Fucking up in Iraq
Fucking up in Iraq
I can't think of anything we can do to stabilize Iraq at this point. Shutting down that newspaper was the worse of two bad options. I'm pretty sure we're fucked.
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- Grand Pooh-Bah
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My question is, is George Bush vulnerable on Iraq and national security? Polls consistently show that people generally feel Republicans and George Bush are the go-to guys when it comes to war. George Bush presents himself as "a war president." If his administration's policies and war are fucking shit up so badly, though, that it's all falling apart, could this be the crack in the GOP's anti-terrorism armor?
General: Much of Iraq's forces have quit
http://salon.com/news/wire/2004/04/21/i ... index.html
About one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces "actually worked against'' U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation, the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday.
About one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces "actually worked against'' U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation, the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday.
Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam
http://nytimes.com/2004/04/26/internati ... RO.html?hp
"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.
http://nytimes.com/2004/04/26/internati ... RO.html?hp
"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.
On the topic of the US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners.
Why aren't these soldiers being tried as war criminals? It seems to me that what they did should qualify as war crimes.
Article 3 of the Geneva convention:
http://www.crimesofwar.org/resources/misc/article3.html
If we're going to hold other countries to these standards, we should hold our own soldiers to them as well. Even (especially?) reservists.
Edited to add: Their officers should also be put on trial in front of an international tribunal. There's no way that they didn't know that this was happening.
Why aren't these soldiers being tried as war criminals? It seems to me that what they did should qualify as war crimes.
Article 3 of the Geneva convention:
http://www.crimesofwar.org/resources/misc/article3.html
As far as I know, all we're doing is censuring some soldiers, kicking some out of the military, and charging others with sexual abuse or something like that. A felony conviction isn't enough, in my opinion, they should be tried as war criminals under the Geneva convention.1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of the armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all cases be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex, birth of wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
If we're going to hold other countries to these standards, we should hold our own soldiers to them as well. Even (especially?) reservists.
Edited to add: Their officers should also be put on trial in front of an international tribunal. There's no way that they didn't know that this was happening.
Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker lays out a thorough case (relying primarily on the military's own internal reports) that the use of torture, humiliation, beatings, and sexual abuse was not the result of a few rogue soldiers but systematic and that Military Intelligence shares responsibility for the incidents.
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
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Why is our military intelligence entirely disregarding the Geneva Convention? Probably because they are desperate to find out who is shooting at them since our intelligence is shit.
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact
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Why is our military intelligence entirely disregarding the Geneva Convention? Probably because they are desperate to find out who is shooting at them since our intelligence is shit.
Send Bush a message about your feelings about the torture, so that Bush can ignore it completely:
http://www.moveon.org/torture/
http://www.moveon.org/torture/
What makes me really sick is the reaction of all the ignorant far-right hicks who support everything Bush does, and everything our soldiers do.
I saw some viewer feedback on CNN about the issue, and people were saying stuff like, "It's just interrogation, or course they'll do stuff like this. And a human pyramid isn't even that bad," ignoring the fact that public nudity is one of the worst things a Muslim can ever go through, as well as the other forms of torture we committed.
Other comments are like, "So what? This is nothing compared to what they're doing to our soldiers," as if that justifies it. Fundamentalist Christians are very quick to say that Jesus denounced the Old Testament in order to divorce themselves from the "vengeful, wrathful God", but are just as quick to use the verse about "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" to justify stuff like this (incidentally, it's even the wrong interpretation for the phrase).
And you know that these people will vote for Bush, no matter how many illegal wars he starts and how many war crimes arise as a result of his attitudes.
I saw some viewer feedback on CNN about the issue, and people were saying stuff like, "It's just interrogation, or course they'll do stuff like this. And a human pyramid isn't even that bad," ignoring the fact that public nudity is one of the worst things a Muslim can ever go through, as well as the other forms of torture we committed.
Other comments are like, "So what? This is nothing compared to what they're doing to our soldiers," as if that justifies it. Fundamentalist Christians are very quick to say that Jesus denounced the Old Testament in order to divorce themselves from the "vengeful, wrathful God", but are just as quick to use the verse about "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" to justify stuff like this (incidentally, it's even the wrong interpretation for the phrase).
And you know that these people will vote for Bush, no matter how many illegal wars he starts and how many war crimes arise as a result of his attitudes.
Fucking Rumsfeld
He's avoiding every single question. The committee needs to fucking make him answer the damn questions.
It's Rumsfeld's live testimony to Senate. Now he's in front of the House.
Basically he answered the questions of the brainless Bush-lackeys and avoided most of the meaningful questions asked of him by McCain and Kennedy. Lindsay Graham (R) asked some pretty good questions that he mostly answered, including admitting that he was to blame for not understanding the gravity of the situation (whoopdie doo), but he reiterated that he would not resign from political pressure.
He didn't rule out completely stepping down if it would help repair our image though.
Basically he answered the questions of the brainless Bush-lackeys and avoided most of the meaningful questions asked of him by McCain and Kennedy. Lindsay Graham (R) asked some pretty good questions that he mostly answered, including admitting that he was to blame for not understanding the gravity of the situation (whoopdie doo), but he reiterated that he would not resign from political pressure.
He didn't rule out completely stepping down if it would help repair our image though.
Sen. Inhofe is a sleazebag:
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/sto ... ory/Front/
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/sto ... ory/Front/
andOklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a Republican, said that he was sick of complaints about the treatment of prisoners that he characterized as "terrorists" and "murderers."
