Posted on 05/09/2004 6:44:14 PM PDT by demkicker
A furious President Bush has demanded to see all photos and videos showing abuse of Iraq detainees, a senior White House source said late Sunday.
"The president was blindsided by the first TV images, he will not be blindsided again," the source, who demanded anonymity, explained to the DRUDGE REPORT.
The president has instructed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to present him with him all known images that could further deepen the crises.
Monday editions of the NEW YORKER feature photos of a dog attacking a naked Iraqi detainee at Abu Ghraib prison.
President Bush was aware of the photo, the top source claims.
The White House is preparing for more fallout, and leaks from lawmakers.
The Pentagon is considering the possibility of showing the unseen material to members of Congress.
"It's clear the moment the evidence is sent to the Congress, we will see a new feeding frenzy in the media."
Well, I think you're right, but it makes little sense to try to put any kind of pretty face on this abuse scandal.
Now stranger things have happened, and he might simply have gotten a rotten assignment from his company and got out as soon as he could find other work. However, that bit of information did cause me to raise my eyebrows slightly.
That is interesting.
Another interesting thing I saw this morning on the talking head shows. Lyndie England, the press described trailer park girl from the hollers of West Virginia who is the one seen mugging for the camera in a lot of the photos, has not one, or two, but three lawyers, such as could be described as her own legal dream team.
My question, who is paying for her legal team for the trailer park girl from WV?
They were. There has been an official investigation since January and it was a reletive of one of the accused who started the media circus.
They were blindsided by the unauthorized release of evidence during a prosecutorial proceeding. The fact that these people were being prosecuted was well known, before the release of the pictures.
I think that's incredibly farfetched.
Did you realize one of the civilian contractors doing the interrogations left in February and just gave an interview to the Guardian? Did you know he was a Dean supporter? Does it seem likely to you that a Dean supporter would volunteer for a job interrogating prisoners in Iraq?
What's so unlikely about it? There are many Dean supporters, and it isn't surprising that one of them turned up in Iraq.
Quite frankly, it's disturbing to see folks on this forum trying to turn this issue into a vehicle for their pet agenda. Here's what I've seen so far:
1. This is because of gays in the military
2. This is because of women in the military
3. This is because of the media
4. This is because of liberals
Simply put, this is about the actions of the people involved, period. Everything else is secondary. It blows me away to see folks accuse the Democrats of using this for political fodder, only to turn around and do the very same thing themselves.
IMHO, conservatives need to rise above this petty political nonsense. It's going to make all of us look foolish.
There is no "consensual sex" in prison between guard and prisoner.
It doesn't matter if the rapists were Iraqi or not. If they were Iraqi guards, they were there under *our* command. If they were photographed by our soldiers raping prisoners, and our soldiers failed to stop it but filmed it instead, then that's criminal and immoral.
Absolutely!
You are seeing "the whole story," oceanview. You're just hoping there are extenuating circumstances that help explain it away.
There aren't. The military is not making excuses; it is accepting blame.
This has nothing to do with pornography, or George Soros, and everything to do with vengeance run amuck.
Huh, I guess you missed demo Senators kennedy, byrd, dayton, levin, clinton, being all so objective towards Rumsfeld last Friday.
BTW, I have a bridge for sale that goes to Brooklyn.
We live in a political world and the demos are going perpetuate that for years to come.
JMO, the people who look foolish are the ones who keep wishing for political utopia.
So what do you suggest? Actively trying to use this as political fodder against liberals to trump their expected actions?
Do you see President Bush taking that course of action? How about Sec. Rumsfeld? Gen. Myers? No, they're accepting responsibility/accountability. That's what strong leaders do - those who are attempting to use this to further their agenda will ultimately hurt their cause, and are the worst kind of political hacks.
LOL So, interrogation tactics used on terrorists and baathists are so awful, that fraternities would be SHUT DOWN! Well that's certainly compelling.
People can debate the effectiveness of specific tactics all they want. But what's key is that interrogation inherently involves unpleasantness. And the irrational outrage over these tactics used, i.e. making the enemy wear underwear, parade around naked, simulate sex acts, etc, is out of proportion. We are at war.
We should use any means necessary to get information that would save the lives of our soldiers and innocent civilians. And the Al Qaida prisoners should get special treatment far worse than simply be made to wear women's underwear. They should be tortured and then shot. But no photo's please. Anyone have a problem with that?
I'll say again, in the world of 2004, once photographs of these incidents were made ... and I'll grant people this, IMHO this wasn't torture but was still way over the line and those involved should be tried and punished as they almost certainly will be ... they were destined to get out. It doesn't matter if they were, quote, "classified," unquote, it doesn't matter if they came from the DOD, from disgruntled reservists, from Congressional committees, from the families of people over there or what. They were going to get out. There was no way that anyone or anything in this or any known solar system was going to prevent it from happening.
IMHO, that is the best thing, I think this situation has already maxed out on heat and if, as I said last night, the White House gathers all this stuff and dumps reams and stacks and piles of it on the media, shovels it on until they cry "no more," we're going to reach the point of diminishing returns.
But it seems like everyone can't understand that because they're so mad about such a big deal being made over this, they're so mad about the fact that it "got out," they're so filled with hatred for the media/libs/Dems/Hackworth that it blinds them to what IMHO the best strategy truly is for ensuring that this causes minimum damage on 11/2.
Again, screw the Dems, screw the libs and screw the media (I choked a little on that, because I work in the media). They're going to do what they do and nothing is going to change it and nothing can change it. If this is such a political world, then every step taken by Bush and the White House on this should be taken in the context of going over the heads of those jabbering nabobs directly to the 20 percent of the American electorate that isn't polarized ... IMHO, 40 percent will vote for Bush and 40 percent will vote for Kerry and that will not change, even if one of them is caught ritually sacrificing a virgin in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue ... and will decide the election on 11/2. And the best way, IMHO, to do that is to dump it all out, hold nothing back, be apologetic, whether anyone thinks it's kowtowing to the media/Dems/libs or not.
One more thing, if this did come from the DOD or Congress, you can't automatically assume that it came from Dems or Libs. I've been preaching this here for six years until my fingers are nubs, but one more time ... people who work in the bureaucracy of Washington, D.C., and who may call themselves "conservatives" or "Republicans" aren't inherently in line with the beliefs of we Freepers and they most certainly don't inherently and automatically have personal loyalty to George W. Bush.
I made no such claim.
FYI, Churchill wanted to do that to the German general staff after World War II, just take them out and shoot them without a trial. We told him no way. We did it the right way, we did it within the rules, the worst of the lot were still stone-cold dead at the end of the day and we didn't parade Hermann Goering and Hideki Tojo around naked for cameras.
It looks to me that Torin is "a man with a mission". The following appears to be one of Torin's more recent missions.
Walk for Dean, Thursday in SLC Torin Nelson is a man with a mission — and that mission is to walk 2,347 miles, the distance between Salt Lake City and Concord, New Hampshire, to raise awareness and money for Howard Dean. For the full story, see the article about Torin in Salt Lake City Weekly.
I still don't understand the point. Because Torin is a Dean supporter, it follows that this entire episode is the work of liberal plants?
That's preposterous.
Eventually those who try to use this to their political advantage will get burned, because the American public will not stand for blatant attempts to politicize such a disgusting series of events. Better that conservatives aren't the ones viewed as making such attempts, but rather those taking accountability and cleaning up the mess.
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