Many Americans Disgusted by Iraqi Prisoner Abuse (but some aren't)

Many Americans Disgusted by Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
By Mark Egan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Many Americans are disgusted at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military in Baghdad but even as the scandal dominates the news, some question if such abuses are just part and parcel of the horror of war.

...

"When you've got prisoners, don't try to humiliate them or torture them," said 43-year old Berry Samuel, taking a break from his maintenance work job. But his colleague Oscar Torres, 21, countered, "I think they deserved it. Those people are crazy over there. I'm voting for Bush. He's doing right."

Harvey Shackman, 65, retired from the New York City Board of Education, said, "You don't know what is propaganda. There are always two sides to a story. War is brutal. You can't have a clean war, but there are rules."

Barbara McNagny, 70, a registered nurse from Rogersville, Missouri, said bluntly, "These people would tie us up by our fingernails if they could. I'm afraid if we don't scare them to death, they won't get in line."

With Amnesty International seeking an investigation of the abuses, one Dallas Morning News reader wrote to the newspaper, "I don't recall this group calling for any investigation into the burning and hanging of U.S. military contractors from a bridge in Falluja several weeks ago."

"If the humiliation of these prisoners results in the saving of one American military life, go to it," Derrel Norris of Wills Point, Texas, said in a letter published on Tuesday.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040505/us_nm/iraq_abuse_americans_dc&cid=1896&ncid=1480

And, I suspect, these people consider themselves "Christians." How well I remember about reading Jesus telling the 12 Apostles to pull out the fingernails and attack the gonads on unbelievers.

A Reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:



Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."

LOL, thanks for the memories of a GOOD and very FUNNY movie

Was part of a small minority of Saddam Loyalist Insurgents.

We're turning the corner every day! (which has us going in circles, but you didn't hear that from me)

WONDER NO MORE.


PUT THESE FUCKING ASSHOLES IN A MOB AND THIS IS THE RESULT.



Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.


On Edit: This is a photo taken 15 years before I was born, this type of sport existed until the late
1960's well into the Viet-Nam war, when men of color and others were busted out of jails and
“STRUNG UP” to entertain cheering mobs and provide “white girls” with justice.

The Caption is from Life Magazine and a book of 100 pictures that changed AMERIKA

WHAT HAS CHANGED??? IN MY HUMBLE OPINION NOT MUCH

Look at the adoring faces in the picture.

This could be the Prom Night Entertainment for all we know.

Look at smiles on the faces of the young women.

Everyone is having a good Time ( A Mob of 10,000 people)

The EXTREME RIGHT WING is playing off people’s fears and ENCOURAGING RACISM.

Colloquially known as the War Prayer:

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. "

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html

to clean up his bad image. drowning the entire planet and then ordering your people to kill everybody but virgin women in the land they are told to steal from the natives will hardly give a demonic deity a good reputation.

As a Cincinnatian, I oughta know. Although there are notable exceptions, overall I think Cincinnati has more right wing nutjobs than anywhere else in the country.

good Ger... err Americans...DISGUSTING

They have no humanity whatsoever.

Soulless fucking bloodsuckers.

" Let them hate so long as they fear"

We are no better than the Roman Empire now.

and maybe considerably worse.

scary quote... facism and psychotic behavior seem to go hand in hand.

who really believed he was decended from the Gods. Americans consider themselves "Christians" and they are the best advertisment for Islam that I have ever seen.

I think Jesus is probably pretty pissed at all these people who run around killing people in his name.

I've said for years that more people have been killed on the invocation of one god or another, than for any other reason.

Forget cancer. Religious zealotry is the real 'Number One' killer on planet earth. Greed/Conquest is number two.

BushCo is guilty of both, IMO.

could we possibly be becoming worse than Nazi Germany.

You could paraphrase Mien Kampf.
Just maybe.

are not only condoned by little ole US ladies but flaunted by the perps. The Nazi crimes were much less serious. Six million deaths is nothing by US butchery standards.

They were defeated.

Rule through fear but do not incur hatred.

Like the Roman mpire, we're heading for the fall.

How does torture and humiliation save American lives?

I would think it would make the average soldier's job MORE dangerous, not less.

average soldier's job MORE dangerous, not less.

I agree. Though Arab media has been portraying 'atrocities' on our part for a while now that are NOT true, so this TRUE account of torture and humiliation will only reinforce their beliefs.

BGEN Karpinski should be charged under UCMJ for deriliction of duty for this.

Though Arab media has been portraying 'atrocities' on our part for a while now that are NOT true,

How can you now be sure that they aren't true. We have now shown ourselves to be monsters who obviously worships a demonic monster of a god.

for Americans. Am at a loss concerning the lack of logic articulated by these gung-ho Americans. Truly clueless.

