Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Those are depressing predictions, and if they come true they have serious implications for our future foreign policy. It may take 30-50 years to recover the good will we've lost in this adventure.

Actually, I thought that they were just preparing for Negroponte by bringing in death squads.

Skimming I read

"impossible ... to see the world as anything other than a zero-sum conflict ...the neocons become more and more discredited, ... Hence the efforts of the neocon faction to discredit ... Lakhdar Brahimi"

Yes exactly, the neocons see the policy debate as a zero sum game. They are totally focused on defeating the adversary, that is, people with the same aims as them but a different proposed means to achieve them.

On the other hand, I think the Fallujah retreat is a very promising sign that Bush is finally willing to face reality instead of living in his morally simplistic dream world. Close (and I) remain concerned by the fact that he insists he has done no such thing as retreat, still I would look at the substance. Even if Bush won't face facts, he may continue to allow the people in the field who are trying to deal with the mess he made face them. Works for me. Let him live in his dream world so long as he gets out of the way and lets the generals handle the war.

As Clemenceau would have said "War is waay too important to leave it to George W Bush"

Finally some people in US start to understand what has been done in their name. All of this was foreseeable and foreseen before this war was started.

The US military is not able to conquer anything bigger than Haiti. The idea still followed in the US media that 3.500 marines could seriously be able to conquer a city of of 300.000 is a bad joke. Even if they would have their heavy weapons imagine that 1 soldier would have to cover 10 houses with 10 hostile people in each of them 24 by 7.

The hearts and minds campaign broke done a year ago with US troops guarding the oil ministry in Bagdahd but not the museums. The torture pictures broadcasted as topnews worldwide (this is only the very peak of the iceberg) but only hardly mentioned in the US press are the facts of US behavior.
Bush says "That's not the way we do things in America. And so I didn't like it one bit." - ahh - But thats the way you do it outside of America and probably you don´t like strong smelling cheese either. The US public is so little aware of the "rest of the world" that there is no cultural capacity to be successfully imerialistic.

The US has lost this war and the only thing the world does hope for now is to this being so humilating that finaly the people in the US will start to be willing to save on fuel consumption and lower their oil dependency so far that no further publicy supported wars for oilgrabs are possible.

Unfortunatly I am not optimistic on this. Is there really a need for a huge catastrophy inside the US without the possibility to blame someone outside before there comes a change of minds?

Please see and show to everybody:
http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow

Link

Success both in the War on Terror and in winning the peace in Iraq have always been contingent on winning the hearts-and-minds battle in Iraq and the MENA generally. And from that perspective, the Bushies have been an amazing bunch of f***ups. There's just no other way to put it. We have totally lost that contest - to ourselves.

USA Today took a poll of over 3300 Iraqis between March 22 and April 2, and its results are here:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-28-gallup-iraq-findings.htm

What's clear from this poll is that, in non-Kurd Iraq, we don't have the support necessary to do anything useful there. And this poll was taken BEFORE our siege of Fallujah, before al-Sadr's insurrection, before we caved to Israel on the West Bank, before the photos from Abu Ghraib prison became known.

I don't see the point in Kerry's bothering to formulate an Iraq policy; it's hard to envision what Iraq will look like on January 20, other than that we'll have far less ability to influence Iraq's future then than we do now.

The photographs at http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow are indeed a shocker.

What is frightening in this context is that the so-called Patriot Act enables secrecy and censorship, while it is already demonstrated policy that people who let out even tame photographs like those of the returning coffins are at minimum fired from their jobs.

The good news is that we have a citizen Army, and an officers corps who got their commissions through Congressional appointments to the service colleges, which means a large proportion of soldiers who are not in the habit of following orders automatically.

I'm confused by those photos. The ones at the top, with the male Iraqi prisoners being tortured and humiliated, are appalling. But what are all the photographs of what looks like women being raped or assaulted (though, alternatively, it could just be consensual sex with multiple partners, I guess)? The woman with dark hair doesn't look Arab at all, and I haven't read anything about Iraqi women being taken prisoner (and it seems decidedly unlikely that we wouldn't have if it were the case). The pictures look more like amateur porn than anything else. Does anyone know if those are pictures of American soldiers mistreating Iraqis?

There's a bright spot in all of this. It's that this arrangement was imposed from the top by the White House - and Bush. It's always been true all along that Bush was only interested in getting relected and his political legacy. He's not a hands on kind of guy. He just wants to be big man on campus.

Now these events confirm that Bush has finally become aware of enough of the political costs to become involved. More and more, Rummy, the Pentagon wunderkind twins Wolfie and Feith, and Dick Cheney are getting over-ruled. The President is finally being awakened that this mess might cost him his election or his legacy.

I don't know if that's enough to convince Bush to turn this over to cooler heads to try to sort it all out, or if it's too little too late, but trust me this was the best sign yet in this entire war ... in the battle for hearts and minds we just scored a coupla points on GWB's scoreboard. Progress it is, of sorts.

Even by the standards of intellectual confusion reigning at SDJ, this analysis is bizarre. The Iraqis are indignant that the four generals are described as "Saddam's", and this is bad?

And that Iraqis want to take responsibility for law and order in their own country, is also bad? I don't know if the Iraqis are up to it, but if they are, this is very good news indeed.

On the photos and deads again:
Seymour M. Hersh has an article in The New Yorker about this (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact).
This looks much bigger than just a few GIs out of bounce.
Some of photos at http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow
show females beeing abused. According to the Iraqi bloggers Riverbend
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#108059254488988448
such things are happening. Also this whole story was reported in January by CNN: "... confirmed to CNN that investigators were looking into the reports -- all coming from fellow soldiers -- of photographs showing male and female detainees with some of their clothing removed." http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/26/sprj.nirq.abuse/index.html
but obviously the US public only reacts to pictures.

(1) Regarding the photos, there was a report about a month and a half ago that hospitalized soldiers were being sent back into battle even though they exhibited post-traumatic stress disorder--so, as with most wars, things are probably worse than we hear about, although no doubt the Iraqis have heard plenty.

(2) It's hard to imagine that Saddam's Sunni generals are likely to turn in Sunni insurgents from Fallujah, for several reasons. Who will Bush blame for this obvious climbdown from getting all the bad guys? Are we finally going to see a housecleaning at Defense? --Stay tuned for more instructive examples of avoiding responsibility! It's also hard to imagine that a largely Sunni army will be accepted by the Shi'ites for pacification of their areas. Has Brahimi been greenlighted to Balkanize the country, if he can't get Sistani on board for a unified command?

Steve Carr: "The woman with dark hair doesn't look Arab at all, ..."

How would you know what Iraqis look like, or Arabs for that matter, or that only Arabs live in Iraq? And while the article speaks about Iraqi POWs, who says that only POWs and Iraqis are targeted with those activities to begin with? Not all Arabs look like Arafat, not all Indians wear turbans or look like Ghandi, and a number of fair-skinned people with more "European" features live in those regions, either as natives, or being there on some business.

Be careful of racially/ethnically based classifications and generalizations (and note I don't say "prejudice").

Likewise, if you see pictures of people in US uniform who have a darker than white skin tone, you wouldn't say they don't look like Americans, right?

Lee A., based on his incredibly ill-informed radio remarks today, Bush is apparently going to "blame" no one. He's simply going to do what he has done for as long as we've known him as president (and apparently, for the whole of his life): he's going to deny the reality of any inconvenient facts, and continue to spout meaningless drivel in lieu of addressing reality.

See, the future is "brighter" in Iraq. Bush says so. The rest of us are just supposed to get with the program....

Er, Patrick. According to NBC, the general being given top responsibility in Fallujah was intimately involved in Saddam's last bloody campaign against the Kurds. For all I know, the Fallujahans may like him just fine, but I assure you the Kurds will have no use for any government that gives him any military power. Which just confirms again that there is no conceivable way to hold this country together in one piece (as the Bushites still seem bent on doing, to the extent that they have any coherent strategy in Iraq at all any more).

Just out of curiosity, how do you react to the analysis over at the Belmont club about Falluja?

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004_05_01_belmontclub_archive.html#108339754451957995

He seems to indicate here and in past stories that this has been a fairly long involved plan.

I agree about the prisoners though. They have not only done horrible humanitarian things but have truly set back their force. One wonders if treason isn't also applicable.

Oh, cm, your post is so ridiculous I can barely bring myself to comment on it. Are you actually arguing that, as a group, Arabs don't look different from Caucasians or from Africans or Asians? If the photo had been of abuses supposedly committed against the Congolese, and the woman in the picture had been white, would you still be arguing that it was somehow racist to suggest that the authenticity of the picture seemed dubious?

