Over at Drumwaster’s, John Cross said this regarding the Abu Ghraib photos:

heh.  that just freaks me right the fuck out ;)

Ha!  Freaks me out every time I have to write it!

Why? John’s a helluva nice guy.

You make an excellent point here. The unwillingness of most major media outlets to reprint those cartoons is beyond pathetic. If Muslims want to protest, that’s their right. If they threaten violence, then they’re criminals, and should be dealt with as such. Publicly exposing the violence inherent in the fundamentalist Muslim world isn’t the worst thing that could happen, its one of the best. If they want to enjoy the benefits of Western society, they’ll need to develop some thicker skin.

But I see a bit of a double standard as well. You have been quite vociferous about posting graphic pictures and video of what our enemies are doing to us (Nick Berg video, 9/11 pics, etc.), but I’ve seen hardly a mention, much less a picture, of the systematic torture and murder of detainees throughout the world. You shouldn’t be held to the same standards as the MSM on your personal site, but some balance would be nice. Our enemies are assholes and we’re lowering ourselves to their level in this war. We’re not performing anywhere near as many morally repugnant acts as they are, but we’ve performed more than zero. Not to be too naive and jingoistic, but we’re the United States, and we’re better than that. And as before, public exposure is the way to resolve this.

drum:  “john cross” is also the name of my husband, who also happens to be jim’s brother-in-law (a/k/a donna’s brother)

Our enemies are assholes and we’re lowering ourselves to their level in this war.

You do not know what the fuck you’re talking about, so you need to shut up.

Posted by jo-jo on 02/17 at 07:39 PM (Link to this comment)

drum:  “john cross” is also the name of my husband, who also happens to be jim’s brother-in-law (a/k/a donna’s brother)

Ah, I see. Well, I can understand that. My real name is common enough that the statistics say that there are likely to be more than 100,000 of me out there (including at least one Hall of Fame-class professional athlete).

Just as a forinstance, I checked at the local college (Cal State San Bernardino) as to the availability of classes a while back, and they told me there were five of me already attending (including one with the same middle name!). :-o

Just the way things are, I guess…

Dear Rann,

Would you care to provide an actual refutation there, or are you just going to say I’m wrong and leave it at that? I notice that you’ve conveniently left out the next sentence where I say that we’re not we are not even in the same ballpark of amoral assholism as they are. But this administration has - at best - turned a blind eye to some things that I, as an American citizen, am very unwilling to accept. While you and I may fall on different sides of the issue of the torture and murder of detainees, can you at least agree that it is an important enough topic that it should be publicly scrutinized?

We’re not performing anywhere near as many morally repugnant acts as they are, but we’ve performed more than zero.

Just ONE such event is “more than zero”, and unless and until you can show that this is an actual policy (instead of having those RARE aberrations investigated and the guilty punished), you really should learn the subject before making accusations that “we’re all the same”.

Until you can show an American cutting off a head or using civilians as protection or using holy sites, schools and hospitals as staging areas, or anything like that, you have no right to draw any kind of moral equivalency.

can you at least agree that it is an important enough topic that it should be publicly scrutinized?

It already has been. Investigations were held. Soundbites were shrilly aired. The guilty were punished. This is just an attempt to re-ignite a story that was settled last year, claiming “First Amendment protections” while ignoring the cowardice displayed by refusing to post the relatively inoffensive CARTOONS, and the only thing you can say about it is “well, we’ve done it too”, while carefully not specifying what “it” is, instead just using a word that has many meanings, none of which actually bear any relationship to reality.

So. To reiterate, “You do not know what the fuck you’re talking about, so you need to shut up.”

Ok, here’s the thing. I was going to do a nice post with cites from the Taguba, Jones-Fay, and Schlessinger Reports, but work keeps interrupting. So I’ll deal with it in a general sense: this administration has stated that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees captures in the war on terror, and has thereby created confusion about the proper treatment of detainees. They have refused to issue a set of guidelines outlining what is acceptable and what is not. The McCain Amendment attempted to codify the military’s long-standing code of conduct re: treatment of prisoners, but the Bush Administration basically said “that’s great, but it doesn’t apply to us.” This is unacceptable to me. It doesn’t matter that someone found a loophole saying we don’t have to follow the Geneva Conventions, military code, or whatever else has been directing our conduct in the past. We are, and should be, held to a higher standard. We’ve lowered it and have refused to raise it back. And that’s what disappoints me.

Drum: refer to my original post. I don’t disagree with Jim regarding the cartoons. And, I’ve made the point throughout that our crimes are not on the same level as their crimes. I’m saying we have dropped below our usual high standards. No equivalence.

They have refused to issue a set of guidelines outlining what is acceptable and what is not. The McCain Amendment attempted to codify the military’s long-standing code of conduct re: treatment of prisoners, but the Bush Administration basically said “that’s great, but it doesn’t apply to us.” This is unacceptable to me.

I have to agree with this.  What I want to see is the administration clearly and specifically say what is considered torture, who is protected by Geneva and who is not, and then send that information to the Pentagon where it will become gospel. 

I don’t agree that everything that happened at Abu Ghraib in those images is torture.  I also believe that coercive interrogation techniques like cold, uncomfortable positions and sleep deprivation are valid techniques.  I even approve of using fake menstrual blood for christ’s sake.  If these morons believe it’s a horrid thing and will give up intel to avoid pussy blood...I say USE THAT AGAINST THEM.

None of that matters though.  No ne cares what *I* think.  What we need is a clearly defined policy from the top down so that the White House and the Pentagon can’t hang any soldiers out to dry...25 or so soldiers have gone down for this already, and I find it hard to believe that every one of them willfully tortured inmates.  I think some of them are taking the fall for following what they believed to be valid orders.

this administration has stated that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees captures in the war on terror, and has thereby created confusion about the proper treatment of detainees.

They don’t, for several reasons:

1) They are not under any kind of central command (as you would find with a national army);
2) they do not wear identifying or rank insignia of any kind (one of the primary reasons for this is to identify civilians, who are to be protected under those Conventions, and are distinguished by their LACK of such devices - and why military men caught out of uniform are subject to be shot for spying, sans trial);
3) They do not obey the Geneva Conventions, and actually violate every single one of them (using civilians for cover, using hospitals/schools/mosques for military staging and storage, using protected symbols - red cross/crescent, etc. - to attack from ambush, offering surrender only to attack those coming forward to accept it, etc.); and,
4) They are not signatories to those Geneva Conventions.

Any of the four would be sufficient. You have a huge burden to show that they actually DO apply, and for some reason other than “we’re too good for that”, because we are ready to fight just as dirty as they do.

They started this war, remember.

They (and you) don’t get to whine just because we’re winning.

I suggest you read Sanctuary (and don’t forget Part 2). Bill explains why the rules don’t apply anymore, much better than I can.

Jim: well said. People can quibble until they’re blue in the face about what is or isn’t torture, but that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is a clearly defined, widely-disseminated guide to what is and is not permissible treatment for detainees.

Drum: reading Sanctuary, it may take a little while. Shooting from the hip: I get what he’s saying, but I disagree fundamentally. We should not abandon our humanity just because they have abandoned thiers.

We should not abandon our humanity just because they have abandoned thiers.

We AREN’T “abandoning our humanity”. Don’t you get that yet? You said so yourself - that we are nowhere near that vicious, and we punish those who violate those protections. It’s just that you think we should be treating them as honorable, when they have specifically not only refused to obey the “rules of civilized warfare”, they make those (baseless) accusations against us because they know that there are plenty of useless fools ready to argue their case (that we should spend even more time on an issue that has not only been long-since-settled, it is in direct contradiction to the argument of principle being made just the crisis prior - and one that has caused dozens of deaths.

