Picture of the day

[Mark]

http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.04050701_torture_sm.jpg

From Le Monde. It reads, "Unacceptable! Torture has never been part of our values."

Click HERE (http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.04050701_torture_sm.jpg) if the picture goes down.

[Wuptdo]

Ah, the French. The stewarts of the perfect world. Only if we could be more like them. Now let me think, ah yes, Algeria, Vietnam, Central Africa, Hatti, and the list goes on. Oh, and how about that 3 billion dollars that they loaned to Saddam over the years. Yes, such a noble people.

About the POW abuse. It was wrong and those directly responsible should be punished, as specified in the UCMJ.

However, let me put this spin on it. As most people are aware the military has a "don't ask, don't tell" in regards to homosexuals. Suppose these MPs were gay soldiers? Suppose these were gay Iraq POWs? What is this was nothing more than a San Francisco bath house party, i.e., boys being boys? The only reason why I think they would be taking pictures is to send back to their friends in San Francisco or Chapel Hill. If the media was aware that this was the actually the case, would they be so critical or would they approve? We won't know tell the court martial.
Yes, I know it bizzare, but .....


Wuptdo B-)

[Mark]

I should retitle this thread to post of the day, the award going to Wup's homoerotic conspiracy theory.

Sorry, but this...

http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.lie.naked_sm.jpg
click HERE (http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.lie.naked_sm.jpg) if picture goes down.

doesn't look like fun and games to me. Or perhaps you'd like to suggest that there is an unusually high percentage of homosexuals serving as MPs at this particular prison? I count eight uniforms here alone. Can you imagine, 8 gays in a 10 x 20 space! It must be a black hole of sin!

[Wuptdo]

Mark,

If they haven't been doing so, I am willing to bet honest money in that every gay S&M club from New York to Chapel Hill to San Fran, they are playing "Iraq Prison" in one way or another. However, my question had nothing to do about being gay, it was about the way the "media" would of treated the issue. I hope you do realize that there is a double standard when it comes to gay issues in the media.

Meanwhile, while CNN is still showing naked POW pictures, how about that 20 tons of chemicals in Jordon. Can you and your media friends wish it away, we hope not.

Also, I remember seeing similar pictures and hearing stories of abuse from the North Koreans to crew members of the USS Publeo. Next time my Uncle is in town, I would like to invite you over. He can tell you what a great time he had spending 7.5 years in the Hanoi Hilton. Oh so sorry, I forgot Mark, you approve when bad things happens to Americans.

I do stand behind this:
About the POW abuse. It was wrong and those directly responsible should be punished, as specified in the UCMJ.



Wuptdo B-)

[johnb]

Oh so sorry, I forgot Mark, you approve when bad things happens to Americans.

I find it hard to say you're wrong there wup.

[Wuptdo]

JohnB,

You are probably right, I was a little harsh. However, I can't understand Mark's self-loathing, at least for this country or himself. In a way, I feel very sorry for him. Seems to be an intelligent, well read young man, sad.

Wuptdo B-)

[johnb]

That self-hate by the extreme left is disturbing phenomena. It leads them to the incredible position that anyone or anything which opposes the west generally and the US specifically must be good.

The hillarity of seeing die hard leftists defend Islamofascists has got to be one of the more surreal moments of political theater one can experience.

[johnb]

Mark,

Knowing you now have neither a factual nor logical leg to stand on in the other thread, (the one where you attacked my children) are you now going to cut and run in that discussion to spare yourself the embarassment of having to defend your outrageous claims?

[Mark]

(the one where you attacked my children) are you now going to cut and run in that discussion to spare yourself the embarassment of having to defend your outrageous claims?

I attacked your children by posting their names? Are you serious? Go back and read what I wrote and then please tell me how anyone can possibly construe such information, which is all public and freely available, as an attack? Your phone number and address are public too, would posting them too be construed as attacks on Bell South and the USPS?

And which outrageous claims do I need to defend? That Islam is not that much more dogmatic on some points than Christianity, to pick but one other silly religion? That, noting that Christianity, to continue with this example, has changed for the better over its history that it should be at least possible that Islam may too refine away its more objectionable practices? That, noting the above, it's aburd to say that there can never be moderate Islam, or that Islam is a priori incompatible with liberal Western values? Or perhaps it was insisting that human beings have reasons for acting, even terrorists, and that those very reasons are essentially what makes them human, or that while one may still evaluate the reasons on their merits you cannot deny the reasons themselves as a basis for action.

