The Iraq thread 3

[billybob2002 0]

I hope Canada does the right thing and sent them back.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm....rs_dc_1

Quote[/b] ]

Canada Urged to Give Refuge to U.S. Deserters

Thu May 27, 3:29 PM ET  Add World - Reuters to My Yahoo!

By Franco Pingue

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada should grant refugee status to U.S. soldiers opposed to fighting in Iraq (news - web sites), just as it accepted tens of thousands of draft dodgers and deserters during the Vietnam War, a Canadian anti-war lobby group said on Thursday.

Quote[/b] ]

Private Jeremy Hinzman served in Afghanistan (news - web sites) as a cook but fled to Canada from the 82nd Airborne Regiment in North Carolina in January when he was called up for a second deployment to Iraq.

Private Brandon Hughey, the second known U.S. soldier seeking refugee status, slipped past military police in Texas in March a day before his unit was scheduled to go to Iraq.

Quote[/b] ]

The group said a decision by Ottawa to grant refugee status to deserting U.S. soldiers would not hurt relations between the two countries -- which have cooled somewhat since the election of President Bush (news - web sites) and on Canada's decision not to participate in the Iraq war.

Yah, right....

Quote[/b] ]

"I think that the Americans would respect that decision, recognizing that ... people who don't come to Canada would also resist by trying to find underground shelter in their own country," said Hassan Yussuf, also a member of the War Resisters Support Campaign.

That they are losers for running....

[Tex -USMC- 0]

The argument that always gets me is "Well, when Saddam was in power prisoners were treated much worse". I thought the line in Bush's speech was always "We seek to eliminate Saddam's torture chambers and rape rooms" not "We seek to put them under new management, maybe give the iron maiden a fresh coat of paint". An argument about a different incident in Iraq has given me a new lens to look at this kind of thing through. Whenever I reflexively go to defend something like this, I step back and think- "What would I think of these words, coming from a German citizen circa 1941?"

Sometimes it scares the beejesus out of me.

[Akira 0]

Quote[/b] ]I hope Canada does the right thing and sent them back.

Right thing? Maybe right thing for you.

One of those soldiers went to his commanding officer because he was having doubts about the Iraq War and its stated meaning and causes. His commanding officer told him to "not think so much."

Some have served honorably in Afghanistan, and only deserted after deciding (rightly) that the Iraq War was bullshit.

Quote[/b] ]STEPHEN McDONELL: Brandon Hughey and Jeremy Hinzman now, technically, face the death penalty in the United States for desertion.

They told Lateline that they've applied for refugee status in Canada on the grounds that they've fled a country making them fight an illegal war.

Is that the "right thing" you were looking for?

Quote[/b] ]Jeremy Hinzman was a United States soldier in the elite infantry division, the 82nd Airborne.

He served in Afghanistan and, after returning to America, heard they were being sent to Iraq.

Hinzman thought the war would only benefit the likes of the Vice President's old company Haliburton, which gained the lions share of post-war rebuilding contracts.

He also didn't believe the stated reasons for the Iraq war.

So, one night he drove north to Canada to seek asylum.

So where is the "right" there? The fact the soldier correctly assesed the situation, or that Cheney handed billion dollar contracts to his old company after lying about WMD and the reasons for this war?

Quote[/b] ]JEFFREY HOUSE: I know of other US soldiers in Canada.

They have not made any decision about what they are going to do.

I also know of US soldiers in the United States who have indicated that they will be coming to this country but have not yet arrived.

Lateline Transcript

I have a hard time considering soldiers that desert an illegal war "losers". Some have served in Afghanistan after all. They certainly aren't cowards.

People that constantly defend this war on the other hand...

Quote[/b] ] ?I believe that the war in Iraq is contradicts the international law, and I am not in the position to fight in this war?, soldier Khaintsmann said.

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

And I get sick of hearing this "war on teror". This is like calling WWII "war on Blitzkrieg"!

[Tex -USMC- 0]

And I get sick of hearing this "war on teror". This is like calling WWII "war on Blitzkrieg"!  

For some reason 'War on Islam' didn't go over so well with the focus groups.

[red oct 2]

well, i think if these guys didn't want to be part of the Iraq war than they shouldn't have joined up in the army in the first place. that's exactly why i didn't follow my best friend into the army. should the deserters be executed? no, of course not. save the chair for Terry Nicoles. A dishonable discharge would be much more suiting for them.

[denoir 0]

I agree. They should be discharged from the military and get a slap on the wrist. If the military has paid for their collage education then they should be sentenced to do community service. Overall there has to be some form of discouragement. Of course an acceptable alternative is to let them run off to Canada or some other country. It should not be an easy choice to desert.