Harvey Shackman, 65, retired from the New York City Board of Education, said, "You don't know what is propaganda. There are always two sides to a story. War is brutal. You can't have a clean war, but there are rules."

I guess ol' Harvey didn't see the pictures. WTF are wrong with these people? And he is a retired educator?
I just had a discussion with someone the other night, and it floors me how little people know, but how much they can yap.
I want to go back to my own planet!

He's right, war isn't clean and there will be moments in the battlefield where something happens that isn't exactly "legal".

But he goes on to say there are rules and I'm guessing he's referencing the photos and saying those go against the rules.

So they deserve it. (sarcasm)

the whole world will cheer.

:puke:

DTH

these people who don't think so have disturbed me even more that viewing the photos! WTF doesn't think this stuff is wrong???

Ugh...I hate people

in the first place. The type of people who cheered when we invaded a non-threatening country. The type of people who think it's funny to tie up and brutalize civilians and pee on them.

The type of people who still support the Shrub. Who else would?

for this stuff

For what we attribute to human rights abuses. We villified Sadam because of his mass graves, his torture chambers and his human rights abuses. We call them uncivilized, brutal natives whose pretense of violence is to be abhorred....and yet somehow condone our own actions of violence so "they will get in line"?

Why must we follow in the bootsteps of Saddam's legacy? These actions, this course we have undertaken is the beginning of America unraveling and I for one will NOT forsake my moral obligation to dissent against any human rights abuses, where ever they occur, for whatever reasoning or logic. I will not use Saddam as a standard by which acceptable and unnacceptable behavior is measured. WE ARE BETTER THAN THAT....aren't we?

The Iraqis had free health care and education, women working in professional jobs, religious freedom and plenty of guns. Funny sort of oppressive regime that. Looking at the source of the info, I would say that Saddam's worst crimes were his CIA days, his business dealing with Bush and the aggression against Iran, in support of his US allies. There are mass graves in Fallujah and the US army buried both Iraqis and Afgahn POWs alive. Saddam didn't wreck the country or cause the deaths of millions of Iraqis. That was done by Uncle Sam.

and tell me if you still don't believe most of the stuff you heard about Saddam.

Free health care doesn't add up to much if you have no right to voice your displeasure of the leader without having to fear for your life.

ground, especially since we invaded a country illegally and overthrew a brutal dictator in the name of democracy. We're not suppose to immiate the dictator.

,...and some people don't even know they are being manipulated with propaganda.

who believe that Iraq and 9/11 are linked, etc. Thanks to a somnolent press that dutifully parrots the maladministration's propaganda, many Americans actually believe that these Iraqi citizens personally helped Al Qaeda. The administration has spent two years drumming up hate against all Arabs and Muslims using lies and innuendo. This should be no surprise and I imagine many of the troops in Iraq also feel this way. The blame should go right to the top - they poured the gasoline and lit the match and fanned the flames.

if the flames end up destroying us we have only ourselves to blame.

the US is isolated and friendless and there will be reprisals. Real ones not the government orchestrated "terrorism" that we've seen to date.

who would demand we level a village if any American troops were humiliated this way.

Can you imagine the outrage if Private Lynch had been treated this way?

Bigotry, fear, stupidity, possible senility. Is this vote enough for Bush?

Which is exactly what I told my husband just before he boarded the bus to go to the airport(on his way to Iraq)

"Keep your dignity. Behave with integrity. Maintain your humanity."

Sure, I wanted to tell him it doesn't matter-just come home safely..but you know what? It DOES matter.

People that can't see that it does matter are people who carry the weight of fear on their backs and are broken by it.

then added no idiocy awards either... please.

good behavior.

Those two soldiers in the pictures with the thumbs up pose, I wonder if their spouses and/or families will ever feel right about them again. What they did was too ugly to want to hug or kiss them again. And if they were following orders, I could forgive that, but the fact that they were so proud and happy over what they were doing is what is unforgiveable. I don't know how I would react in such a situation as being in a war zone, so I hate to condemn, but if they just were not having so much fun this would be easier.

Does it not seem cowardly too torture people who are already at your mercy?

May your husbands return to your safely and ASAP!!

Gotta love it:
>> I'm afraid if we don't scare them to death, they won't get in line." <<

In other words -- Iraq -- meet the new boss, same as the old boss!

This cartoon also expresses this same irony of congratulating American brutality, while on a mission to eradicate Saddam's....

gassed and tortured his own people" to justify the war. Jeanine had it right...anybody who supports Bush now has a character flaw. I'll add: they're psychopathic nazis. Nothing less.