If we insist on using the language of animal, let us really be consistent about it then. Consider this. No doubt terrorist acts are reprehensible. They're acts of passion, acts of hate, and often acts of a last resort - as the final straw. Terrorism kills deliberately and consciously, and it does so for what are, in the end, political reasons. But what of the acts of violence perpetrated by the West, and the U.S. specifically? A consumer culture that condones sweatshops, that exploits coffee farmers, that destroys livlihoods. Farm subsidies for U.S. agribusiness that kills, literally kills, foreign farmers. Patent laws that decrease the prospects of health in developing nations and restrict the methods of treatment for the ill. Banking and loan systems that refine away the choices of sovereign states, that often reduce public spending for health and education, and open up states to predatory international competition. Wage laws that force a downward pressure on wages. Commercial exploitation that damages environmental standards and puts health at risk. I could go on for hours. What all these things have in common is that their victims are not present, and the perpetrators don't care about them, if they even recognize that they exist. People die and lives are tarnished simply by fact of our existence, the mere presence of certain political structures necessarily contributes to violence and destruction against other people and communities.

A culture where killing occurs as a crime of passion, hate and politics or a culture where killing occurs as a crime of consumption, indiffernce, and money? A tiger does not recognize as victim its dinner; that sounds more like the U.S. than it does, say, the Iraqi insurgency.

[johnb]

No doubt terrorist acts are reprehensible. They're acts of passion, acts of hate, and often acts of a last resort - as the final straw.

You are already trying to shift the blame Mark, trying to fabricate some moral equivalency here.

First off, you are wrong, again. Acts such as the beheading of Jews like Danny Pearl and Nick Berg are completely in line with authentic Islam as codified and exemplified by it's founder, Mohammed.

It is not your right nor within your power to decide what is or isn't authentic Islam. The Islamofascists justify their actions, including the beheading of Jews, on commands from the Koran and the haddith's. The murderers who slaughtered Nick Berg were re-enacting a ritual that has been an ongoing feature of Islam since it's inception and is described and commanded in Islams foundational documents.

Terrorism is nothing but a method. Their goal is straight forward. The world refused to believe what Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf until it was too late. Their goal is world domination, the Koran tells them to fight (jihad) until they have subdued the world. It is an ideology in search of victims. That goal can be achieved only with the active cooperation of the rest of humanity. If we refuse to resist we deserve the slave tax and the status of dhimmitude that would be impressed upon us.

[Wuptdo]

Sometime very complex problems only need simply solutions. See below:

http://www.thoseshirts.com/images/coulter500.gif




Don't send troops, send Missionaries!

Wuptdo B-)

[Cathy]

Anyone who would say such a thing as that quote, is not a Christian, but a certifiable "nut job". Ann Coulter has said many other things that push her into the "nut job" category.

[johnb]

Wup,

You would be sending missionaries to their death.

Apostates from Islam are condemned to death as a matter of course, as are those who try to convery Muslims to another religion. Mohammed was quite clear and very bloody in what he commanded his followers to do to such people. Even in supposedly secular nations such as Morocco apostates are arrrested by civil authorities and in the grand tradition of Soviet repression are taken to a psychiatric hospital. The king of Morocco quiped something to the effect that in Morocco they don't execute the insane, they 'treat" them.

In states with the Shari'a the life span of such a person is severly compromised.

[johnb]

http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/side_orders/showpics.cgi?islamic_purity_test

http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/side_orders/showpics.cgi?islamic_purity_test

[Cathy]

Abu Ghraib Events Shock Aurora Man Who Served There
Staff Sgt. Jeff Day, who worked in military intelligence, heard no orders to mistreat prisoners

Monday, May 17, 2004

ALEX PULASKI

Jeff Day spent more than two months inside the wire at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison interrogating Iraqis for military intelligence -- the same period when prisoners were abused and humiliated by their American guards.

Day, a 46-year old reserve staff sergeant from Aurora, said that at no time did anyone order or encourage him to harm the Iraqis. Nor did he witness or hear any of such treatment of the detainees.