94% of the non-Kurdish Iraqi population is Arab. If there are pictures of two women being sexually abused, and one looks like she's Caucasian, then it seems reasonable to question whether the pictures are real. Especially when there has been no mention of these pictures in the news, and when they were not shown on "60 Minutes II," which is the source of the photographs. This website, which has been generally reliable when it comes to posting pictures from Iraq, does not have the rape photos: http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/. In fact, as far as I can tell, no reputable site has them. And given the fact that Albasrah.net, where the pictures were posted, is dedicated to portraying the truth about American "imperialist terror" and praising the Iraqi "resistance," it again seems important not to assume mindlessly that any pictures purporting to show American misdeeds are automatically real. (Albasrah's homepage also features a lovely animation showing the new Iraqi flag turning step-by-step into the Israeli flag. Very subtle.)

Here's a link to a Crooked Timber discussion where someone who initially linked to the pictures says they're fake: http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001793.html. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence to suggest they're real, other than the fact that they're posted beneath the actual Abu Ghraib photos. So instead of imagining racism where there isn't any, why don't you spend some time trying to figure out what's true?

As for your final offensive comment, don't you want to be a serious person? Isn't this stuff important enough not to be tossing around absurd accusations of racism -- accusations you have to know are untrue -- in an attempt to score rhetorical points? The question of whether these pictures are genuine matters a lot. Stop acting like a faux-sensitive college student and start acting like an adult.

Steve, I have known many Arabs who didn't "look like Arabs." Your offhand comment was very stupid. As for the authenticity of the photos, I have no idea.

There are Arabs with blue eyes and fair skin, Steve.

It is difficult to describe what is happening at Fallujah with anything other than disgust. The force that is headed up by the Sadam geenral at Fallujah is actually made up of the very insurgents with the addition of some criminal elements that the Marines have been fighting. This gives a whole new meaning to the term "can't beat 'em join 'em." If one looks at the pictures of this new force the flag they aremarching under is not even the "new" sky blue flag but the old Iraqi flag. This is the symbolic sticking it in your face message being sent. What's next al Sadr as chief of police in Najaf? And interesting, thinking out of the box solution, worthy of Donald Rumsfield.

It is no wonder that Patrick is confused, it says speaks volumes about the situation that he states it publcly.

The photographs are of a piece with Fallujah. Much of what we know about the Holocaust comes from pictures taken by ordinary Germans as they carried out their work. There is an eirre similarity between the two. In both cases they were proud of what they were doing, thought it was "fun." They have provided the very evidence that will be used in their courts martials, and saw no problem with it at the time. This indicates a systemic problem. And part of this systemic problem probably has to do with private contractors who carried out torture in the old torture rooms, and rape in the old rape rooms.At some point, when the history of these events are finally told, I would say the "privatizatrion" of military functions will be seen as a monum,enbtal strategic errpr.

This article is long on ideology and suggestion, and extremely short on logic. Reference indicators notwithstanding, nothing he mentioned at first supports any of his far-reaching conclusions.

As far as torture pictures, they're fishy -- at least knowing as much (or little, rather) as we do now. It's not clear for what reason this torture was perpetrated, the reason for taping it, and who did it. The Mirror reports they protected their sources, but that doesn't make any sense: obviously it was just a few people, so how difficult can it be to figure out who made these pictures available to the press? Something fishy...

Think of it: have you seen any videos of, say, Egyptians torturing someone? Or Russians in Chechya? There's a lot of talk about Hussein, but have you seen any pictures in the newspaper? Syria? Saudi Arabia? They all use torture. You can be sure it's done; that it's done as a matter of policy; done on a scale that dwarfs anything that may have happened in Iraq. Yet, have you ever seen any pictures? I haven't. I have a hard time getting to understand a torturer who tapes his exploits and then makes these tapes available to The Mirror. Why not do it quietly? It's not that it's so difficult, you see...

Yes, there are a minuscule number of Arabs with blue eyes and fair skin. But the vast, overwhelming majority of Arabs have dark complexions, dark hair, and dark eyes. What's the point of arguing about this? We want to know whether a photograph of dubious provenance is in fact a picture of American soldiers assaulting an Iraqi woman. Surely the fact that the woman in question does not physically resemble the vast majority of Iraqi women is of at least some relevance to the question of whether the picture is real.

Here are the photos of the 19 9/11 hijackers:

http://www.kylgrafx.com/usa/spineless.htm

If an APB had been put out before the event with descriptions of these men that characterized them as Arab in appearance would that, too, have been unacceptable? Would it have been inaccurate?

I looked at those photos, and it's clear that any of the women could have been Arab. You don't know what you're talking about, Steve.

Well, the first question I would like to ask is what ARE these pictures? albarash.net doesn't seem a legit website. Why argue so vehemently about the likelihood of blue-eyed arabs when you don't even know if these pictures aren't Photoshop wizardry.

Steve Carr: I meant no offense (as always), and to my knowledge did not accuse anybody of racism. I don't know why you are exploding like that. The racism allegation is nowhere in my text, only in your imagination. I specifically said in the beginning that I am _not_ talking about prejudice, only race/ethnicity based classification and generalization.

The purpose of _none_ of my remarks was to score a point; we are not doing this as a rhetorical competition, do we? I just meant to illustrate by "reversing" the sides that judging national or social affiliations based on ethnic or racial classifications is fallacious.

Please interpret statements more carefully before taking personal offense.

As for the authenticity of the pictures, of course everybody needs to have some reasonable doubt. The pictures with the women are made in a different setting and clearly have a different "style", and appear to show different guys in fatigues.

But then note that I neither made a point about authenticity nor questioned your justified doubt, only your improperly (in my view anyway) judging based on ethnicity.

Well, the first question I would like to ask is what ARE these pictures?

We'll have to see. My guess is that Steve is right, and they are just porn. I haven't seen any definite proof of that, though.

No Preference:
> My guess is that Steve is right, and they are just
> porn. I haven't seen any definite proof of that,
> though.
Yeah, looks like a couple of snapshots from "Hyperbolic Anal Babes #15" or something... :-) Btw, we don't need a proof that it's porn; rather, the proof we're interested in is that it's not. Anyway... all that makes me remember "real photos", very clear ones, from the serbian Ministry of Information site (during the Kosovo events) with a squadron of the "fascist NATO" warplanes flying over Serbia in a swastika formation. That was impressive (though I like porn better, I must admit.) Btw, try to run whois on "albarash.net": you'll get nothing. It's not a legit web site; probably some half-assed fly-by-night arab propaganda outfit.

Some of those pictures are from a Russian internet porn site that specializes in making videos of soldiers raping women. Not that it matters to Arab public opinion since some unfortunately look to be the real deal.

I'll bet this whole DISASTER is in some part due to lax control of private contractors. The media is pretending this isn't a big story, but it is HUGE and VERY DAMAGING to us in the Middle East.

Its truly dispicable that this sort of thing was allowed to happen. The offficer in charge ought to be hanged or shot for this sort of stuff.

"Er, Patrick. According to NBC..."

Coming from a guy who just proved he can't read a short Reuter's article accurately, I am less than impressed with Bruce's appeal to authority.

" I don't think much about what I do."
-George W. Bush

" It's not my job to nuance."
-George W. Bush

Makes you feel good, doesn't it?

Is it yet obvious to even the ass-kissers that this moron is in so far over his head it isn't even funny?

Just to clarify this, I have also been doubtful whether the pictures of raped/abused women show the conduct of US troops in Iraq, and my response to Steve Carr was directed at his reasoning based solely on the ethnic appearance of the women, not on any merit that I assign to the pictures.

Johnsanto: "I'll bet this whole DISASTER is in some part due to lax control of private contractors."

In _some_ part, yes. But it also if not proves, then at least indicates either severe failures of oversight of those "contractors" (and so far we don't know in which way private contractors were really involved), or that questionable agencies, whether private or officials operating under the cloak of secrecy, are employed presumably in order to evade the government's accountability mechanisms. I have to presume they pay these guys pretty well, so I have serious doubts that it is because of cost control alone.

But the soldiers shown in the CBS pictures are pretty unambiguously regular troops who apparently were under the impression that they act outside the rule of law. Blaming it on contractors doesn't cut it. (After Steve Carr took issue with a previous post, let me make clear that I'm not saying you do blame it on contractors.)

cm, I'll take it down a few notches. What really set me off was your last comment, with what seemed like the implication that I might associate American-ness with whiteness. That kind of association is something I find viscerally appalling, and was so far from what I was writing about that it made me angry.

I should say that I still think the apparent ethnicity of the woman in the photo was relevant -- though obviously not definitive -- to the question of its authenticity. But we can disagree about that, and I apologize for going off on you like that. The important thing is that those photos now appear to be almost certainly fake, and that any links to them on other blogs or other threads in this one should be immediately discredited.

Hey, "Bernhard", what's your real name? Moqtaba ar Rahaman ibn Farid or something? How come your "american" soldiers wear Warsaw-Pact surplus uniforms? Why are their faces painted in the broad daylight, eh? Makes them unnoticeable in the desert I guess... And look at the girl, hell, I'd do her myself. This is an Iraqi woman? In your (wet) dreams perhaps... What's the porno flick you ripped off for this piece of "photo journalism"? Seems like a good movie I'd like to rent sometime.

