Slashdot Mirror
Digital Cameras Change War Photo-Journalism
prakslash writes "Back in 1945, it took three days between the time U.S. Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the famous picture of the historic moment was published in all the newspapers. In 2004, it took barely an hour before the explosive photos from an Iraqi prison were seen all over the world. This drives home a defining fact of 21st century - the pervasiveness of digital photography and the speed of the Internet are making it easier to see into dark corners previously out of reach of the mass media. As reported in
recent news, some of the most shocking Iraqi photos were not taken by photo-journalists but by soldiers and government contractors who used a digital camera, a CD burner and an internet connection to zip the photos around the world with an ease that has never existed before."
mod parent up and?
Pictures can be re-touched faster too.
I don't think the pics out of Iraq are re-touched, but the ease and power of photoshop and such is something to keep in mind...
No, you idiot! You use PKzip to zip images, not the Internet!
read the bunni comic
anything?
As a result of the near-instant publishing of "sensitive" materials, expect to see the military prohibit digital cameras shortly.
Yeah, right.
Maybe someone should "zip" them a copy of the Geneva Convention?
Maybe Bush should "zip" away and sign the Hauge treaty?
This is going to totally change the rules, when you have 5 megapixel digital cameras that will easily fit in a BDU jacket pocket and when everyone has one you're going to see a lot of pictures that the Pentagon would rather you didn't, which is probably a good thing.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
..without the ease of publication that it provides, we all know that those prisoners would have kept their clothes on.
Because it provides at least a partial answer to "who guards the guards".
A crack-down on possession is almost inevitable, since our society seems to prefer hiding problems over fixing them, but IMO any such crack-down will be lamentable.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
the most shocking Iraqi photos were not taken by photo-journalists but by soldiers and government contractors who used a digital camera, a CD burner and an internet connection to zip the photos around the world with an ease that has never existed before.
What photos?!
Its bad enough US troops were doing this, but why were they even taking pictures of it? How stupid can you get, really...
"Anyone who quotes me in their
The Washington Post was allowed to post the Pentagon papers because they had a million lawyers behind them.. If we go to a mostly indy media, can the government harass editors and throw them into prison
If you think this isn't possible, what's changed between now and the alien and sedition act of before?
The first prison photos to be shown on CBS were taken last year .
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
...never made it home from the earlier conflicts? I'm sure our perceptions -- and maybe even the outcomes -- of wars-gone-by would be radically different had the public had access to images of events and incidents from those.
Anyone has a good link to pictures in question? News articles never seem to include more than a single photo.
WTF?! From what I understand, these abuse photos were taken way back in January! That's a lot more than an hour.
What is being said about the shortening of the photojournalism cycle is still true, I just think this is a case of a bad example.
The date of the pictures is a seemingly minor detail, but I think it's very important. Little innacuracies like this perpetuate broad misunderstandings of important events.
-Matt
You are saying that it was an hour between the time the photo was shot and it was "seen all over the world"? I'm calling BS.
Certain technologies have allowed regular people and small teams of journalists to quickly assemble video to create their own documentaries and news stories to counter slick corporate presentations, and the Internet has allowed us to access video stories from around the world that we'd be otherwise less likely to know about.
I think the new technology is impowering, but the important thing to remember is that with cameras and microphones everywhere, the record of what you do and what you say will be around for a very long time, if not forever.
These pictures were taken months ago. Iwo Jima beat them them to publication by a mile.
Is universally successfull, 100% law enforcement desireable?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why are photos of a guy forced to wear panties over his head, or a woman pointing at somebody's dick be more controversial and shocking than, say, the photos of mass graves, or Saddam's torture chambers, where they used REAL electricity to be shocking?
And why are they both termed "atrocities"? Not saying that either one is right, just why the double standard?
Or something like that. Man! Imagine if it got out onto the Internet! How embarrassing?! You'd never live it down.
Like the man said: it's like trying to remove pee from a swimming pool...
It's been widely argued that Iwo Jima picture was shot few times, by asking soldiers to re-raise the flag again.
Some go even further by saying that the flag was never raised, but prominent historians have reached a common consensus that it was indeed raised, albeit the picture was not good enough, so they re-created the scene for perfection purposes.
The photos were taken a substantial time before they were published. Yes technology helped transfer them very quickly...but the photos were taken months ago. Digital photography did not have much to do with the "speed" (or lack off) that they got published in.
Sadam was a evil dictator and... .. the US is supposed to be the good democracy. The whole leader of the free world bullshit.
The rest of the world just regards the photos as proof that the US miltary is a bunch of cowboys.
The Red Cross report didn't have an effect.
The complaints didn't have an effect.
The eye witness accounts didn't have an effect.
A few pictures change everything.
Most people have stronger reactions to pictures than they do to printed words. If the military is going to control the reaction, the military is going to ban cameras.
When cameras are outlawed, only outlaws will have cameras.
Was nobody paying attention when Rumsfeld, Gen. Myers and the other Pentagon brass were testifying? The pictures were apparently taken in December 2003, copies passed to Army CID mid-January 2004 and copies were first in the Pentagon around the start of February. Gen. Myers even knew CBS had the pictures long enough to request they not publish, at least for the time being - the potential suppression of the media being something both Senatorial and Congressional committees were quite concerned over. So from the pictures being taken to being front-page news took closer to five months than "barely an hour".
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I'd categorize this as interesting and possibly related to the topic at hand. But since when did being off-topic ever stop me from making a /. post? [Yeah, I know my karma will go all negative.]
That famous pic in Iwo Jima was staged. It was taken after the event was over and was completely choreographed.
Now, as people expect things to come so fast, how will we get such good pictures? There's no time for staging things, and enormously less time to just dig through all the pics and find the ones that are actually good.
Say goodbye to quality pics and hello to amateur journalism.
Meanwhile, many of us see movies weeks before they're even released to theatres and watch TV shows the day after they air via internet exchanges. Just the other day someone promised to post a TV program that had JUST aired "as soon as the encoding is done" which, in this case, was about four hours.
I buy and sell shit via the internet in the blink of an eye. Just the other day I bought another CD from magnatune and the only reason it took me a day to get it was because of my hideously slow dialup connection and my insistence on getting the highest practical quality (FLAC).
ALL these examples and the best you can come up with is to mention an "old guard" news source releasing months old photos only AFTER they had "cleared it with washington?" Yeesh.
In Australia, the major political parties frequently hold party meetings that are closed to the public, and to cameras. Thanks to new mobile phones that now have video recording capabilities, a brawl at a national branch meeting of the Liberal Party was caught on camera for all the world to see. I'm sure a lot of people had to think twice about the image of the Liberals as a "mature and rational" party after that, I know I sure did.
Just one detail for the freepers out there--the abuses occurred (and the photos were taken) in fall 2003. This is months before the four American contractors were killed and had their bodies burned in Fallujah.
So, if you want to put a biblical eye-for-an-eye spin on this, the Fallujah killings in March may have been revenge for the Abu Ghraib abuses, not the other way around as some folks are trying to insinuate.
Remain calm! All is well!
Could it be because they are in fucking Dubai enjoying all the nice official pictures on those plasma screens?
Or could it be because they are busy sipping drinks at some Hotel in Baghdad?
Or *gasp* could it be becasue they are [in]embedded with coalition forces?
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/
Those idiots in the pictures seem to have had a whole chain of command of idiots who never bothered to train their troops or check their troops.
Un-trained
Un-monitored
Un-professional
They didn't even think what they were doing was wrong.
Didn't it take quite a bit longer from the flag raising of Iwo Jima to get a picture out? If I remember correctly the famous picture came from some guys setting up a replacement flag before they were headed out, some guy who took a picture of the first flag (the important one) got upset because his picture wasn't as good as the second and wasn't used. I personally like the "famous" picture, it may not be historically accurate but it is really moving.
Not a new issue, people. Photography impacted public opinion in the Civil War. after the battle pictures of Antietam The library of congress photos of the civil war. Ken Burns has some interesting stuff too ...
What kind of person would EVER want to force a guy to wear panties over his head or point at a naked prisoners dick?
Let's face it, the army aren't a bunch of heroes, they're a bunch of fucking simpletons who can't find gainful employment anywhere else. They are the lowest strata of a free society, and the worst possible people to arm and send overseas. They only reason that they ever are is because they are so worthless that the rest of society is willing to let them die.
If the U.S. military bans digital cameras from personnel, it might give the impression to the world that abusive acts on prisoners can continue without being discovered. If they don't ban cameras, odds are that more humiliating images will be released, inciting further hatred from the Arab community. I am glad that I am not the Secretary of Defense right now...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Since the Starr Report, and perhaps before that the Oklahoma City Bombings, the internet has become one of the most important vehicles of communication in politics. 9-11 distributed information faster, more personally, and with far less repetition than the news channels. Howard Dean's campaign, while unsuccesful, nevertheless demonstrated the importance of a web presence for an aspiring politician, something that Kerry and Bush seem to have all but neglected.
This scandel again demonstrates the increasing proliferation of the net and its significance in modern politics. What we're seeing here is like TV was to the Kennedy-Nixon debates or the Army McCarthy Hearings. This is another phase in the coming of age of the net as a viable medium at least as significant as print and TV, the "old media." And this coming of age will only continue, perhaps until The Next Big Thing in 50 years. These incidents, the Starr Report to the Iraqi Prison Pictures, should serve as a warning to any politician that would overlook the power of the net as a communicative tool. Those who embrace the web, like Kennedy with the TV camera, will flourish. Those who do not, will like Nixon regret they didn't.
Yes, today's pictures can be photoshopped, but retouching war pictures or contriving them in general is hardly new. The famous Iwo Jima photo was not the actual flag raising right after the battle, but a re-enactment for the camera (God I hope I'm right about that, actually)
And when war photography first came to the fore, during the US Civil War, photography was treated like paintings, and photos were taken after the battles with soldiers set up in posed, contrived positions because of the long exposure time.
