With what the soldiers did to the POWs.
Will
Which ones? The British?
Don't be fooled yet - after scrutiny those tabloid pictures are likely to be exposed as fakes.
If so, the reckless publisher should be tried for treason and executed - the buck stops with him, regardless of whether he knew their authenticity.
In this currently volatile state of affairs over Iraq, such paper-selling antics and anti-war propaganda is inexcusable as impressionable minds are changed through deception.
Of course if they are indeed ruled fakes, many will still suspect a "government cover-up" which results in outrage either way.
aye its been horrible stuff eh critter, but i am happyened to see you back here ! hows it hanging big guy ?!
I can only be around off and on, whenever my step brother is in town...hes a truck driver. He lets me use his computer. Wake and Floyd, but I'm going through a divorce right now. But other than that, things pretty much suck right now.
Will
Hi Critter.
Nice to see you back, if only for a short time.
Sorry to hear about your trouble, but you've always got us, eh?
It has been a while, and it is good to hear from you.
sorry to hear that Crites. all the best & look forward to seeing your posts whenever you can. hang in there eh?
why are you in a divorse? did your woman throw away some of your comics?
Will, don't mind Cybermax. He's just become paranoid about that happening to him...
Welcome back!
Hope life improves for you.
- Trout
Hiya Critter. Glad to have you visit.
This place will always welcome you with a smile! :)
Bolt-01
I wish it was as simple as that. Its been two years of snide remarks, put downs, and an almost sexless marriage. I had all I could take. I still love her, but can't live with her anymore.
Will
well, good to hear from you again. Come back any time.
as for your problems - I hope things improve.
Sorry to hear that, sounds like a living El Paso Fajitas ad.
ADE
some heavy shiv there, crits, good to see you around again though. Stay cool.
Welcome back, Crites. I can remember when you used to contribute to the old 2000ad-L, with Grainne and Miranda, et al.
Yeah, the Iraq torture-photo scandal is pretty depressing.
I'm half in agreement with Vlad the Impaler up there: it's irresponsible of The Mirror to be displaying these photos now. It will almost certainly cost lives. How much more provocation do vengeful extremists need to go blowing up civilians and foreign soldiers?
But I'd stop short of treason trials and exceution for the free press. I think the journalists, editors and publishers responsible are going to get away with it. What planet's that blue-faced geek living on?
If British soldiers have been torturing Iraqi prisoners, then the chain of command is at fault. Check out Amnesty, the Christian Peacemaker Teams,and various other organisations against torture for just how many incidents of torture, mostly but certainly not exclusively by American soldiers, have been reported.
I have nothing to say about the Mirror pictures as they haven't been proved to be true (and Piers Morgan has a somewhat elastic view of the truth), but the American pictures most certainly are real and show abuses every bit as bad.
Rather than get angry with the free press, I'd get angry with the military and politicians who are waging this stupid, ill-prepared and ill-thought-out war.
You're probably right, Dud. Although I would say by all means print the story, but did The Mirror really need to show the pictures? There's a fine line between holding governments and armed forces to account and making a volatile situation even worse.
I agree, it was somewhat irresponsible...
To print such pictures with the potential risk they bring to UK Forces and civilians you have to be clear and certain that they are real. If they turn out to be false then the punishment must be severe for the paper in question.
It's a tough thing, on one hand I hope they are false but on the other if they found not to be faked then the full force of the law needs to be brought down on the soldiers stupid enough to carry out such an act and also stupid enough to take a photographic record.
As for the American photographs, where the people were grinning so proudly at their achievements, they were verging on the unbelievable. Any punishment they receive needs to be made very public so that people can see that this is unacceptable and intolerable.
On another note; sorry to hear about your troubles Crit; there's a lot of my friends going through (or just gone through) similar situations at the moment - it's a tough time.
I know several soldiers who have fought and killed in Iraq, and one wonders how widespread the torture/humiliation of POWs is over there.
I have not received any first hand reports, but hints that when tensions are running particularly high (killing of coalition forces) then contempt can be brought to boiling point in some camps - particularly in younger soldiers.
It could not be considered unjust to hurt a man who has killed women and children... but as far as the bigger picture goes, to allow war crimes to be exposed on TV and in newspapers is astoundingly reckless and worrying about the security and blind-eyes in these camps.
"It could not be considered unjust to hurt a man who has killed women and children..."
no way, the soldiers of coilition forces are there to fufil ..whatever role it is theyre supposed to be fufilling & that is NOT acting as judges, jury & torturers, thats what the laws are for, boys from the west are in a shitty situation that they can only retaliate not instigate fire etc, BUT that is their job, they are there to represent certain values ( allegedly ) & if they cannot uphold these morals without being reduced to lord of the flies, then their training is crap, they are crap at their job & shouldnt be there. Under NO circumstance is torture etc on the part of UK & USA troops justifiable.
Crites, sorry to hear all that , but sounds like youre doing the right thing, no-one deserves to be put down by their loved ones al the time, seen it a million times, its time to leave. good luck .
I used to be attached to the 265th Heavy Material Supply Co. that shared the same building as the Military Police unit responsible for whole thing. So the MP company is local and so is the guy who turned them in. My step brother is leaving today, so I'll see you all in about a month or so.
Will
critter
great to see you bakc again.
be back in a month bit more regular great to hear it.
You can believe that what we're seeing isn't the worst crimes that have been perpetrated by the Coalition forces.
Quite frankly, if the Mirror genuinely believed these photos to be true (and with the vast stacks of photos showing US troops, they'd got a lot of reasons to believe they were) then surely to sit on them, and not to release them would have been far worse. It's bad enough the Arab world will see these pictures, but to couple that with an arguement that our so-called "free" press should have complicitly concealed the truth as well? Hardly gonna inspire trust.