Show me a single newspaper burned for publishing the Piss Crucifix or the Modonna in Elephant Dung. Show me a single Iranian embassy torched for their latest “Holocaust as fiction” cartoons, sponsored by the government-run media.

Now, if you have proof of an ongoing issue at Abu Ghraib, and you might have a point. Since you can’t, you don’t, and should really just STFU, because all you’re doing is making a fool of yourself.

One more time, since it’s clear that you’re not smart enough to follow multisyllabic words: This is old - and I mean OLD - news, but the news types are out to hurt us with this act.

“Why?”, you ask.

‘Cause they can.

We are not abandoning our humanity just because we’re cruel to terrorists. There’s a difference between a bit of torture in the name of getting information and ramming fucking planes into buildings. M’kay? M’kay.

Drum: Most of the relevant parts of Sanctuary seems to deal with the conduct of the military during combat, which I have had no problem with. The rest of it is rants against straw leftists (which do exist, I know them and dislike them for horrible Bush=Hitler arguments) and attacks on the media. It’s impossible to fight an urban war with a non-uniformed enemy and not make some mistakes, I accept that. My primary argument is that the issue of torture is not settled. It’s, what, over a year since the Abu Ghraib pictures and we still have no standardized code of conduct regarding treatment of detainees, and the well-documented abuses at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other sites throughout the world are a direct result of that. The attempt by the Senate to codify acceptable conduct was laughed off by the administration. Again, what I’m saying is that we should be held to a higher standard because we are better than they are. And again, I’m in total agreement about the cartoons. Every free newspaper in the world should have printed them and it is utterly pathetic that they didn’t.

Also, please lay off the ad hominems and try to have a civilized discussion.

Rann: Again, the baseless one-liner. Note the multiple posts above where I freely admit that there is a vast difference between ramming planes into civilan buildings and torturing military captives. You say we are not abandoning our humanity by torturing terrorists, but give no argument to back that up. My argument is that prisoners held by the United States military should not be mistreated because the United States military has a long and proud history of not mistreating detainees, and was well-respected throughout the world because of it. That reputation has been tarnished by, at best, benign neglect on the part of the current administration. I, as a citizen of the United States, feel that a clear set of guidelines is the solution to this problem, and that what is needed is a public vetting of A)what has happened, B) how it happened, and C) what can be done to prevent it from happening again. I feel that questions A and B have been answered, if not fully satisfactorily, at least within reason. However, we stopped before getting an adequate answer to C. I’m going to push for public exposure of what has happened until I have a reasonable assurance that it won’t happen again.

You say we are not abandoning our humanity by torturing terrorists, but give no argument to back that up.

Because there’s no need. See, the thing is, you spout out endless amounts of words, language, whine when others don’t do the same. But see, the point is, I’m a sensible person, I know that it’s not the same thing. I wouldn’t even begin to think we’ve abandoned our humanity over this, so why should I spend a lot of time going over a point that anyone with the common sense that was bestowed upon your average shower fungus should know?

Or, let me put it this way… your stance is not worth more than a one-liner in reply.

Why even bother feeding Rann? She doesn’t want a conversation, just an opportunity to assert her “authority” over a newcomer.

You want a rational debate and yet she cannot even acknowledge you as a worthwhile person, no in fact you are apparently a person deserving her contempt for not aligning perfectly with her views.

Now to address your actual posts; I don’t think that we as a nation have come anywhere near losing our humanity, in fact I believe the opposite.

Especially the military, as a collective has held to our high moral standards and had but a handful of screw-ups and misunderstandings.

I am on the fence about strict guidelines. I mean, trying to make things more defined tends to go wrong, especially since it can be misused at a later date. Some sicko can always say “well you see I didn’t do -precisely- what was against the rules”

We just need to deal with infractions on an individual basis and make it clear that the offical US position is not to torture.