Just something to think about. The camera can be remarkable for conveying accurate truths, or for conveying convincing lies.
Yup...
Sorry, I can't feel sorry for some Iraqi made to wear a dog leash while naked when no one has seen fit to publish any photographs of Saddam's goons feeding people into shredders feet first, or photos of Saddam's "elite" troops having to watch the brutal murder of children so they become "hardened".
Fuck all you Saddam apologists.
Looking at the photo's EXIF info most of it was either stripped or a very old digital camera was used.
Most people don't know about EXIF so I doubt they conciously stripped out the info. Yes the data is rather banal but it could be useful to track down the make/model of equipment used to lift a finger print or narrow down suspects.
Given the fact Digital evidence is getting very dicey to track down the photographer (although in this case I doubt any investigation is really needed) I suspect that makers will begin to embed much more in EXIF and other features of the photographs that can't be masked.
Stego could be used to imprint the makers mark without the consumer ever knowing anything.
It's a reverse of how some scanners/printers/software muck with the moire patterns when you scan money.
One of the criticisms of the Bush administration is that they're a bunch of cold-war throwbacks (Cheney, Rice, Feith, Wolfowitz) left over from the Republican cabinets of 1980-92 , and they came into power in 2000 all set to pick up where they left off, with star wars, new nukes, and new air combat platforms. Never mind that in 8 years the world had moved on and the active threat to America was terrorism, requiring police vigilance and response, not nation-killing weapons.
Now the Bush administration is losing control of the media coverage in Iraq. They've done very well up to this point--embedding reporters with units makes them very sympathetic, and for whatever reason US corporate media sources simply do not give bad news from Iraq the same prominence that other english-language sources do (UK, etc.). But, they've been caught by ubiquitous digital cameras and CD burners. Word-of-mouth is deniable, but trivially copyable pictures, where every grunt can have his own collection, is just too hard to control.
Personally I'm shocked that soldiers were allowed to have cameras--what kind of operational security is that? But, just like these guys don't get the net, they didn't realize the difference between film cameras and digital cameras--digital photos propagate at T1 speeds. This means that a hot photo may be copied 1000s of times in a week, where a film photo might be handed off, but not copied.
Remain calm! All is well!
From an article in the Sydney Morning Herald,
"For two weeks before 60 Minutes in America broke the torture story, it obeyed requests from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers not to run it for fear it would harm American interests in Iraq. The network ran it only after learning that other journalists would tell the story if it didn't.
(see http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/08/10839114 61425.html)
In this case, it was relatively "instant" only once the news was ALLOWED to be let out of the bag.((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
Auuugh! Cameras are good! It allows the people to check on what their army is really doing. Don't want embarrasing pictures? How about not acting in a way you'd be embarrased to have the world know instead of confiscating cameras?
-- MG
Because digital cameras have features like automatic focus, they have made it easy for anyone to take technically good photos.
WOW! Auto focus! That's so awesome! I wish film cameras had auto focus! Wait... *walks over to Canon Rebel 2000, uncaps lens, switches to Portrait mode, half holds shutter* HEY! My film camera has autofocus! That's so sweet! When did this happen?
That line really bothered me, "features like automatic focus"... digital cameras have features like white balance correction (not 100% sure but I think the only way to change white balance in film photography is with different lens filters), black and white mode (without having to switch film hehe), special effects (like sepia to make pictures look more aged) stuff like that, that lets you be more creative without buying expensive filters. But COME ON! Auto focus has been around for a long time now, any decent point and shoot camera has auto focus, I think any EF lens has auto focus (and manual focus, and then there's the full time manual focus which doesn't require switching between manual and auto to use both.) Anyway, yeah that line really bothered me.
it's evidence of digital computers.
I don't know if this is bullshit or not :
3 w04/msg00150.htm )
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States
Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report,
which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know
basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds,
not Iraqi gas.
The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle
around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated
they had been killed with a blood agent - that is, a cyanide-based gas -
which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used
mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at
the time.
These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as
often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned.
(source via google : http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/200
The Geneva Conventions only cover POW's and civilians and criminals.
2 07 07-2004Apr17.html
Bush (their Commander in Chief) has SPECIFICALLY stated that some of the people we've captured are NOT covered under the Geneva Conventions, being that they are "unlawful enemy combatants".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
When you have the people at the very Very VERY top trying to play word games with the rights of prisoners, you don't expect the people at the bottom to behave themselves.
It's probably worth noting that the Red Cross warned the UK Government about this in February. Surely the US were informed too?
BBC: Iraqi abuse 'known in February'
They were soldiers, but they were SPECIALLY TRAINED (as in Advanced Individual Training) in Military POLICE operations.
You see, every enlisted soldier has a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) which is his/her PRIMARY mission. This can range from cook to cop to construction.
Their SECONDARY mission is killing and destruction.
These people failed in their PRIMARY mission.
I remember the puffery on the news about Tiannamen and the great things that the internet was doing for democracy. The world after all, had a right to those images and as terrible as they were every newstation found a way to decry the brutality and praise the pictures.
Without equating the two morally, I wonder at the treatment of images leaked from Iraq by modern media and the control entrenched powers have to stifle reporting.
I think it is the supreme court steps that read Eternal Vigilance is the cost of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson. It is frightening that the atmosphere in Amerca today is so in favour of censorship. Without information we cannot be vigelant. We may not like what we see, but sometimes thats the point!
The four men brutally slain Wednesday in Fallujah were among the most elite commandos working in Iraq...Blackwater has about 400 employees in Iraq, said one government official briefed by the company. Its armed commandos earn an average of about $1,000 a day..
They were MERCENARIES.
Say it with me now...MERCENARIES.
I wish to freaking god the spin would stop.
It's ridiculous.
That video is unbelievable. What fucktards. The connection is a bit slow, so here is another copy of it loot.wmv
I may not be directly involved but not trying to sound crass or anything but ... this is a war. People are getting killed. Pictures are taken of prisoners that are hurt and wounded. Let me repeat - this is a war, ugly things happen. this is exactly what happens during a war - Geneva convention or not this is reality. I don't like it and nobody does but... people are being killed everyday as happens in a war.
Stay tuned for new sig...
I haven't tried one myself, but how about this? Reads SmartMedia, Secure Digital, Microdrive, Compact Flash, MuiltiMedia Card, Memory Stick, or Memory Stick Pro and writes to CD-R or CD-RW.
What those soldiers did was certainly wrong, but on the all-time list of crimes possible in times of war, this is a minor traffic violation, not a felony or even a misdemeanor. But the "anybody-but-Bush" crowd is going berserk.
If I were someone interested in reducing the impact of these and future pictures, I'd create a bunch of outrageous-but-more-or-less-easily-detected fakes and flood the system with them. As the fakes were discovered and debunked, suspicion would arise regarding any still photograph, until Gresham's Law takes effect and the bad eliminated the good. If there were scores of "war crimes" photos released each day, soon no one would pay attention any more, and the real ones would likely be ignored or at least be strongly doubted.
This website discusses the issue of double standards.
Double Standards - http://www.doublestandards.org/
It took considerably more than an hour - it took several months. The military had already started an investigation into this in January, and mentioned it to the press at a press briefing in January. There was no follow up by the press. After the firsst charges were laid in March, there was another press briefing, with a military lawyer present to answer questions from the press. There were no questions on the investigation or charges.
Odd that the press ignored this to pursue thier own agenda in Jan - April, but when the issue was finally released by CBS 3 months after the military told the press what was going on, they changed their agenda.
Here it is, AGAIN!
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/
Let me help you with the hard parts.
"There is abundant evidence in the statements of numerous witnesses that soldiers throughout the 800th MP Brigade were not proficient in their basic MOS skills, particularly regarding internment/resettlement operations."
Get that? They did NOT "KNOW and UNDERSTAND their job". That was in the report.
"Moreover, there is no evidence that the command, although aware of these deficiencies, attempted to correct them in any systemic manner other than ad hoc training by individuals with civilian corrections experience."
Not only didn't they KNOW their job, they thought that having people with CIVILIAN training would compensate for MILITARY training.
"I find that the 800th MP Brigade was not adequately trained for a mission that included operating a prison or penal institution at Abu Ghraib Prison Complex."
Again, they were NOT trained.
"However, I found no evidence that the Command, although aware of this deficiency, ever requested specific corrections training from the Commandant of the Military Police School, the US Army Confinement Facility at Mannheim, Germany, the Provost Marshal General of the Army, or the US Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas."
Even though their Chain of Command KNEW they weren't trained, their Chain of Command did NOTHING to fix it (above the company level).
"Almost every witness we interviewed had no familiarity with the provisions of AR 190-8 or FM 3-19.40."
They didn't even KNOW the AR's and FM's appropriate to their mission.
"Numerous witnesses stated that the 800th MP Brigade S-1, MAJ Hinzman and S-4, MAJ Green, were essentially dysfunctional, but that despite numerous complaints, these officers were not replaced."
The word "dysfunctional" applied to officers by a GENERAL in his OFFICIAL report.
Now would you care to tell me what "EVERY basic military trainee is drilled on"?
Image matters. The U.S. military, like many organizations, is very conscious about managing its image. My understanding is that since 1991 they have prohibited photographs from being taken of arrivals at Dover AFB, to avoid the negative image that they believe results from pictures of coffins of U>S. soldiers coming home.
Images of prisoners in military jails have little upside, and major potential downside as we are now seeing. I would have expected that the only cameras to be allowed into military prisons would have been those for specific photo shoots showing how well the prisoners were being fed, clothed, and housed. Why did the military commanders all the way up the chain of command not have a policy banning the possession of cameras of any sort within military prisons?
I am not saying that it is good to hide prisoner abuse, out of sight - out of mind and all that. I am saying that if I were a neocon Rumsfeld interested in protecting my job then I would have issued an order banning cameras a year ago. At this point it has gone too far and any attempt to ban cameras will look really bad, like he is trying to cover up further abuse. A year ago he could have issued such an order under the guise of a "protecting the privacy of the prisoners" kind of order.
