Beheading in Iraq

[lookout123]

um, truly sorry for the family's loss... but bad shit happens in war. this is a war and people will die in brutal ways. we can either sit around worry about who is torturing who or we can pull out all the stops and start a war of elmination. until we have destroyed those who oppose us we can not build a democracy. we must truly rid the region of the old regime and those who, for whatever reason, oppose change. and, unfortunately that means large scale combat operations resulting in many dead. and if the Iraqi "civilian" population allows the terrorists or insurgents, depending on your views to live in their midst then the "civilians" will also pay a very high price in casualties. i'm pretty sure that in WWII there were many civilian casualties in germany and japan, but we won. the war ended and we went in and rebuilt their nations to better than pre-war conditions.

[glatt]

Too bad the bad guys don't wear black hats. It would be a lot easier.

[tw]

Originally posted by godwulf
Far from being over, as you suggest, I think this story - the prisoner abuse scandal - has barely begun to be told. This is not a case of the media simply flogging a dead horse for the sake of sensationalism (not to suggest that they wouldn't, if necessary), but rather a situation where the full extent of the blame, not to mention the vast majority of the evidence, has yet to be scrutinized and evaluated.

I never said it was over. Its over as far as the 'powers that be' are concerned. They may just be right. Major difference between what I posted and what a few here instead read.

Far more serious pictures are pending. Many other reports involving other aspects have yet to be provided. Taguba's report was only limited to the MP brigade - which the 'powers that be' already have spun to say blame is limited only to some in the brigade. They have effectively deflected blame and, more important, avoided any investigation of Guantanamo Bay. It is critical that we not have a clue that Guantanamo is equally as bad if not worse. Without 'pictures of hype', then we just will not understand.

Notice that anyone who might even mention how bad Guantanamo Bay is (ie Chaplain Yee) was instead all but court-martialed on invented charges.

What I am saying is the 'we' are already trivializing it. Remember the example provided. If you were not 16 or older in 1972, then you probably have little idea of what I had posted about a Watergate parallel. The youngsters among us think (due to their 'history as told by Hollywood' perspective), that Watergate was a big story every day. In fact maybe half the nation's newspapers rarely reported Watergate. The 'loyal patriots' would even verbally attack those that kept questioning Watergate. Remember that anyone shot at Kent State was openly declared an enemy of America who deserved what they got. Believe me, the 'patriots' in America where that agressive and forward. How dare we say anything bad about the president! It was that way in 1972 America. Watergate went on month after month with most people not even knowing what Watergate was. Many who did simply kept blaming the communist newspaper called Washington Post.

I used to be amazed at stories in the Post and most said it was wrong - because other papers were not reporting it and because the President would never be involve in such things.

Welcome to the Iraqi prisoner scandel. This is a major disaster. Seymor Hersh noted how serious this scandel will have for citizen safety, new business, international relations, domestic science, etc for Americans and America virtually everywhere in the world. Most Americans have such myopic news sources (ie Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the local gossip) as to not even understand what Hersh says.

What makes it even worse are the Americans who note that Iraqi terrorists do same - therefore justify the abuse. Their 'I never got educated' opinions get carries throughout the world because such opinions are so pathetic as to become news. These extremists don't understand how much they undermine, damage, and pervert America in they eyes even among our friends. They play right into the propaganda of anti-humanity extremists such as bin Laden. They act as classic enemies of America by doing anything but be outraged by this event. They equate American patriotism with an idea that Americans 'hate' all foreigners. And they have only assisted in trivializing this event. Yes, the torture and sexual abuse is being trivialized to the point that the scandel is already over from the perspective of those 'powers that be'. Even the above post from lookout123 demonstrates the real problem. He helps to tivialize the entire problem.

The scandel is already dissipating. You saw it when Taguba did not testify alone. Suddenly the UnderSecretary for Intelligence and others were seated with him to put a correct spin on his report. They did so as necessary to limit blame only to enlisted men and a female general. Already blame has been cast that will protect the real source of this scandel.

