Idiots in Iraq and their Moronic Photos

[Aristotle]

I'm sure you've all heard about the crap going on at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

This situation is becoming a perfect example of why I can hardly stand politics these days. Instead of just seeing a problem and working to fix it, the issue will be absurdly politicised and the two sides will take it to equally erroneous extremes.

One side will say its no big deal and that shit happens during wartime.

The other side will treat this as an indictment of the entire military, proof that the whole liberation was wrong, and blame Bush.

Here is an interesting political cartoon that does somewhat put things in perspective:

http://images.suntimes.com/images3/h...ggins35006.gif

My only concern about that cartoon is that some might interpret that to mean since they messed with us, anything we do is acceptable. That would be a totally improper conclusion.

A friend of mine asked me how I think something like this can happen. What I said to him was:

Here's the recipe:

1) You take a bunch of people (enlisted folks) with (at best) a high school degree.

2) You break them down psychologically so you can send them into places they know they have a high possibility of being killed.

3) You drop them in an area where they are hated for no logical reason- simply because they are Americans.

4) They risk their lives to help people, and then by their perception, the same people are trying to kill them.

5) Bear in mind, that in order to deal with the possibility of killing people, you inherently have to conclude they are less human than you. It is a moral justification that a lot of people make in order to be able to kill.

6) Heat to 110 degrees (whatever it is there), stir in the fact that most of them are many months beyond their original deployment date, and there you go.

They should all spend a few years breaking big rocks into smaller rocks as far as I'm concerned, but to interpret this as an indictment on the entire military or our efforts in general is absurd.

I despise the way every single thing that happens in the world has to be seized upon by political whores as their latest weapon in the war to discredit, rather than simply disagree, with the other side.

It makes me absolutely sick and it is a perversion of our political process. Our system was designed to promote debate so that the truth could rise to the top. My, how far we have fallen.

[Ganthrol]

Oh, I don't think our government is done falling.

In fact, I'm writing a theological paper on the issue of our government and all of its corrupt methods and lines of thought.

In regards to the prison fiasco....orders were issued. It's the duty of the lower ranks to obey the orders of a higher rank. Those of the lower rank are to assume that the order is a legal one, for it's the responsibility of the one issuing the order to ensure it's legal.

I think the person(s) who issued the order should be on trial, not those who carried the order out. This argument goes back as far as the courts hearing the case about Hitler's men.

Oh, some of the actions I read about were in fact horrible. The soldier having sex with a female prisoner? That is no where near being "legal".

[Jidoe]

Originally posted by Ganthrol
In regards to the prison fiasco....orders were issued. It's the duty of the lower ranks to obey the orders of a higher rank. Those of the lower rank are to assume that the order is a legal one, for it's the responsibility of the one issuing the order to ensure it's legal.

I think the person(s) who issued the order should be on trial, not those who carried the order out. This argument goes back as far as the courts hearing the case about Hitler's men.

I don't know how it is in the American army, but in the Israeli army there is a term called "illegal order", which basically means the lower ranked soldiers are OUGHT TO disobey an order that is completely unacceptable by any human being.

Battle Morals is another important term when we're dealing in a war between a Western country and a third world country/terrorists/etc. In order to maintain our humanism we ought to play the war differently than our enemy. Yes, our enemy will kill innocent civilians - but we won't. Our enemy will use unconventional weapons - but we won't. In the bottom line, in order for us to differ from the terrorists and the reigns of terror, we must be civilized and attempt to battle only those who will hurt us, attempt to hurt us, or have had that thought pass in his head.

Living in a country that has never known peace is not easy. Horrible things happen everyday. Innocent people from both sides die every day. Family and friends find themselves entangled in this blood bath. And what can we do? The only thing we can do is continue to live and try not to turn into beasts (that's surely not an easy task).

While I wouldn't go as far as accusing the soldiers for what happened (for the reasons Aristotle mentioned above), perhaps it is time for them to look at themselves and reflect on what they have become - beasts. From my experience, people who turned into beasts during wartime, have stayed like this long long after the war, and have failed to find their place in society, no matter how bright they were.

In my opinion, it's in the USA's best interest to avoid having soldiers do such things - for the soldiers sake. Even in a country they are hated for just being Americans, and when they fear for their life every second, they must stay humans.

[Pyrosama]

The only reason this is being thrown at us in the media is because of the extreme opposition to the war by many Bush hating liberals who want to blame him and any of the other republican heroes who have made much of this war a success thus far.

There is nothing shocking to me about the mistreatment of prisoners during a time of war. My stepfather told many stories about his captivity during vietnam, so I know that things happen and that humiliation is a form of punishment utilized against the enemy. But, I've always had trust in our military men and women to be moral and professionally driven to accomplish a mission. These soldiers who committed these acts are not the kinds of military men and women that I've ever been around.

It's appalling that any of our soldiers would do such things, but it seems like the media is expecting some sort of "OMG! I'm SHOCKED!!" outrage or something like that. Then when you have leaders stand up and say that they are looking into it and that those responsible for the mistreatment of prisoners will be dealt with, the general media reaction is like, "That's it???!"

Um, yea. That's about it. What do they expect people to do? Reverse time and make it NOT happen? The only responsible thing that we can do is to punish those abusers and make them an example so that it doesn't happen again or that the likelihood of it happening again is very minimal. I feel like the expectation of some is that America should be like, "Uh oh...this is bad stuff...we are sorry that these soldiers did this to the men trying to kill them...we are sorry for this war and all this outrage that these soldiers are creating...we have a war going on, so we didn't notice that this sort of thing was happening...we were too busy seeing people get killed that we failed to see such mistreatment going on...we'll end this war and go home now...because we are so sorry."