The jerk from Wills Point Texas missed the point didn't he? They weren't humiliating them they were torturing and murdering them plus it is happening not just in Iraq, the latest army investigation shows widespread abuses.

Oh yeah and Barbara most of the Iraqis held in that prison have not even been charged. Talk about racism! I love that expression "these people".

. . . must not be working very well.

Is that some of our soldiers appeared to be SMILING in the pictures.

That is so wrong. I mean, if some one wants to argue that these Iraqis were suspected terrorists and extreme measures were necessary to get information - I will have that debate in a calm, rational manner.

But, that argument falls apart because it seemed like our soldiers ENJOYED the brutal acts they committed.

common sense to know they are being spoon-fed this garbage by a WH gone MAD. I am losing faith in mankind more and more each day.

These remarks are outrageous, hope that RN has retired.

whether they think it is right or wrong, the Iraqis and the rest of the World say it is WRONG. We have lost the moral high ground and we are all going to suffer because of it. I suppose when the next "World Trade Center" attack happens here they still won't get it. :argh:

I say "us", because I'm an American, too. One woman who was interviewed, an R.N. said "These people would tie us up by our fingernails if they could. I'm afraid if we don't scare them to death, they won't get in line."

Excuse me, but get in line for what? We illegally invaded their country. Every reason we gave was false, from WMD to bringing democracy to them. We have bombed and destroyed their country, killed and maimed their people, brought unimaginable hardship and suffering to them, and we think THEY need to get in line?

We are the guilty party in all this. We need to apologize to them, get the hell out of their country, and pay for the damage we've done. I say "us", even though I was adamantly opposed to the war, because as I have already stated, I am an American, and it is my country which is doing this. There is already too much evasion of responsibility going on, for me to add to it.

that I may be annoying people, but I am on a crusade to get people from this site to go to bighuskerfan.com/phpBB2/ and sign up and get into fights with those people. For every new topic that comes up, I can think of someone on that board who has expressed exactly the opinion that everyone here can't believe people could share. For example, one guy on that board said that worrying about the prisoner abuse is just a result of being "PC."

Idiots. Please go on, it's free and it might become addicted. I can't imaging how they'll react if they can't beat up on one or two liberals, like me, because they banned me. They can't ban everyone.

Wow.. that reporter really can sniff out the winners. Depends upon where you ask.. and what you report. It's a well known fact that journalists (and I use that term loosely) keep asking until they get the question that fits the angle their assignment editor told them to get. Those people are morons.. they are ignorant and cruel.. and probably call themselves christians. I suggest Mr. Torres, being 21, get his ass over to Iraq to help out, if he's so damn gung-ho about it.

How ironic.. these people are speaking up for armed mercernary contractors who probably killed many more people that we could imagine over there.. as though they were military. And.. they conviently forget that Hammill was treated beyond nice in his captivity. People are stupid.

Its brave to be shooting your mouth off like he did. Oh well, he'd shit in his pants went the nasty drill sgt throws the 35 Gallon steel garbage can down the hall and yells "Ladies GET UP".

it seems that quite a few Americans are becoming numb to violence and humiliation.

I suppose it shouldn't be with all of Bush's talk of the evil doers and the evil ones, but I find it hard to fathom that these folks don't comprehend how this puts the lives of Americans everywhere in more danger. Leaving aside the basic humanity and decency one would expect from civilized people, these ho-hummers don't realize how much this damages us as a nation.
I've never been so ashamed to be American.

this guy -------------> Oscar Torres, 21, countered, "I think they deserved it. Those people are crazy over there. I'm voting for Bush. He's doing right."


Let's see how gung ho he is when he's on one or the other end of a gun..

FULL METAL JACKET (The Movie)


Remember when R. Lee Ermey (Gunny) asks the platoon if they know who Whitman and Oswald were?

And Joker replies,

"THEY WERE MARINES--- SIR"

and the Gunny shouts "OUTFUCKING STANDING"

it will be nothing more than karmic justice.

And the rest of the world will say "those people are crazy and they deserved it."

priceless.

all Muslims are bad, "no their not" smirks bush. But the smirk gives him away.

I caught a small part of Hannity's radio show and he's clicking just like Rush and the other dittoheads.. He doesn't seem to ashamed this happened and was making excuse for the troops that actually did the abusing.. Just amazing..

He said it was an isolated incident. Well, he is going to eat his words when more proof of abuses surface.

right

obviously not learning anything. :(

they can save their cowardly hides. Stop all this talk of "ignorance", "brainwashing" and "media" this is choice. These people wilfully refuse to see the truth, because they would not mind killing off all the other people in the world and stealing its wealth. Too many Americans condone murder for profit.

eliminating torture. I asked him if he "knew about Abu Ghraib, the torture by U.S. troops," and he just stared blankly at me!

yeah, and you better believe that the iraqis believe we deserve it too.

so when it happens to our soldiers, i sure hope to see the same understanding attitude.

afterall, we do want to be consistent, don't we?

i wonder if they can be more creative in their torture than we can?