Again, I cited Watergate as a classic example of same. An event that completely disappeared within a week. It also was spun as work of a misguided seven. An event that almost never even made history - due to what was being reported month after month ... nothing.

Watergate for months - even through the election - had nothing to do with anyone in government. That's right. Months after Watergate was exposed, 49 out of 50 states voted to reelect Nixon. Why? Watergate was trivialized just like this Iraqi prison scandel is being trivialized.

I was careful to note the similarity to Watergate - expecting that many here would fail to understand what I said because many never really learn history of 30 years ago. IOW we are dooomed to repeat history just as Iraq is so similar to VietNam. And so the only question is when will a John Dean, McChord, or Judge Sirrica step forward to expose this scandel. It does not look good. The spin is being cast that well and that wide. I suspect only when we start seeing same pictures from Guantanamo will this scandel get any serious attention. IOW already it is being trivialized.

Look at what I cited. Notice what the 'powers that be' fear you might understand. Major Gen Miller arrived in August from Guantanamo to do in Iraq what is done in Cuba. By October, the sexual abuse and torture - including death of prisoners - was ongoing. Notice that this was that obvious with my first posts on this topic. Now the 'powers that be' even deny that Military Intelligence (MI) ran Abu Ghraid - causing friction between an MI Colonel and the MP General. 'Powers that be' must have you not see the relationship between Iraq and Guantanamo. Prisoner deaths were not even mentioned during Senate questioning of Taguba.

My god. It takes leaking of an ICRC report to expose something we really have suspected - that 90% of those in Iraqi prisons are not even guilty. How do we know? Just by the numbers of people given the $10 and released after 3 months.

'Powers that be' have done their job well. Until you understand that part of this story, then you really have no idea of the real story. Those pictures get attention of the emotional. Those who are more logical - seek the irrefutible fact - see those pictures as only minor corroborating details of something far more serious and maybe sinister.

Since most of us don't think so factually; since so many of us only see the problem in terms of the emotion of those pictures, then this Iraqi Prison abuse scandel will be made trivial with time. Only the little people will be prosecuted just as Watergate was only McChord, Liddy, Magruder, etc. And that will only be reported on inside pages of the newspapers.

Apparently I made a mistake. I posted only a summary. Therefore too many assumed something I was not saying. Got to remember to make my posts longer.

[DanaC]

until we have destroyed those who oppose us we can not build a democracy. we must truly rid the region of the old regime and those who, for whatever reason, oppose change.

What an odd way to go about installing democracy.

if the Iraqi "civilian" population allows the terrorists or insurgents, depending on your views to live in their midst then the "civilians" will also pay a very high price in casualties.

Why the inverted commas? Do you doubt that the population of iraq is made up of civilians? Do you think the only people not supporting the coalition's occupation are militia?

i'm pretty sure that in WWII there were many civilian casualties in germany and japan, but we won. the war ended and we went in and rebuilt their nations to better than pre-war conditions.

Many civilian casualties? That's something of an understatement given Hiroshima and Dresden. ........and....are you suggesting that America installed democracy into Germany too? Are you really that arrogant as to simplify WW2 in such a manner? And which "we" are you referring to? I have a suspicion you are taking your history lessons from the Hollywood University.

[lookout123]

Originally posted by DanaC


Many civilian casualties? That's something of an understatement given Hiroshima and Dresden. ........and....are you suggesting that America installed democracy into Germany too? Are you really that arrogant as to simplify WW2 in such a manner? And which "we" are you referring to? I have a suspicion you are taking your history lessons from the Hollywood University.