As it stands, the pictures that have been taken and released will result in thousands of new recruits to the terrorist cause, which will result in the destruction of thousands more human lives. Banning the cameras a year ago would not have stopped the abuse, but it would have stopped the extra carnage that will now result.
Transparency in government means you don't have trust the people, because you can trust the process to keep them honest. In an Opaque government it's not enough to trust the Man at the Top, you've got to trust EVERYONE under that Opaque shield.
The latter has something to do with why we're in the current mess.
The same holds for business, considering the opaque bookkeeping behind some recent scandals.
The concepts of Transparency vs Opacity are slightly different terms, but should be familiar to Open Source coders when considering security.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
These soldiers were either (1) very stupid and reckless or (2) Doing what they thought was appropriate and approved, since they were taking photos of themselves doing it.
My personal favorite stupid guards. Courtesy of Monty Pythons Holy Grail.
FATHER: Cut that out, cut that out. Look, you're marryin' Princess
Lucky, so you'd better get used to the idea. [smack] Guards! Make sure
the Prince doesn't leave this room until I come and get 'im.
GUARD #1: Not to leave the room even if you come and get him.
GUARD #2: Hic!
FATHER: No, no. Until I come and get 'im.
GUARD #1: Until you come and get him, we're not to enter the room.
FATHER: No, no, no. You stay in the room and make sure 'e doesn't
leave.
GUARD #1: And you'll come and get him.
GUARD #2: Hic!
FATHER: Right.
GUARD #1: We don't need to do anything, apart from just stop him
entering the room.
FATHER: No, no. Leaving the room.
GUARD #1: Leaving the room, yes.
FATHER: All right?
GUARD #1: Right. Oh, if-if-if, uh, if-if-if, uh, if-if-if we...
FATHER: Yes, what is it?
GUARD #1: Oh, if-if, oh--
FATHER: Look, it's quite simple.
GUARD #1: Uh...
FATHER: You just stay here, and make sure 'e doesn't leave the room.
All right?
GUARD #2: Hic!
FATHER: Right.
GUARD #1: Oh, I remember. Uh, can he leave the room with us?
FATHER: N- No no no. You just keep him in here, and make sure--
GUARD #1: Oh, yes, we'll keep him in here, obviously. But if he had
to leave and we were--
FATHER: No, no, just keep him in here--
GUARD #1: Until you, or anyone else,--
FATHER: No, not anyone else, just me--
GUARD #1: Just you.
GUARD #2: Hic!
FATHER: Get back.
GUARD #1: Get back.
FATHER: Right?
GUARD #1: Right, we'll stay here until you get back.
FATHER: And, uh, make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD #1: What?
FATHER: Make sure 'e doesn't leave.
GUARD #1: The Prince?
FATHER: Yes, make sure 'e doesn't leave.
GUARD #1: Oh, yes, of course. I thought you meant him. Y'know, it
seemed a bit daft, me havin' to guard him when he's a guard.
FATHER: Is that clear?
GUARD #2: Hic!
GUARD #1: Oh, quite clear, no problems.
FATHER: Right.
[starts to leave]
Where are you going?
GUARD #1: We're coming with you.
FATHER: No no, I want you to stay 'ere and make sure 'e doesn't leave.
GUARD #1: Oh, I see. Right.
HERBERT: But, Father!
FATHER: Shut your noise, you! And get that suit on! And no singing!
GUARD #2: Hic!
FATHER: Oh, go get a glass of water.
Why now? Either they were too busy with some other rediculous thing or accusation back then, or they waited untill now to make the president look worse.
Blame the Dept of Defense I guess. They successfully convinced CBS to kill the story. They only ran with it when they did because the photos were about to become public anyways.
Otherwise, the media would have happily complied with the Bush administration in burying the story.
If you did not yet hear about or read these sites :
:
Read how a Baghdad citizen felt about the preparations and during the war Salam Pax - Where is Raed ?.
Read about an Iraqi girl who lost her job and her hope for the future Riverbend - Baghdad Burning.
Read what an Iraqi female engineer tells about what's happening in Bagdad now A Family in Baghdad.
Read what an Iraqi architect has to say Raed in the Middle.
And in a slightly related note
The Stanford Prison Experiment documents an experiment that had to be aborted after only 6 days, because of abuses.
a couple of months before this, some MP police guy in iraq was posting pictures to a message board about how they beat one of the iraqi contractors up because the intepreter said he didnt like americans.
Many people who heard of these "abuses" just shrugged them off anyways but once they saw the pictures it all changed.
It's sad to see those pics but you can also understand it when the iraqis are blowing up humvees everyday with roadside bombs. That same MP who posted pics etc posted one of his hummer after it took a hit from an rpg. I guess it's hard to restrain yourself when somebody is trying to kill you huh
did you forget to take your meds?
And, I can remember a certain 9/11 2001 where old style cameras were pointed at the WTC and I could see it crashing down in realtime. The images were guaranteed authentic in almost no time.
So, this thread is pure bullshit!
Achille Talon
Hop!
As Rumsfeld confirmed, there are pictures and videos of much much much worse things going on. Like forcing prisoners to rape boys, guards raping female prisoners, etc.
say, the photos of mass graves
Checked out the soccer field in Fallujah lately?
Such an optimist, always seeing the mass graves as half-empty.
But hey, continue to write it off as "frat hazing" if you want. Just don't express surprise when the fruits of our labour come back to kill us.
has been protested by Iraqis for many months.
Given the extreme nature of their deaths, how unique it's been amongst other killings, and the fact that they were lured into ambush makes me think they might have had some extra-ciricular activities that pissed off the wrong people.
I know mine is! I think... Sorry, couldn't resist :p
-ReK
(I think that was from rinkworks.com, in the computer stupidities section)
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
what about during vietnam and the gulf war? if i'm not mistaken, we had satellite uplink of video which made the wars broadcasted around the world the same day.
i'd like to know if and how many photos are censored by the us military... i'm guessing that's what happened to those secret iraqi prisoner photos initially...
It's estimated that 60% of the prisoners there didn't do anything. They're just people who got picked up for some reason or another, and have been forgotten by the system. There's no processing of prisoners so no one knows why everyone is there.
And the abuses aren't confined to Abu Ghraib. They're happening in prisons all over Iraq.
We invaded Iraq to restore the Baathist party to power.
Why else did we hand control of Fallujah over to a Baathist General who oversaw the killings of Kurds?
We've all heard it before, but it really is true how the internet, most importantly, and recent technological advancements have taken a lot of the power from corporations and into the hands of the individual.
It's mostly about a power struggle of who controls the information.
Just look at the Monica Lewinsky scandal - it was broken by a poor twenty-something with a modem and a source. This prisoner abuse scandal is another testiment to the power of technology and an individual. Additionally, bloggers have been credited with bringing the Trent Lott racist Strom Thurmond comment to the forefront - they took him down from the Senate Majority Leader position.
On the security end of things, the world changes because of people who would otherwise be insignificant.
In 2000, Ebay, Amazon, Microsoft, and Buy.com were taken down by a 14-year-old in Canada. Most recently, the Sasser worm was written by an 18-year-old nobody in Germany.
The title of "powerful" as been redefined, formerly exclusive to the rich and mighty, but now handed to anyone with the know-how and the will.
Man, modded off topic but it's kinda related. Won't have access to a laptop, it'll be going onto cd for internet cafe access. So Nero is no good. Just straight from the camera to publishing without using a computer.
The Kanguru was one of the ones I was looking at, but I haven't seen a review of one. Have you? Might want to post as Anon Coward so as not to burn up your karma by some chucklehead moderating you as off-topic.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Either they were too busy with some other rediculous thing or accusation back then, or they waited untill now to make the president look worse.
Or they waited until now because they were trying to kill the story and make the president look better.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
All the rent-a-cops that I know of (the ones in the office building where i work) are NOT armed.
I don't think the guy patrolling the school would be armed.
But mercenaries ARE armed.
"I know it's harder to hate them if you're aware that they're just ordinary guys trying to make a living by, for the most part, just being big and looking intimidating."
The word "goon" comes to mind. Someone hired to physically intimidate someone.
The problem is that they do not fall under US law nor military law. If they shoot an Iraqi, who do they answer to?
THAT is the problem. The US government should NOT have anyone in theatre who does not have a clearly defined chain of command. But we do.
"Back in 1945, it took three days between the time U.S. Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima and the famous picture of the historic moment was published in all the newspapers. In 2004, it took barely an hour before the explosive photos from an Iraqi prison were seen all over the world."
Well actually it took several months for the pictures to get into the hands of either the government or the media (some might say "same thing") and atleast 2 weeks of delaying the final broadcast. The real question that we ask to measure the speed of information in our society is: how long until the Flash parodies appear?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
From watching the hearing, I was under the impression that the photos were taken between January and April, and evidence in a criminal investigation that was illegally leaked to the media before the proceedings were concluded.
I definitely didn't get the impression that the photos appeared in the media an hour after they were taken! Apparently there are a great many photos and several videos, only a few of which were obtained by the media, and these were actually taken weeks or months before any of us saw them.
Is this not the case? Isn't this topic an assumption or over-sensationalizing digital media? Couldn't all the photos just have easily been film? Did the photos being digital really make any practical difference in the situation at all? What am I not understanding here?
Without names and verification, there is absolutely nothing to prove these pics are genuine. Just the word of the media... well, we all know how unbiased they are towards the current administration...
Anything?...of course, at least is the avidence that someone whanted to "say" something, same as if that person writes anything..A digital picture is just a way to express some meaning, just like any other technology device (a pencil for instance..), what is being said could be a lie but the same technology is available to everyone so the lier could be unveiled easily thanks to the same technology that allows him to lie easily.
let's piss on this guys face for the camera!