What we do know:
The army thinks it is legit.
The army has court martial proceedings against at least 6 soldiers.
The Americans posing in the photos are the ones under court martial.
This has been going on for months before the photos finally leaked.
The photos must have been suppressed for obvious reasons.
It is bad news that they have leaked.
Lawyers for the soldiers do not deny the photos are legit.
These lawyers are blaming intelligence and commanding officers for the actions of their clients. They are maintaining that this was estblished proceedure by higher ups.
Rumor has it that civilian contractors are involved in some of the worst abuse.
The General in command of the Iraqi prisoners has been brushed aside.
The current rumor is that intelligence asked the prison MPs to soften up prisoners for interrogation.
The MPs involved were not prison guards and had no prior training in the proceedures and conduct regarding treatment of prisoner.
The pictures were in circulation among MPs in Iraq.
Remember, these are 18 year old kids with ipods and digital cameras, laptops. etc.
Having seen some of the abuse perpetrated by supposedly smarter 19 year old college Frat boys, is it any wonder that untrained American 18 year olds stuck with having to guard prisoners might not get it right?
Maybe one of the reasons why these have surfaced is the ready access to digital technology that allows troops to make and distribute such photos quickly and under the radar.
Supposedly an outraged recipient of a CD containing these photos supposedly blew the whistle.

This is really, really bad. Our press is not showing this but it is all over the Arab media. Not only are the Americans implicated but the British as well.
If I were a terrorist/Jihadist/bin Ladenist who wanted to stir up the Arab street, I would doctor some photos like those and release them.
It is incredibly stupid. It is terrible news.

The US does seem to have reversed course in Falloojah. I hope it is not too late to keep the situation from spinning out of control The US should have done something like this earlier. The best would have been to never dismiss the Iraqi army, and move commanders around so the troops they commanded were ones overseeing their home cities.

The bad news is it provides a model for other areas of Iraq to wrest power from the Americans. We could end up with a group of warring city-states. On the other hand, establishing a balance of power among the Iraqi ethnic groups would help stabilize the situation.

Iraq has similar ethnic tensions to Bosnia. Bosnia never stabiled until the US looked the other way while the Iranians and other Muslims armed the Bosnian Muslims. Once it was clear that Serb objectives could not be easily won by military means they negotiated. The same could work in Iraq. Iraq could also break up like Yugoslavia. Mess-O-potamia.

Steve Carr: Let me add (again, without any offense please) that I consider this whole concept of making statistical judgements about individuals dangerous and fallatious. While you can define a concept like "Arabs as a group" (whatever that means), and ascribe various observed or imagined properties to them, you can reason about them only probabilistically, i.e. in the context of large numbers.

I come from Germany, have traveled in a number of European countries, and know a number of people from various Middle-Eastern countries and surrounding areas (southeast Europe, northern Africa) who live here in the US, I regularly shop at a grocery store that caters to Mediterranean, Arabic, and Persian taste, and I can assure you that there is no reliable way to tell from which region somebody originates or to which culture they belong (quite a number of customers are Europeans). The giveaways are mostly language, and if they don't happen to speak, clothing style, choice of perfumes, etc.

Which is not to say that _most_ Middle-Eastern Arabs, central Africans, or Far-East Asians don't look distinctive, but you cannot make the reverse conclusion.

Here in California, for example, many people hold prejudices against "Chinese" drivers. But there is virtually no way to tell by appearance whether an Asian-looking person is coming from Asia, or is a second- or third-generation US citizen. How often have I heard "Chinese" (or less favorable characterizations) when people refer to an idiot driver when they have not seen the person yet. I have paid attention (lots of idiot drivers here), and my conclusion is that it is roughly in proportion to the ethnic breakdown of "drivers as a group".

Judging _individuals_ based on race or ethnicity alone is just bogus, and greatly contributes to the problems of this world.

The US press is writing that the US has changed policy in Iraq. Of course Bush will claim not to have changed anything.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8562002.htm

I agree, more or less, with an earlier poster--Bush isn't acknowledging what's happening in Fallujah as a pullback or a defeat because he figures if he doesn't, then the general public won't either. And he can continue spouting rubbish about how things are just getting better every day in every way in Iraq. Who knows if he even has a clear idea of what's happening? This is the guy who doesn't read newspapers and who relies on the likes of Condi and Cheney to give him most of his information. That and talking to his "higher father." So much of what's happened in Iraq was very predictable--and this is one reason why Bush, Cheney, Wolfovitz, Perle, Rummy, et al have failed the US so badly--because the State Dept. had studied Iraq thoroughly--yet all fo them chose to ignore the information in favor of their ideological obsession (and possibly resolving Bush's oedipal issues), chose to lie to the public and Congress, to shortchange the armed services, etc. Congress failed too, in refusing to insist upon a real debate and questioning of Bushian allegations/claims as well as giving him basically a blank check and way too much authority. Now it looks as though Bush has created a "widening circle of terror" --exactly the opposite of what he said would happen. Well, h and his cronies have their millions or billions of dollars and Bush has secret service protection for life--the rest of us just get to take our changes with the increasingly volatile and polarized world he's worked at making or making worse.

Last sentence should read: "take our chances in . . " should've previewed before posting.

Steve Carr: "I'll take it down a few notches."

I appreciate that. I worked on my latest post while also doing other things, so I missed what you posted meanwhile.

Sometimes what I say will cause people to go ballistic because it touches some nerve for which I have little advance appreciation, and I'm sure there are a few things in the other direction that would set me off. Those are cultural things.

Still I think in a forum like this (and generally in conversations between civilized and good-willing parties) correcting misunderstandings after the fact is preferrable to paranoid self-censorship. In fact, I prefer getting a strongly-worded objection to somebody silently taking a grudge.

So, hopefully, no offense, none taken.

I know precisely what we need to do - Georgie, pay attention here. We will bribe Russians to come and pacify Fallujah. Once they see Russian conscripts raping, torturing and killing anything that moves, all "resistance fighters" will beg for US to take over.

bakho: "Remember, these are 18 year old kids with ipods and digital cameras, laptops. etc."

Yes. Judging by the quality of the pictures, they look like screenshots from video footage. But maybe they are low-quality stills.

"Having seen some of the abuse perpetrated by supposedly smarter 19 year old college Frat boys, is it any wonder that untrained American 18 year olds stuck with having to guard prisoners might not get it right?"

Yes, frankly, it is. I didn't learn in school, and neither in the military, that you are free to act as you please if you feel unobserved. This guy Sgt. (?) Frederick pointed to not having been trained in the Geneva conventions. Excuse me? How have these dudes grown up? Does he mean to tell me that if unsupervised, you are free to commit atrocities, beat the shit out of people or whatnot, unless somebody specifically shows you an operations manual that disallows it? The guy was a corrections officer! (On which I won't further comment here in the interest of brevity.)

What I heard (unconfirmed) of the mother of Ms. Lynndie England (the girl giving the thumbs-up) is "The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us?". Towards the end of: http://wcco.com/topstories/topstories_story_121150140.html

"Maybe one of the reasons why these have surfaced is the ready access to digital technology that allows troops to make and distribute such photos quickly and under the radar."

Definitely yes. This I would call one of the blessings of digital technology; it has become much easier to make multimedia documents accessible to a wider public, by intention as well as by leaking or stupidity.

"Supposedly an outraged recipient of a CD containing these photos supposedly blew the whistle."

This is confirmed (not the CD part). Somebody (I forgot his name, it was quoted) showed this to one of his commanders.

cm- I in no way excuse what these guys did. My point is that you cannot leave gung-ho guys like this without proper supervision and proper orders. Teenagers can make terrible decisions and do. Hopefully they don't make a bad decision that gets themselves or someone else killed. They lack experience. Putting a group of teenagers together to run a prison is asking for trouble.

This is more than just a personal failure. This is a command failure. In addition, some of the "civilian contractors" are implicated and that military personnel were acting on "orders" /requests from civilian contractors. This has all the hallmarks of a rogue operation. Some people high in the chain of command deserve to be cashiered over this.

"Some people high in the chain of command deserve to be cashiered over this."

With the Bush Administration we have the United States Govt. as a spoiled protected rich boys toy -- and no one Ever, Under Any Circumstances, has to take for fall for Any Problem or Any Behavior, no matter how egregious.

We live in an oligarchy, remember?

You also have to wonder how the men and women in the US armed forces are going to adjust when they get back home.

I live in a region with a large US Army installation. There have already been beatings of spouses and even murder perpetrated by Iraqnam veterans. I don't think the first rotation is even complete yet.

It's sickening how American blood treasure is being pissed away in vain. All for government lies.

bakho: I think we are on the same page. I didn't want to suggest anything, just comment.

bakho:
> What we do know:
> The army thinks it is legit.
Some of the photos (lower 10 or so) are not among those published so far by any respectable source. You can't post two legit photos and then attach a dosen smudged snapshots from some skin flick and claim that "army thinks it's legit". Yeah, the guy on the chair may be legit; what about the rest of stuff there.

> The army has court martial proceedings against
> at least 6 soldiers.
So that proves that all the photos you can see on that bs website are real?