If they on the other hand desert while they are in Iraq then they should be IMO be court martialed and recieve the harshest punishment possible. There is no worse act of treason than betraying your comrades and your unit.

An exception is of course if war crimes or othrwise illegal orders are being executed. But I think that's already covered by the uniform code of miltary justice. In most militaries you are not allowed to obey illegal orders.

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]I have a hard time considering soldiers that desert an illegal war "losers". Some have served in Afghanistan after all. They certainly aren't cowards.

People that constantly defend this war on the other hand...

I called them losers for running not cowards. They enlisted, not drafted, in the military and that makes them bigger losers for doing that.

Quote[/b] ]Is that the "right thing" you were looking for

I can only think of one instant in which a soldier was executed for deserting and that was in World War 2 (he was on the battlefield, however). Have not heard anything since about a soldier being executed for running to canada (could be wrong). Furthermore, I believe they should be dishonable discharged and have a few days in jails (a month).

It is very rare (.00000000001%) for a person to be executed for that. Hell, the us government allowed the people who fled to canada during the vietnam war to return without being arrested.

[Pathy 0]

Isn't there such thing as "conscientious objector

" status any more (or whatever it is) ?

Edit :

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18215

[Tim Pink 0]

Quote[/b] ]well, i think if these guys didn't want to be part of the Iraq war than they shouldn't have joined up in the army in the first place.

Have you ever thought that people enlist in the army to defend there country, not to get sent overseas to wage an empty hollow war because some power hungry megalomaniac has decided he wants to finish daddy's job.

Every U.S. soldier that deserts should be awarded a bloody medal, at least they had the guts to stand up and say this war is a heap of bullshit, its not right and they dont want to be part of it.

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

It isnt that easy. Look I remember stories from germans that refused to take part in WWII and deserted. Still nowadays those individuals are considered to have been egoistic cowards. Surely they had the right attitude, but they let down their comrades. Quite ironic!

The decision whether a war is just or injust has to be decided on the home-front, not in the military (military is only an executive authority not a judiciary).

Also, I claim that 90% of all deserters dont do it because of "moral" issues but because of fear for their life. This "the war is not just" is most often a self made apology to fight their own remources!

I dont want to claim that I am more of a courageous person but one should think before enlisting. The problem here is once again in the system of the american military. The spin- off advantages of joining the army are sometimes so extreme that people are often forgetting what they are actually signing up for.

However!!! There are cases of soldiers that have been to iraq, killed several iraqis and couldnt take it no more. How should we judge that?

[EiZei 0]

The spin- off advantages of joining the army are sometimes so extreme that people are often forgetting what they are actually signing up for.

Remember that signing up is the only option for some poorer americans since they cant afford higher education.

[red oct 2]

Quote[/b] ]well, i think if these guys didn't want to be part of the Iraq war than they shouldn't have joined up in the army in the first place.

Have you ever thought that people enlist in the army to defend there country, not to get sent overseas to wage an empty hollow war because some power hungry megalomaniac has decided he wants to finish daddy's job.

Every U.S. soldier that deserts should be awarded a bloody medal, at least they had the guts to stand up and say this war is a heap of bullshit, its not right and they dont want to be part of it.

well im sorry but thats not how i see it. if somebody can't handel the shit-jobs in their military career than they simply shouldn't choose to go into the military. the only medal a AWOL U.S. soldier deserves who voluntarily enlists in the service and decides to abandon his fellow soldiers because he or she doesn't approve of the war in Iraq is a bullet in the head. i'll agree that i don't like this war too much either but that doesn't justify leaving. you don't like the military? than finish your remaining years till your reinlistment comes and get out. Medals are given to the people who been through the nasty business of war seeing their friends getting injured or killed. we don't give medals to cowards who freeloads off the military benifits only to cut and run because of thier "political views". and by giving medals to those who are "brave" enough to go AWOL, your pissing on graves all those guys who sacrificed their lives and giving a slap in the face to those who lost a limb or two. in the military you don't have any say what so ever in what war you want and don't want to fight in.

[bn880 5]

because some power hungry megalomaniac has decided he wants to finish daddy's job.

power hungry christian fundamentalist

who talks to god

[denoir 0]

The language of diplomacy [bBC]

Quote[/b] ]In May 1994 I found myself in New York covering the United Nations Security Council for a few weeks. It was the height of the genocide in Rwanda; unspeakable massacres were taking place every day.

"It's so awful, we must do something," an aide to the UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali, said to me.

Instead, the members of the security council argued about something called the concept of operations for an expanded UN mission. A senior American official said it had to be a do-able operation; expectations of what the UN could achieve should not be exaggerated. Scarred by the painful experience of Somalia the previous year, the Clinton administration delayed a vote on a resolution to send 5,500 troops, even though there was no question of American soldiers taking part.