My personal opinion, not that it matters, is that those dumbasses should get an even harsher punishment just for taking the video and pictures and giving their own country a blackeye. The abuse was bad enough...but taking incriminating videos and pictures is just appallingly stupid and irresponsible to the rest of American society.

[Darion]

In regards to the prison fiasco....orders were issued. It's the duty of the lower ranks to obey the orders of a higher rank. Those of the lower rank are to assume that the order is a legal one, for it's the responsibility of the one issuing the order to ensure it's legal.

I have no idea where you conjured that from, but American soldiers are obligated to clarify the order, inform their superior that they believe the order to be illegal, disobey the order if the order stands, and report through the chain of command such orders that are believed to be in violation of either the Geneva Convention or the International Law of Land Warfare.

"I was just following orders" did not work for the Nazis at Nuremberg or American soldiers at My Lai. That is a valid legal defense (in the military), but not if the order was known to be illegal or a reasonable person would have known the order to be illegal.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Pyrosama
Then when you have leaders stand up and say that they are looking into it and that those responsible for the mistreatment of prisoners will be dealt with, the general media reaction is like, "That's it???!"

Um, yea. That's about it. What do they expect people to do? Reverse time and make it NOT happen? The only responsible thing that we can do is to punish those abusers and make them an example so that it doesn't happen again or that the likelihood of it happening again is very minimal.

That is my opinion on the matter as well. I also agree with your point that the punishment should be additionally harsh since their photographing/videoing of it all just adds to the callousness of it.

What I despise is the way this is being twisted to extreme political ends. Some are trying to act like this is "no big deal" and others are trying to blame this on Bush. *boggle*

This is a problem. It is a nasty problem. But in America, we DEAL WITH PROBLEMS and resolve them. We fix things that are broken. We improve things that are not operating properly.

When we obsess over the blame game more than the solution, we become worthless and ineffectual as a society.

[Ganthrol]

Valthaeris, there are times when orders can be questioned. If you think the order is illegal, you do notify your chain of command and (if necessary) your Commanding Officer's boss. But you still carry out the order.

If a soldier had the option to question and disobey an order, their would be chaos in the field. Imagine a sailor questioning his CO about the firing of a missile....

I "dug this up" from research.

As for the Bush haters, I'm one of them. Bush has, so far, committed two acts that are grounds for impeachment. It's just that no politician has the guts to stand up and start the process. For example, his diverting of funds to fight the Iraq war. That money, approved by Congress, was to fight Osama and his men.

Then there is the actions he has taken during the 9/11 attack. He orders all airlines to be grounded, but then authorizes certain planes to fly Arabs and such out of the country. *boggle*

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Ganthrol
As for the Bush haters, I'm one of them. Bush has, so far, committed two acts that are grounds for impeachment. It's just that no politician has the guts to stand up and start the process. For example, his diverting of funds to fight the Iraq war. That money, approved by Congress, was to fight Osama and his men.

What??????

This is unadulterated BULLSHIT.

Congress voted on money SPECIFICALLY for the Iraqi War and rebuilding.

Furthermore, the entire middle east is one big problem. You don't fix terrorism just by getting Osama Bin Laden. If you think that you are SEVERELY deluded.

Until there are liberal democracies in the Middle East we will ALWAYS have these problems. As long as the Middle Eastern countries are tyrranies, monarchies, and dictatorships, there will never be any hope for peace.

Originally posted by Ganthrol
Then there is the actions he has taken during the 9/11 attack. He orders all airlines to be grounded, but then authorizes certain planes to fly Arabs and such out of the country. *boggle*

What in the HELL are you talking about and what does that have to do with ANYTHING? The above example sounds like Item #487 from Moveon.org or something.

Both of your examples are things you might consider grounds not to vote for him but they are not even CLOSE to impeachable offenses.

Just because a President does things you do not like does not make them reasons to impeach.

[Darion]

Valthaeris, there are times when orders can be questioned. If you think the order is illegal, you do notify your chain of command and (if necessary) your Commanding Officer's boss. But you still carry out the order.

If a soldier had the option to question and disobey an order, their would be chaos in the field. Imagine a sailor questioning his CO about the firing of a missile....

You might be on to something, if you had occasion to actually read what I wrote, to wit:

...in violation of either the Geneva Convention or the International Laws of Land Warfare.

If your first line supervisor orders you to line up ten EPWs against a wall and put two in the back of their heads, you tell the CO on the grounds that you think that may just not be kosher, and he says "Illegal order? Nah, fuck 'em!", you do not do it anyway. I am not sure what 'research' you found to substantiate that, though I am sure it is intriguing.

Soldiers do not have the 'option' to question orders. They are obligated to disobey orders that are in violation of either the Geneva Convention or the ILLW. To use your own example:

If a sailor disagrees with the firing of a missile against a predetermined target, that is a damn shame for the sailor. The target has already been approved and cleared by the chain of command who exercises command authority over that launch and an operational law specialist who is authorized to say "Yes, we can blow that building straight to hell" and has already determined the legality of such an action. At that point, disagreeing with the morality of such an order becomes an irrelevant sidenote. If it's a military target, it's a military target. Sometimes life is hard like that.

[kestra]

my thoughts were...what kind of a dumbass, or dumbasses would risk taking photos of this sort of stuff!!
These types of things always blow up in their faces!