> The Americans posing in the photos are the
> ones under court martial.
Including those "Americans" in Warsaw Pact uniforms I take it? Oh boy, that adult-industry talent agency they work for must be in real trouble now...

PS. enlighteend one:
> I know precisely what we need to do ...We will
> bribe Russians to come and pacify Fallujah.
> Once they see Russian conscripts raping, torturing
> and killing anything that moves, all "resistance
> fighters" will beg for US to take over.

Exactly. Hey, that's how Saddam operated: have you seen any pictures then? Even now, after he's gone, there's nothing tangible. And why would there be? How difficult is it for the controlling power to make sure that what goes on inside a prison is not videotaped?

Something did happen, but what exactly remains to be determined; in the meantime, I think it's obvious that most if not all of the pictures on that albarash site are fakes.

Krom Karpinski's remarks, the Army has known about the photos (she saw in Jan) for some time. According to her, although she was in command of that cell block, CIA and contractors had access and privileges beyond(?) her command. So bahko's view that it was just teenagers out of control may be a little soft. For me it raises the question who was in command? Who are the military figures that Karpinski refers to?

Let me qualify my post to say that I have not seen all photos posted on the web. However, many that I have seen are legit and they depict the very soldiers under court martial. I am not suggesting that teenagers out of control explains the whole problem. It does explain the damning and damaging photos.

"Coming from a guy who just proved he can't read a short Reuters' article accurately, I am less than impressed with Bruce's appeal to authority."

Er, Patrick. As I pointed out in the thread below, that Reuters article is absolutely indeterminate as to whether that (and some of Powell's other quotes) came from his press conference or his CNN interview.

However, as you yourself have indicated, the transcript of the press conference itself shows that he did say it there -- and that there he spouted exactly the same Orwellian definition of "sovereignty" as "being free to do what we tell you to do" which Max Sawisky described. My error was in assuming that Powell could spout such idiotically contradictory things in the course of a single press conference -- I assumed that he would at least have to say totally contradictory things in two SEPARATE press interviews.

Don't shoot the whorehouse piano player, though -- when he makes idiotically self-contradictory statements to try to justify the administration's current actions, he's doing the best he can, because nobody in the administration has the slightest idea what to do now. To quote Robert Kagan tonight ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59795-2004May1.html ):

"All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now. Consider Fallujah: One week they're setting deadlines and threatening offensives; the next week they're pulling back. The latest plan, naming one of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard generals to lead the pacification of the city, is the kind of bizarre idea that only desperate people can conjure. The Bush administration is evidently in a panic, and this panic is being conveyed to the American people."

(By "the most blindly devoted Bush followers", he means, of course, people like Patrick.)

NBC Nightly News, by the way, elaborated in great detail on the fact that said Republican Guard general was intimately involved in Saddam's last "pacification" program against the Kurds, although they did also say that there's no evidence that he DIRECTLY ordered any of the massacres which accompanied that campaign. I rather doubt that this will comfort the Kurds.

My understanding is that the army has photos and some of those photos ended up with the press. Those photos are legit. Any photos are subject to question. However, numerous news organizations asked a lot of questions and documented that photos released were legit. However it happened, the consequences are very bad.

It goes much, much farther than that, Bakho. See the latest notes in the "Gen. Karpinski" thread above.

Yes, *some* of the photos appear legitimate. But not all that are offered by "Bernhard" for your viewing pleasure -- of those, most are fakes. But wait, there's more:

Doubt cast on Iraq torture photos

Sources close to the army have questioned the authenticity of photographs appearing to show British soldiers torturing an Iraqi prisoner.

An investigation has begun into claims British troops assaulted the prisoner before throwing him from a lorry.
The claims were made in the Daily Mirror which carried photos allegedly taken during the man's ordeal.

However the BBC's defence correspondent Paul Adams says sources close to The Queen's Lancashire Regiment believe many aspects of the photographs are suspicious.
He says they believe the pictures may not have even been taken in Iraq.

They believe the rifle is an SA80 mk 1 - which was not issued to troops in Iraq.

They say soldiers in Iraq wore berets or hard hats - and not floppy hats as in the photos.

They also believe the wrong type of Bedford truck is shown in the background - a type never deployed in Iraq.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3677311.stm

So, these may too be porn after all. So, what are we left with? A guy in a hood standing on a box. Well, that of course is not good either... but I wander if I ever see on that bs site pictures of torture (real and widely used) from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.

Also, this Italian guy who was shot recently: how does that accord with the Geneva Convention? If they can prevent deaths like these by pissing on a thousand prisoners, or making them stand on a box, I'd say, more power to them.

Well, Disgusted, first of all there's LOTS more interesting (and unquestioned) pictures than the guy standing on a box. For a few selections from the collection that the US military itself gave to "60 Minutes", see http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/ .

And I'm afraid that a very large part of the US military itself disagrees with you. To quote from that classified military report that Seymour Hersh got hold of ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact ):

"...A major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of 'sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses' at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:

" 'Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.'

"There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added— 'detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.' Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their 'extremely sensitive nature.'...

"Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood...

"A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., told the court, according to an abridged transcript made available to me... that witnesses had said that [Chip] Frederick, on one occasion, 'had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest.'...

"In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called 'O.G.A.,' or other government agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employees—was brought to his unit for questioning. 'They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.' The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, 'and therefore never had a number.'

"Frederick’s defense is, of course, highly self-serving. But the complaints in his letters and e-mails home were reinforced by two internal Army reports—Taguba’s and one by the Army’s chief law-enforcement officer, Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general...

"[Gen. Taguba] urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote."

And you seem not to have noticed that passage from tonight's NY Times article that deLong quotes above:

"Prisoners were beaten and threatened with rape, electrocution and dog attacks, witnesses told Army investigators, according to the report obtained by The New Yorker. Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept naked and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts, witnesses testified. Mr. Hersh notes that such degradations, while deeply offensive in any culture, are particularly humiliating to Arabs because Islamic law and culture so strongly condemn nudity and homosexuality.

"General Karpinski said she was speaking out because she believed that military commanders were trying to shift the blame exclusively to her and other reservists and away from intelligence officers still at work in Iraq.

" 'We're disposable,' she said of the military's attitude toward reservists. 'Why would they want the active-duty people to take the blame? They want to put this on the M.P.'s and hope that this thing goes away. Well, it's not going to go away.' "

The Washington Post tonight quotes another passage from one of Frederick's letters:

"Prisoners were interrogated using physical coercion, Frederick wrote. One prisoner with a broken arm was choked, he wrote, and dogs were used as tools of intimidation. Prisoners were made to remain for as long as three days in damp isolation cells without a toilet or running water, he wrote."

So, Disgusted, we're talking about a wee bit more than "pissing on prisoners or making them stand on a box". Now, if you want to make an argument for flat-out classic torture like Mother used to make as a military interrogation technique in our current situation, you're free to do so. But keep in mind another passage from Hersh's New Yorker article:

"The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. 'They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,' Rowell said. "You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say." You don’t get righteous information.'

"Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an 'imperative' security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo."

Just to clear up:

The pictures from the Memory Hole are legit.

Some of the pictures from the al basrah.net site are the same as those from the Memory hole, the ones we've all seen, involving putting naked men in suggestive and humiliating positions.

There are other pictures at the al basrah.net site, showing rape of females, that look obviously staged. Seriously. The uniforms on the guys, they're posing like, well...it's just obvious to me that it's really bad, cheaply made amateur porn-type stuff. It might have been done to be used as propaganda, don't know.

But I'd give it 95% odds that the most egregious pictures (female rape) are fake.

I fucking hope so. And I hope that people in the ME recognize them as fake too.

The military investigation resulted in Karpinsky being replaced. Is that it? She is the fall guy? Is there a Red Cross report? Were there any other suspensions? Were there any reccommendations about the presence of cameras in these places? What role and authority do non-military personnel have in these interrogation camps? Can we expect any changes in the conduct of our military if the chain of command is as ineffective as it was under Karpinski?

Or is this a replica of the Bush/Cheney meeting with the 9/11 investigation?

Yeah, I've read all that; I don't deny that stuff is happening there. What I'm saying is that first, what we know for sure is not nearly as bad as is suggested by a lot of funny websites and reports in the Mirror. Also, I am not an army PR representative; what I say doesn't need to match official army statements; I'm just thinking for myself, that's all. Torture of course is repugnant -- but so is war, and many other things. There are laws against it, yet not many signatories actually adhere -- and far from everyone is actually a signatory. I'd like to see a similar public outcry over someone other than the U.S. (keeping in mind that the U.S., even if these reports are totally veracious, is still the least offender in the overall picture.) I don't buy into one-sided civic stance; to me it looks too much like yet another kind of infowar effort, perpertrated by political operatives of hostile powers along with a number of western "useful idiots" and disingenuous media characters who made a paid profession out of appropriately-directed and very selective protest. There's somehow always willing to human-shield Saddam from the U.S. (to a great media acclaim), but somehow no one attempts the same in Sudan or Chechnya. Hey, of course, the arabs and russians are known not to give a crap, will allow no media in the area, and will actually shoot, plus the sudanese and chechens don't have the requisit skills, political operatives in the right places, and money to organize the useful idiots in the west, while the russians are very adept at misusing the openness of the western societies for organizing all kinds of "international solidarity" in their own favour, and by now it's clear that the arabs have learned this art from them. Stalin used to have all "proletarian international" in the West working full time for the benefit of russian geopolitics; Communism has remained an unlikely utopian dream, but they did manage to overrun most of Eastern Europe. I don't see much of a difference now with left/palestinian/arab/etc. hullabaloo. No matter how bad the real things are, attaching a pack of porno snapshots to a couple of legit photos is very telling; it gives a very clear idea of the real intentionality of the providers of such reporting -- not truth, but self-seeking manipulation of public opinion, by crude fraud if need be.