The sad thing is that the number of civilian deaths caused by coalition troops since the "end" of the war is now so great that the military have stopped investigating and are giving out paltry and arbitrary compensation payments to relatives and survivors.
When I find the link (was somewhere on the BBc and Guardian sites) I'll post it.
Critter - I'd like to make some kind of lighthearted "chin up" remark, but I don't want to belittle your situation. You'll survive.
But you're talking about a business taking it upon itself to "release" frighteningly controversial and dubious photographs to the world, in the midst of an ugly ongoing battle involving our country.
The newspapers are there to report news - one could say every conceived story is news and therefore nothing should be censored, but if tabloid rubbish is using such a sensitive subject to provoke knee-jerk outrage (and thus high sales) at this time then it should be reprimanded and ordered to desist.
It compromises our country's war effort - and we are still fighting a war - and could instigate further bad feeling and vengeance from those who would like to blow us all up.
If the UK pictures are real, then there should be a time and a place for them to be analysed and actioned upon internally after this conflict has finished. That a tabloid editor has (as usual) got there first and is recklessly brandishing them for his own self-serving purposes tells us such pigs are unpatriotic, greedy megalomaniacs high on their powers of publicity.
War crimes are terrible, but inevitable - and I believe in our world today the mistakes made by British soldiers would pale in comparison to that of some other countries.
Hang them if you like, but make sure you hang Piers too.
>If British soldiers have been torturing Iraqi prisoners, then the chain of command is at fault.
??????
La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.
Hmmm......
Just watch rumsfeld on tv - He's finally apologised about the treatment of the POW's by certain American soldiers - He's backed down off the stance he was taking, saying it happenned on 'his watch' so he's ultimatley at fault. then I heard an interview with the mother of Prv. English - She stated that her daughter had be given ORDERS to torture the POW's prior to interrorgation! If that is the case, then surely It makes the Coalition as bad as the old regime? I've always thought two wrongs don't make a right - if we are there to bring democracy and order to the country then shouldnt our forces be above the kind of images that have been published?
One final note - when did the story break over here? I've been in the U.S and the first mention of it Was on the morning news on Sunday.
It was terrible. What kind of sad person would want to stage such photos in the first place. Like Endjinn said, I think it was really irresponsible of The Mirror; they must have known the reaction the pictures would cause, you would think they'd make sure a million times that the pictures were actually genuine.
when did the story break over here? I've been in the U.S and the first mention of it Was on the morning news on Sunday.
CBS broadcast the photos last Wednesday night on CBS News' 60 Minutes II. The Washington Post newspaper ran a story on it on Friday. Sunday was the watershed for TV coverage.
Oh, and the videos that haven't been seen show the rape of children that are held in the prison, apparently.
... and the US abuse appeared in the UK papers on Friday, though it may have been on the TV news on Thursday. The Mirror printed the first of its photos of British troops on Saturday.
"Oh, and the videos that haven't been seen show the rape of children that are held in the prison, apparently
Which children? By whom? Explain.
Sorry, should've said that the first I heard about it was sunday - apologies...
jetlag's a bugger!
"Which children? By whom? Explain."
U.S. military officials have told NBC News that the unreleased images & video mentioned by Donald Rumsfeld yesterday include:
U.S. soldiers beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death
U.S. soldiers raping a female Iraqi prisoner
U.S. soldiers "acting inappropriately with a dead body"
Video shot by U.S. personnel showing Iraqi guards raping young male prisoners
One of the contractors mentioned in the Taguba report is also alleged to have raped a teenage male prisoner.
These claims are, apparently, the tip of a very dark & ugly iceberg, and that the U.S. administration is publicly admitting that worse is yet to come is an indication of the scale of this. If it really was just a few "bad apples", the notoriously secretive Bush administration would not be making this known. It's a widespread, officially-sanctioned policy.
Yay! We're gonna get a democat America.
sickening shite isnt it. what twisted wierd fuckery? have they watched too many nasty videos or what? do they get trained in inhuman wierdness? guess this'll be the material in some dark disturbing movie witha cool sound track in 20 years time.
see our Richie has replicated again.
>do they get trained in inhuman wierdness?
They get trained to kill people, and that effects people in different ways.
La Placa Rifa,
W. R. Logan.
Sickening shite indeed.
I like to think that, as an adult, I've pretty much seen it all, and can no longer be shocked or appaled by something I see.
Well, this has proven that wrong, hasn't it..?
Logans point is interesting. These people are trained to kill, pumped up and sent into a hostile environment, then given nothing to do. I'm not saying this is an excuse, merely an observation.
I wish I could say I was shocked by these revelations. But I'm not.
In one of his books (I think it was "A Mad World, My Masters", but it could have been "News From No-Man's Land") John Simpson talks about the shit pulled by British and American soldiers in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia, including smuggling female refugees and their children out of the couuntry in exchange for a quick gang-bang.
Like Logan and Rac said, these people are trained to kill, and I for one have no clue what is going on inside their heads. But there's some shred of humanity in me that says torture is just fucking wrong, no excuses, no forgiveness. And to take pictures and record videos....man not only is that sick, but it's pretty damn stupid at that.
There was a quote from one of the American soldiers accused I heard on the radio saying they hadn't been trained or told what to do with PoWs. Even if that was the case, something should have told them that threaten to electrocute their bollocks is not what is required to win hearts and minds.
The sheer moral bankruptcy of both the British and American governments is clear to see in all this. They knew about this kind of shit monthys ago, and are only now beginning to act. Kinda puts the moral outrage Blair and Bush spouted out when Iraqi forces showed our PoWs on TV in perspective. At least they weren't dragging them around on a leesh.