By the way... my 2 cents says: We ended WWI with an armistice with Germany...Then WWII happened, right? Then it ended with an unconditional surrender. We ended the Korean War with an armistice...now whats going to happen? (WWIII?) Just gimme a plane ticket and a markII luger with an 8" supressor... j/k but we do need to do something about kim jon il (<--sp?).
Weeel, itss aboot tieme wee goo back too Canada, eeehy boyss.
Oh yeah.... saw something on this on 60 minutes last month, maybe two. look half way down the page about the "Diary of Ann Frank."
North Korea, Ann Frank
Weeel, itss aboot tieme wee goo back too Canada, eeehy boyss.
I am angry about this because some stupid grunts are going to take the fall, to make sure GWB's re-election chances are not hurt. Watch as this is now swiftly wrapped up with some school girl going to goal because she followed orders OR it disappear until after the electon in the US.
What happens, now the Geneva convention is dead, when our servicemen are captured?
>>I disagree that this is the same thing. A simple mosque equates more to a church. <<
Najaf is the Muslim equivalent of the Vatican. Ali Modammad 4th 'Pope' of Islam and son in law to the prophet Mohammad is buried there (among other things). The Shiite form of Islam originated with those who believe Mohammad selected Ali as his successor (not Abu Bakir).
""Najaf for Shia Muslims is like the Vatican for the Christians, Roman Catholics. It has that level of sacredness and they consider it as their highest authority," says Abbas Kadhim, a UC Berkeley doctoral student, who hails from Najaf. "
source
http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1217625
http://slate.msn.com/id/2099573/
"Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars......the rest I squandered."
George Best
"If you are going through hell....keep going."
Winston Churchill
i would say more but i keep getting the feeling that it is absolutely pointless talking about it.
Well, calling that an armistice is like calling blackmail a free trade agreement. It was as much an unconditional surrender as WWII. The only "conditions" were set by France in some kind of revenge movement.We ended WWI with an armistice with Germany...Then WWII happened, right? Then it ended with an unconditional surrender.
Matter of fact, my great grandfather whose name I don't even know might have fought in that war 90 years ago. He might not even have been asked about it, as Germany was kind of a monarchy back then. And if it would have been for France's intentions of revenge, a part of my taxes would still go to France as reperations. Today !
The thing you called armistice was one reason why it was easy to win the Germans for another war. Especially the section about who's fault WWI was.
I don't think there is such a potential for Korea.
hth
-nv
She was so Blonde, she spent 20 minutes looking at the orange juice can because it said "Concentrate."
When in doubt, read the FAQ.
Then ask a smart question.
Sorry I haven't been entirely following this thread, but:
If all you are saying is that they should have done more when they found out or told us sooner, maybe they should have. Still, I don't see how it helps to tell everyone now...I can see why they wouldn't want the story to be public--just look what terrorists are using it for now! It can't be making things any better for our troops over there...Originally Posted by novacain
"Think not but that I know these things; or think
I know them not: not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought."
-John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671)
"Work hard and it might happen."
-XSquared
I really, really hope that you're joking/trolling.
However, I cannot be 100% sure, and that is what scares me. It really, really scares me.
What if you won a great sum of money and made yourself president?
Last edited by Sang-drax : Tomorrow at 02:21 AM. Reason: Time travelling
>>If all you are saying is that they should have done more when they found out or told us sooner, maybe they should have.<<
I believe this is not an isolated incident but is Standard Operating Procedure.
You can't take 1800+ images in a US military prison, with many other servicemen standing round unless it is officially sanctioned. Let alone ones containing illegal acts.
The grunts on trial did this because they were ordered to.
The real criminals are those who allowed it to happen and when informed did not stop it. That is Sec of Defense, Donald Rumsfelt.
But this will be handled in the manner that minimises its impact on GWB's re-election chances.
To that end, I expect the people in the photos to do some serious time (for simply following a superiors order).
>>Still, I don't see how it helps to tell everyone now...I can see why they wouldn't want the story to be public--just look what terrorists are using it for now! It can't be making things any better for our troops over there...<<
You realy think that the Iraqis did not know this was happening to friends and relatives?
