Some Historical Facts:

Whatever the CIA was going to be doing with them, I don't know. But what was going on with the guards was not part of the CIA and should have been delt with by the commanders. Once the CIA agents pulled the prisioners into the dark cells, you enter a different realm from what prision guards are doing which is guarding.

Yeah, I really hate to break it to anyone who thinks that competency come before loyalty in academia.I mean to a point this may be true. You can't be an ass-kissing blithering idiot and get by. You've got to have some level of competence. But, jesus if there is a place for politics, it's in stupid academia. Then there's the tenure system....(wtf!?)

What are you talking about? Abu Garaib had the same CIA-commissioned private contractor interrogators as everybody else. Who do you think was telling these guards how to "break" the prisoners?It had everything to do with the CIA. What realm is that? A realm where torture is ok?

Man, you are really trying to read a whole bunch into what I say. I know you hate it when people like me just don't come out and say what you think we are made up of.I do not condone torture of prisioners - period. That is a sign of weakness. I do condone interogation of prisioners. That is a sign of intellegence. Torture is done out of aggression, fustration, desperation and retrobution.Interogation is done for the sole purpose of gathering information. Once the information gathering has culminated, the interogation ceases. If it becomes clear that the interogation methods will not produce results, the interogation ceases. Never should the intergation deteriorate into torture.Prison guards are not interogators. At best they are idiots for trying. At worst they are tortures and murders. Whoever tried to seduce the guards into taking part in the interogation by employing it as the daily norm should have been called out by the commanders of the guards. The fact that this did not happen shows a weak link in the leadership in that prison.Again, the lack of strong leadership and lack of people who know right from wrong comes back to bite you in the ass in times of war.

In that prison, in most of our prisons, and in the leadership of the guys giving those guys their orders. Which is why it's a travesty and a betrayal of our responsibilities to our troops that we've only court-martialed the token fall guys at the bottom. Coming from a long line of men who served their country as US Marines (a pleasure that I have not had), it disgusts me.I agree 100% about your thoughts on torture and interrogation. What this administration has done is worse than biting us in the ass; it puts our servicepeople over there - over everywhere - at risk. Deadly risk. And somebody needs to pay for that.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-27-2005 08:48 PM

This is true that everyone who was in this game of spades should have been thumped and not just the ones caught holding the most at the end of the round.Everyone is issued a military handbook and should carry it on their person, especially in a war theater. In it is dirrectives from the UCMJ and that does not get superceeded by the "whim of the day" club.If the leaders in the prison would have been strong and known right from wrong, they would have thrown up enough flack that another strong leader higher up in the command would have responded with a personal visit and heads would have rolled. Problem was not the CIA or whoever issued the dirrectives to the CIA. Problem was lack of strong leaders and an over abundance of admistrators in their place.

Are you referring to Hitler and the Third Reich and D-Day? It was important we occupied Western Europe to keep it from being taken by Russia but Russia, led by the horrendous tyrant Stalin contributed a great deal to the fall of Germany. It was the Russians that struggled and died in the streets of Berlin.The British helped also but the US had the wealth and infrastructure to do it furnish the needed material for the war effort. I'm not saying it could have been done without us, but I'm wondering if we and Great Britain could have done it without the Russians or vice versa. Anyway, a number of countries contributed, most were democracies but one was Soviet Russia.lfen

I am still trying to figure out how this is different than any other form of government. This is simply false. As much as I hope something good can be made out of our decision to go to war, and indeed believe we have to try and make something good happen at this point, there is simply no comparing Iraq to any other formations of democracy except the previous failed attempt at democracy in Iraq.We did not "help" them, as we did not have a group of people from inside Iraq that was popular and organized and asking for our help. Neither did we have ANY plans for how to help the Iraqis once Saddam was thrown out of power.What we did is help an exile group with ties to Iran stage a coup, and turn Iraq into a MidEast banana republic. We were muscle with ulterior motives, none of which had to do with the actual democratic future of the Iraqi people.I'm getting pretty sick of reading comparisons between this war and our Revolution. At the very least stick to the former ones Bush and Co had made with postwar germany and japan.AbE: Forgot the second part of your post... Okay I don't know if I can all over the world but I am travelled. I am willing to defend a free society, though my guess is I've got a broader sense of freedom than you do. I didn't say that was radical. You are suggesting that Iraqis need to get so gungho that they want to go out and die for a nation. Actually they need less nationalism, and more practical experience in how to defend themselves in an organized way. 1) I would hope the "baddest meanest SOBs" in my life were the assholes that kidnapped me and not the soldiers come to rescue me. Having experience with fighting one does not have to bad or mean in order to win, you simply have to be good at fighting... really good.2) I would not need to go through that experience to know how much I value my freedom and want to defend it. Indeed the more insidious and dangerous situation is the flagwaving nationalists who attempt to usurp the nation and take ones freedom away (essentially kidnap the entire nation), leaving no hope for a rescue because they in fact own the SOBs you are talking about and are likely to blow through your wall and kill your family in the name of "protecting you".3) If you are willing to die for your freedom, how on earth did you end up as a hostage? Irony is great. Didn't you just get done describing how there wouldn't have been a Free America in the first place without Europeans. Looks like one hand washes the other to me.This message has been edited by holmes, 06-28-2005 05:04 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

