things to Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot it wouldn't be justified. Basically we have here some people who have been arrested with little proof, and then tortured in order to break them. I don't understand what the point of "liberating" Iraq was when they're just going to suffer the same fate as before. Oh, but it's the bad guys that are suffering now? Well, I'm sure Saddam could have said that the people HE was torturing were nasty sorts, too...

I hadnt heard about the chemical lights and electrodes... those soldiers and their officers deserve life, not just career-ending letters. The officers may not have been directly involved, but they knew what was going on!

I was going to say the correct word is abuse not torture, but I'm retracting that one. It's torture plain and simple and those soldiers... just... argh.

They've completely tarnished the American military's image in the Middle East. That kind of torture is sooooo symbolic to the Middle Eastern culture that Bush just going on Arab TV is not going to help. He has to do a lot more...

Anyways, back to the real thread... um... I agree with Wookie06's first statement. A lot of **** happens in the name of God, but I think that this is only weakly related to religion.

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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

I believe the correct word is abuse. You could argue that some of these things could be considered psychological torture.

Look, people that know me understand that I am not a dispassionate person. I'm simply reserving judgement until the facts are known.

Regarding the electrical wires and the chem lights: the man was not electrocuted and chem lights are non-toxic. To me the acts seem to be aimed at breaking someone down psychologically rather than physically injuring in order to get information. I don't see much wrong with this. In the real world you can't convince someone to cooperate by being nice to them and isn't anyone a least a little interested in knowing what it was these people were being held for?

To address the photos that we've seen, I believe that if those soldiers were acting without direction that is horrible. If they were acting with direction but without purpose that is horrible. If they were acting with direction and purpose I want to know more about the situation before I judge them. Humiliation is another way to break people down. Is it nice? No. Was it neccessary? I don't know. All of the soldiers that participated in the picture taking, posing, and distribution of the pictures should be dealt with harshly regardless of the acts themselves. That was stupid and irresponsible.

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I would like to pose a hypothetical question.

If we knew of an imminent attack on America prior to 9/11 and we captured someone we knew had complete knowledge of the details, where would you draw the line at interogation, abuse, and/or torture? This is a difficult question because on one side you have Americans with our values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and on the other side you have someone who is intent on destroying you and you fellow countrymen with no consideration of the pain and suffering you would endure.

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Exactly. It's a tribal, ethnic problem. It's something that we in the West don't understand. The US is close allies with Japan and Germany only sixty years after a major war. Although we teach about Pearl Harbor in classrooms, the children don't come home ready to hack any Jap who crosses their path into pieces.

In tribal lands, it's not like that. Their history is taught from an emotional, not chronological (or even factual), standpoint.



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Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

Beating a prisoner is torture. Sodomizing a prisoner with a broomstick is torture. Pouring phosphoric acid on a prisoner is torture. Forcing prisoners to strip naked and simulate sexual acts may or may not be torture, but it is immoral and a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Wookie, the facts are known and further revelations will certainly not mitigate them.

Here's a hypothetical question. Suppose you were captured while you were in Iraq, and the same torture and abuse that US soldiers have inflicted on Iraqi prisoners was similarly inflicted on you. Would you be justifying your captors' actions like you're justifying the actions of US soldiers now?

Dear God. You think it's fine to torture prisoners as long as the public doesn't know and some valid information is screamed through broken and bloody teeth? You are not a "huge proponent of human rights". You're a moral relativist, a utilitarian who believes absolutely any evil can be excused if it's in our national interest.

Your question is not a difficult question at all. The ends never justify the means.

My question must be difficult for you because it seems that you have misunderstood both the question I asked and my statements in this thread. I also would not argue the things that you called torture however I have yet to find out that any of those events actually occured. Above all you must have missed the part where I said I'm reserving judgment until all of the facts are known.

It must be difficult to live in such a little ideological bubble. Then again I guess it is more difficult to step out of your ideology to open mindedly assess the facts.