/>sarcasm

while I was confronted by a co-worker when I was showing some of my other co-workers pictures that I took in Dayton yesterday of bush protestors. She made the comment that it doesnt matter what happens to them. After a few more comments I had in response to that she said oh well, Jesus is comming back in five years and the world is going to end and she cant wait to go.......................


I'm not real religious but I know enough about the bible(some I have read and most I have learned from my mother) that "no man noweth the day nor the hour" at which he will decide to return.

WTF is wrong with these people?


BTW, my site with the pictures is up right now and all of the pictures are viewable now here at http://www.bushprotest.1accesshost.com/bushprotesthome.htm

who hate Middle Easterners as much as they do -

hated the Russians this much during the 'Cold War'?

hated the Panamamanians this much during Reagan's war on them?

hated the Grenadians this much during Reagan's war on them?

hated the Vietnamese this much?

hated the Iraqis this much during Gulf War 1?

and, covertly, still do.

Hated Northerners or Southerners during the Civil War
Hated the French during the French and Indian war
Hated the Spanish during the Spanish War
Hated Germany, Japan, Italy.........

Who's Next in this ridiculous cycle of hate?!?

With Amnesty International seeking an investigation of the abuses, one Dallas Morning News reader wrote to the newspaper, "I don't recall this group calling for any investigation into the burning and hanging of U.S. military contractors from a bridge in Falluja several weeks ago."


No, we just went in and blew the fucking place up.
:eyes:

is WRONG with these people?????? Don't they have any compassion, feeling for other living things, fellow humans???? How can one live that way? I really don't understand.
I'm sick to death over this, it gets worse every day.

Bennie Simmons, alive, soaked in coal oil before being set on fire. June 13, 1913. Anadarko, Oklahoma.

Silhouetted corpse of African American Allen Brooks hanging from Elk's Arch, surrounded by
spectators. March 3, 1910. Dallas, Texas.

Tinted lithographed postcard. 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.

Printed inscription on border, "LYNCHING SCENE, DALLAS, MARCH 3, 1910". Penciled
inscription on border, "All OK and would like to get a post from you. Bill, This was some Raw Bunch."


The corpses of five African American males, Nease Gillepsie, John Gillepsie, "Jack" Dillingham,
Henry Lee, and George Irwin with onlookers.

August 6, 1906. Salisbury, North Carolina.

Spectators at the lynching of Jesse Washington. May 16, 1916. Waco, Texas.

The bludgeoned body of an African American male, propped in a rocking chair, blood splattered
clothes, white and dark paint applied to the face and head, shadow of man using rod to prop up
the victims head. Circa 1900, location unknown.

Unidentified lynching of an African American male. Circa 1908, Oxford, Georgia.




The lynching of Dick Robinson and a man named Thompson. October 6, 1906, Pritchard Station,
Alabama.

Townspeople gathered for the burning of John Lee. August 13, 1911, Durant, Oklahoma

Another version of this photo postcard was marketed with the negative etched, "Coon Cooking."

Lynching of African American male. 1960, McDuffie County, Georgia.

John Richards hanging on a tree, jubilant lynchers, a freshly hewn pine coffin. January 12, 1916, Goldsboro, North Carolina.

A lynch mob and the smoldering remains of an African American. 1910, Texas. Gelatin silver print.

Pencil inscription on front reads: "Burning of the negro who killed Jim Mitchell. August 1910."

IS THIS MURDEROUS LAWLESSNESS A PART OF OUR HISTORIC CULTURE????

:grr:

Hi all.

Those images of the torture of the prisoners made me think that maybe now, at last, people will realise the women can also be abusive and not just while at war. They are also abusing men in the home. I know it was not only women who were abusing prisoners in Iraq, men were also. However, it simply mirrors what is happening in homes all over the world and we only ever concider one side of it; the abuse of women by men. As someone who has suffered female abuse and felt utterly powerless to fight back (real men dont hit women)and also found no help available for me. I am only too well aware that this is far more common than most people believe. I now run a support organisation in the UK for abused men. In a perverse way these photographs will help me get help for these men because they prove what I have said for 10 years.....women do abuse!

Omigosh, women can be violent? :eyes: And this has to do with torture, HOW???

This woman is a nurse and her attitude is "I'm afraid if we don't scare them to death, they won't get in line."

Fingers crossed she doesn't work in a pediatric ward.

Anyone want to start a fund to send Babs to Fallujah?