.
let's rape for the camera!
let's turn this guy, already bleeding from from an apache canon fire, into mince meat for the camera!
I am sure when the military bans cameras there will be a major drop in reports because the soldiers will be free of their evil influence . .
I am impressed you were are able to so easily trivialize the inhumane treatment of others. Something you must have learned from the current great leaders of the U.S.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Folks,
The ability to use digital cameras and the Internet to send pictures quickly around the world is actually kind of old news. Once digital still cameras became reasonably portable and affordable (this was by the middle 1990's) many photojournalists have been sending their pictures in all-digital format. I believe the first time this happened was during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, GA.
Brutality in Iraq in three parts:
- Saddam killed and tortured thousands.
-> Saddam was a brutal dictator, and these are the things dictators often do...
- The US killed thousands in a war that alienated the US from most of the world and was started on surprisingly weak evidence, if not lies.
-> The majority of the US media does not question the war. Thousands of Iraqis are killed to "free" Iraq.
- The US does not behave correctly with iraqi prisonners, but does not kill any prisonners.
-> The US media finally report the news and it becomes a huge political matter, so important that Rumsfeld might even have to resignate.
I don't criticize the public outrage and political turmoil resulting from the bad treatment that happened in Iraqi prisons... but I find it surprising that the war itself, which actually killed people, did not make any a similar if not bigger impact on American politics and public opinion.
War has always been about killing the other side as effectively as possible until they give up.
It happened, it was wrong, people are being punished, not let's move on, shall we? I mean really, in the freaking history of all warfare, what happened to most of those dudes is probably the rosiest experience any POW has ever endured. BY COMPARISON, MIND YOU, so all you Michael Moore wannabe motormouths don't even go there.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
The Red Cross DOES release reports. Do a google search and you'll find tons of them.
If, as you claim, the report cited was fake, then why hasn't the Red Cross stepped up and stated so?
"An alleged report has been leaked; the consensus of opinion among those who I work for is that this report has been severely doctored by whomever released it to the Arab press."
It was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Why would you believe that the Wall Street Journal was part of the "Arab press"?
I know that this story hints at the biggest issue of the last few days in a coy way, but I have to say something. Karma be damned.
One day far from now Rumsfeld will be close to meeting his Maker, reflecting on his life. At some point I hope he realizes that there was a reason that the Geneva Convention was created. He might note that it protects our troops from torture, and that torture is an ineffective tool to gain information. He might also, for one moment, actually re-evaluate the decisions he has made over the last few years and ask: why?
But perhaps not, a man who shakes hands with Saddam months after he uses chemical weapons on the Kurds obviously sleeps well at night for some twisted reason.
I will assume that you've, somehow, managed to miss the news.
CIA hireling beats prisoner to death. Hireling has not been charged or fired.
Google on CIA death CAIC prisoner Iraq.
Actually the Geneva Conventions (there were 4 IIRC) do cover some rules of war (can't use disproportionate force against targets with civilians) and defines unlawful combatants as those who violate the rules of war. These violations include using civilians as cover, dressing as cvilians, using chemical weapons, etc... Those Iraqi 'insurgents' have used civilians as cover, fought from mosques and hospitals, disguised themselves as civilians, used ambulances to transport weapons and fighters (a Palestinians terrorists favorite), etc. However, the Geneva Coventions provide almost the same level of protection to those "unlawful combatants" as regular POW's.
Another consideration is that non-state military organizations have to to file a declaration with the Swiss government accepting the obligations of the Geneva Protocols to secure protected treatment under the protocol. But, everyone is supposed to be afforded the assumption of POW status initially.
I do think that even unlawful combatants deserve some minimal level of decency in their treatment. But they deserve some extra-punishment (humane of course) for their illegal acts.
I can't help wondering: If this was the stuff they didn't feel they could get into trouble for documenting, what may have happened when they tried to hide their tracks?
You have to wonder about the brains of those soilders.
You don't need a course on the Geneva Convention to know what they did was a dirty deed, yet they did it AND LET THEMSELVES BE PHOTOGRAPNED DOING IT.
probably the number. Assuming it's only ten, but stating it as fact is most likely what happened to your karma.
note: just guessing, total WAG. I also guess the real number is way high over ten. And if you include the cute term "collateral damage" to "unfortunate close by civilians" I guess getting blown up or shredded or ventilated or whatnot in a normal way in war might count as torture. Also, over to the other war in ashcanistan, they offed three thousand prisoners by locking them in steel containers for days, Whomever didn't croak of thirst and heat, then got machine gunned and plowed into mass graves then. And torture and whatnot was and is still common there, it's common all over the place actually. That story came and went rapidly.
The first general at gitmo (when they started transferring prisoners there, and no I won't call them "detainees", that's intellectually just insulting and wrong) quit, because he wouldn't condone or participate in torture under his watch, that's back in the news someplace, I read it several times, too lazy to google for it now though.
that you guys are making on the behalf of those behind these warcrimes. Since when has an american taken responsibility for his/her fscked-up behaviour? ("It's not our war crimininal, GIMP made me do it." "It's not my fault I'm a serial killer, my mom beat me when I was a kid. Ask my shrink.")
No wonder the fscking US government has refused to sign up to the UN warcrimes tribunal - they know that most of their fscking soldiers are little better than Saddam's.
First - the bright side of thing is that army procedures at least are working somewhat - as in there were actual investigations even without publicity (though when the punishment for what the army itself calls "murder" is just being thrown out of the army and never serving any jail time...). However, this seems to be going on *despite* the Pentagon leadership who tried to minimise their scope and people's knowledge of them as much as possible within the boundaries of existing law and is more a testament to the strong structures put in place by previous Pentagon leaders and previous lawmakers rather than any real care for human rights of the current ones (who probably see them as more hinderences to their goals than anything else). This is why we need strong rights and checks and balances in a democracy. This example also shows the need for a strong free press in a democracy. What we are seeing are that the democratic structures in the US that previous generations laboured to put in place are still working.
Now, onto the bad side.
Personally, one of the things I find most repellent about the Pentagon's reaction to this issue is that they seem to see this more as a PR disaster then a humanitarian disaster. Of course they are making noises about how terrible it was blah, blah, blah. But Rumsfeld also complained mightily in his recent interview about how annoyed they are they are restricted by "peacetime rules" and hence can't control the dissemation of photos and videos on the web from servicemen and so the photos are getting to the media first without being vetted by the Pentagon.
"We're functioning in a - with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the information age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon."
As a result there have been mutterings of increased censorship of servicemen from the Pentagon. Before the photos came out, they tried to suppress the details of the information as much as possible without being able to be accused of doing something illegal eg. press releases released at times they know no-one will be paying attention (an old government trick) with only the barest details (not even the names of the soldiers accused nor any real details of the crimes). Nor was there any attempt to inform Congress at all (even though they were having high level meetings with Congress just a few hours before the photos were published and the Pentagon had known about it for ages as they asked CBS to delay broadcasting them during the fighting at Fallujah). Is it just me, or does *everything* about Iraq seem to shock Congress nowadays? "We didn't know anything!" seems to be their standard response. They are getting to be pretty useless as one of the 3 branches of government. The report about the prison abuses that was leaked to the New Yorker is defined as "Secret" even though the Pentagon admitted there was no real reason for it to be so.
Also the fact that they are trying to pass this off as a few rogue soldiers rather than a systematic problem (which is something their own report and the Red Cross make clear). It almost seems as if the major problem is not that what happened happened, but the fact that the mass media actually found out and are making a big story about it. Now, let's hang some soldiers as scapegoats, make a few noises about "being sorry" and hope it all goes away without us having to make any real changes so we can go back to doing the same thing as before.
No, your point does not apply.
Interestingly enough, in the OFFICIAL REPORT, several instances of admiral behaviour on the part of other MP units and individuals were noted.
I will now quote from that OFFICIAL REPORT:
"3. (U) Throughout the investigation, we observed many individual Soldiers and some subordinate units under the 800th MP Brigade that overcame significant obstacles, persevered in extremely poor conditions, and upheld the Army Values. We discovered numerous examples of Soldiers and Sailors taking the initiative in the absence of leadership and accomplishing their assigned tasks.
a. (U) The 744th MP Battalion, commanded by LTC Dennis McGlone, efficiently operated the HVD Detention Facility at Camp Cropper and met mission requirements with little to no guidance from the 800th MP Brigade. The unit was disciplined, proficient, and appeared to understand their basic tasks.
b. (U) The 530th MP Battalion, commanded by LTC Stephen J. Novotny, effectively maintained the MEK Detention Facility at Camp Ashraf. His Soldiers were proficient in their individual tasks and adapted well to this highly unique and non-doctrinal operation.
c. (U) The 165th MI Battalion excelled in providing perimeter security and force protection at Abu Ghraib (BCCF). LTC Robert P. Walters, Jr., demanded standards be enforced and worked endlessly to improve discipline throughout the FOB.
4. (U) The individual Soldiers and Sailors that we observed and believe should be favorably noted include:
a. (U) Master-at-Arms First Class William J. Kimbro, US Navy Dog Handler, knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI personnel at Abu Ghraib.
b. (U) SPC Joseph M. Darby, 372nd MP Company discovered evidence of abuse and turned it over to military law enforcement.
c. (U) 1LT David O. Sutton, 229th MP Company, took immediate action and stopped an abuse, then reported the incident to the chain of command."
So, individuals and units that received the same training that you claim turns them into cogs and were under the same brigade that had the problems still had completely different behaviours.
Leadership is the key. From the top down, everyone has to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it.
When leadership at the top fails (as was noted in the official report), then the problem gets worse as it goes down the chain of command.
Certain individuals and commanders were able to resist this and retain/re-establish control over their units.
These people received the same training to "[perpetuate] inhumane values and actions" that the others did. But their behaviour was completely different.
British troops ordered: hand over all Iraq photos
When anybody can be a journalist, it changes the value of journalism as a career.
