Comments on: Abu Ghraib, Take Two

By: cassandra

cassandra — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:40:56 +0000

Chris, thank you so much for raising this question on your show!

What's insane about the above sentence? Let me tell you: What's absolutly INSANE about it is that Chris is virtually alone in raising this question in the American media landscape. And yes, I am talking about blogs, too! Outside of the regular ACLU or CCR-NY press release, who is really asking fundamental questions like How can they possibly keep the lid on it all? These are digital files - aren't they sitting on a number of people's computers? How on earth have they managed to keep them off the internet until now? You can go to ifilm.com/warzone today and find tons of "snuff movies"

-- neocon wet dreams / military porn from the death zone --

so how have they managed to keep a lid on rape and torture at Abu Ghraib? I hope you will ask these questions again soon, Chris! I WANT AN ANSWER.

By: Soldiers' Angel - Holly Aho

Soldiers' Angel - Holly Aho — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 18:30:28 +0000

A Second Rate Dawn Patrol – ( I tried…I really did!)

I miss the Dawn Patrol over at the Mudville Gazette! I woke up this morning and sat down to see the Dawn Patrol round-up and it wasn’t there. Technical difficulties ruined HOURS of work for Mrs Greyhawk. I would have been mad to say the least. &*%…

By: thedullroar24

thedullroar24 — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 04:18:52 +0000

I donâ€™t see the need to make these images public. Or rather, I donâ€™t think there should be a need to make these images public. If the government was to show some sign that these travesties were being thoroughly investigated and dealt with and that policies were being made to prevent things like this in the future, nobody would be asking to see the pictures. There has been no news, however, to suggest that things are really getting done. Whether there is no news because nothing is happening, or the happenings just arenâ€™t in the news, I donâ€™t know. If things wonâ€™t happen without a public outcry and media firestorm (fed by this second batch of images), then I guess we need the images. If the people who are better informed on the matter think that is the case, fine, but that puts us in a very sad state of affairs. It frightens me that some people think that we canâ€™t trust the government to do what is right without enormous outside pressure, because they may be right. We should be able to prosecute these crimes without plastering the images everywhere. If this were a case of torture and sexual assault inside the US, in a cult or some terrorist organization, the public wouldnâ€™t be asking to see the pictures so they knew just how terrible the acts were. You would hear on the news that three men were being charged as the leaders of some organization for crimes X, Y, and Z, and that would be the end of it. A trial would ensue and any relevant pictorial evidence would be used, but it wouldnâ€™t crop up on the internet the next day. Why should this or why does this need to be any different? Some say, â€œThe public has a right to know.â€? Well, if you tell me that guards tortured, humiliated and raped detainees at a prison, Iâ€™ll take your word on it. Nobody has anything to gain by making it up, so I donâ€™t need to see it to believe it.

By: ddubb

ddubb — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 07:29:30 +0000

Shouldn’t this be titled, “Abu Ghraib, Take Three”? Unfortunately, the cameras weren’t rolling during “Take One.” As late as 1994 this prison was the site where biological weapons were tested on “prisoners” (1); most likely they were also innocent lower class citizens randomly taken off the street. Maybe if the US reinstates these experiments the court of world opinion will ignore the atrocity as the UN ignored the Saddam Hussein regime’s use of this prison facility… and then ignored the reports of the UN’s own Special Commission… what DOES the US have to do to have IT’S atrocities ignored…

Actually, UNSCOM did obtain photos of wounding caused by the biological agent tests conducted in Abu Ghraib. I think the Secretary General of the UN should release those photos. Personally, if I were a prisoner in Abu Ghraib I’d much rather be a victim of the US Military’s “atrocities” than Saddam’s “standard operating procedures.”

(1) “The Greatest Threat” by Richard Butler

By: damian mcnicholl

damian mcnicholl — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:40:28 +0000

All photographs and other materials should be released. It is not a question of becoming immune to the indignities inflicted by one set of human beings on another. It is a question of openness in a democracy. These images will prompt a discussion about the true issue requiring to be aired, namely the status under international law of the captured. I have no answer as to their proper and legal classification, but it needs to be defined according to international law principles, not the laws of the vanquishing country. And if we become immune to the sights depicted in the photographs, that refelects negatively on our sense of humanity, but cannot be used as justification for suppressing the photos, etc.