yes it is an understatement - but thanks for pointing out the obvious. and, by the way, if bringing up Hiroshima was supposed to tweak me.. i think it was the right decision. what type of gov't did germany have before WWII? after? and no - my history lessons don't come from hollywood - but definitely not revisionist history either. my BA is in history my MA is in Foreign policy, sorry to disappoint.
atrocities happen in every war. that is the nature of the beast. i don't like it but i don't feel we should shrink from it either. if you want to build a new way of life, government, commerce in an area where there is opposition, the fastest, least painful (to us) method is to destroy all that stand in opposition and then begin a building process. trying to build something new while shielding our backs from attacks is a sure fire way to lose.
personally i don't believe the arab nations are capable of supporting a democracy in the way most westerners view it, but if that is what we are there to do, then DO IT THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY THAT CAUSES US THE LEAST CASUALTIES.

the quotes were to point out that we aren't fighting an actual army. these are individuals that take their cheap shots and slink back into society at large. if the non-combatants, for lack of a better word, refuse to call out the terrorists in their midst, then unfortunately many of the innocent will die. in WWII when the allied armies advanced upon a town that was to be a spot for battle those who didn't wish to be listed as collateral damage and in many cases came forward to give info(number of troops, location, weapons) to the allies. for those who hide our enemy(worst example) or just ignore the fact that they are in their presence (mildest form) they are aiding and abetting those who wish us harm and i am not overly concerned about their demise.

[Scopulus Argentarius]

Originally posted by sycamore
The cover of this morning's Philadelphia Daily News

Newspaper says it ...

except I'd like to add... "These bastards need to die...now and painfully"


Berg was not a civilian casualty; he was not in near a bombing or caught in street fight. He was kidnapped and murdered by these bastards in their snuff-film attempt at progaganda... (so they could scare us?..what stupidity)


Kill every one of them... kill them all...

[DanaC]

How can someone have a BA in history yet display such seeming ignorance of WW2's historical context? The government in Germany prior to the war was the direct result of the Versailles treaty, it was an aberration which came to an end because of the Allies ranged against it, not because America won.

You think Hiroshima was worth it? You dont think that might be described as a sledgehammer to crack a walnut?

Oh...and we, your British allies werent there to install democracy we were there because of an imminent threat to our national safety. Regime change was considered not to be a valid rationale for going to war. With no imminent danger of attack it was illegal to invade.

"the quotes were to point out that we aren't fighting an actual army. these are individuals that take their cheap shots and slink back into society at large. if the non-combatants, for lack of a better word, refuse to call out the terrorists in their midst, then unfortunately many of the innocent will die."

For want of a better word? We have a perfectly good word. Civilians. It doesnt need any inverted commas the word stands.

"personally i don't believe the arab nations are capable of supporting a democracy in the way most westerners view it, but if that is what we are there to do, then DO IT THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY THAT CAUSES US THE LEAST CASUALTIES."

If we are there in the aid of Arab democracy surely we should be doing that in the most efficient way that causes THEM the least casualties, as long as we value the blood of those we seek to democratise at a lower rate than we value our professional soldiery we are just an enemy occupation force installing a puppet regime. If you are not overly concerned with the demise of those you are democratising I seriously doubt they'll be over concerned with accepting that democracy. In much the same way as Rumsfeld was not overly concerned about the geneva convention. You do remember the Geneva convention? Of course you do you have an MA in history.

[lookout123]

Originally posted by DanaC
How can someone have a BA in history yet display such seeming ignorance of WW2's historical context? The government in Germany prior to the war was the direct result of the Versailles treaty, it was an aberration which came to an end because of the Allies ranged against it, not because America won.

You think Hiroshima was worth it? You dont think that might be described as a sledgehammer to crack a walnut?

Oh...and we, your British allies werent there to install democracy we were there because of an imminent threat to our national safety. Regime change was considered not to be a valid rationale for going to war. With no imminent danger of attack it was illegal to invade.

"the quotes were to point out that we aren't fighting an actual army. these are individuals that take their cheap shots and slink back into society at large. if the non-combatants, for lack of a better word, refuse to call out the terrorists in their midst, then unfortunately many of the innocent will die."