When every soldier is an "embedded journalist", who needs to bring the professionals along? Professionals will always be useful for big stories and in-depth coverage, of course; but in the future, when most people get their news from spur-of-the-moment blog posts and e-mails instead of large media "ground truth" takes on a whole new importance.
Please Help a Schizoid Genius!
It's worth reading the orders of the Iraq Provisional Authority. It's an Ashcroft wet dream. Order 14 allows arbitrary suppression of newspapers and broadcast stations, including seizure and confiscation. But Order 25 gives stronger property rights and three levels of appeal to other businesses.
Also in those orders is a copyright extension act for Iraq. Only to 50 years, and no DMCA, though.
...the less they usually know!
I don't know where you get your certain and indignant knowledge of all things, but I seriously recommend trying other information sources!
Here's a link to a 5 minute NPR report dealing with this in detail: (Click the "Morning Edition audio" link right under the headline)
The extent of your misinformedness is well summarized by this quote:
"There's a policy that Americans can not be tried in Iraqi courts".
I agree with everything you've said. You should read the report. It will disgust you. Their brigade commander (BG Karpinski) seems to have LIED to the investigators about when she was at the various prisons.
Other officers are described as "dysfunctional".
Which would have been bad enough, but then you have civilian contractors telling the troops to soften up the prisoners and telling them that they're doing a good job at it and that they're getting good information because of the abuses.
Non-existant leadership.
No training on what the limits are.
Asking to help with intelligence operations.
Bush claiming that some prisoners are NOT subject to the Geneva Conventions.
Hostile environment.
No idea when they'll be going home.
So, a few enlisted will burn and the officers will be allowed to retire from service.
I think that their entire chain of command should be doing a few years in Leavenworth.
I can see how some worthless fucks could do what they did. I can see burning said worthless fucks. And the responsibility goes up the chain. Their commander should burn. Their commander's commander should burn.
And Bush needs to shut up about "unlawful enemy combatants" and state that EVERY prisoner is subject to either the US criminal justice system OR the Geneva Conventions.
In order to admit a picture as evidence (at least, in a normal criminal court--I don't know what they have to do in military courts), you generally do three things:
1) Print it.
2) Sign it.
3) Date it.
You then submit that to the court. For reference, my information on this comes from the US DOJ CCIPS page. Note that their position on this is similar to how they treat non-digital photographs--that is, they don't insist on the negatives, but they present developed photos to the court. I believe that they cite more case law in there about that so you can read up on it yourself. I'm still digesting lots of 4th ammendment case law from it, myself...
The report, and photos had been around for months before getting released. Anyone who watched the hearing on thge matter knows this. Yet another little bit of "technology rules all" BS.
-bZj
.sig
i would be very surprised if the military didn't ban outright soldiers having cameras... hiding problems is always easier than actually fixing them.
Mod up for truth. That's how it happened--it's a real photo, though not the first flag. THey replaced it for reasons of size, not camera.
The only reporters sent by the government are military personnel with a journalist MOS.
DUH!
"They can't be tried by military tribunal, US court, etc. They may not be typically be armed with weapons, but they still have the ability to get a hold of one and start killing/torturing people."
Incorrect.
Art. 64. The penal laws of the occupied territory shall remain in force, with the exception that they may be repealed or suspended by the Occupying Power in cases where they constitute a threat to its security or an obstacle to the application of the present Convention.
Subject to the latter consideration and to the necessity for ensuring the effective administration of justice, the tribunals of the occupied territory shall continue to function in respect of all offences covered by the said laws.
The Occupying Power may, however, subject the population of the occupied territory to provisions which are essential to enable the Occupying Power to fulfil its obligations under the present Convention, to maintain the orderly government of the territory, and to ensure the security of the Occupying Power, of the members and property of the occupying forces or administration, and likewise of the establishments and lines of communication used by them.
Art. 65. The penal provisions enacted by the Occupying Power shall not come into force before they have been published and brought to the knowledge of the inhabitants in their own language. The effect of these penal provisions shall not be retroactive.
Art. 66. In case of a breach of the penal provisions promulgated by it by virtue of the second paragraph of Article 64 the Occupying Power may hand over the accused to its properly constituted, non-political military courts, on condition that the said courts sit in the occupied country. Courts of appeal shall preferably sit in the occupied country.
Art. 67. The courts shall apply only those provisions of law which were applicable prior to the offence, and which are in accordance with general principles of law, in particular the principle that the penalty shall be proportionate to the offence. They shall take into consideration the fact the accused is not a national of the Occupying Power.
Art. 68. Protected persons who commit an offence which is solely intended to harm the Occupying Power, but which does not constitute an attempt on the life or limb of members of the occupying forces or administration, nor a grave collective danger, nor seriously damage the property of the occupying forces or administration or the installations used by them, shall be liable to internment or simple imprisonment, provided the duration of such internment or imprisonment is proportionate to the offence committed. Furthermore, internment or imprisonment shall, for such offences, be the only measure adopted for depriving protected persons of liberty. The courts provided for under Article 66 of the present Convention may at their discretion convert a sentence of imprisonment to one of internment for the same period.
The penal provisions promulgated by the Occupying Power in accordance with Articles 64 and 65 may impose the death penalty against a protected person only in cases where the person is guilty of espionage, of serious acts of sabotage against the military installations of the Occupying Power or of intentional offences which have caused the death of one or more persons, provided that such offences were punishable by death under the law of the occupied territory in force before the occupation began.
The death penalty may not be pronounced against a protected person unless the attention of the court has been particularly called to the fact that since the accused is not a national of the Occupying Power, he is not bound to it by any duty of allegiance.
In any case, the death penalty may not be pronounced on a protected person who was under eighteen years of age at the time of the offence.
Art. 69. In all cases the duration of the period during which a protected person accused of an offence is under arrest awaiting trial or punishment shall be deducted from any period of imprisonment of awarded.
Sure, the lead is good as far as photojouranlism goes, but the Pentagon has been sitting on some of the photos and torture videos since January.
So, instead of just the instant-access world of digital photos & Internet, we are also confronted with a world where the longer embarassing/damaging information is held, the more damaging it is when released. Also, from a journalism standpoint, please note how these instantaneous images have all been altered in Photoshop: the media aren't showing genitals.
-Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
I have (thankfully) never had to fight in a war. I can't even imagine what it is really like. But in my opinion, in a war, you ether shoot or get shot. You DON'T go about it half-assed. You formulate a smart plan, and hit the enemy HARD. There was a greate quote by a general (I think) on a PBS documentary. Something along the lines of "The objective in fighting a war is NOT to kill all of the enemy, but to hit them so hard that they lose the will to fight."
Besides, what kind of force should they go in with? Underwhelming force?
http://www.prisonexp.org/
And that only took 6 days.
To summarize: Lots of very ordinary people become viscous and sadistic in the absence of external controls.
The only way to counter this is with training and a clearly defined chain of command / chain of support which provides leadership.
#1. Those soldiers need to burn.
#2. Their commanders need to burn.
#3. The civilian contractors telling them they were doing a good job need to burn.
And I'm not talking about letting the officers get off with "retiring" from service. I'm talking Leavenworth.
and, #4. Bush needs to get off the bullshit about "unlawful enemy combatants" and say that EVERY prisoner is covered under EITHER the Geneva Conventions OR the US's criminal justice system with all the rights and protections of one or the other.
Now maybe if we're all totally inundated with these newly freed streams of images about all that's horrid and evil in times of war, we'll suddenly wake up and see what an incredible waste of human potential it is, destroy all the guns & bombs & other crap and start treating each other with a little respect. Nah. We'll become desensitized to this too and pretty soon we won't bother to look anymore. We suck. I'm packing for the first flight to Mars. Bye now.
This started out about "contractors" / "mercenaries". You said:
"The Iraqi court system of course. They don't have any sort of diplomatic immunity to speak of."
I had pointed out the there were cases where such did not happen. A civilian contractor for a US government organization killed an Iraqi and nothing was done.
I also stated:
"The US government should NOT have anyone in theatre who does not have a clearly defined chain of command."
I think that was fairly clearly written. But YOU had a problem understanding it. You replied:
"So, reporters should be banned completely?"
To which I replied:
"Reporters are not sent by the government."
So, I state that the US government should NOT have anyone in Iraq who does not have a clearly defined chain of command and YOU ask about reports who have NOT been sent by the government.
If they are not sent by the government, then my point does not apply to them, does it?
Now you're going on about how you're "not talking about reporters sent by government."
So, I posted the pertinant sections of the Geneva Conventions to help you with your little problem.
Do a google search on CIA CACI death prisoner Iraq
"Is there really any difference in the atrocities if the people who commit them were sent to the country by the government or not?"
Yes, there is. Read the Geneva Conventions. If a soldier shoots an enemy soldier, that soldier CANNOT be tried for murder.
There is a HUGE difference.
"Now, what was the point of posting the articles above?"
Don't worry about them. You don't understand the situation so you wouldn't understand the references to legalities behind it.
The author of the parent post is correct, the entire "abuse" wasn't just recently discovered. In fact, there is a transcript of the Coalition Provisional Authority Briefing that mentions briefly the same allegations that have been floating around in the press as of late.
Personally, I think the Associated Press writer needs to be fired for misrepresenting the facts; although, it is possible that he or she was merely using information available at the time. Regardless, this is just a blatant demonstration of the agenda behind purportedly unbiased reporting. Someone, somewhere saw an opportunity to pin this on an individual very high up in the chain of command (Rumsfeld) even though it is outdated news.
Yes, folks, even with the Information Age upon us, the three day delay between taking the pictures at Iwojima and publishing them was much faster than what happened here. The reason? The Pentagon didn't want them to be released for a while after the incident. (Though, it's a bit silly to discuss an investigation this late into the game--except to save face.)