Finally, my personal view on torture: I think it should not be used to gratuitously abuse prisoners. The key word here is "gratuitously". That's why I immediately thought those hot pictures of Warsaw-Pact clad "americans" doing a thoroughly un-iraqi girl so enthusiastically, were fraud. However, when it comes to getting intelligence that matters -- during a war, right on the battlefield, when what you know determines your military success, the life of your soldiers, and the very same civilians, btw, that everyone pretends to be so terribly concerned about -- here I'm much less certain of what's right and acceptable. Personally, if I had a buddy of mine in trouble, and I knew that I can bail him out by kicking a couple of imprisoned bastards in the nuts, I'm very certain I'd do it. If I could ensure that I can free this brave italian guy how was shot in cold blood by running a truck over the whole Al Ghuarb, I'd probably do it too. War is war, it's not to be fought with one hand tied behind your back by all kinds of "international agreements" that are, moreover, understood to work only one way. If you're not prepared for that, don't engage in war (which, I suspect, is long-term impossible in our best of all worlds.)

Furthermore, I think that you have to accept limitations of law on what you can do to further your cause only when you can expect your "co-signatories" to reciprocate. I don't think this is remotely the case though; it may have been possible when dealing with a state (like Saddam's Iraq, for example), but when dealing with hell knows whom in the terrorist context, this is not to be expected: not logically, not based on experience -- there's no accountability, they're not afraid to do whatever, deniablity is the whole reason behind terrorism. And so I say, stick your sensibilities where the sun don't shine, and do what needs to be done. Remember this italian guy, remember the burnt and dismembered contractors, remember this journalist who got his throat cut in Pakistan, and so on and so forth. Meet the challenge on its own level, don't play a gallant knight-palladine when dealing with someone with a very different outlook -- for you will lose, and lose like a fool.

When I see these shady combatants stopping the use of their own children and other civilians as human shields, then I'll say don't bomb the cities. Absent that, I don't want to here any hysterics about civilian casualties. We are already careful enough to avoid them as much as possible. If you don't want mosques bombed, don't use them as arms depots and sniper nests. If you don't want to be tortured, start by not torturing yourself. If torture is repugnant to you, let it be repugnant in any context, rather only when a lightest, barely-qualifying kind of it happens to be commited by a few US MPs (reduced to expedients and not as an approved policy, and with the subsequent media exposure, court martials, and massive mea culpas by everyone. Say something about its quiet use by the russians, arabs, and north korea too -- it's much worse there, and the fact that there are no media reports about it and websites with photos is obviously not due to its not happening there, but because on one hand they of course keep it quiet, and otoh, the multitude of vociferous justice seekers operating this side of the ocean -- including not only the "Bernhards", but our own (who you'd think should know better and have no hidden political designs) -- are somehow thoroughly uninterested. Show me an Al Ahram article on torture in Egypt or Iran.

PS. As far as force in interrogation's not working -- that's just a PC pronouncement. If it weren't working, it wouldn't be used so much throughout the history. That is the biggest problem: it does actually work, especially when there's a time constraint: it's crude, yes, but very much working -- and that is precisely why it's so hard to get rid of.

"Er, Patrick. As I pointed out in the thread below, that Reuters article is absolutely indeterminate as to whether that (and some of Powell's other quotes) came from his press conference or his CNN interview."

Funny that I was able to determine that it was attributed to Powell at the press conference simply from reading the article.

"However, as you yourself have indicated, the transcript of the press conference itself shows that he did say it there -- and that there he spouted exactly the same Orwellian definition of 'sovereignty' as 'being free to do what we tell you to do' which Max Sawisky described."

No, just as I predicted, the line in the Reuters article was taken out of context. There was nothing "Orwellian" about it all, read in context. Max is in denial. As are you.

Today's bad example of keeping your story straight is:

"If you "smell a rat", it's only because you're not using enough deoderant, Patrick. MaxSpeak quoted this from Reuters, which in turn quoted it from an interview Powell did with CNN -- NOT from Powell's press conference described by the Globe."

Followed by this revision:

"Er, Patrick. As I pointed out in the thread below, that Reuters article is absolutely indeterminate as to whether that (and some of Powell's other quotes) came from his press conference or his CNN interview."

More crap by "Bernhard":
>Some of photos at >http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow
>...show females beeing abused. According to the Iraqi
>bloggers Riverbend such things are happening
>(http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#108059254488988448)

Two questions:
1. What the hell is "the Iraqi bloggers Riverbend"? Judging from the lacking grammar ("seperate", etc.), not a solid media source. Anyone can set up a blog on the net; a blog's existense itself says nothing about the credibility of the blogger. Maybe "Bernhard" set up this blog himself and then travels around posting links to it, like this blog is some kind of authority.

2. A better one: there's nothing on that "bloggers Riverbend" page proving (or even saying anything) about females' beeing abused. So, even regardless of the respectability of this Riverbend blog, Bernhard's statement "According to the Iraqi bloggers Riverbend such things are happening" is a bald faced lie.

It's amazing (but educative) to observe how guys like "Bernhard" are working the net: posting outrageous, but fake photographs and inviting the public to take a look (who cares, right? Not everyone will notice little stuff like strange uniforms or painted faces... no one on the so-called "arab street" for sure), posting links to sites that are supposed to prove something, while the actual referred-to material does nothing of a kind (even if we were to overlook the fact that the site itself is half-literate drivel), and so on. "Calomniez, calomniez, il en restera toujours quelque chose."

I bet this "Bernhard" (al Moqtaba) draws a nice Al Qaeda salary (though it seems his lies are too crude, at least if his work is intended for the western consumption.) Time to change the online name from "Bernhard" so something else now... "Bernhard" is compromised.

cm, do us all a favor and quit feeding us bad logic and playing the race card.

"Here in California many people hold prejudices against "Chinese" drivers. But there is virtually no way to tell by appearance whether an Asian-looking person is coming from Asia, or is a second- or third-generation US citizen."

What's that got to do with anything? There's still a very easy way to tell by appearance whether a particular Californian DID NOT come from Asia, whether immediately, or in a second generation. We are not trying to distinguish Asian-looking people in Calofornia from Asian -looking people somewhere else. Steve is (reasonably) saying that this "iraqi" woman is no iraqi, just as one can always tell if one of your calfornians is NOT of Asian extraction. By itself this is not of course a complete proof of the photos' being fakes, but combined with other suspiscious details of those pictures, it is rather telling - things add up.

So, this very fallacious ad California argument does nothing to prove the supposedly bona-fide iraqi origin of muddy photos of a bunch of unmilitary-looking plump boys in blackface, dressed in polish uniforms, obviously pretending to mishandle a blue-eyed and button-nosed girl, who you say, is middle-eastern. That this girl is not mideastern type is clear, and stating that much has nothing to do with racism. Which doesn't mean that this couldn't happen in Iraq, no, it only makes it very unlikely: maybe them "americans" prefer to wear ill-fitting dark-green polish fatigues - very appropriate in european forests, but rather inappropriate in the sandy Iraq; maybe they like to grotesquely paint faces before causing mayhem; maybe the US army command doesn't worry about little pranks like that; maybe the boys brought this European-looking girl with them to Iraq so as to avoid offending local sensibilities when making porno - which is why the american military is there to begin with. OK, who knows, maybe the world is run by aliens, that could be too.... not very likely though.

Sullivan: "No, just as I predicted, the line in the Reuters article was taken out of context. There was nothing 'Orwellian' about it all, read in context. Max is in denial. As are you."

Please. What Powell said was that the coming Iraqi "government" will possess "sovereignty to invite us to stay" but not "sovereignty to tell us to leave". A very strange kind of sovereignty, although Orwell would have recognized it. Powell could, of course, have said simply that the Iraqi government will have sovereignty in some matters, but not on this particular very big point -- but then, if he'd said that, he would have been giving the game away even faster, so he decided to resort to Newspeak instead.

Any comments on what Kagan (like so many other conservatives) is now saying about Bush, and about his rapidly shrinking flock of "blind" supporters (such as yourself)?

