Pacific Views

Wow! Thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard about this.

I'd much rather have a hood on my head than have my head chopped off.

Gee, Copper, I'm sure you'd rather see your children sodomized and hear their screams while it's happening too. Or having your genitilia electrified. Or being severely bitten by a dog. I guess we should all be thankful that we don't have terrorists chopping off our heads - afterall, everything else is just a nit.

Gee Mary, wonder what Sadam was doing during all those years. Might want to read the papers and see how many people he killed, chopped their heads, arms, legs, etc. off. How many rape rooms were there? How many masss graves? We had a few military members who went over the top, but at least they are being prosecuted. If you believe that we are the enemy then pack your bags and off to Iraq you go.

no, copper. the evidence is that the stuff that went on at abu ghraib was suggested and condoned by those at the highest levels. but, of course, dubya's administration and the pentagon brass responsible are covering it up.

let me tell you about a conversation i had with a woman still on active service with the army about a week after the news about abu ghraib broke. (i should add the she comes from a military family, and that her brother was serving in iraq when we spoke.) what she said was that the people who were being charged with the abuse would never have thought it was okay to do what they did unless they had orders from above to do it. or unless it had been made abundantly clear to them -- without formal orders -- what kind of behavior was expected of them.

what worried her most at the time -- and what was worrying other people she was serving with -- was the possibility that the revelations of torture and abuse would result in show prosecutions of the low-rank people who did the dirty work. And that the officers, contractors, and defense department civilians who were responsible for given the orders and/or creating the climate in which abuse would be condoned would get off scot-free.

well, all her fears have been realized. and i don't think that reflects very well on the current administration or on the US.

for me, your argument that because saddam was bad, torture and abuse is okay is reprehensible. i'd like to think that the US is a country that stands for certain principles and standards of international behavior -- and that torturing prisoners goes against those standards. i can recall the outrage among people in the US in the 1970s when the POWs returned from north vietnam, and the country found out that they had been tortured. it's a very sad commentary on how the country has changed that the abuses at the hands of US jailers in iraq, afghanistan, and guantanamo not only raise little concern, but are actively defended by idiots like you. even if only the guilty were in those prisons -- which was definitely not the case, given the 'arrest the usual suspects' nature of the roundups -- torturing prisoners only takes the US down to the level of the terrorists.

Copper - get your head out of your ass. The US has killed, maimed, raped and tortured an order of magnitude more people than Saddam has. Let's get our affairs in order before we start telling other people how to run their countries.