He who has no
As an Armed Forces Veteran's son, it disgusts me to know that bastards like these make it into the army. Our Army has now been disgraced, along with the government the world over, because 5/6 people didn't make it past puberty. I love that bitch's excuse for being in those pictures - "I was just posing mom". That's right, you were just posing with the leash - "Look ma, I'm in Iraq!". Bitch. I suggest the army do more than just sentence these people to prison (which they still haven't done..). I suggest they cut off the penises of these assholes, pack 'em up in a box and send them to 1800, Pennsylvania Avenue. "Dear Mr. Bush, please keep the dickheads back home, we don't need them here".
I agree. The thing is, these people are as dumb as they come. They couldn't find the door if you pointed it to them. Consider this: their primary job is to KILL PEOPLE. What kind of sick fuck chooses a career who's main task is to filet the guts out of another human being because of where they live? They couldn't get a more productive job like construction or cooking or programming or something? They chose to KILL PEOPLE instead? Imagine being some Iraqi kid watching TV with your dad in your living room and suddenly hearing a thud and looking down and seeing your intestines on your lap because some US soldier had to shoot his 50 caliber into your house because he thought someone was hiding out in there. "But I was just doing my job, sir." Sorta puts in perspective what kind of person a soldier is, so it wasn't any surprise to me at all that these kinds of photos existed. The President is also incorrect when he states that this behavior represents only a small portion of our military, because, as I explained, you'd have to be a pretty sick fuck to even BE a soldier in the first place. Most soldiers would do the EXACT same thing had they been put in charge of that prison.
Actually, I wouldn't blame the soliders. Being as dumb as they are, they're actually the victims in this scenario: Soldiers are the most ABUSED members of our society. You can only blame those in CONTROL of our society for this situation. And, in a capitalist society like ours, the people in control are the wealthy upper-class. The tiny upper-class (let's say, Chris Rock's A+ students) figured out a genious marketing campaign to actully get other human beings, mainly members of the hated and completely stupid lower-class (D/F students) and the vast and barely qualified middle-class (B/C students), to DIE for them. This is the ultimate, most brilliant marketing campaign ever- to get someone to DIE for your product of "country". Just look at our citizenry- they absolutely LOVE the military! "How dare you cut our $500 billion military budget?!" Love 'em like they're heros! Why? Not because they did something productive like find a cure for cancer or anything like that, but becuase they did something destructive like bomb an Iraqi hut with a cruise missile launched from a boat some 900 miles away, to, ultimately, protect "country".
In this era of globalization, where the idea of "country" becomes diminished since the entire world is instantly connected and therefore seperated by one degree, this would be the equivalent of a factory owner in Columbus, Ohio to get the citizens of Columbus to invade Toledo. I'm sure the people in Columbus are mad as hell at the people of Toledo, but, come on, it's sorta meaningless to those that don't believe in "city", right? And, if you notice when you go country to country these days, they're all pretty much the same, with the trade of the wealthy upper-class defining each "country".
Sounds like the dumb-fuck ideas the CIA came up with during the Cold War. After all, who created psyops?
I've had this hope for a long time, that somewhere, sometime, something will be going down and we'll get a picture from one of those cellphones with a camera.
We're all going on about Iraq here, so here's an example. After a particularly nasty helicopter crash, the army came in, secured the area, and confiscated all the cameras. If they were digital cellphone cameras, those pics would be uploaded to a "secure location" instantly.
The current scandal is further proof that a picture is worth a thousand words. The comparison to Rodney King comes to mind -- without that video that would have been another routine traffic stop. I for one was not ready to believe just how bad the situation in Iraq is, but now that even Rumsfeld has admitted this is just the tip of the iceberg, it really casts things in a new light.
To sum up: As technology progresses, there will be more instances of people being "caught" on camera or perhaps covertly recorded in a tiny MP3 recorder, and so on. And this is a good thing. What's that old saw: You can tell a lot about a person by how they act when they think they won't get caught.
Rules? Rules are for games. War doesn't sound like a game I'd like to play, but if you make me play a war, all bets are off.
Bitches, let's try to stay focused...
who were these prisoners and why were they in jail? they were there for a reason. how do we know if they werent saddams personal executioners who killed thousands of iraqis? did there interogation and abuse save coalition lives?
if anything bush and the pentagon are being pussies about this situation because its an election year. if anything this is good for future interogations.
"Okay, that's certainly a bad thing, but it's not the end of the world. There are plenty of unresolved murder cases in the US as well."
It's not unresolved. We know who was killed. We know who killed him. We know when, where and how.
The only thing "unresolved" about this is that the killer will not be tried as a murderer by either the US government nor the Iraqi government.
Since you seem to have trouble understanding this simple fact, I don't feel the need to waste any more time educating you on this.
I can see it now coming up for remake. It will be called THE PASSION OF THE IRAQIS:PASSION II. How ironic.
At least in this part of Europe, the United States are seen like a coutry where money and corporatism take the lead, far more than morality. Moreover, war exactions (e.g. in Vietnam) and dubious alliances aren't exactely forgotten. So yes, USA is a big great country, an economical leader, but it's not really seen as an example to follow. Not here.
And so does B&W mode. The best way to make B&W digital images is to shoot them in color, then mix the RGB channels down to a single channel. By controlling the mix, you can control how colors are mapped to gray levels. Hell, I do this with images scanned from film all the time.
Are you adequate?
filter
I understand the British pictures were on film rather than media and there are a number of technical inconsistencies - weapon-type, uniform and so on that suggest that they may have been staged.
See my journal, I write things there
Does anyone know if there are digital cameras that can sign their own pictures (PGP,...). That would be a simple solution against manipulations.
Everybody is upset about this pictures, the sadest point is that nobody seems to be upset for those thousands of innocents deaths. That's the nature of the war beast, it's not news, it's not new, but it's there.
It seems that war is never the answer.
What's in a sig?
What's in a sig?
If you have _any_ brains whatsoever, they put you in the navy. :)
(i was in the navy yes)
FRA: STFU GTFO
"This is Edison Carter, Live and Direct!"...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
So in this new digital age we see all,I think its more important how we react to all this information...
so a few dumb soldiers screwed with some prisoners, reprimand them or jail them and get over it. I find it amusing that crimes that were mostly based humiliation are getting such a run of press time... where was the same run and concern when when people were killed torched dismembered drug through the streets and hung from the lamp posts?
KBR is not allowing any private computers on their system for the next ninety days
and should be modded as troll. How sanctimonious and self-righteous can you get?
Why do some people volunteer to kill people? Perhaps it's because they're dumb and don't understand the implications... but perhaps they ARE smart enough. Perhaps they understand that, in a violent, racist, zealous, genocide-prone world, lethal violence is sometimes necessary.
I'm sorry, but that's the hard truth. Look it in the eye. Go ahead. It's easy to do from your computer... a lot harder to do in person.
The soldiers who abused those prisoners WILL get what's coming to them, as well they should... but don't go tarring the entire military with the same brush... that's how racists and fanatical islamists think.
Even if you haven't the understanding of what it means to serve in the military, at least show a little respect... if it wasn't for those troops (and thousands of others like them) protecting your rights, you wouldn't be writing such trollish rants in this forum.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Although the capturing device has accelerated the 'flash to print' time, the main reason why the Iraqi photos travelled around the world so fast was the networking infrastructure that meant that they could be sent and received quickly.
A major factor in the publishing delay for WW2 photos was the time it took for the photo to get to one or more mechanisms for mass-distribution (i.e. then, the Newspapers).
Prior to the rise of the interconnected broadband public Internet, the only way that photos could be sent was by proprietary point-to-point sytems: initially wire transfer, more recently various forms of ISDN connection.
It was only during the 20th Century that the mass distribution of pictorial information became possible - through Newspapers, News reels and then TV.
In all this, the evolution of the camera itself plays a very small part... It is the rise of the public internet, with common (open) standards that allows hi-resolution photos to be sent quickly with confidence that they'll arrive in a form that can be viewed and published has transformed photo-journalism, along with the option for these photos to be published to massive audiences at almost no cost via public web sites.
(Quote)some of the most shocking Iraqi photos were not taken by photo-journalists but by soldiers and government contractors who used a digital camera:
When are people going to stop listening to Bush and his Whitehouse cronies and going to start calling these so called Contractors what they really are, MERCINARIES.
Bush, Rice and Rumsfield should be indieted for war crimes:
Blair and Howard should be indieted for stupididy.
Red eye's at night, Hackers delight. Red eye's in the morning, Professors Warning.
Those in Guantanamo Bay are in luxury compared to this:p ows-d13 .shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/
Or, just search for "afghanistan containers" for more articles.
It's something in the oil that makes Iraqis so much more important than Afghans, even as prisoners.
The "apologetic" Bush and ilk are only sorry for getting caught. Why is there an outrage now? It's standard procedure as usual.
Why the hell did it take so long for some kind of reaction?
t an .html
http://www.crimesofwar.org/onnews/news-afghanis
It took 8 months for some journalist to expose some pictures from Iraq, while 2 and a half years later eyewitnesses have disappeared from Afghanistan.
the U.S. military still 'outsources' a lot of its 'interrogation' of Iraqis to private security firms (AKA mercenaries), who practiced (and still practice) similar if not worse torture
True, the military does use private security firms in Iraq, as well as many other places. However, these mercenaries are not used for what you think they are. They are ex-special ops soldiers, who have specialized training--training your average soldier does not. They are not used to torture prisoners--they dont even see prisoners. They are used as bodyguards for the most part for VIPs. Paul Bremer's bodyguards are members of a company called Blackwater. Numerous other dignitaries, generals, etc, have their security handled by these private contractors because they have skill sets your average soldier doesnt, like VIP protection. The active duty specops guys cant do it, they have their hands full.
One of my best friends was in the SEALs for eight years. This summer, he is in Iraq with one of these security companies.
Bush is an irresponsible ot several thousands of deaths (north-american & iraqui people).