Ignoring a Red Cross report that said that up to 90 per cent of the prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison had been rounded up by mistake, Mr. Inhofe suggested that no one should feel sorry for detainees who had been photographed in humiliating and degrading positions.
Meanwhile, my respect for Sen. McCain grows and grows:"I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," he said.
"I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human-rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying."
Senator John McCain got up and left the room while his fellow Republican was speaking. Mr. McCain, who was captured and tortured during the Vietnam War, told reporters that he rejected Mr. Inhofe's position.
Unsurprising behavior from Inhofe apparently:
http://www.claremoreprogress.com/archive/article13633
He apparently sued his brother to gain his fortune.
http://www.claremoreprogress.com/archive/article13633
He apparently sued his brother to gain his fortune.
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- Minion to the Exalted Pooh-Bah
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This is why the prisoner thing should've never happend. How can we looking into the killing of one person when the rest of the world wanted us to focus on prisoner issue.quantus wrote:http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm ... ID=5110381
Ummm, so what are we gonna do about this?
The correct response would be get the group that's responsible for it and give them whatever punishment they deserve, but with all the fuck up over there we will probably forget about him by friday.
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- Tenth Dan Procrastinator
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Btw, if you're morbidly curious (a la faces of death videos, I'll pass), there's a link to the video off of http://www.salon.com
What people do for ratings... sigh
(reminds me of people that post sick links on IRC explictly telling people not to double click. I guess this is a test of sorts)
What people do for ratings... sigh
(reminds me of people that post sick links on IRC explictly telling people not to double click. I guess this is a test of sorts)
Thomas Friedman, an ostensibly liberal pundit at NYTimes, was defending Bush's initiatives in Iraq for the longest fucking time. I was always stunned with the lack of skepticism Friedman had for the Bushes.
Now the guy is finally catching on:
"My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong."
http://nytimes.com/2004/05/13/opinion/13FRIE.html?hp
and since that link is wont to expire I'll post the article below:
Now the guy is finally catching on:
"My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong."
http://nytimes.com/2004/05/13/opinion/13FRIE.html?hp
and since that link is wont to expire I'll post the article below:
It is time to ask this question: Do we have any chance of succeeding at regime change in Iraq without regime change here at home?
"Hey, Friedman, why are you bringing politics into this all of a sudden? You're the guy who always said that producing a decent outcome in Iraq was of such overriding importance to the country that it had to be kept above politics."
Yes, that's true. I still believe that. My mistake was thinking that the Bush team believed it, too. I thought the administration would have to do the right things in Iraq — from prewar planning and putting in enough troops to dismissing the secretary of defense for incompetence — because surely this was the most important thing for the president and the country. But I was wrong. There is something even more important to the Bush crowd than getting Iraq right, and that's getting re-elected and staying loyal to the conservative base to do so. It has always been more important for the Bush folks to defeat liberals at home than Baathists abroad. That's why they spent more time studying U.S. polls than Iraqi history. That is why, I'll bet, Karl Rove has had more sway over this war than Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns. Mr. Burns knew only what would play in the Middle East. Mr. Rove knew what would play in the Middle West.
I admit, I'm a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post- 9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion — as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did — I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn't just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.
Why, in the face of rampant looting in the war's aftermath, which dug us into such a deep and costly hole, wouldn't Mr. Rumsfeld put more troops into Iraq? Politics. First of all, Rummy wanted to crush once and for all the Powell doctrine, which says you fight a war like this only with overwhelming force. I know this is hard to believe, but the Pentagon crew hated Colin Powell, and wanted to see him humiliated 10 times more than Saddam. Second, Rummy wanted to prove to all those U.S. generals whose Army he was intent on downsizing that a small, mobile, high-tech force was all you needed today to take over a country. Third, the White House always knew this was a war of choice — its choice — so it made sure that average Americans never had to pay any price or bear any burden. Thus, it couldn't call up too many reservists, let alone have a draft. Yes, there was a contradiction between the Bush war on taxes and the Bush war on terrorism. But it was resolved: the Bush team decided to lower taxes rather than raise troop levels.
Why, in the face of the Abu Ghraib travesty, wouldn't the administration make some uniquely American gesture? Because these folks have no clue how to export hope. They would never think of saying, "Let's close this prison immediately and reopen it in a month as the Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training — with all the equipment donated by Dell, H.P. and Microsoft." Why didn't the administration ever use 9/11 as a spur to launch a Manhattan project for energy independence and conservation, so we could break out of our addiction to crude oil, slowly disengage from this region and speak truth to fundamentalist regimes, such as Saudi Arabia? (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.) Because that might have required a gas tax or a confrontation with the administration's oil moneymen. Why did the administration always — rightly — bash Yasir Arafat, but never lift a finger or utter a word to stop Ariel Sharon's massive building of illegal settlements in the West Bank? Because while that might have earned America credibility in the Middle East, it might have cost the Bush campaign Jewish votes in Florida.
And, of course, why did the president praise Mr. Rumsfeld rather than fire him? Because Karl Rove says to hold the conservative base, you must always appear to be strong, decisive and loyal. It is more important that the president appear to be true to his team than that America appear to be true to its principles. (Here's the new Rummy Defense: "I am accountable. But the little guys were responsible. I was just giving orders.")
Add it all up, and you see how we got so off track in Iraq, why we are dancing alone in the world — and why our president, who has a strong moral vision, has no moral influence.