By: dwg

dwg — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:47:03 +0000

The coverage in the New York Review of Books has convinced me that Bush and Rumsfeld are responsible for the torture. The insurgency in the summer of 2003 took them by surprise and in desperation they rounded up guilty and innocent alike. It’s their own fault that they were taken by surprise, because they ignored their own State Department advice on occupying Iraq and the warnings of many people before the war that war would increase, not decrease, terrorism.

The newspapers haven’t made this story as simple as it should be for the general public, and I guess the gruesomeness of the new pictures will distract the press more than focus them on the story.

Some new pictures have already been on public display. Aidan Delgado, a veteran of the current Iraq war and a student at New College, Florida, showed slides from his year in Iraq, including six months at Abu Ghraib, on December 6, 2004:

http://www.ncf.edu/PublicAffairs/Documents/delgado.htm

The pictures are more barbaric than anything the general public has seen. One showed a prisoner with his head half blown off and brain exposed, and an American soldier next to him smiling and holding a spoon.

By: shpilk

shpilk — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 00:16:28 +0000

The press has been totally co-opted by being embedded.

How about a show on what has happened to our American Press, supposedly the most free in the world – how it has been gelded into submission?

We found out about these abuses almost by accident, because an American soldier saw what was happening and knew it was wrong; he tried to report it. He was rebuffed, repeatedley, but finally the message got through.

From the Taguba report {this is the US Army report} “The report estimates that 60% of the prisoners at the site were “not a threat to society” and that the screening process was so inadequate that innocent civilians were often detained indefinitely.”

Imagine if you will, what Americans would demand as retribution if a foreign nation invaded our country and did these things to our citizens.

Release the pictures, and let those who are guilty be charged and sentenced.

By: sierramurphy

sierramurphy — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:58:39 +0000

I feel the pictures should be released so that the American Public can see what is being done in their name. This torture has every Americans stamp on it whether we want to believe that or not. Maybe it will be a wake up call for many Americans.

By: deb

deb — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:56:30 +0000

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~Marie Curie

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance. ~Arnold Glasow

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest
kind of fear is fear of the unknown. ~H. P. Lovecraft
———-
The photos should be released. To not release the photos is to encourage fear of the worst in our imaginations. We need, as a nation, to face this horror honestly and openly.

deb
http://www.pbu.blogspot.com

By: shpilk

shpilk — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:46:33 +0000

What is extraordinarily pathetic about this issue is thet we forget, too that many of these people tortured were everyday people in Iraq – not terrorists, not insurgents.

These people were detained and tortured without trial, without habeas, without any rights to be represented.

The US had invaded Iraq and offered up ‘democracy’ as the canard for the casus belli, after the fact.

There is no sense of proportion in defending an invasion based upon the concept of bringing democracy on the one hand to repressed people, and the abuse and mayhem that at a minimum was allowed to happen under our watch or even worse directed to happen by the highest levels of our leadership.

By: shpilk

shpilk — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:33:31 +0000

So far, Janis Karpinski, the Brig General who was in charge of Abu-Ghraib was convicted of shoplifting from a PX; and all the rest of the people who have been charged have been at the Staff Sargeant level or lower.

It is an outrage.

The real issue is accountability of the highest levels of command and control. To deny the truth and cover up the facts is what is making things worse. Supressing the truth will lead to only more hatred.

Rehashing it isn’t going to be pretty.

Did we need to see all the images and stories from the Inquisition, from Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Babi-Yar, from the Gulags? Did we need to hear all the details of what happened in pre-war Iraq, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, what is going on today in Darfur? Did someone decide that these images were not ‘too damaging’?

How does a society ever learn from their mistakes?

What needs to be done, is those people who were repsonsible, the ones who made command decisions, or by lack of guidance and sheer incompetence allowed it to happen, be brought to justice – the longer the delay, the more the people will lose trust in the United States.

What ‘moral authority’ will the US be able to wield in the future if there is doubt about the truth? What hurts worse, hiding the images or revealing them?

Until all the information is released, there will never be any resolution to this issue.

By: Wordlackey

Wordlackey — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:31:25 +0000

I think the pictures should be released. While graphic in detail, it’s important for our citizens to know these details. This isn’t super secret spy stuff. It isn’t a national security risk. It obviously poses an embarrassment to this administration but I think it is not a partisan issue. It’s a moral and ethically issue.

By: Wil Davis

Wil Davis — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:24:24 +0000

No one has mentioned “R2I” (Resistance To Interrogation”) – David Leigh wrote a piece in “The Gaurdian” (UK Newspaper) back in May 2004. To answer your question Chris, try throwing “R2I” and “David Leigh” at googleâ€¦

- Wil