For want of a better word? We have a perfectly good word. Civilians. It doesnt need any inverted commas the word stands.

"personally i don't believe the arab nations are capable of supporting a democracy in the way most westerners view it, but if that is what we are there to do, then DO IT THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY THAT CAUSES US THE LEAST CASUALTIES."

If we are there in the aid of Arab democracy surely we should be doing that in the most efficient way that causes THEM the least casualties, as long as we value the blood of those we seek to democratise at a lower rate than we value our professional soldiery we are just an enemy occupation force installing a puppet regime. If you are not overly concerned with the demise of those you are democratising I seriously doubt they'll be over concerned with accepting that democracy. In much the same way as Rumsfeld was not overly concerned about the geneva convention. You do remember the Geneva convention? Of course you do you have an MA in history.

how typically arrogant. i didn't say that the US single handedly installed democracy in germany. and yes i do know what forces were in place to allow the Nazi's rise to power. exorbitant reparations after WWI were an extremely bad idea that directly led to WWII. so get off your damn high horse.

as far as the "sledgehammer to walnut" idea - damn straight. how many allied troops would have died island hopping all the way to tokyo. the general idea in a war is to win with the least amount of casualties on both sides but primary focus MUST be on your own. your fear of casualties in the civilian community, although admireable, actually leads to policies that tie the hands of the troops on the ground causing increased casualties to OUR people. that is priority 1.
now we could get into a discussion over British vs American tactics/stategy in WWII but you'll still be sitting there looking down your nose at this schmoe from the colonies...

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally posted by tw
To what end? All that risk and effort for something that, quite frankly, will be completely forgotten in a few months. At least from the perspective of those you think may want to 'distract' - this is already over except for some dirty little court-martials. Why would they then do something so risky?

To what end? How about a wonderful 30 second TV campaign commercial.

[lookout123]

Originally posted by DanaC
[ In much the same way as Rumsfeld was not overly concerned about the geneva convention. You do remember the Geneva convention? Of course you do you have an MA in history. [/b]

oh - i forgot. F the geneva convention. our forces are the only ones who have followed the rules since the damn thing was created.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The government in Germany prior to the war was the direct result of the Versailles treaty, it was an aberration which came to an end because of the Allies ranged against it, not because America won.

You’re absolutely right, DanaC. At Versailles, the British and primarily the french, were running the show, They extracted their pound of flesh, in the finest European tradition, which led directly to the rise of the Nazis and the rematch. At the end of WWII, however, the United States of America was clearly calling the shots, which led to a democracy in Germany and Japan.

You think Hiroshima was worth it? You dont think that might be described as a sledgehammer to crack a walnut?

What walnut are you referring to? Hiroshima? Was an a-bomb necessary to destroy Hiroshima? Hardly. The only reason Hiroshima was chosen is because we were running out of targets. Most of the cities had been destroyed and war production had been moved to hundreds of tiny hamlets throughout the countryside. Tiny machine shops in bamboo shacks turning out war materials in a steady stream, much like the Viet Cong did 30 years later.
Was dropping the a-bombs necessary? Abso-fucking-lutely! The point was not to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The point was to let the Emperor know that we could destroy Japan without invading. The Emperor was shielded from reality by the generals that refused to ever surrender. The only way Japan would give up, was if the Emperor told the Japanese people to quit. As long as the generals were telling the Emperor they could hold off a mainland invasion, by arming every man woman and child with the production from those tiny machine shops, we would have had to invade, at an estimated cost of over a million lives. Several hundred thousand of those lives being US soldiers and the rest Japanese. Remember the mass suicides on the Pacific islands we captured?
But of course your such an expert on the history of WWII, you knew all that.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by lookout123
oh - i forgot. F the geneva convention. our forces are the only ones who have followed the rules since the damn thing was created.

It seems to me like we threw it out after 9/11 anyway.

