Top 10 Conservative Idiots - Why "Saddam's Replacements"?

For those of you who haven't read this week's Top 10 Conservative Idiots, at #3 are the soldiers responsible for the torturing of the Iraqi POWs.

Here is the segment I'm talking about:

During a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Martin last week, Bush said, "A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we'd accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq." Funny that he should say that just days after CBS showed a shocking report on conditions at the Abu Ghraib Army prison facility in Iraq, including disturbing photographs of prisoners with wire taped to their genitals, prisoners stripped naked and made to pile on top of one another, and prisoners who were forced to simulate sex acts on one another. Many of the photos feature U.S. Military personnel who seem pretty pleased with themselves. There have also been allegations of rape, beatings, dog attacks, and other forms of torture. Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinsky, who was in charge of Abu Ghraib prison, has since been relieved of her post. Last October she told 60 Minutes in an interview, "This is international standards... It's the best care available in a prison facility."

Now, it is clear that these soldiers were idiots. But were they conservatives?

There's nothing in the article suggesting that the soldiers are conservatives--or Republicans, for that matter. The only possible way I could imagine this belonging on Top 10 Conservative Idiots were if (a.) Bush was the idiot the author was referring to or (b.) if the one soldier mentioned in the article, Brig. Gen. JAnice Karpinsky, was conservative.

But Bush isn't the object of ridicule in #3, the soldiers are. And I haven't found any connections between Karpinsky and conservatism.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Zell Miller has ended up in the Top 10 before too, and he's (supposedly, arguably) a Democrat.

Wouldn't this be like calling a hungry kitten a "hungry hippo"?

"I don't care if it's not a hippo. It's hungry, for God's sake! Isn't that enough for us to call it a hungry hippo?" ;)

Know what I'm saying?

...since you seem so very interested in my point.

Analogy:
"I don't care if it's not a hippo. It's hungry, for God's sake! Isn't that enough for us to call it a hungry hippo?"

This is no different than what nonconformist is saying:
"I don't care if they're not conservatives. They're idiots, for God's sake! Isn't that enough for us to call them conservative idiots?"

What I'm saying is that the weekly list itself is the Top 10 Conservative Idiots. Yet I don't see any reason to automatically associate these soldiers with conservatives. Do you?

It was brilliant. Seriously.

What's not so brilliant is your attempt to bait DUers into attacking soldiers, so that the comments here can be cut and pasted into some conservative apologetic board, telling everyone "Look how much they hate America!" while completely avoiding an intelligent discussion of the actual issue at hand, the horrors of the Abu Ghiraib photos.

It's a shell game. I'm not playing.

That's my take, at any rate.

But let's get something straight: I STARTED THIS DISCUSSION AT HAND.

The discussion I STARTED does not involve the horrors of the pictures, but whether or not the soldiers in those pictures are conservatives.

I don't think DUers are attacking soldiers (wtf?), I'm not a member of any conservative apologetic board (but who the hell cares if I am or not?), and I'm NOT AVOIDING THE SUBJECT THAT I STARTED.

You might want to look under the couch.

Anyway.

Since you haven't really responded to my initial post, nor expressed an opinion on it, do you agree that the soldiers deserve to be on this week's list?

... but it's damn clear that he's conservative... and a Conservative Idiot t'boot.

... personally, I think it could just be qualified by saying "why they might actually be idiots, not conservatives, they are in Iraq because of the neo-conservative policies of the Bush Administration..."

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Hmmmmmm? ;)

And who's to say this isn't a hobby. :)

just wondering why you would question the idiocy of questioning why soldiers who torture shouldn't be included in the idiot list. I don't care it they're Buddhists, if they violate another human being they're idiots. On the matter of their conservatism ask yourself, "Would Gandhi torture someone? Would Martin Luther King do that? Would Nelson Mandela hook wires to someones Penis?" I'm sure there are some free thinking liberals in Iraq, unfortunately they weren't at that prison.

I'm not questioning their idiocy, mharris660. I'm questioning their conservatism.

Read my post again. I said myself those guys were idiots. But we shouldn't automatically associate them with conservatives (which that list does) until we know if they're conservatives themselves, which we don't.

I'm well aware that Gandhi, MLK, etc... I know these people wouldn't torture someone.

But there ARE idiots out there who just happen to be liberal. Idiots who would actually be stupid enough to do something like that.

NOW I'M NOT SAYING THOSE SOLDIERS ARE LIBERALS. I'm NOT assuming they are either liberal or conservative.