Cameras are everywhere. Anyone doing something wrong doesn't even bother to think that someone may be watching. Do they have some feeling that they can just get away with it?
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
The digital photo machine and the internet make the difference. But the CD burner?
I want to congratulate the modern day version of the appeaseniks of the 40s. I want to congratulate on having cheapened yet another evil through their hysterical blather, raving and frothing at the mouth. You helped cheapen the horrors of Naziism by calling everybody who ever disagreed with your asshatted socialist beliefs "Nazis." No, I won't even get into the irony of socialists calling their ideological opponents "socialists" as an insult, I just want you to know that if we, as a species, ever forget the TRUE horrors of Naziism, then it's in large part due to your idiotic, imbecile ravings and calling everybody who doesn't believe in your failed ideology "Nazis".
And you've done it again. You are, after all, very good at it.
This time you've managed to cheapen the horrors of Saddam's regime by comparing it to a dozen morons in Abu Ghraib's puerile abuses. Of course, it's nothing new with you Lefty Saddamites. From Day 1 you've been busy trying to diminish the true horrors of Saddam's regime of terror. Not surprising, really, considering that he was a socialist just like you. A fellow traveller, so to speak. Granted, a national socialist, but still a socialist, and this isn't the first time you've stood up for them, is it?
How you can state that taking naked pictures of prisoner, however humiliating and disgusting that is, is the same as murdering millions and STILL look yourselves in the mirror is beyond any halfway decent human being. But then again, you're neither decent, nor human beings. You're socialists.
The pigs that did what they did in Abu Ghraib will be dealt with, they'll be dealt with SEVERELY, as they bloody well should be. I just want to know if you can say the same for Saddam's butchers or, indeed, for all of the socialist butchers that you idolize.
And where were you exactly when Saddam was still in power, still abusing, murdering, raping and mutilating innocent civilians? Oh, that's right, you were out in the streets doing all you could to make sure that he could keep on doing it.
And now you have the friggin' NERVE to lecture anybody on morality???
Kiss my proud American ass, lefties.
You have absolutely ZERO credibility on that issue, and if you knew what was good for you, you'd just slink away and hide under your slimy rocks again, hoping that someday perhaps everybody would forget the mass graves that the psychopath that you defended dug.
And that goes for Saudi Arabia too. Shut the fuck UP, you cave-dwelling camel fuckers. YOU'RE the ones sending school girls back to burn alive because they're not dressed properly for evacuation, YOU'RE the ones chopping off limbs for shoplifting, YOU'RE the ones thinking that it's just fine and dandy to stone women, and you have the gall to try to lecture US?
Piss off, crawl back in your tents, fellate your favorite goats and pray, PRAY that your turn never comes, because you've fucking well earned a right royal bitch slapping a THOUSAND times over, and I'll be ululating my fucking HEAD off if ever the happy day comes when your litter box is turned into a sheet of glowing glass.
Yes, that goes for all of the rest of the medieval thugocracies of that inflamed boil on the scrotum of humanity that we refer to as the Arab World as well, not to mention your social club, the Useless Nitwits.
What happened in Abu Ghraib was an abomination and a stain on our honor and it must be dealt with. But we're dealing with it, we have been dealing with it for months, which is a damn sight more than can be said about any of the thousands of atrocities that you swine have committed.
It needs to be addressed, it is being addressed and we're not even halfway done addressing it, but the last fucking thing we need is a lecture from pigs that make Adolf Fucking Hitler look like a Catholic Choir Boy, capice?
So shove it up your asses, because we'll be fucking thrice damned if we'll pay any attention to a single syllable slithering out of your stinking, genocida
Its too late to an camera technology now. Its becoming smaller, cheaper and everywhere. You get digital cameras in cellphones, pens, computers, toys, for next to nothing.
This really applies to both sides and shows you the dillema of all conflicts like this. Where you have two sides who don't want each other. Doesn't matter if it is vietnam, northen ireland, israel and now iraq.
It is very hard after a battle when you buddies been killed and you came close to death and that son of a bitch on the other side has his hands up to not give him a little lesson and teach him not to ever do that again.
Old war movies don't show this but the more recent ones finally show this reality. It is human nature and something that only the most highly trained can overcome, SWAT teams, certainly not regular soldiers. One of the hardest jobs for a police officer is being nice to criminals you are trying to interogate while moments before you where cleaning up their handy work.
And there been plenty of examples of even cops losing it.
So iraq and all those other conflicts has two sides who are escalating in their hatred neither side simply capable of stopping it.
If only we could change human nature so that we could fight a battle and then when it stops calm down and threat the other side humane. Then again if we changed that much we wouldn't have battles in the first place.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Someone named Fred said it much better than I could:
Note how obedient the Iraqis are. Think about this. One man doesn't give another a blow job for the amusement of Twiggy unless he is terrified of the consequences if he refuses. Is it only psychological torture? In the pictures, yes. Somebody is behind them with whips and pliers. Those men are scared shitless, and they have a reason.
That's an excerpt from here.
Slight confusion of scandals --
The Washington Post broke the Watergate story.
The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, and did indeed fight their right to do so all the way to the Supreme Court.
A stanford professor is making the rounds on the talking head shows reminding people about an experiment he did back in the 70's where they made university graduate students (not joe sixpack) play the roles of prison guards and prisoners for a research project to examine behavior. The experiment was 24/7 for a few weeks (4-5 weeks)and there WERE cameras (both hidden and not-hidden).
Apparently they had to stop the experiment weeks early because of sadistic behavior by the university graduate students playing the prison guards in the experiment to prevent people from getting seriously hurt (physically and mentally). This isn't joe sixpack and this wasn't a real high-pressure situation either.
After about a week, the cameras in this experiment recorded really horrible acts humiliation and nearly all the "prisoners" being stripped down naked and forced into humiliating sexual poses at nearly one time or another and lots of escalating punishment by the "guards" as they tried to out-do each other and seemed to have wanton disregard for the "prisoners" health and safety (the escalation factor was the main reason they gave for stopping the experiment early).
The conclusion of this might be that there's strong evidence that it's probably in our (human) genes to be sadistic and we REALLY need rules (or at least some society pressure) to resist our natural tendancy to fulfill the adage that "absolute power corrupts absolutly" from taking over.
There have been many studies that show how sadistic we can be as a species. Some example of things that people learn as kids: pulling off insect wings, frying ants with magnifing glasses, swallowing goldfish, breaking hamster necks, putting cats in driers, tying nooses around dogs necks, pushing brothers and sisters down flights of stairs, holding funny looking nerds under water, wedgies, atomic wedgies, not to mention unspeakable college hazing incidents. Not to mention parents and teachers that tell impresionable minds that there's a bad side of town and they don't trust people of a certain color or parentage...
Yes we all certainly learn how to treat people fairly as children. NOT! Lord of the flies anyone?
Don't discount training as a way to counteract this. People train all the time to resist their natural instinct and modify their behavior (e.g., personal trainers, therapists, etc). Military training (done correctly) can be a good way to train people in these situations to be aware of natural tendencies and recognize when they should be wary of going with their instincts.
It's actually the websites that are showing an edited version of the video - the Iraqi who's initially shot up was transferring RPGs from the pickup trick to a weapons cache in the field. The video floating around the web starts after he's dropped the RPGs and is walking back, making it look like the pilot is shooting up guys just hanging around a field. The Apache was there watching because they'd gotten intel that the weapons transfer was going to happen there. The version of the video that was aired on TV starts with the two trucks arriving, and shows all of this, along with the pilots describing it to their CO, asking for, and receiving permission to open fire.
as some of you do in your comments making fun of the situation.
War is inhuman on either side, and every "real" photo is shocking.
These photos will show a little more of the real war, which has never been shown to the public.
The pictures were taken late last year. The Pentagon has been investigating since January. CBS sat on the pictures until they were afraid they'd get scooped. Anyone check this story out before posting it?
I am not left-handed, either!
The pictures of the prison torture occured a year ago. The Falluguh attacks took places a few months ago.
Did it ever occur to you that the Falluguh attacks occured in response to the torture going on in the prisons?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
In Greham's words, "We're talking about murder and rape, not just humiliation."
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Apparently the Bush administration ignored that regulation when it came to Gitmo detainees and Iraqi prisoners.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Digital reporting is only as pervasive as the jumped up little tinpot dictator of the country being investigated allows it to be. The mud reporters throw at democracies will often stick however because we don't cut out the tongues of reporters who criticise the government. Reporters in some middle-eastern countries don't have this luxury.
This war is far less vicious than any war before it. The only difference this time is that the armchair patriots are seeing their soldiers die every night on TV in damn near real time. If you don't have the stomach for it, change channels, which is your right as an armchair patriot. Whatever you do, don't force your govt to withdraw and abandon the 99% of good clean living Iraqis to anarchy and destruction.
I vote for a forced reformation of the Muslim church. Get them all the hell out of government worldwide like we did to the Catholics hundreds of years ago. Religious fruitloops are far too greedy, one-eyed and dishonest to act as political or military leaders. Geez, our politicians ego trip enough without thinking they've got a mandate from Jehova, Allah, Bhuti Bhuti or whichever fictitious cloud riding God they chant to.
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model
To the extent that the abuse by Americans is given more press than abuse of Americans, I think this is a matter of differing expectations. Whether it's right or wrong, many people expect Islamic fundamentalists -- or any of "them Arabs" -- to act in a way that citizens of Western countries would consider barbaric. And at the same time, they expect Americans to be "more civilized." When the American guns-for-hire ("security contractors") were abused even after death, it fit with expectations. When the Iraqi prisoners were abused, it ran counter to those expectations.
As for "jail them and get over it" I think that might work handily within the US -- but the rest of the world won't accept such a pat answer, because they won't accept as easily that it was just some isolated incidents rather than an indication of what the United States is really all about.
Photographer Robert Capa landed on Omaha beach on D-Day and risked his life taking lots of pictures. When the films went to the lab, they got overcooked and all but seven frames were destroyed.