Day said he was sickened by the publication of photos that showed naked prisoners being attacked by dogs and forced by grinning Americans to simulate sex acts. .

"Like everyone else, when those pictures came out I couldn't believe it," he said in an interview. "The people who did that to those prisoners are sick. They're warped."

Several of the military police in those photos have since asserted that they were following instructions from military intelligence officers to "soften up" the Iraqis. That claim is at the center of widening Pentagon and congressional inquiries into the abuse. Senior Pentagon officials have dismissed the abuse as the work of rogue officers on the "night shift."

Day's account, the view of one soldier, is hardly the last word. But it does raise the question of how widely an order to mistreat the prisoners could have been disseminated if it did not reach a key military intelligence battalion operating within the prison.

Not under investigation

Day, who returned Dec. 23 from Iraq, doubts such orders were issued. "I refuse to believe it," he said.

Day says he is not under investigation, nor has he been contacted by military investigators. But his battalion was under the command of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which has been a focus of the abuse inquiries.

The photos made public so far have resulted in military charges against seven soldiers.

According to military court records, several witnesses have testified that intelligence officers may have authorized or ordered some harsh behavior, such as depriving detainees of sleep or food, intimidating them with dogs or pouring water over them, The New York Times reported Sunday.

But, the witnesses continued, these officers would never have called for the things the soldiers are charged with: hitting detainees, piling them naked in human pyramids, photographing them and having them pose as if performing sex.

Day arrived in Iraq in late April 2003, part of the B Company, 325th Military Intelligence Battalion. His assignment stemmed from a chance decision -- an "unfortunate choice," in Day's words -- to take interrogation training as he was preparing to leave active Army duty in 1995.

Before being sent to Iraq, he said, interrogators were briefed on the Geneva Convention and rules of engagement. Twice during his interrogation stint in Iraq, which lasted through Nov. 20, he and other questioners were required to sign papers acknowledging that they understood the rules of engagement.

The rounding up of detainees was chaotic and often futile, he said. Day acknowledged that one finding of a Red Cross report critical of detentions and interrogations at the prison -- that as much as 90 percent of Iraqi prisoners had been picked up by mistake -- was true.

Iraqis settle grudges

Iraqi citizens fingered suspects to settle old grudges, he said. Then interrogators had to sort the wheat from the chaff and release the innocent as quickly as they could.

In one memorable instance, he said, a single informant identified 15 or 20 individuals as belonging to a party opposing coalition forces. Through questioning, interrogators determined the common thread running through their stories was that they had all been swindled at one time by the informant. They were released.

"Over there," Day said, "if you had a problem with a neighbor or a business deal that went bad and you wanted to get even, you'd run down and tell the Americans that this guy took part in an attack. Then you'd sit back and wait for us to drive out, arrest him and take him away."

Day said that he did hear secondhand stories of interrogators being pressured to produce results. He said one interrogator told him of a tactical operation that went looking for four suspects and instead rounded up hundreds over three days.

"They arrested every adult male in this town, and they're screening them asking about Saddam Hussein and arms caches," he said. "They're a bunch of farmers, and they don't know anything."

As interrogators filled out form after form indicating that the detainees had no intelligence value and should be released, Day said, an officer involved in the raid upbraided them. Their lack of results was casting a poor light on his mission.

Day's company conducted interrogations at a camp set up at Baghdad International Airport through Sept. 15, when it moved to Abu Ghraib. Five days later, the interrogation tents were struck by mortar fire. Two U.S. soldiers were killed; Day received minor fragment wounds in the chest and side, for which he was awarded a Purple Heart.

Four days later he was back at Abu Ghraib, questioning detainees again. After the attack, questioning was moved to specially constructed rooms -- shipping containers reinforced by dirt to protect against shells.

Most of Day's questioning during two months at Abu Ghraib involved low-level detainees. He recalls three occasions in which he questioned prisoners inside the main compound at Abu Ghraib -- where the so-called "high-value" prisoners were kept and where the abuse allegations have been focused.

One such interrogation was of a first cousin of Saddam. His answers were clearly lies, Day said.

