PHONY IRAQI ABUSE OUTRAGE SYNDROME

Regularguys.com ^ | 05/05/04 | Larry Wachs

[Rightly Biased]

Wow!! I was just writing an e-mail about this and I may quote you on a couple of fine points you made and I hope you do not mind. All credit to you for putting what I was thinking into words.

Thanks
RB

[texasflower]

THANK YOU for the ping Eaker! This post was well worth seeing.

LongCut, what you have written allows us to experience with you, the anger and outrage of all of our good and honorable defenders of freedom.

Thank you for sharing this with us. It's as if you gave us a special view into the heart and soul of a hero.


We continue to stand with you all.

[Long Cut]

Their top seargeant was, in civilian life, a PRISON GUARD. I wonder if he was "acting out" what he wanted to do to the cons he has to guard?

He wanted to have that one chance to be a "tough Screw". I hope the SOB was canned from his job at the hoosegow for this.

No matter what, he can't claim ignorance, not before the court martial, anyway. Unlike civilian courts, a Court Martial can smell bull**it a mile away.

[Long Cut]

I'm no hero, TF. I'm just a Sailor, trying to do his job. And I'm ROYALLY pi$$ed that some goofballs with too much free time and too much "Jackass" made it harder. I'm even more pi$$ed that their commanding officers and NCO's were too damned comfy-cozy in their cushy rear-echelon jobs to do anything about it.

And I'm OUTRAGED that a General Officer has the low character to try to babyface her way out of it by laying it all off on others.

[Long Cut]

I don't mind at all. Spread the Word!

[k2blader]

HUGE BUMP.

This should really be posted as a thread of its own. :-)

Thank you and all those who serve or have served with honor.

[MEG33]

#60 and on down..from active duty Freeper.

[fatima]

Bump.

[boxerblues]

Thanks for the ping. Many active duty military are equally disguted by this. The image of Americas Military was taking a turn for the better since the days of Vietnam. This incident will only serve those like Jf'nK who said so many years ago that they are war criminal committing crimes against humanity.

[Texasforever]

Meg I saw it and he had good points. The only problem, I have is with no answer about context or timing of events. We don't know who the prisoners in the pictures were. We don't know what if any information we were trying to get from them. It is one thing for on-duty guys to be outraged and I applaud them for that but we have been in a high intensity guerrilla war over there and the folks handling prisoners also have a mission to get information as fast as possible. As I said, there may be a valid reason OR it may have just been a group of sick SOBs being SOBs. I haven't made up my mind yet and can't until I get the context that goes along with the pictures. I am more concerned about a possible command over reaction that leads to less effective intelligence on the ground.

[FreedomCalls]

One thing we can be assured of...the lowest ranked person will be found guilty.

And the punishment for the commissioned officers will be that they will be "forced" to take retirement. Sure, "punish" them by paying them 38K a year for the rest of their lives.

[MEG33]

My post to Long Cut was that we must not allow another Kerry arise to paint all with a broad brush,not ever.

[mathurine]

A much higher percentage of people will engage in maltreatment and maybe even commit atrocities under certain circumstances than most of us believe. Many studies after WWII by Stanley Milgram and others have concluded this, and their experiments have been replicated over three decades and always come to essentially the same conclusions. Now that's just good scientific data, and useless if nobody converts it into plain talk which organizations can use. The plain talk is that ambivalence about personal responsibility, peer pressure, and inadequate guidance and supervision from superiors is likely to lead to incidents such as is currently being decried about a third of the time. Almost anyone who has been to a War College and many who have done graduate work in management would have studied Milgram, and practically anyone who has taken even Psychology or Sociology 101 would be somewhat familiar with Milgram's work--the Obedience to Authority Experiments; the Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.

The perpetrators can not be excused for what they have done, and will be prosecuted, to be sure, and if found guilty, punished. On the other hand, either officers and policy makers were ignorant or inept or both not to have put better procedures and policies into place. Anyone who has ever run anything-- military or civilian--knows the word supervision, and the basic fact that if you don't supervise, policies, procedures, etc. mean little, and accomplish less. Training helps, too, but hanging a bunch of snuffies without the officers-in-charge being punished even more severely for inadequate supervision would be a travesty of justice, IMHO.

If anyone's interested in Stanley Milgram's research, just go to Google or any other major search engine and enter his name. His research has held up amazingly, especially since it implies that many who criticize maltreatment very likely might do the same thing under similar circumstances.

On the other hand, there are plenty who wouldn't, and the whistle-blower apparently came from the same unit as the perpetrators.

Conclusion: when there is a situation where some people are given great power over others, some will abuse their power if not closely supervised. Be wise, supervise.

[scarface367]

I couldn't have said it better. Everyone in my squadron I've talked to feels the exact same. This is an absolute disgrace to the military.

Those involved have no idea how much they have screwed up things over there. The Muslim nutcases will use this as "proof" that all US military personnel are like this. Arabs are already too easy to convince with propaganda and conspiracy theories. We did not need some dumbass pictures being broadcast across the Arab world. I also want to know who the mentally deficient moron was that decided it was a good idea to take pictures. Pictures in the military always have a bad habit of turning up.

[SandRat]

BG Janis Karpinski if you dug deep enough you would find that she was a DACOWITS Dame. Got there because of D-I-V-E-R-S-I-T-Y and the power of the NAGs. Check out the raosting she's in for in front of a Courts Martial here: "Raw data : Pentagon Report on Abuse"

[MEG33]

Great link here.

[Long Cut]

TF, the answers you seek are ON THIS THREAD. It's the actual Pentagon investigative report. Bring a strong stomach, this went WAY BEYOND what you've heard about.

These animals don't just need to do time...they need Psyche Evals!

[LoudRepublicangirl]

Does anyone remember that Jessica Lynch as well as other female POW's (in Gulf War I) were raped? Lynch was even sodomized. Of course we don't have the pictures for CNN to repeatedly televise but these things happended just the same. I'm not excusing what those troops did at the prison but the Arab world is only outraged when their swarthy brothers are undergoing what weekly occurs at Frat parties across this great nation. And the rest of the world is just as hypocritical. France harbors a child molestor(Roman Polanski)and dares judge us?

[Long Cut]

Yep, just saw it and linked to it myself. I also bookmarked it.

Her ass is going to be GRASS, and the Judge Advocate General will have the lawnmower.

She did NOTHING to see that policies from above, and even herself, were followed. Once again, she paid "lip service" only.

And the torture went WAY beyond the "fraternity prank" stuff...flat-out into rape and physical torture for fun.

One NCO, for example, was said to have raped a 15-year-old female detainee.

[Doc On The Bay]

NO ONE--In the Military, or our "Government"--HAS EVER (NOT EVER) accepted the "Behavior" shown on those "Interrogation Video's!!"

THAT FACT has been LONG KNOWN by our Military.

So, HOW could such Abberent Behavior Exist--Especially Since SUCH BEHAVIOR is "EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN BY" American PROTOCOL!!??

This WHOLE INCIDENT "SMELLS!!"

This "Incident" "SMELLS LIKE" a "SETUP!!"

This Wouldn't be the First Time that the "Islamo-Nazi's" have attempted to "Frame" Legitimate Citizens to "Prove" that Honest Human Behavior is NOT a "Proper Outcome" of Human Endeavor.

Doc