The fighting was so heavy that many of shots were taken taken by holding the camera over his cover and shooting blind. Oh for an LCD display! And what about best shot selector and digital stabilisation for the nervous shake?
BTW Capra carried on as a war photographer and was killed in Vietnam.
The US military is unlike many militaries: It is all volunteer, it is multi-racial, multi-cultural, and comes from all strata of american society. It also has a sizable percentage of members who are not career soldiers... they are only serving a stint to get their college money, etc. Many are also "citizen-soldiers"... reservists and Guard of various types. The US military is unlikely to act against US society, because it's drawn from, and represents a broad cross-section of, that same society.
Also, there is the small matter of illegal orders... those soldiers in Iraq that stated that they were "just following orders" are going to twist in the wind. A soldier is OBLIGATED to disobey an order he knows to be illegal or unlawful. As an officer carrying out illegal orders, you have no defense against prosecution for such actions... it is your duty as an officer to evaluate those orders. As an enlisted man (depending on your rank), you sure as hell go up the chain of command for clarification.
As a former field-grade officer in the US military, it is difficult for me to envision a scenario where the US military would act to oppress and murder US civilians. If you think it's odd that the Iraqi military would not act against its own people (witness the recent uprisings in Iraq), you should ask a bunch of US soldiers if they'd do the same without a damned good reason.
I've actually had this conversation with other officers and enlisted men... our concensus was not only "no," but "Hell no!" If ordered to wantonly slaughter their own people, US soldiers would either refuse, remove their bars/oak-leaves/stripes, or immediately turn on and arrest whoever issued that order.
Just FYI.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Spoken like a true Clintonite. "You joined the military so you must be scum, or at least a moron." This bile is wrong on so many levels it is beyond belief. Perhaps that is what you were thinking about as you wrote that reply. I know from the a friend that worked in the White House Communications Center during the early 1990's that that definitely was the attitude of the then new administration.
First, digressing to a slightly earlier post, every single person who has been mobilized since at least Bosnia and Kosovo goes through Law of Land Warfare refresher training as part of that mobilization process. Anybody that says otherwise is playing the victim. I have been mobilized twice, for a year each time, since Oct 2001. I got back from Iraq shortly before Christmas. We were thoroughly briefed on the Law of Land Warfare each time. Furthermore, the regular Law of Land Warfare briefings are an annual requirement for everybody in the military, including Reservists and National Guardsmen (there is a slight difference between the two.)
Second, while Mr. Velauthapill may not know many or any current of former service people that attended "Ivy League" or top ranked schools, that is more a result of the law of averages working against him than the lack of exixtance of the same. As a member of the military, I have known dozens of individuals who have attended these schools. I served with a JAG officer in Baghdad who was a Harvard Law graduate. We have another in my unit who served in Afghanistan, but chose not to go the JAG route. I had NCO's serving under me that were Fordham grads. We had another junior enlisted person who had a Masters degree from Harvard. My unit has had at least two lieutenants that were MIT Grad Students. And the CEO of the company I work for is a former Marine aviator. Military people do not necessarily wear their service on their sleeve. And with less that one third of one percent of the population serving in the military in some capacity, it is very easy to miss knowing a service member. Especially in enlightened areas like parts of the Northeast or Left Coast where it is not popular among the elite. But even then, since 9/11 there has been a rising tide children of the elite joining the military with a desire to serve their nation. A good example of this is Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's son.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
But the iraq war-crimes photos... took MONTHS to reach the papers... the abuses took place early to mid winter...
So you think Cliton hates the military? Or are you just so biased against his administration? Conversely, so does Bush love the military?
As far as the rest of your comment is concerned, I am not saying that there are ZERO intellectuals or "smart" people in the military. I am not saying that. What I AM saying is that the military in nearly all countries are made up of lower classes. There are hardly anyone from the top schools for example. This is not to say that there are zero (after all, more than one dead is listed on the walls of these schools (walls shows those that died in service)). My point, however, is about the general population.
If you really don't believe that the military is disproportionately made up of lower classes, I can find stats to back it up. I know for a fact that blacks and Latinos make up more than their share. There are very few millionaries in the military. Also, I can't remember the number but I think there are less than 5 members of Congress (and maybe includes Senate) who have family members who have served in the military. And lastly, almost no one from MIT, Berkeley, Yale, etc join the military. If you want proof, just ask and I'll look it up.
If USA starts conscripting (which could very well happen in one year), you will hear the stats that I have referenced. Already, some politicians are calling for the draft.
I am not saying that the military personnel are smart or dumb or anything like that. All I'm saying is that the vast majority simply join for economic and other reasons.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
That's exactly the topic of the movie (Das Experiment) I mentioned a few posts earlier.
But I suppose most people here prefer believing that this girl is special, instead of looking in the mirror.
Please note that this doesn't mean she is not guilty, just that she wasn't well prepared for that kind of job (and certainly the trainers aren't qualified either). The chain of command should have her (and his psychotic fellow) moved out of this job as soon as they knew about this, and open up all their military carceral system, instead of denying and pulling that "Geneva convention does not apply" crap.
The same thing happened with Rodney King. NPR reported yesterday that a local L.A. TV station "cropped" the video to eliminate King's initial psycho behavior. The jury acquitted the officers after seeing the entire video, but the public thought that the edited version was reality, thus the riots.
BTW, NPR reported that many of the Iraq abuse photos have been cropped to exclude dozens of other troops standing there, watching. This would clobber the "just a few bad apples" argument.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
... are notoriously easy to be sucked into abuse of power over other humans. I watched a fascinating little clip the other day about a psychological study done in the 70's. At this college, they divided up the class, 1/2 became prisoners, half the guards, for a projected 2 week incarceration. They even got the local cops to start it off by "arresting" the detainess at home when tHey weren't expecting it. It was supposed to run for two weeks, but it only lasted 5 DAYS until they had to emergency shut down the experiment. It's on tape, you can see how the prisoners got demoralised, desperate and wimpy, and how the guards got correspondigly more aggressive, right into sadism, into sick "fun". that was on dateline the other night, BTW. They interviewed these people, was interesting to hear the takes they had for their actions 30 some years ago.
You talk to any HONEST combat vet, they'll tell you torture is common place, abuse and killings of civilians and prisoners is common place. It's beyoind common. I mean, what excactly is a "free fire" zone like they had in nam? Them old fart officers they got who are all nam vets know this, it's amusing to see them act oh so surprised and keep sputtering how "it's just a few guys" and "it should never happen". That is SUCH a freekin joke.
War is about state sanctioned murder, that's about it. they take real young people and ENCOURAGE them to change what society tells them, to change into inflicitng death and pain on others is to be rewarded, the better you get at it, the higher you go in rank, the more money you make, the more "honor" and medals you get. This is like duh, what do they expect to happen? Sometimes it's because of a nation getting invaded by another, but that is the exception, usually wars come about from a profit angle (this one, it's the oil and some of the leaders we have are israel firsters, not USA firsters)), but usually war comes about from a few connected fatcats having a beef with some other connected fatcats some other place, but they "give the orders" so millions get to suffer from their buffoonery (and cowardice). You don't see too many national leaders "fighting" any more, like in ye olden days, at least the doofus king back then would strap on a sword and go out and cha cha right along with his men.
And it goes on in jails around the US as well on the street. From torture to murder. And I KNOW it does, nuff said. Any HONEST cop will tell you the same thing as well.
It's gotten out of control. These nimrods have single handedly taken the last remaining 1/5th of the worlds muslim populations who were at least neutral towards the UD and made them all start listening to the nutjob fundy mullah jihaders. I hope the neocons are proud to be the cause of ww3.
I have seen a lot of administrations, this one we got now is THE WORST one of the bunch, near as I can tell, and most of them been more or less "bad", but these guys.... sheesh.... To call them incompetetent stupid liars would be a compliment.
This guy aaron russo for prez is looking good to me, I think I'll probably let diebold enter his name into their blackhole voting machine where it can disappear. It's the thought that counts...dang if I'll vote for either mainstream evil.
%^)
It is good for someone to actually stand up and point out the fact that the ICRC does not release such reports. And I am completely sure that they did not release them in the Iraq situation.
However, one question I would ask of the parent poster is this: What do you make of the ICRC's strong statements made regarding blatent violations of international humanitarian law by the IDF in the West Bank and Gaza? These announcements have been released and have generally been available from their web site, and have been further covered in Ha'aretz. Granted they cover abuses of ICRC personnel rather than prisoners, but it seems that this is an indication of an extremely serious problem which is not getting the media attantion it deserves.
Regarding the idea that somehow our news in the US is better than Al'Jazeera, I would point out that our news coverage is strongly shaped by the Pentagon to their own ends. One simple example of such is the insistance that this resistance in Iraq is somehow exclusively a foreign endevour and not an indigenous uprising. By these same standards, the American Revolution was not an indigenous uprising either but the work of the French, but this claim is being repeated because the alternative (truth) is too damaging to this administration. The truth appears to be that this is the continuation of a structure of resistance which existed in many persecuted communities under Saddam and which is now far more able to operate freely with the Saddam regime taken from power. Do they have some foreign help? Of course. But it seems that most of the fighting is being done by Iraqis.
One major concern I have regarding the use of digital cameras in war journalism is that it makes it extremely easy for the photos to be altered in ways that make it difficult to trust the source documents. If the press gets burned once, it will be harder to get them to put photos showing prisoner abuse, etc. in the future.
Finally, regarding the Iraqi prisoner crisis, what made the difference wasn't the fact that the pictures were taken, but the fact that they were leaked to the press. Leaking information regarding unconscionable actions on the part of the military is an important part of American patriotism, and this is very similar in a way to the leaking of the Pentagon Papers. I respect those who feel that they have no action they can do in good consciance other than to release these documents for all to see.
But like the leaked ICRC reports, how will we be able to trust what is leaked? How will we know that it is an act of consciance?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP