Tom, your comment about your uncle made me feel a ton better. I've been waiting for *days* to hear about reactions from real vets.
Particularly intel-type vets.
What I hear of John McCain's comments helped, too.
Thanks.
I find myself agreeing with many of these comments so much I had to jump in.
Tom: On your comment of May 9, about the Islamic gloves-off attitude we will experience now, with the drastically increased danger to our troops, I completely agree. I've been staying up late and posting journal comments and sending protest emails until I'm sick to my stomach. I found myself thinking through why anybody would set up such a bureacratic situation, and encourage such widewspread practice of torture, just as in creating a Vietnam or Korea monster unit.
I agree completely that the methods that were used could be untrained misapplications of methods used to train frontline guerilla units to resist primitive interrogation methods.
So that in fact it became just that, primitive interrogation methods.
But I have trouble believing that the higher levels who tolerated this were acting out of cowardice at confronting it. I can't think there was anything accidental about it. I think it was deliberate, conscious, and planned to accomplish exactly that.
The fact that it was documented in Afghanistan and among British troops, theater-wide, suggests there is high-level intent here.
I got to this point by working my way through the fact that such a useless application of torture on prisoners held for long periods was not in fact an attempt at getting intel at all.
It shouldn't be called 'interrogation', a misnomer.
It is one form of waging a war of terror on an occupied people. (Monster units are another. I wouldn't be surprised if we learn about that too, in days to come.)
Which led me to the seriously paranoid thought that it is intended that way: Malice aforethought.
Well, American power has been known to engage in such "unAmerican" use of force before.
I began to wonder if exacerbating the whole conflict and making it an indefinite endless war of terror was the whole intent.
Extend the war of terror for generations.
Then somebody will retaliate with another 9/11 event, and then it's a great excuse for declaring martial law.
I know, if you're the Tom Whitmore I happen to know in other contexts, that you're very well aware of fictional warnings about all of this.
Babylon Five featured exactly such a political coup in a futuristic setting.
To anybody else who hasn't read Margaret Atwood's book 'The Handmaid's Tale,' either speak out against this future now, loudly, or be prepared to live in the kind of fear experienced by those prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
Apparently this is exactly what happened to inmates already, if you were in Texas during Gov. Goerge Bush's term of office.
Nancy:
Had to comment that, in fact, we have been treating American prisoners very badly indeed.
One of the links about it that I saw posted by an actively political person over on live journal was this one:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002937
I am afraid I can't post another link to a different story, as I would like to. I have asked this very active person to post the link here, if they get the chance. There's enough data in the summary that it should be searchable online, if anyone is interested in pursuing it.
I can only offer that, IMHO, this person's summaries of news stories tend to be pointed and accurate.
This was their summary of the news story:
The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 3 |
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