Sigh.

[1918underwood]

I heard some guy on the radio this morning bring up that the abused Iraqi prisoners are criminals (murderers, he said, of course--I'm sure they're all murderers) as an argument that this abuse isn't "morally equivalent" to the terrorists who beheaded that poor American guy. (Geneva Convention notwithstanding, he said. You might as well say f*k the

Comments

personal accountability

[dalena13]

We wonder why it's the hardest thing to teach to our kids, then we look around at the leaders of our country, who are experts in the field of "He did it FIRST"!

I remember taking a pre-law class, called Logic and Argument, and it outlined the basis of objections in the court. One that sticks in my memory is the fallacy of finger-pointing as a defense for one's own actions. I did it, but he did it too. I did it, but he made me. I did it, but they deserved it. I did it, but they did it first.

I am not altogether sure that the beheading of Nick Berg wasn't an event staged by our own government. That's how jaded I have become.

[vengeant]

The other point to make is that the detainees in Abu Ghraib prison are not all criminals. They've just been detained by the US military, for whatever reason. Heck, they could've simply been detained for not liking something that US soldiers are doing, such as frisking their wives. They haven't been tried and convicted of anything, they're just being "detained."

And I'm beginning to wonder if that's the difference between us and Saddam's regime: we rationalize what we do. Our troops torture people, and we say, "oh, well, they deserved it, they're criminals, it wasn't actually that bad, we're fighting a war against an Idea here," while when Saddam's soldiers tortured people, they would say, "you're being tortured? Glad I'm not you"?

[1918underwood]

You're absolutely right. As it says in this link posted by 12and21:

"Coalition military intelligence officers estimated that about 70 percent to 90 percent of the thousands of prisoners detained in Iraq had been "arrested by mistake," according to a report by Red Cross given to the Bush administration last year and leaked this week."

[vengeant]

Exactly. So we can assume that most of those detainees in the pics were arrested by mistake, and haven't done anything to deserve what they got.

[1918underwood]

While that is true, and horrible, I want to affirm that I don't believe that any human, detained for any reason, should be:
1) coerced (granted, the coersion is assumed) to sodomize themselves with a banana
2) tied by a rope and repeatedly pulled into a door until they collapse
Both of which were described in today's SB Sun as among the graphic images viewed by congress. No one deserves what these people got.

By the way, apparently Rumsfield and the Bush administration believe that the Geneva Convention should not apply to members of Al-Qaeda (also per today's SB Sun).