My unwillingness to commit to condemning the alleged torture has little to do with the fact that I am in the Army. I actually hold military personnel to higher moral standards than most civilians as most civilians have never had to swear an oath to anything. I'm simply waiting for all of the facts to be revealed and we simply don't know the facts yet.

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Oh, and my objection to the pictures has nothing to do with revealing the information to the public. Not surprising you would think so and I wondered which one of you would go down that road. It has to do with the fact that they were either photographing, participating in, and/or distributing unlawful activity or military operations. Either way THAT certainly was a crime and, also either way, has exacerbated a bad situation. Those soldiers are at best morrons and at worst morronic criminals.

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Like a brick wall.

So, believe whatever you want. Feel free to start a new thread whenever you feel "all the facts are known" or you've moved past denial or whatever other bizarre blockage is preventing you from accepting a military report, photographic proof, testimony from eyewitnesses, and acknowledgements and apologies from practically the entire administration and military establishment as sufficient evidence to make a judgement.

Hmm... pretty sure violation of international law AND American law would make them criminals in either case. They are NOT at best morons, they were at best acting independently from their officers and at worst following orders.

Wookie, it's been pretty much proven that the sodomizing and torture with chemical lights was going on. And they werent just pouring chemicals on them, but in their cuts and scratches. No matter how you look at it, it is not moral for any of the Armed Forces to participate in such action. If it was just the CIA, I would view things a bit differently...



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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

Well, it's like this: the US army came to stop what those soldiers were doing to the POWs, no?

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"Music is the universal language and the
dialect we speak in is Hip Hop!" - King Solomon

What's wrong Ictus? The fact that I have not drawn a conclusion on the TOTALITY of the situation makes me like a brick wall? I would think that you might have a case if I had already pronounced my final opinion on the issue but since I have stated numerous times that I am waiting to assess all of the facts [that the government doesn't hinder from being] released that that certainly isn't the case. I am not in any kind of denial. I will openly state now that if the things that have been alleged to occur actually have I will be deeply saddenned and upset with those involved. I know that we are better than that. If, however, we are talking about acts occuring no worse than what we have seen in those pictures and if, in fact, the were used specifically for the use of softening them up for interogation and no physical injury was involved then I see the issue differently.

Look, I understand if anyone here disagrees with that kind of treatment. I can't say that I like it and I doubt that I could ever participate in that sort of thing. All I'm saying is there appears to be a lot of unknowns here and I'm waiting for more information.

Regarding my hypothetical above, Ictus, what I was looking for was more where someone would draw the line. I look at humiliation as a minor price to pay if it would have saved thousands of lives. I'm sure there are some here that wouldn't go that far as well as others who would go much further. Myself, if put in the situation, can not honestly answer just how far I would go if I were in a similar situation (to my hypothetical question earlier in the thread) or if it involved my family.

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"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
-Groucho Marx

Wookie, you can chest-beat, flag-wave and quibble over the exact nature of the pictures as much as you like, but as one analyst noted the other week, those pictures are going to get more US Soldiers killed/wounded.

You were a lot more eager to take the administration's word(for far less evidence) on WMD's than you are to take the administrations own admission that there was prisoner abuse going on in at least Abu Ghraib, if not the wider prison system.

Your hypothetical question is crap, if the US wants to go down the path of torturing prisoners for information, don't let me stop you. But you either stand for freedom & democracy or you don't and institutionalized torture would have to put you in the "don't" category.

Say the japanese knew about the Manhattan Project, would they be justified in torturing US prisoners to get that information?(Not that they weren't anyway...)

Bush himself said that any Iraqi soldiers who mistreated US prisoners would be tried as War Criminals. But somehow it doesn't swing both ways eh?

Ghorg, you know me better than that.

WMDs were in Iraq and have been reported everytime they've been found. Just for some reason the press doesn't feel compelled to point out that the things they have reported are WMD components. Seperate issue and of course debatable. I personally didn't need WMDs as the sole reason for the war and they were never given as the sole reason for the war.