Disgusted: "Say something about [torture's]s quiet use by the Russians, Arabs, and North Korea too -- it's much worse there, and the fact that there are no media reports about it and websites with photos is obviously not due to its not happening there, but because on one hand they of course keep it quiet, and otoh, the multitude of vociferous justice seekers operating this side of the ocean -- including not only the 'Bernhards', but our own (who you'd think should know better and have no hidden political designs) -- are somehow thoroughly uninterested. Show me an Al Ahram article on torture in Egypt or Iran."

Well, hell, Disgusted, show me an ADMINISTRATION denunciation of torture by the Russians or Egyptians, or by anyone who happens to be (nominally) on our side in this war. Which, of course, isn't happening either, precisely because we're usually farming out the suspects we want tortured to those governments to torture them for us (Jordan and Egypt in particular), so that we can keep our own hands technically clean. Kind of like Pontius Pilate.

And, speaking of Newspeak, from today's NY Times:

"Gen. Richard B. Myers insisted that only 'a handful' of U.S. troops were to blame [for the torture], but said he could not rule out that this was part of a wider pattern."

At this point the Administration reminds me of that Fisher-Price toy commercial recounting the various bizarre excuses kids come up with for how their toys got broken. It ends with an infuriated mother snapping at her daughter, "Teresa, what's happened to this dollhouse?" (The dollhouse is completely caved in in the middle like a saddle.) Teresa, who's about four, sticks her finger in her mouth, thinks hard for a few seconds, and then says tentatively, "Nothin' ". Teresa obviously has a future with the Bush Administration.

This is a good time to point out that the foreign-policy Neocons are actually divided into two radically different groups:

(1) The Realistic Neocons, such as Kagan and Max Boot, who were always well aware that occupying and trying to reform Iraq would cost one hell of a lot but still thought that on balance it was worth it. (They're open to question in their belief that we couldn't spend that huge amount of money and military strength better elsewhere, but at least they were honest about the cost.)

(2) The Iraq Pollyannas -- primarily the unholy trinity of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz -- who unfortunately gained Bush's ear, and who were convinced that we could do this on a dime. After all, their dear friend Chalabi kept reassuring them of it, and if you can't trust Ahmed...

In that last connection, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4881157/ :

"NEWSWEEK has learned that top Bush administration officials have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some of his top aides have supplied Iran with 'sensitive' information on the American occupation in Iraq. U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq. There are also indications that Chalabi has provided details of U.S. security operations. According to one U.S. government source, some of the information Chalabi turned over to Iran could 'get people killed.' (A Chalabi aide calls the allegations 'absolutely false.')

"Why would Chalabi risk his cozy ties to Washington by cuddling up to Iran's fundamentalist rulers? Administration officials say Chalabi may be working both sides in an effort to solidify his own power and block the advancement of rival Iraqis. A U.S. official familiar with information presented to policymakers said that White House advisers were concerned that Chalabi was 'playing footsie' with the Iranians.

"Yet Chalabi still has loyal defenders among some neoconservatives in the Pentagon. They say Chalabi has provided information that saved American lives. 'Rushing to judgment and cutting off this relationship could have unintended consequences,' says one Pentagon official, who did not respond to questions about Chalabi's dealings with Tehran."

Josh Marshall also reports that a large number of people in the CIA are convinced that Chalabi (A) deliberately tipped off Saddam to the CIA's 1996 coup attempt (once again because he wouldn't have gained power from it), and (B) learned in advance about Al Qaida's imminent 2003 bombing of Jordan's embassy in Baghdad and kept it secret (which the Jordanians also believe on the basis of phone intercepts).

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that it's now increasingly clear that Bush was also royally rolled by Ariel Sharon ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61482-2004May2.html ):

"President Bush took a huge diplomatic gamble two weeks ago when he forcefully embraced Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and handed Israel key concessions on a final peace deal. The backlash in Arab and European countries was especially intense, but administration officials argued Sharon's plan carried the seeds of a breakthrough in the stalled peace process.

"Now, the Likud Party's overwhelming rejection of that plan has left the administration's credibility in the Middle East in tatters. The tilt toward Israel will not soon be forgotten by the Arab world, but it will be harder for the administration to claim that Bush's support of Sharon has made a difference. Moreover, the Likud vote comes when the image of the United States is already greatly damaged by accounts of psychological and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners by some U.S. soldiers.

" 'The real objective of giving Sharon the blank check he left with was to shore up his political support at home,' said a State Department official speaking on the condition of anonymity. 'We paid a very high price and did not get a return.'

"Samuel W. Lewis, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said the vote yesterday 'is an embarrassment diplomatically' for the Bush administration and 'now they have the worst of both worlds.' He faulted the administration for giving in to many of Sharon's key demands, including saying that in a final peace deal some Israel settlements in the West Bank would be retained and that Palestinians would have to give up their right to return to lands they lost during Israel's war of independence. Instead, he said, Bush should have given just general support to the plan.

"The administration's next step is unclear. U.S. officials, fuming that Sharon did not wage a strong lobbying campaign once he had Bush's support, still hope Sharon will be able to push his plan through because polls show that most Israelis support it...

" 'We have to prove there is a process underway and we weren't played by Sharon,' the State Department official said. 'But we'll get hammered and our judgment will be questioned beyond belief.'

"Seeking to mitigate the diplomatic backlash, administration officials have emphasized that the letters with Sharon stressed that a final peace deal needed to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians -- and that the letters also committed Israel to take steps to ease Palestinians' suffering...

"Arab officials privately said they feared Sharon had lured Bush into a diplomatic trap. Although Bush administration officials had said for weeks they were not negotiating with the Sharon government, merely listening to ideas, Arab officials believed every line of the letters between Bush and Sharon was carefully argued and negotiated, with Sharon winning most of the concessions.

"Moreover, though Sharon remained publicly committed to the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the 'road map,' Arab officials were dubious. They viewed Sharon's plan as an effort to freeze the process for years. In a little-noticed letter between Rice and Sharon's chief of staff, Israel promised a key U.S. goal -- 'territorial contiguity' of a Palestinian state -- in only the northern West Bank. The Israelis pledged to aim for 'transportation contiguity' in the rest of the West Bank, meaning a state scattered among Israeli settlements and linked by roads and bridges."

Bruce, " show me an ADMINISTRATION denunciation". First off, I don't remember if it was the administration or not, but there was a lot of concern over Russian deeds in Chechnya. But more relevant to the topic: I don't remember the administration resorting to fake photos to score a win in the propaganda war. That's what we're talking about here. Moreover, "Bernhard" is not any "administration", friendly or hostile; he's just a bs monger (deniablility again.) And I do not blindly condone the use of torture, what I'm saying is first, let's not be so quick with conclusions after seeing some junk on the net, and second, let's be a bit realistic.

bernie: I was not arguing the authenticity of the pictures, and neither did I say the woman shown was Middle-Eastern. I was trying to illustrate using a number of examples that making judgements based on ethnic appearance about things that are not causally tied to ethnic appearance is bogus. I do concede however that the driver example was not very well thought out. I meant to illustrate that US-born "Asians" who grew up here are US citizens of mostly US culture, and the only "Asian" thing about them is probably their appearance. I shouldn't have tied it to the driving thing (and no race card was intended). Anyway this has gotten way off-topic on top of it.

No question that our Islamic Fascist opposition is (A) repulsive, and (B) willing to utilize faked propaganda whenever they get the slightest opportunity to do so. But, once again, even if you admit that there are some desperate situations in which torture for information may be morally justified, there are also reasons why we signed the Geneva Convention -- and why we followed it even for Imperial Japan, a deadly enemy which refused to follow it for our POWs. And one very big part of that reason is that we are going to have to live with these people after the war is over, unless we kill all of them -- even less practical with the Moslem world than it was with the Japanese.

When our "military intelligence" (which may be a contradiction in terms, as Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Sen. Moynihan have both suggested) decided to start methodically torturing Iraqi POWs for information, how the hell did they think they could cover it up afterwards? And what the hell did they think the reaction of the Moslem world would be when the news got out?

Actually, I think Robert Kagan answered that question in the Post last night, when he said that the Administration doesn't have the slightest idea at this point what they are going to do from one day to the next. I don't think they ever DID have the slightest idea what to do. From the very start, they operated on the assumption that virtually all the people of Iraq would run out and throw flowers at our troops, no matter how sleazily and negligently we acted. They took this COMPLETELY for granted -- and so had absolutely no backup plans, and no idea at all what to do, when it didn't happen. Christ, they didn't even have any plans to occupy and guard Saddam's WMD sites, which were supposed to be all over the country! Apparently they thought Iraq's Grateful Citizens would do that for us themselves, too. If Bush was the only moron in this administration, we might survive that -- but the people telling him what to do, Cheney and Rumsfeld, are also morons, and that's deadly.

By the way, folks, regarding the "Fallujah Defense Force" which is being set up by that Republican Guard general at our request: NBC News interviewed one of its members tonight, who calmly told them -- on camera, in English -- that its real military goal is "to throw the American occupier first out of Fallujah, and then out of all Iraq." (And, no, Patrick, I didn't get that quote wrong, as you'll see over the next few days.)

