Americans are doing a lot of soul searching right now

They all know what we have done in Iraq. Even the ones that won't admit it know it. Many are in denial of what our country is capable of doing. But deep down they know that the "we are a little bit better than Saddam" excuse will not hold water. And that is a fact.

Don

:shrug:

eom

All 9 of them:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/11/opinion/L11IRAQ.html?pagewanted=print&position=

I'm a little surprised or maybe a better word for it is chagrined at the cynicism of some of the posters here at DU who think that these images are not going to have a profound effect based on their belief that Americans are heartless and thoughtless in their support of Bush.

I think these images are a watershed and will cut through.
Of course there are always idiots in the electorate who are blind, but I have to believe and I do believe that for a substantial majority of Americans, these images and this scandal goes beyond the pale.

That letter to the editor comparing this stuff to the images of the monks setting themselves on fire in Vietnam gets this.

the photo section in the center pages features those and of course many more, including the Saigon Police Chief shooting the captured guerilla in the head.
For an 11 year old boy those images were deeply seared into me.

we had one of those assignments in school on vocab/spelling words.
The assignment was to take all the words on the list and write a poem using them. This was in 1967.
I wrote a poem that was about Vietnam and mentioned the monks on fire and also a picture of the Vietnamese mother screaming over the body of her dead child.
Seeing that stuff on TV at the time really got seared into my memory also.

I think we are at a similar moment, even if it hasn't registered with everyone yet.

We invaded Iraq and destroyed thousands of Iraqi and American lives because of WMD. Later we were told we were there to "liberate" the Iraqis from their despotic dictator. Then it's part of the War on Terror , and our soldiers are there protecting American freedoms. I have one question: WHAT FREEDOMS OF MINE ARE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ PROTECTING?

and another one: why didn't America choose to liberate Pakistan from its dictator, or what about the roughly half of the African continent from their despotic dictators and their human rights issues which make Iraq look like a slice of pure heaven by comparison? Well, you have to have a soul to search it.

btw, I hate that mantra myself. During the first few months of the invasion, all the local talking head tv dingbats could talk enough about the soldiers "protecting our freedoms" and I kept asking myself what in the world are they talking about? Who will answer this question?

Of course, its just a flag waving mantra and the dirty truth is that they are protecting the gas guzzler style of life.

They all know what we have done in Iraq. Even the ones that won't admit it know it. Many are in denial of what our country is capable of doing. But deep down they know that the "we are a little bit better than Saddam" excuse will not hold water.

I wonder if the anger and shock is because of what happened or because what happened came to light. I'm hearing a lot of "these things happen in a war," and I have to admit that I was not surprised when the news first came out. Ashamed... but not surprised.

the behavior. That is the problem. There is an elephant in the room. yet they are all denying it. Denying responsibility. Bush's addict behavior has been the highlight of this huge dysfunctional family. And when the ones who are sane/healthy speak out Bush has discredited them.

He had used coercion and threats to anyone who opposes him. He has taken them down, by tax audits, barring their child from access to resources, outed their wife as a CIA agent, and gone to any extent possible to continue the abuse.

This torture has been know for years. This dancing around right now is all show. The torture will not stop unless the main people who sanction it are stopped.

Bush sanctioned torture yesterday when he said Rumsfeld was doing a excellent job. This is the job he wants him to do. Now Bush will do his song and dance to protect his hired guns. Bush likes what Rumsfeld has done and created.

What Bush does not like is that there were pictures. Notice the first person they are trying is the one who took the pictures. Anyone in the pictures will be tried even if off to the side.

They people who are not being tried and who are keeping themselves out of the fray are Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Cheney, and Rice. Those are the War Criminals who have sanctioned and ARE STILL sanctioning this $#%$#%#@.

The only difference now is they will do it even more out of sight and they will make sure there are no cameras. They will have a camera check upon entering and leaving a torture area.

In your sterile soul searching, sitting in your comfortable den with a cup of coffee, watching the talking heads on TV, ask yourself how many American lives were saved by the strategic decision to proceed with aggressive interrogation.

With all the publicity, are our enemies less likely to want to confront us in the field?

The bottom line: We must be ruthless to win.

donz

until they pick up your mother for some ruthless interrogation because she happens to live next door to someone who might have information about another made-up scary freeper scenario.

Enemies, enemies everywhere, gollee. Too bad we made most of them ourselves.

Because it seems to me that you're endorsing the creation of more insurgents in order to defeat the current ones. It's a mistaken proposition -- much like the sentiments expressed by BushCo when they talk of "ending evil" as if this "evil" is a somehow static, fixed force that, once the current representatives are defeated, will somehow be vanquished forever.

What they fail to see in their terrible myopia is that by their tactics for every "evildoer" they take out, they create 5 more in his place.

Your sentiments reek of the same shortsightedness and hubris.

How many american lives would have been saved if he had not invaded IraqNam? I know that oil is very tempting. However, wouldn't it be more appropriate for those who believe in free markets to buy it rather than stealing it. Or, wouldn't it be smarter to use the incredible scientific talents of this nation to push faster development of alternative fuels so that we aren't turned into spoiled tittybabies whining at the tit of Middle Eastern oil?

At some point, decades from now this will be done. If we had a leader with a brain (apologies to your president), we could be further down the road on alternative fuels and much of our dependence on the politics of the middle east would be moot.

...what an absurd logical framework - "American lives saved" - no evidence of that has ever surfaced. The proper question is how many American soldiers will die or be wounded from this sytemic torture?

Here a recently reported statistic: approx. 70-80% of the detaniees in that prison were interrogated and subsequently released - as innocent. The vast majority of them are simply Iraqi civilians in the 20-30 age range who were swept up in various Security Sweeps. Some of them petty criminals, and some of them were former Bat'tist members, but the majority are just unemployed men - who may now become determined resistance fighters. You need to study history...and I'd start by going to Blockbuster and renting the same movie the Pentagon showed last Sept: "Battle for Algiers"

(As an aside, of the 1000+ individuals J. Edgar Ashcroft had arrested and held without here in the US, *not* a *single* one had charges brought against them. Gotta love them Police States...)

At least WE'RE WHITE! (Shouted in my face many moons ago).

They still don't give a rip that we launched an unprovoked attack against a disarmed nation in compliance with UN mandate. They still don't give a rip that we are murdering innocent people daily who did nothing to us.
We care about the ones in prison because we got caught with our hand in the cookie jar and it looks bad. Most Americans could care less about the innocent men, women and children we are gunning down every day.