I have not posted a single thing in this thread to imply that I wouldn't condemn mistreatment of prisoners. I'll let you in on part of the reason I'm reserving my final judgement. From the pictures I've seen and the things I have heard reported, there appears to be a commonality throughout (for the most part). I believe that those soldiers could have been participating in those acts for, what I believe to be, a more sinister purpose than anything that had to do with orders.

And how is my hypothetical question crap? It's an opened ended question that leaves plenty of room for anyone to answer how far they think it is acceptable to "mistreat" someone. Would someone possibly think it acceptable to yell at the prisoner? Maybe tell them that you have their family and will kill them if they don't cooperate? What about slapping them? Prancing them around nude? Electricly shocking them? Showing them pictures of dead people? Burning them? There is lots of room for the question to be answered and assuming that I have taken a certain position because I asked it is stupid.

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There were plenty of WMD components in iraq, even 11 tonnes of low-grade uranium. But there's been no indication that they were planning on doing anything with it.

I don't know what you're getting at, but fair enough, at least you acknowledge something wrong was going on. Your previous posts seemed to indicate you weren't buying the abuse claims though and were going for more along the lines of Rush Limbaughs view that they were on the same level as College initiation pranks.

Yeah alright, calling the question crap was a bit rich of me. My point was that you can't really justify torture of prisoners. If someone was in the next house over from me torturing OBL, I'd have to acknowledge it was wrong, but I doubt I'd do anything to stop it.

And in answer to your question, if it was up to me, I would use whatever means to get the information out of them. However even if I did get the information out of them, I would expect punishment from the system I was working for, for doing something that is plain wrong. I'd also not expect anyone else to justify it on the grounds of the information gained or on the basis that whatever side I happen to be fighting on, gives me a right.

Frankly in this case I really don't see that any information they could have got out of a bunch of ex-Saddam soldiers or militiamen being worth the trouble it's causing the US government.

yay penny arcade is working again!

[This message has been edited by GHORG (edited May 09, 2004).]

Whoa. WMDs were found in Iraq? Wait, that's right. Dual-use equipment obviously being used for legitimate purposes transmogrifies into labs developing city-killing weapons when you're a hopeless apologist with a very tenuous grasp on reality.

The administration went from claiming WMDs to claiming WMD-related program activities and is still backpedaling. Take a cue.



As a side note, I'm not really trying to tear you down, Wookie. Take any insults as lightly as you can.

Torture doesn't work. Either the soldiers in question had an intense case of cabin fever and needed a few kicks, or they were inexperienced interrogators, I seriously doubt they would have received valid information, especially any that would "save thousands."

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Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

Ictus, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.

Ghorg, Limbaugh's point isn't that nothing that was done is worse than what we've seen in college initiations. It's that nothing we've been shown is worse than that. He has condemned the acts.

Stat, torture may or may not work. I imagine to a certain extent it does but when a threshold is crossed, anything gained is probably crap. In any event, I think those soldiers were participating in something else for a different reason. That would also explain the fact that they took and released pictures.

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Not trying to reopen anything here but I feel I have a little to add.

First, upon some reflection and after being reassured by things I have heard in the ongoing hearings, I believe I can safely say I condemn the acts taken by those soldiers. I was mostly resistent to calling anything torture because torture, to me, implies it is being used to accomplish something. While I don't mean to imply I would have been for torture had those soldiers been doing those acts under orders, it would have placed the blame on someone other than the soldiers that committed the acts. Leadership did fail because it did not provide adequate supervision of its soldiers.

I am somewhat relieved to find out that the acts committed were not a result of soldiers following orders but also disturbed that so many of them would have done those things on their own.

Next, I still find it hard to classify these acts as torture. Criminal and abuse, yes, torture, I wouldn't call it.

Another reason I find it so difficult to agree with some in this thread is because there seemed to be the implication that it was our military and/or government doing those things to those people. Sure, it was employees of the aforementioned but not the groups themselves.

Lastly, there is the politicization of the issue. The military is being criticized. The fact is that 17 members of congress were contacted (or attempted) about the abuse and congress is all claiming they were kept in the dark. Meanwhile, a military investigation was already underway and we are getting ready for the first prosecutions.

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