wade said:
What went on at Abu Graib and other prisons was too extensive to have been less than actual policy. It was just set up to allow "plausible deniability". In any case, it is a disgrace we must now live with.
You two watched how inmates were pictured in humuliating positions and even made to wear underwear on their heads. And then watch as those acts become front page news for a month of marathon of media scrutiny, free of all censorship, and invoke outrage and condemnation from all of our leaders, and finally see those perpetrators tried in a court of law and convicted in due process.
Which also equates to the methodical, cold blooded, execution of hundreds of civilians for public consumption, held in capitivity for days and made to beg for the camera.
Forgetting those twelve Nepalise cooks/cleaners working for a Jordanian firm were simply methodically beheaded in a row in the most brutal manner imaginable without any demand for salvation, the broadcast provided for consumption invoked very little outrage, zero expectation of justice, or even blame for their acts in light of their oppression... or what?
Oh sure that's a 'bad' thing, we'll surely hear that. In fact, you might want to say, it's just as bad as the human pyramid, the same kind of "terror and torture" inflicted upon those 'innocent' held as fighters supporting those who would cut from the neck as retribution to American wrought horrors visited upon them by Lydie the penis pointer.
Seems like America is still the bankrupt ideology, still the one who invokes outrage, still a singularly ammoral power among the oppressed and worthy of continued despise. Terror and Torture? MY ASS.
Please note that I'm just trying to define the terms here.
Free fire zones and search and destroy missions, as outlined in Vietnam basically consider collateral damage (civilian deaths and destruction of their property) acceptable and normal - and this is in violation of international law. It was especially grevious in VN because the zones involved were usually in in S. VN.
And International law by what means you say?
You can bring up the Geneva conventions in that time and place, but then have to excluse all the Viet Cong from any such protection while they never claimed nor practiced such conventions... so as per the letter of the international law in effect they are indeed spies and subject to summary execution by Geneva. And sure, that allowance wasn't really the common practice in any case, but I bet that once there is mention the actions of North Vietnam and the communist supporters supported inside the South we can end that whole sanctified preacher act.
Carpet bombing non-military targets, or saturation bombing of a small facility knowing that a very large non-military area will be devestated, without prior warning, is terror bombing.
Unfortunately large areas are not protected by conventions. Niether are small facilities protected from conventions. You want to say that non-combatants were targetted intentionally, really. Almost like the millions killed in South East Asia by victorious Communist regimes in oppression and not really remotely connected to acts that could be tried as murder to any US soldier in the field.
But they are trained to succeed no matter what, and thier position in the elite unit depends on success. I'm not saying that this is what is being practiced today, but the "elite" Special Forces thing is really against past US military doctrine for just this reason. If the war were to get tough the very nature of such elite units is that they tend to become very brutal.
I think the gentle ones all die in battle.
I agree it would be regrettable if the numbers got that high, but if it eliminated the Taliban, Al-Queda, and got Bin Ladin, it would be justified.
Apparently it's the assumption from CMS that we knew where to target Osama and/or Saddam from the open stages, which we certainly tried to do anyway, several times in fact, with a little less mass death and a good deal more restraint but at times with massive conventional firepower no less lethal than any field WMD.
And so we eliminated the Taliban and Al-Queda as any viable force. Isn't that believable?
In Iraq, such tactics would probably have resulted in a lower overall civilian death toll from US actions and immeadiate consequences of US action. It would also have sent a clear and unmistakeable message to any organization supporting terrorists.
Sure thing, everyone has the right to their own opinion.
Wade.
Now, there is something to be said for being a lunatic with a zeal for murderous rampages and how people just don't fuck with that type of person.
But look... the thing is when you and CSM pretend that Abu Gharaib is a terrorist acts, with torture by design, and then work in the barb about Vietnam and that the civilian slaughter that 'we' committed is illegal, well WTF?
All the while the Communist takeover of Hue after Tet and then the fall of South Vietnam in 1973 did in fact wreak mass murder and what I hear from both of you as 'terror and torture' is something Lydie waged on naked Iraqi men, and not mentioned with respect to the 12 senseless beheadings of Nepalese, by those who call us enemy... well fuck that. Nothing like a series of neutron bombs to clear our name, right?