Hmmmm... Been out in the garden all day, so coming in on this rather belatedly. Would the powers that be sacrifice an individual for political gain? Well, yeah, no kidding, welcome to reality, folks. Sure, its a valid theory.

Is the US interested in democracy in the Arab world? I doubt it. The US is interested in its own best interests. We need not look all the way back to WWII for examples of this. Take Chile, for instance. Chile WAS the oldest democracy in Latin America until the Chilean people made the mistake of electing President Salvadore Allende, a communist. The CIA then took charge of Chilean political affairs and assasinated Allende. So much for democracy in Chile.

I don't see how anyone can be so innocent as to think that all we care about is Arab "democracy." What we want is to secure our supply of petroleum, bottom line. Hiroshima was a pragmatic sacrifice of Japanese civilians over a protacted battle from island to island; jungle to street. Either way, we would have won. We chose the most efficient manner of victory.

We will never win the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim world. If we were smart, what we would do in Iraq is to start driving the people out into central Asia. The Chinese would take little pleasure at the sudden influx of Muslim refugees into their sphere of influence. They would send out their army to dispatch the problem. We could wring our hands over Chinese atrocities and laugh all the way to the oil fields.

[DanaC]

how many allied troops would have died island hopping all the way to tokyo.

Well given that the Japanese had already decided to surrender and in fact had made attempts to surrender and those attempts had not been recieved, I would suggest not very many

Real History

From that page-:

"For Tokyo the writing was on the wall. On June 18, Truman's chief of staff Admiral William D Leahy voiced the opinion that a surrender could be arranged "with terms that can be accepted by Japan."

By that time Japan had begun running discreet surrender flags up the flagmasts of several of her diplomatic missions around the world, particularly in messages radioed to ambassadors in Moscow and Stockholm. They were using, intriguingly, a code -- PURPLE -- which they knew both the Americans and British were capable of reading."

and-:

"Washington too decided to squelch every sign that Japan was trying to quit. When the International News Service wired on July 7, 1945 that three influential newspaper publishers captured in Okinawa had confirmed that Japan would surrender immediately provided that the United States put in only a token occupation force, the State Department forbade publication of the news.

On July 8, the Department learned that the Japanese military attaché at Stockholm had told Prince Bernadotte over dinner that the Emperor Hirohito would ask Sweden's King Gustav to contact the Allies when the right time came, and that he had stated only one Japanese condition of surrendering: namely, that the Emperor himself remain in office. (This term was subsequently adopted by the Allies).

So even on this date it was plain that all American talk of a million soldiers losing their lives in an invasion of Japan was at best ill-informed, and at worst a deliberate deception of the British and American publics. It was obvious that there was not going to be any opposed invasion."

So.....sledgehammer to crack a walnut for no good reason. America the good, America the great.

Look down on you guys from our colonies? Are you really serious? Shall we discuss the genocide committed on your soil? Do you really think you guys can cause such utter devastation to another country and then look like the good guys? Britain has done some shady things in her past . I wold hold up my hand and say yes we have caused grief and devastation from one sea to another and we have left a raw and weeping legacy in parts of the world. But......you are the Empire now. You forged your empire in blood and suffering. You arenot the brave young rebel colony now. You are the ones with the power and you seem as judicious with it as the British Empire ever was.

[Yelof]

While I agree with you analysis that the A-Bomb was unnecessary for Japanese surrender, I think it a bad choice to link to a David Irving article, the guys credibility couldn't be lower. I'm busy now but I'll see if I can't dig up later better links.

From how I understand it, the Japanese concern was with their Emperor. Prior American statements had made the Japanese think that the Emperor would have to go, when the Japanese learnt that they would be able to keep the Emperor in place they were willing to surrender. The A-bombing had little to do with the decision making process, Japan already knew they were defeated, if the Americans had spent more time learning about the culture of their enemies (a lesson unlearnt I fear) they could have got the surrender without the bomb.

I think this link describes the surrender decision

I think the bombs were dropped as a show of strength to Russia who had just entered the Pacific war