But I want to know what the author knows, that I don't, that links the soldiers to conservatism or to the Republican party.

all I can tell you is it wasn't liberals burning witches in Salem, it wasn't liberals leading the Crusades, it wasn't liberals who blew up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, It wasn't liberals in Waco, and it wasn't liberals who drug a black man to his death in Vidor, Texas. Now if your next question is, "was it liberals who killed those people in Mei Lei?" I don't know and don't care, they were also idiots.

at all times?

That's a pretty broad brush with which you paint. Liberals can do no evil? Or if someone does evil, they are automatically no longer liberal (if they were before) and are now conservative?

i think the original question in this thread is a good one - we don't know the soldiers political leanings, so to say that they are CONSERVATIVE idiots is specious. To say that what they did was EVIL idiocy works, but not CONSERVATIVE.

I, for one, refuse to believe that liberals are ipso facto incapable of doing anything heinous. Who knows the conditions those soldiers were in? What commands came down from on high? What the stress of being away from friends and family has done? What the stress of being in a war zone has done? What the taste of a bit of power over another human being has done to them?

ALL people are capable of doing something rotten and nasty, not just conservatives (though I will agree, it seems the conservatives do more than their share of rotten and violent things).

trying to show that throughout history alot of atrocities we're committed by people with a somewhat conservative/religious mindset. Thats all. Whether those soldiers are repub or dem, it makes no difference to me AS LONG as they are on the idiots list. Its my opinion this post is nothing more than bait to elicit some anti-soldier response. Here, I'll give him one and we can put this to rest. Those soldiers who abused their fellow man are dickheads and deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Now if your going to cut and past my "anti-soldier" rant do it in its entirety.

I don't see how this thread has anything to do with eliciting "anti-soldier" remarks. That's just stupid - the conservative idiots list already was anti-soldier, and not a person here (so far) has thought that what they did was good. Which is to say, this is ALL anti-soldier - what they did was patently wrong and evil, as I said in my first post. I agree wholeheartedly they should be punished, and according to NPR this morning, there is some serious punishment coming up for them. You keep calling this thread as "bait", and I don't see that at all.

What I reject to is the automatic labeling of them as conservatives, without any actaul knowledge of their political leanings. It makes us look dumb and hateful and unable to see the potential for evil in ourselves when we automatically knee-jerkily name people who do evil as "well, they must have been conservatives! Liberals wouldn't have done that." That's a serious showing of ignorance.

And since it's a CONSERVATIVE idiots top ten list, it DOES matter whether someone on it is liberal or conservative, whether or not you care about it. It's about accuracy and truth. Otherwise, let's just call it the Idiots List.

if they're liberals and torturing their fellow man I don't want to stand with them. As I said to the author of the thread, "ask the author of the Top 10 List". I'm glad they made the list.

that the rightwing uses.

Yes, torturing and what happened is mostly a non-liberal kind of behavior - but to then name the people who did it as conservatives, without having any idea, is no different than the rightwing labeling anti-war protestors as communists or feminists as anti-family.

It might feel good to simply label them as conservatives, swiftly removing any possibility that any one of them might be one of ours so that we don't have to think about what it might mean if a liberal DID join in on the torturing or other things.

I know that you believe that a liberal would not do that, and that if they did you would abandon them. But I think the world, or human nature, works quite that neatly and efficiently. A liberal is also one who willingly, and actively, tries to see as many sides of an issue as possible, doesn't search for black and white, and is willing to face the truth whatever that truth might be - and willing to face the lact of facts and not jump to conclusions where there is no basis to make a conclusion.

Peer pressure is a strong presence, any one of those men or women in the armed forces could be "talked into" some act of stupidity. I only wanted to show that a majority of atrocities throughout history have been caused by groups with conservative/religious direction. As a liberal I can only hope that none of my ilk would give in to such acts and be able to rise above it. I think the posters in this thread only wanted to show that a person with a true "liberal" heart and full of compassion could never engage in these kinds of acts. Are we living in a fantasy world in believing that? Probably, but it keeps us sane thinking that there is a group of human beings above those kinds of actions. With that said I won't post again in this thread, where my posts are deleted.

Blast from the past.

The principles of freedom and equality, the rights of the dispossessed and the minority, prisoners' rights, justice for all and not just for the few...

I strongly suspect that is why they made the list. But perhaps you should ask down in Ask the Adminstrators, since it is their work.