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. "The Economist" suggests that there's a genuine chance that the entire UN "Oil for Food" scandal has been trumped up out of thin air by Ahmed Chalabi, presumably to keep the UN from interfering with his plans to take over as much of Iraq as possible himself:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_02.php#002904

I take it Bruce isn't going to comment on how he could determine:

"from an interview Powell did with CNN -- NOT from Powell's press conference"

At first, but now change his story to it being "completely indeterminate" where it came from.

Bruce:
>No question that our Islamic Fascist opposition is
>(A) repulsive, and (B) willing to utilize faked
>propaganda whenever they get the slightest opportunity
>to do so.
No argument here, of course.

>But, once again, even if you admit that there are some
>desperate situations in which torture for information
>may be morally justified, there are also reasons why we
>signed the Geneva Convention -- and why we followed it
>even for Imperial Japan, a deadly enemy which refused to
>follow it for our POWs.
A good point; accepted. To me, this suggests that the reported cases of abuse of iraqi prisoners are accidental excesses and not a matter of policy.

>And one very big part of that reason is that we are
>going to have to live with these people after the war
>is over, unless we kill all of them
"These people" have lived (and continue to live) under brutal, torturing, wholly inhumane regimes since times immemorial. Whatever the U.S. may have done there is nothing in comparison. Not that I say that it's OK; what I'm saying rather is that your argument is weak here. It is our own sensibilities and the media that make this a problem, not the fact that some brutal excesses happened and that now, we (?) "will have to live with these people". These people (in fact, the absolute majority of people on earth) are used to much worse. For example, they'd lived under Saddam for thirty years and all went just swimmingly. If we lose there, it will not be because of our supposed brutality, but bullshit back home, we will defeat ourselves. In most cases, when there's a lot of complaints about brutality, it is because there isn't actually much brutality, 'cause if there was any, no one would dare to speak -- which is what happens in most places.

> When our "military intelligence"...decided to start
>methodically torturing Iraqi POWs for information,
I don't know anything that suggests, much less proves, that our intelligence decided to start torturing methodically. Moreover, in my view, the very fact that there's a scandal evidences that there's nothing methodical there: if that were a matter of policy, it would be very easy to hide; just like the rest of the world does it.

>how the hell did they think they could cover it up
>afterwards?
Are you kidding? What's so difficult about that. To get rid of a few dosen of unwanted witnesses in times of war, when thousands die for no reason? OK, you torture for information, and then take them to the backyard and shoot them in cold blood. Here, you've covered it up. Or, if you want to be humane and sensitive, you tell them that you let them go, but if they ever run their mouths bad things will happen to them and their family. Not as good as far as covering things up, but still fairly reliable.

>And what the hell did they think the reaction of
>the Moslem world would be when the news got out
Yes. And forget the Moslem world (there's no such thing, these are totalitarian societies, what goes by the name of "the Moslem world" is actually propaganda by their ruling cliques); much more important: what did they think the reaction back home would be? It is *here* that the torture is unacceptable, not in the Moslem world.

And so -- even though it's obviously bad for propaganda, still you think it's done on purpose, methodically? The obviousness of conclusion should make us question our premises here. The russians, saudis, egyptians, north koreans cut people in pieces alive when they need to and have no trouble hiding it afterwards. I suspect it's not difficult if you do it deliberately; you simply take care. To me it's obvious, that if such care hasn't been taken, it's because the event itself has been accidental, that is, no one expected it and was not preparing to handle the likely ramifications. Maybe I'm wrong? Please show me where.

>Actually, I think Robert Kagan answered that question
>in the Post last night, when he said that the
>Administration doesn't have the slightest idea at this
>point what they are going to do from one day to the
>next.
That is an opinion of Mr Kagan that he's fully entitled to. But no more than that. And he's not in Iraq, running around with a gun in his hand, trying to achieve something, he bears no responsibility for anything, it's just talk. If he's wrong, he's not gonna die, his soldiers aren't gonna die, he's not gonna lose a war.

But even if true, so what. War is like that. You start it, you plan as much as you can, but then... whatever happens, happens. No one has divine powers to foresee everything and map out future developments in the most nitty gritty detail. You can't completely avoid having to think on your feet -- at some level, at some point at least. That is so even when driving to work every day; how much more so it should be in an enterprise as unpredictable and complex as war.

>From the very start, they operated on the assumption
>that virtually all the people of Iraq would run out and
>throw flowers at our troops, no matter how sleazily and
>negligently we acted.
I don't recall any official statements to this effect.

>By the way, folks, regarding the "Fallujah Defense
>Force" which is being set up by that Republican Guard
>general at our request: NBC News interviewed one of its
>members tonight, who calmly told them -- on camera, in
>English -- that its real military goal is "to throw the
>American occupier first out of Fallujah, and then out of
>all Iraq."
That tells you how much US brutality there is there, if they're not afraid to make such statements -- openly, on TV. Now, *that* is a problem, in my view.

Patrick, really. YOU said -- initially -- that Powell's comments weren't in the Boston Globe article, and that you therefore "smelled a rat", by which I assumed you meant that you thought Sawicky was faking Powell's comment. I then did the obvious thing: double-checked the Globe article to make sure you'd read it right, then consulted Sawicky (which you didn't bother to do before shooting off your mouth), found he'd derived his information from the Reuters story instead, and concluded that if Powell really didn't say it in the press conference described by the Globe, he must have said it in the CNN interview that was also described by the Reuters piece.

It wasn't later on (in your comment to Sawicky, which I didn't see), that you switched to the completely new cock-and-bull story that Powell really did say that, but that his weird comment had been somehow "misinterpreted". (By the way, I see no attempt by you at all to defend Powell's Adventure in Newspeak. Presumably you're hoping we'll all forget about the central subject of this discussion if you fling enough distractions around -- which, after all, is your standard operating technique.)

And now, I'm afraid, I must drop this particular exercise in diminishing returns. Like Gandalf the White, I have better things to do with my time than bandy deliberately crooked words with a lackey till the lightning falls -- and the lightning is now falling pretty damn fast in Iraq.

Disgusted: "To me, this suggests that the reported cases of abuse of Iraqi prisoners are accidental excesses and not a matter of policy."

Read the Hersh story, D -- and then read the solid confirmation of it from the latest news stories. It WAS a matter of policy -- and the fact that we did it but didn't shoot the victims afterwards was because (A) that policy was the totally incoherent, jury-rigged "policy" that the Bushites ordered after their original Pollyanna scenario broke down in Iraq, and (B) the Bushites were (and are) still sticking to that part of their strategy that called for us to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq as a whole, rather than by simply terrorizing the entire country (and the entire Moslem world) into bowing to our Superior Will. (After all, you'll recall that the "let them hate as long as they fear" strategy has been a spectacular failure for the Israelis in that tiny patch of Islam called Palestine. It really is wise to remember that the guy who originally stated that strategy was Caligula.) The Bushites' idiocy in Iraq was their stubborn belief that they could win the Iraqis' hearts and minds for a dime.

Which, of course, is why I referred to Kagan's article to explain our weird combination of torture and a lack of total ruthlessness: this administration not only doesn't know from day to day NOW what it will do in Iraq,, but it never DID know from day to day what it would do after the Pollyanna Scenario collapsed immediately upon our entry into Baghdad.
_______________________________________

Disgusted: "These people (in fact, the absolute majority of people on earth) are used to much worse. For example, they'd lived under Saddam for thirty years and all went just swimmingly."

Then mightn't it be wise of you to ask yourself why they are raising screaming hell at us, D? Even before the torture revelations, the latest Gallup poll of Iraqis showed that 2/3 of them -- and that includes the Shiites and Kurds -- wanted us to leave IMMEDIATELY. What we're hearing now, with monotonous regularity, from the Iraqi man on the street in press interviews is that "the Americans have proven themselves to be as bad as Saddam". We aren't, of course -- but we are up against an entire billion-person culture saturated with fanatical religious bigotry, with the result that most Mideast Moslems are trained to strongly dislike and distrust Americans from birth simply because we're non-Moslem and therefore Immoral. In a situation like that, the only hope to change their minds is to treat them as kindly as possible -- but that would require really massive spending during our occupation, which the Bushites were totally unwilling to do. Now Moslems worldwide have concluded that we are indeed every bit as Evil as their religious leaders have always told them all non-Moslems are. Which is what I meant when I said that the torture was both a crime AND a mistake, and that the "mistake" part of it may end up doing tremendously more harm than the "crime" part.
__________________________________

Disgusted: "No one has divine powers to foresee everything and map out future developments in the most nitty gritty detail. You can't completely avoid having to think on your feet -- at some level, at some point at least. That is so even when driving to work every day; how much more so it should be in an enterprise as unpredictable and complex as war."

Rumsfeld: "You can't predict the future. You can't even come close. So why bother? Why try?"

Dwight Eisenhower: "In war, any individual plan will always turn out to be usless -- but the PROCESS of planning is absolutely crucial, to prepare for contingencies and possible alternative sequences of events."

