What the fuck are we doing?

[grinninfoole]

Perhaps I haven't understood this clearly. Perhaps this story isn't accurate. Perhaps I expect too much. But, it looks to me like this story: (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3674355.stm) is telling me that, in fact, our soldiers, my fellow americans, are torturing people in Iraq. In the exact same prison where Saddam's thugs used to torture prisoners. The stopping of which was our only moral justification for invading and taking over and such.

I think, when I get over being shocked, I shall be stunned. Then, I expect to be very angry, followed by sadness and maybe even some shame.

EDIT:
Well, it's true. Here's a link taken from mycrofth's LJ of pictures of tortured Iraqis taken by the perpetrators themselves. They're not as bad as some of the stuff that came out of Auschwitz, but it's still pretty strong stuff. Don't look if you can't handle it. http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/

As Jazzytwang might put it: "Another way to describe these photos is 'People's Exhibit A'".

Comments

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked by it, although not too surprised, as it's been obvious that POWs are being handled in a haphazard way: there are still thousands of people imprisoned from the fighting that ended last year, few of whom should still be imprisoned. But there is a big difference betwen neglect and out and out abuse.

They really need to put the hammer on the people responsible.

I also wish that Abu Gharib had gotten half the scrutiny Guantanamo has gotten. As far as I know, the Red Cross/Red Crescent hasn't even visited Abu Gharib. Independent scrutiny of POW camps helps keep them honest. (Although it is possible to fool the Red Cross {the Nazis had a model concentration camp that they used to do that}, it would have been hard to conceal attempts to do so given the number of people who would have been involved and the press scrutiny that the Red Cross would have brought.

If these people had been al-Qaida members, they could not have done more damage to us. These pictures will circulate in the Arab- and Islamo- spheres for centuries.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

"If these people had been al-Qaida members, they could not have done more damage to us. These pictures will circulate in the Arab- and Islamo- spheres for centuries." You're probably right. Even if we executed the guilty, the pictures would still be out there in their own right. That famous picture of the US soldier shooting that Vietnamese guy in the head is still used as an example of random brutality, of GIs shooting hapless people for no reason. In fact, the man had plenty of blood on his own hands (I don't recall the details just now) and he wasn't being killed at random, he was being deliberately executed. I still think it's a shocking image, and I'm not saying that I'm comfortable with shooting accused criminals, even guilty ones, in the street, but he wasn't some poor guy who had just happened by.

(I'm reminded: a friend of mine has a t-shirt with a picture of one of those depleted uranium gatling guns, and the text: GE, We Bring Good Things To Life. I'd like one of that girl running down the street covered with flaming napalm, reading: Dow, better living through chemistry. And yes, I know the girl survived and still lives to this day.)

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

The guy was a VC sniper who had changed into civvies..he had killed something like 12 people (at random..his mission was terrorist) before they caught him. The guy who is holding the gun in the photo is a US citizen now, and he's talked about it at lenght..though he's undergone a religious change (he's a Buddhist) and thinks he should have handled things differently.

I think those images just don't compare to this. This reminds me of photos I've seen from the GULAG.

It's also apparently much worse, according to a leaked (http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040510fa_fact) Army report.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

I have never seen gulag photos. I'm curious, though I expect I'll regret seeing them.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

There are some mild ones in Anne Applebaum's book. I've seen some of the ones from Soviet archives. Not pretty.