Day said he did hear of some prisoners being kept naked inside the prison. But he said all the prisoners he questioned were clothed. Sometimes detainees were hooded and cuffed for transport, he said, but restraints and hoods were taken off for questioning.

Photos appear on Internet

Day said he never saw or heard of a prisoner being mistreated or humiliated by the Army until this year, after he had returned home and the photographs began surfacing on the Internet.

Some of the photos that Day keeps in a scrapbook are of the prison's exterior. One shows him inside Saddam's execution chamber, where the Iraqi dictator had prisoners tortured and hanged. Those photos remind him of how Iraqi detainees have told him of teeth being pulled under questioning while Saddam was in power.

The other photos, the ones that have arisen on the Internet, just make him angry.

"I bled at Abu Ghraib," he said. "We bled. Two of us lost our lives there.

"We did our jobs to the best of our ability under hard and dangerous conditions. Abu Ghraib was our legacy. And the people that perpetrated these gross acts on those Iraqi soldiers have tarnished that.

"I feel like our sacrifice has been trashed just by association with them."

Alex Pulaski: 503-221-8516; alexpulaski@news.oregonian.com
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/108479509768031.xml
Copyright 2004 Oregon Live. All Rights Reserved.

[Cathy]

NBC 17
Iraqis Get Prosthetic Hands After Saddam Cut Real Hands Off
POSTED: 2:26 p.m. EDT
May 18, 2004


HOUSTON -- The man tied his shoes. Then he untied them just to do it again.

Liath Aqar was one of seven Iraqi small-business owners who received finished prosthetic hands after almost six weeks of surgery to prepare their arms, along with recovery and fittings in Houston.

The men got their prosthetics nine years after agents of Saddam Hussein's government cut off their right hands to punish small-business owners for Iraq's collapsing economy.

The prosthetics, carefully matched to skin tones and arm size, are as close as medical technology can get to the men's real hands.

Specialists at Dynamic Orthotics & Prosthetics who made the limbs were there for the men's big day. After receiving their hands, the men immediately began hugging and shaking hands with them.

"These may be small things, but to me they are huge," Aqar said through a translator.

The removable hands, cost about $25,000 and although not perfect, can perform many tasks of a human hand.

"What we do is provide a tool for the patient to use that is designed to improve quality of life," Tom DiBello, Dynamic's president, told the Houston Chronicle in Tuesday's editions. "Even though this represents the pinnacle of technology today, nothing can replace an individual's limb."


Don North, a video producer and former television correspondent, arranged for the men to travel from Baghdad to Houston. He became friends with them after seeing video of the amputations a year ago. A German company, Otto Bock Health Care, was persuaded to donate the limbs.

"This is a day we have long waited for," North said.


The hands operate using an electrical-impulse based technology called myoelectrics. It has been used in prosthetics for more than 15 years. The myoelectric hand detects small electric pulses from muscle movements on either side of the forearm, that triggers motors to open and close the thumb, middle finger and forefinger.


These are the newest hands available and have sensors that can detect when an object is slipping and automatically tighten the grip. They also allow an advanced user to flex the forearm muscles slightly to open and close the hand more slowly or quickly.


They also have technology referred to as smart electrodes, which prevent cell phone towers and anti-theft devices from accidentally opening and closing the hands, a problem in the past.


The Iraqis will spend about 30 hours working with their new hands in Houston in the next week. They will then leave May 24 to visit U.S. soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.


They will also meet with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The group will travel to Frankfurt, Germany on June 3 and will return to Baghdad by U.S. military transport a few days later.

Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[johnb]

It doesn't matter Cathy. The donkeycrats and the other extremists on the far left are willing to believe the worst, and only the worst, about the US, US troops, US companies, and the US government when not led by a Donkeycrat.

The incidents at the prison will be dragged out so the left can flog Bush til election day, yet the fact that chemical weapons are being found in Iraq doesn't seem to make the news. I wonder how many more Jews the Islamofascists will have to behead on camera before the left/mass media will take notice that some story other than that minor prison incident is going on in Iraq?

[Cathy]

I know that you are absolutely correct about that John. Some of those rabid "anti-Bush" folks are my in-laws. Any attempt to steer a conversation toward some reasonable middle ground is met with accusations of "right wing conservative" labels.
I just want to put the other stuff out there for the record, in case others missed the report.

Cathy