Ike, needless to say, was completely right. Which is part of what I meant when I said that if ancient Rome really had been run by the likes of Bush and Rumsfeld, Hannibal could probably have conquered it with one elephant.
___________________________

Me: "From the very start, they operated on the assumption that virtually all the people of Iraq would run out and throw flowers at our troops, no matter how sleazily and negligently we acted."

Disgusted: "I don't reall seeing any official statements to that effect."

Read what Cheney and Wolfowitz said -- repeatedly and publicly -- before the war, D. And read the public prewar prediction of Andrew Natsios -- appointed by Bush to run a large part of the reconstruction effort -- that the total cost of reconstructing Iraq would be only $2 billion. (You'll hve to look for it in Google, though -- the White House has now yanked that comment by Natsios off its official website.)

And then consider that the nitwits obviously acted on precisely that belief -- right down to failing for weeks to put together any effort to occupy and guard the multitude of likely WMD sites thought to exist in Iraq, in the apparent belief that the Grateful Citizens would do all that for us too!

And keep in mind that Rumsfeld, in particular, isn't just wrong; he is, literally, nuts -- a Defense Department version of Captain Queeg, as revealed constantly in his public statements. And that (according to the NY Times) he is still Bush's favorite cabinet officer, and Bush plans to keep him on throughout his second term.

Bruce:
>Read the Hersh story, D -- and then read the solid
>confirmation of it from the latest news stories. It WAS
>a matter of policy"

I've read this article once and do not recall anything about the use of torture being a policy in Iraq. I could have forgotten or overlooked that, of course, so all you have to do now is to support your contentions with facts, so I may see that it is indeed true and you are right, and I am wrong (which I'll be happy to admit. Could you point me to where it says this (maybe post a quote?)

Bruce:
>Then mightn't it be wise of you to ask yourself why they
>are raising screaming hell at us, D?"

Yes, it would be very good thing consider. I think it's because:

a) we let them
(not enough brutality; nothing like that has ever happened under Saddam -- and it's not that he didn't give reasons for complaints or there was no television in Saddam's Iraq), and

b) because the people you see speaking are not just random guys on the street but probably insurgents or baathists, or iranian political operatives trained in propaganda warfare just doing their job. After all, that's what the media are for, right? Especially since we practically encourage them: after all, what is there to be afraid of? We wouldn't do anything bad to them, that would be against the law.

But perhaps there's more: since we don't control many areas, I'm sure that people who think otherwise *are* afraid to speak on TV -- they *do* have a lot to be afraid of because the terrorists are not against torture, you see, and cannot be bothered with the Geneva Convention. So a regular guy who perhaps is very glad to see Americans there is simply afraid that these guys from Al Moqtaba "army" will cut his throat an hour later. Who's there to protect him? No one. So you hear what is safe to say publicly under the circumstances.

And btw, this hypothetical guy doesn't need to be an iranian agent: ANY iraqi guy, even with no hostile fighting agenda, understands the above, and if asked to say something will say what is safe to say, fully minding the fact that the journalists will depart in a half hour, but he will have to remain in the area infested with thugs, who will treat him to something worse than making him stand on a box or even pissing on him. And they won't invite the media to videotape the procedure.

Bruce:
>Rumsfeld: "You can't predict the future. You can't even
>come close. So why bother? Why try?"

The source, please. I'm mostly interested in the "why bother/why try" part.

Bruce:
>Dwight Eisenhower: "In war, any individual plan will
>always turn out to be usless -- but the PROCESS of
>planning is absolutely crucial, to prepare for
>contingencies and possible alternative sequences of
>events."

I don't see any contradiction between the two citations. Nor do Eisenhower's words somehow contradict what I'd said in my earlier message: Indeed one needs to plan -- and do the best possible work at that. But no amount of planning can possibly cover every possibility. Things happen; that is to be expected -- and of course if something unforseen does happen, the very fact of it is not an uncontrovertible evidence of a lack of apporpriate advance planning.

Bruce:
>From the very start, they operated on the assumption
>that virtually all the people of Iraq would run out and
>throw flowers at our troops, no matter how sleazily and
>negligently we acted."

Disgusted:
>>I don't recall seeing any official statements to that
>>effect."

Bruce:
>Read what Cheney and Wolfowitz said -- repeatedly and
>publicly -- before the war, D."

I'll gladly do that: have you got a reference ? (I'm especially interested in the "no matter how sleazily and negligently we acted" part.)

Bruce:
>failing for weeks to put together any effort to occupy
>and guard the multitude of likely WMD sites thought to
>exist in Iraq,
I'm not sure what this is about. Are there any reports of important places not having been suitably protected and something dangerous having been stolen from there or used maliciously? Again, you'll have to help me with the original source of this information; w/o such, I simply don't know what to make of it.

Bruce:
>Even before the torture revelations, the latest Gallup
>poll of Iraqis showed that 2/3 of them -- and that
>includes the Shiites and Kurds -- wanted us to leave
>IMMEDIATELY
Hmmm... Kurds want us to leave? That's a bit anti-intuitive. And how could anyone question two-thirds of Iraqis anyway? Eespecially in the current conditions.

Well, again -- a link to the place where you saw this reported, along with an apposite quote perhaps, will resolve the conundrum.

Those are the funniest pictures I ever saw. Those big fat Iraqi asses climbing all over each other sweaty. Ha ha

The Iraqis love gay porn and man love!
A real rainbow nation !!!!!

LONG LIVE THE GAY SEX IRAQIS!!!!!!!!!!!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

I tried going to this website to see for myself:
http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow
and no such website seems to exist.
So, what's the real site name?

It was there just yesterday, porn and all. But I'm not surprised it's gone; this was obviously not a legit reporting source. Just an fly-by-night propaganda outfit packed with anti-american lies.

PS. Bruce, as I see, has not provided any of the sources that I had asked for, things to support his many overly certain opinions. That, too, I find educative: push these guys against the wall, one line at a time; ask them to put up or shut up, and whaddaya think? They invariably shut up. That's good.

It is more than a little disturbing to see so many of you speak of the pictures of women getting raped as "just porn."

"Just" pornogrpahy of men gang raping women that men use to masterbate themselves to orgasm?

"Just" a staged (or not staged?) rape of women by soldiers is what porn users want to see in such large numbers they flood the internet and find their unsolicited way to my Hotmail account?

"Much of the abuse was sexual, with prisoners often kept naked and forced to perform simulated and real sex acts, witnesses testified. Mr. Hersh notes that such degradations, while deeply offensive in any culture"

Apparently he has not done any browsing on pornography websites else he would rephrase that statement to say, "such degradations of men, while deeply offensive in any culture, are a free market protected masterbatory aid and form of men's entertainment when such degradations are done to women."

Sam

LETTER TO EDITOR:

The horrifying photos of US servicemen raping an Iraqi women, posted from http://www.albasrah.net, are fakes,

They have been floating around on the Internet for a few weeks to my knowledge, and are purported to be from a Russian pay-sex site. Note that the website mixes these photos with the real photos of abuse. Unsurprisingly albasrah.net is connected to an anti-semitic and pro-Baathist (pro-Saddam) organization known as Free Arab Voice. The site is registered in the Netherlands.

I hope you will take action on these photos being on your website by making a contraction, or take steps to prove that these are in fact authentic.

the location
http://www.albasrah.net/images/iraqi-pow/iraqi-pow
is not working ro just not exist but I understand that is very bad things was in there so if it was real pictures of Iraqi women in that situation I stress that the accursing will touch the Americans soldires and they will feel the real horror ...

Buy www.i-directv.net this it is a wonderful addition to anyones home entertainment system.

Get WWW.IDEBTCONSOLIDATION.ORG the debt relief you are searching for here!

WWW.E-CREDIT-CARD-DEBT.COM

Get WWW.IDEBTCONSOLIDATION.ORG the debt relief you are searching for here!

Get www.all-debt-consolidation.org help with your credit problems here!

Online Casino Directory

Now you can Play Poker online any time!

Buy Viagra online! its easy click here today.

online casino

If you've ever been curious about how to play online poker then you'll want to read over the following online poker guide. This guide is designed to give you a basic overview of the game concept and rules. After reading this guide you should be in a god position to play poker. We suggest you try an online casino that offers free play in order to practice a bit before placing any real wagers.

cool pages

cool and great

online casino

If you've ever been curious about how to play online poker then you'll want to read over the following online poker guide. This guide is designed to give you a basic overview of the game concept and rules. After reading this guide you should be in a god position to play poker. We suggest you try an online casino that offers free play in order to practice a bit before placing any real wagers.

I love tramadol even though
I have no idea what it is. And this sentence is just filler.

online casino

If you've ever been curious about how to play online poker then you'll want to read over the following. We suggest you try an online casino that offers free play in order to practice a bit before placing any real wagers. You can also play blackjack online fo free!

1150 You can buy viagra from this site :http://www.ed.greatnow.com

7549 Why is Texas holdem so darn popular all the sudden?

http://www.texas-holdem.greatnow.com

569 Get your online poker fix at http://www.onlinepoker-dot.com

1716 black jack is hot hot hot! get your blackjack at http://www.blackjack-dot.com