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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Citron who wrote (132447)	5/10/2004 2:32:24 PM
From: Don Hurst	Respond to of 281500

Amazing NY Times article....we spent US taxpayer dollars to rebuild Abu Ghraib, Saddam's infamous torture chamber for Iraqis, so that we could use it to torture Iraqis. Brilliant!!!! The least we could have done is use those Iraqi oil dollars that Wolfowitz always talked about.

To: Sam Citron who wrote (132447)	5/10/2004 5:36:27 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<...just horror that our dirty laundry has now been so thoroughly aired?> A recent CNN poll asking "Is torture ever justified during interrogation?" yielded 47% of respondents answering in the affirmative, which explains why there hasn't been much stateside outrage over prisoner neglect in the past. It's that Faustian with-us-or-against-us mentality rearing its ugly head once again, promising safety but tempting us to dehumanize others and lose our souls in the process. commondreams.org We are seeing an unintended consequence of new and cheap digital photo taking/sending technologies. It gets harder and harder, to glorify war, and believe our rose-tinted self-image. Reading a description of torture, doesn't have near the impact, of seeing a videotape of it, or even a series of still photos. The other interesting thing, is the inability of the guilty, to stop themselves from making incriminating documents and photos, and bragging about it. Remember the executives at Worldcom and ADM, who left an email trail about their thievery? The sadists in uniform in Iraq would have been able to continue torturing with impunity, if they hadn't taken pictures, and then shown those trophy pictures to their buddies, and let their buddies download them, send them home to mom, etc.

To: Sam Citron who wrote (132447)	5/11/2004 2:47:41 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates. This a problem in French prisons as well, so I'm not going to have a cow over this. I only cite France since I've lived in that country and know this from following current events while I was there, and they don't really have any lessons to give us [except maybe for our useless death penalty which I wish we'd abandon, but it wasn't that long ago that France still used the guillotine, so it's a bit like people who've just quite smoking.....] The important thing is that when this kind of shit hits the fan here in the US, it is in the end largely discussed in the mainstream media and not left to internet or other rumor mongering. The most pertinent criticism of the US comes from within the US, in this case as always, and this latest PR disaster demonstrates this once again. Or would everyone prefer what goes on in Libya ? Or Russia ? Or China ? Or any of a whole list of hypocritical countries who want to give us lessons ? Because if this was China, what do you think the odds are that SI would even exist ?