ACLU: 21 Killed in U.S. Custody

Fox News ^ | October 25, 2005

[El Gato]

You know that when the building you have been shooting at US or allied troops from is hit by a JDAM or other heavy weapons, you may suffer blunt force trama. How many of these 21 suffered their injuries before being taken into US custody. They may have also have been captured by their fellow Afghans or Iraqis who are less gentle in their prisoner handling than US forces, and in fact the article mentions one such case. The strangled ones may have been strangled by their fellow prisoners because they were talking to US or allied interrogators. That is after all their way.

There is not enough information to determine if any of these people died at the hands of US forces from injuries received after they were in US custody. Since the Army itself has charged at least some guards with mistreating prisoners, it's likely some did die under those conditions, but we can't tell from this story.

Heck if we were systematically beating or torturing prisoners to death, would we be doing autopsies at all, let alone letting the likes of the ACLU have access to them?

[daviscupper]

I am still not sure we have all the facts. Remember we are at war. The prisoners might have been wounded, wounded badly and maybe fatally, before they were captured. I am not so sure I would believe anything the anti-American ACLU says about anything, least of all anything that concerns our heroic service-men and women. JMHO.

[El Gato]

I can't remember.....is this more or less than Waco?

Less, way less. 82 civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly–half of them people of color died at Waco in '93, counting both the initial raid and the fire, not counting the 4 BATF agents killed during the raid.

Don't recall the National ACLU weighing in against the FBI and Janet Reno's Justice Department on that one. The Utah branch however did, although not at the time, only in '97. Click here

[El Gato]

My point was strategic. The world most likely thinks the same things about us when prisoners are killed in U.S. custody that we think about others who kill captured Americans

You are assuming a symmetry of culture and belief that doesn't necessarily exist.

As an example the Japanese involved in the Bataan death march, and other guards of allied prisoners, felt that the Americans and others who had surrendered had lost all honor in doing so, rather than being killed or even killing themselves. Thus they saw the prisoners as beneath contempt. Many other Japanese felt the same, and thought the same of their own troops who had surrendered or been captured. It wouldn't have mattered a hill of beans to them how we treated those Japanese we had captured.

Add to that the fact that the Terrorists aren't really all that interested int good PR, just as long as they get some PR, and you can see that there is not a symmetry of views between the sides in this conflict, nor among the uninvolved western countries and the nominally uninvolved Islam ones.

[El Gato]

With 6 or 7 100 Megaton thermal nuclear devices. There now there is peace, not even the sound of a locust.

Locusts are pretty tough when it comes to radiation.

BTW, you'd be much better off to use 60 or 70 10 MT devices, although it wouldn't take near that many. Because the blast effects go as the cube root of the energy (the megatons), several smaller bombs will destroy a lot more than one big one. There are of course situation where only a big one will do, especially considering the effects of (mis)timing and fratricide, but none of that probably would apply in this instance.