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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug R who wrote (48162)	5/26/2005 4:52:43 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

THE MEDIA SHOULDN’T IGNORE TALES OF ABUSE – JUST KEEP PERSPECTIVE jim geraghty reporting TKS I realize I've been on a "the mainstream media never gives the U.S. military a fair shake" kick lately. So maybe it's time to add a bit of nuance to the emotionally powerful topic of how U.S. forces ought to treat prisoners. (Some of these thoughts are spurred by reading Reuel Marc Gerecht's "Against Rendition" in the Weekly Standard from a few weeks back.) I trust our guys in uniform. When they have a tough, ugly job, like guarding captured terrorists or trying to get further information out of them, I want to give them a lot of leeway. I don't want to be a backseat driver, a second-guesser, a Monday Morning Quarterback. I wouldn't pretend to think that I know how to do their jobs better than they do. This doesn't mean they operate with no limits, rules, or laws, however. In the case of Abu Ghraib, a small but significant number of men and women in uniform behaved like animals, thugs, and sadists. They ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and considering the damage that they have done to our nation's image, their current sentences seem light. If there's credible evidence that similar abuses have occurred in Gitmo, then they ought to be investigated, and if the guards there abused their authority, they ought to have the book thrown at them, too. But note those words ‘credible evidence.’ I don’t put much faith in the claims of prisoners, partially because (as John Podhoretz reminds us) we’ve found evidence that they have been taught to lie about abuses and partially because they’re aspiring mass murderers, and I doubt they would have moral qualms with lying. To quote that al-Qaeda training manual: <<< Missions Required of the Military Organization:... 5)Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy… IF AN INDICTMENT IS ISSUED AND THE TRIAL, BEGINS, THE BROTHER HAS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING: 1. At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge. 2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison. 3. Make arrangements for the brother’s defense with the attorney, whether he was retained by the brother’s family or court-appointed. 4. The brother has to do his best to know the names of the state security officers, who participated in his torture and mention their names to the judge. [These names may be obtained from brothers who had to deal with those officers in previous cases.] >>> So before I’m going to put much stock in an allegation of abuse, I want to see some corroborating evidence – perhaps from another guard, or physical evidence like the Abu Ghraib photos. A few bloggers and commentators have suggested that the press should not report on any allegations of abuse or any reports of wrongdoing by U.S. soldiers. I don’t agree with that. What I, and I suspect a large number of Americans and U.S. troops want, is perspective. A comparison to the gulags ought to be laughed out of serious conversation. Senator Kennedy’s declaration that Saddam’s torture chambers are open under new management ought be denounced left, right, and center as an unfair smear. Someone ought to calm down Andrew Sullivan when he declares that we are “watching our own military descend into the religious bigotry and intolerance we are fighting against,” or that because they don’t write about this often enough, that “It is so sad to watch decent people like Glenn Reynolds or Wretchard descend into this moral abyss.” It is folly to conflate outright beatings and torture with barking dogs, wrapping an inmate in a Jewish flag, or an ungloved hand touching a Koran. Let me know the ugly truth when somebody in our armed forces crosses the line. But don’t tell me that those actions somehow create moral equivalence between the U.S. military and al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or Saddam’s secret police, or Zarqawi’s thugs in Iraq. In those bands of sadists, you get promoted for decapitating prisoners, and al-Jazeera makes it a prime-time special. There’s another issue, dealt with more directly in Gerecht’s Standard article. Gerecht makes the point that if a method of extracting information is worth doing, it ought to be done by Americans – not outsourced to the Jordanians or Egyptians in order to keep American hands clean. I think the public conscience of the American people is a pretty good guide. If the U.S. government isn’t willing to let the public judge its methods of getting vital information in the war on terror, then it probably shouldn’t be using those methods. We’re morally repulsed by methods of interrogation because they’re morally repulsive. (Their effectiveness is also disputed.) nationalreview.com weeklystandard.com usdoj.gov