The Red Cross knew for over a year that this was systemic to US military prisons.
The UK and Australia knew.
Legal action is currently being taken against the US over POW abuse, by UK citizens released from Camp X-Ray.
The Australian citizens there have both reported abuses to the Red Cross but are barred from revealing the details by the US administration.
Until the pictures it was just the 'terrorists' word against the US military denials.
Who do you think was being believed?
"Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars......the rest I squandered."
George Best
"If you are going through hell....keep going."
Winston Churchill
Just to provide a few relevant news articles -- here's a CNN.com piece on an article to be printed in The New Yorker on May 24, already available online.
Since the New Yorker article is really long, I'll try to summarize the main points.
The first paragraph of the The New Yorker article summarizes its claims pretty well:
The rest of the article focuses on a history of how Rumsfeld and the Defense Department created a special force to rapidly act on intelligence and more efficiently extract information from high value targets.The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
A brief picture of how the setupworked:Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate “high value” targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror. A special-access program, or sap—subject to the Defense Department’s most stringent level of security—was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps. America’s most successful intelligence operations during the Cold War had been saps, including the Navy’s submarine penetration of underwater cables used by the Soviet high command and construction of the Air Force’s stealth bomber. All the so-called “black” programs had one element in common: the Secretary of Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the normal military classification restraints did not provide enough security.
The article points out that the insurgency was taking place outside the domain of US intelligence. The solution, according to the article: turn Iraqi prisons into interrogation centers.In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military’s facilities at Guantánamo, Cuba. They carried out instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world.
According to the article, the scope of the operation expanded until it was getting out of hand, and threatening the cover of the program.Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.
“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,” the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets”—prisoners in Iraqi jails—“than people who can handle them.”
I think it's interesting that The New Yorker article actually shows that the program was helping uncover elements of the insurgency. In a lot of ways, it brings out the gray areas of the situation pretty well. It's not completely clear, from the article, just how effective the interrogation program was -- it seems to have provided a picture of the insurgency, but it's hard to say how many innocent Iraqis were also victimized.The C.I.A.’s complaints were echoed throughout the intelligence community. There was fear that the situation at Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret sap, and thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a valuable cover operation. “This was stupidity,” a government consultant told me. “You’re taking a program that was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures of a conventional war with an Army of a hundred and thirty-five thousand soldiers.”
One source summarizes it this way:
The pentagon strongly denies everything, as quoted from CNN.com in the article linked above:“This [profanity deleted] has been brewing for months,” the Pentagon consultant who has dealt with saps told me. “You don’t keep prisoners naked in their cell and then let them get bitten by dogs. This is sick.” The consultant explained that he and his colleagues, all of whom had served for years on active duty in the military, had been appalled by the misuse of Army guard dogs inside Abu Ghraib. “We don’t raise kids to do things like that. When you go after Mullah Omar, that’s one thing. But when you give the authority to kids who don’t know the rules, that’s another.”
"Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture," Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said.
>>It's not completely clear, from the article, just how effective the interrogation program was -- it seems to have provided a picture of the insurgency, but it's hard to say how many innocent Iraqis were also victimized.<<
Intel from POWs is considered very low grade, especially if you had to 'torture' them to get the intel. This is because anybody who knows something will not tell until you have to go too far and those who don't know anything will make something up so you will stop.
Here is the first grunt up on charges.
Looks like the standard PR response, first, divide to conquer (the patsies) and second, create a 'pausable deniability'.
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f...25-2918500.php
I found this link to US servicemen currently suing Iraq for POW abuses interesting.
"The plaintiffs said they want to expose the abuses, hold the Iraqi leadership accountable and spare others from the same fate."
"Seventeen former and current service members and 37 family members"
"The suit, the first such complaint by Desert Storm prisoners of war, seeks damages of over $750 million for physical and emotional pain, economic loss and other suffering."
http://www.armytimes.com/archivepape...ER-1805363.php
"Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars......the rest I squandered."
George Best
"If you are going through hell....keep going."
Winston Churchill