LOL!Yeah, all those republicans who keep mentioning France disparigingly regarding WW2 need to be reminded of their crucial role and help in the actual founding of our country.

Yeah when Bush and Co were creating freedom fries and dumping wine, I was waiting for them to burn up documents related to their aid at our crucial hour of need as well as packing up the statue of liberty and shipping her back, COD of course.This message has been edited by holmes, 06-28-2005 08:44 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

The photos of Iraq after the over throw showed plenty of people rejoicing about it. It's tough to know just how formulated and organized they were as a unit but they were in unity in spirit and it showed that day.Sure in America it was different in the early 1770's when the rebellion began. But the newly formed continental government didn't have any authority over the states at that time and every time that it asked for money from the states to fund the efort, the states rejected it. So support wise, there are differences but both rivers of change were flowing in the same direction. I wasn't a hostage. I'm one of the S.O.B's. It isn't different. That's the point. We had an ocean to protect us after we won our independence. Even so, we went through tremondous trials afterwards. The Iraqi democracy does not have the luxury of an ocean to isolate them and give them time to solidify and their citizens time to fully experience a free market economy. So we need to stay put for anouther 12-16 years in a recognizable show of support by force and act as that barrier ocean for them until they can fight for it and succeed by themselves.

C'mon. You gotta know that's bullshit. Here's your "plenty of people" rejoicing about our victory:If you squint, I think you can probably see them.Now, two years later, here's a demonstration by the people who want us out of there:(Thanks to Zhimbo, originally posted here.

If you want to give all of the credit of the fall of Hitler to the Russians, go ahead. The reason that so many Russians died in the capture of Berlin has more to do with the idiocy of the two generals driving their respective battle groups toward the city, than tuff german volkstrom fighters. It was a competition to see who could get there first for Stalin and neither battle group was properly supplied to be doing that. So they supstituted munitions with bodies.But remember that all of your Russian heros's would have been slaughtered in the plains of Poland had it not been for American presission daylight saturation bombing that destroyed their industrial infastrucure. If the Germans would have had as little as 500 more Tiger 2's in theater after Stalingrad, they would have regained it and taken Moscow.Of course the opening of a second front in Western Europe after June 6 of '44 did nothing to help your Russian buddies move west across their country and through Poland. And the absence of
meserschmitts and foc wolf's that American fighters previously shot out of the skies meant nothing to the advancing Russian armor.It was the Americans who reached all the way to the head of the German war machine and fake cracked it, killing it. That was the industrial base in the heart of Germany. Once the head was dead, the Russians layed the body blows to the torso and got the knock down via attrition. They didn't score any major victories once they were within 60 miles of Berlin. They just were able to outdie the Germans. Again, the tank battle at Kursk would have gone very differently had the Germans had 500 more Tiger 2's.I believe history shows that we were much more than an "Sold" sign on French real estate.

Your selective photo's show me what 2 years of American pressence can do to unravel 40 years of an opperssive dictatorship. Looks like nobody's affraid of being tortured to death for excercising Free Speech.Sure only the very brave and crazy came to the party in 03', but even the granola tie died flip flop Iraqis are probably out in 05'.Now get them to stand up to the insurgency like that and I say that Bush is doing it right.

So, then, they weren't having huge celebrations, like you said?Your post shows me a backtrack artist at work. This reminds me of a joke: what does an Iraqi policeman say when an insurgent shows up?Answer: Taxi!

quote:

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After a typical episode in which the unit was attacked and ran away (four hailed taxis to make their escape), Sergeant Rick McGovern, who leads the unit, dressed them down. "You are all cowards," he informed them. He went on, "My soldiers are over here, away from our families for a year. We are willing to die for you to have freedom. You should be willing to die for your own freedom."

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So, no, Bush isn't getting them to stand up to the insurgents like that. The only people that stand up like that are the people that want us out of there. Is Bush doing a good job? You'd have to be an idiot to think so.