"Everyone is very conscious of the urgency of the matter," said a British representative, but the dry as dust haggling went on.

Strikingly, the big powers, especially the United States, resisted the use of the word "genocide" to describe what was going on in Rwanda. So the resolution eventually passed talked instead of mindless violence and carnage, the death of many thousands of innocent civilians.

Plain language

There was only one oblique reference recalling that the killing of members of an ethnic group with the intention of destroying it was a crime under international law. Using the word itself - calling a spade a spade - would have mattered because, if it was genocide, how could you not act, however difficult it was?

In a similar way, British officials in the early 1990s tended to describe the fighting in Bosnia as civil war rather than Serb aggression - the phrase implied that all the parties were as bad as each other and weakened the demand for intervention.

In the end, the pretence over Rwanda at the UN was swept aside. Mr Boutros Ghali appeared before the media to declare: "Genocide has been committed - and we're still discussing what is to be done. I've begged them to send troops; I failed. It's a scandal." It was a rare instance of emotion bursting its diplomatic bonds - the kind of moment that diplomatic correspondents relish, as compensation for the amount of time they spend studying ambiguous phrases to find out what lurks beneath them.

I can remember others - Boris Yeltsin, for example, ailing but still larger than life, at a summit of more than 50 leaders in Istanbul in 1999, angrily rejecting western criticism of the behaviour of Russian forces in Chechnya as interference in an internal matter. Bill Clinton publicly turned the tables on him by recalling Mr Yeltsin's stand for freedom on a tank in Moscow.

"If they'd put you in jail," he said, "I hope every leader round this table would have stood up for you and not dismissed it as an internal Russian affair."

Then there was British Foreign Secretary (as he then was), Robin Cook, the previous year visiting a Jewish settlement site at Har Homa in torrential rain. The Israeli Government accused him of breaking an agreement not to meet Palestinians there. Demonstrators called him an anti-Semite and the then Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, cancelled a dinner with him.

Mr Cook proclaimed: "I did not submit to Israeli pressure."

Instruments of policy

His officials, for once, were just as undiplomatic, accusing the Israelis of a fantastic over-reaction, of being in an ugly and defensive mood. Those were moments of plain speaking. Usually, words are carefully chosen as instruments of policy. The leaders of the big powers try by constant repetition to get their terms adopted by everyone, because they carry with them value judgements and a particular view of the world.

The most obvious example is the word "terrorist". When President George W Bush calls someone a terrorist, he thinks that is all that needs to be said. The word is intended to close off argument, ignoring the disagreement across the world about who is a terrorist and who is not. It has become just a term of abuse.

There are similar objections to the label "war on terrorism" but it still flourishes.  Can you have a war on a technique, since that is what terrorism is? Can the war ever end?

Words do matter

The attraction for Mr Bush is that Iraq can be verbally neutralised as the central front in the war on terror. Diplomatic correspondents worry about this sort of thing.

American and British politicians - and the media - now talk of transferring sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June. Pedants object that they cannot do that because they do not possess the sovereignty in the first place.

All right, then, they are going to hand over power. Are they? Really? Perhaps a transfer of "limited administrative authority" would be more accurate.

But that does not have the right ring to it. It certainly does not sound like a clear end to the occupation. So you see, words do matter, even if facts on the ground matter more.

[walker 0]

Hi Bn880

That would be Ashcoft the one who goes around shouting "WOLF!" and compares to himself as Christ.

Quote[/b] ]In his memoirs, Ashcroft regularly compares himself to Christ, describing his campaign victories as 'resurrections' and his defeats as 'crucifixions..'

http://prorev.com/bush4.htm#ashcroft

Quote[/b] ]News that the ambassador to the Netherlands had calico cats upset Ashcroft's advance team, who knew their boss considered the animals 'instruments of the Devil/'

Quote[/b] ]NEWS - The attorney general was fed up with having his picture taken during events in the Great Hall in front of semi-nude statues. He had ordered massive draperies to conceal the offending figures.

The man is so wierd and creepy how in the heck did he become the man in charge of Justice in the US?

I thank god I can not think of any one who is as much a fruitcake in a position of power in the UK or Europe please tell me the man is in no way in line to become president of the US.

Kind Regards Walker

[denoir 0]

The man is so wierd and creepy how in the heck did he become the man in charge of Justice in the US?

Because those that put him in power are equally weird and creepy?

[bn880 5]

Hi Bn880

That would be Ashcoft the one who goes around shouting "WOLF!" and compares to himself as Christ.

Quote[/b] ]In his memoirs, Ashcroft regularly compares himself to Christ, describing his campaign victories as 'resurrections' and his defeats as 'crucifixions..'

http://prorev.com/bush4.htm#ashcroft

Quote[/b] ]News that the ambassador to the Netherlands had calico cats upset Ashcroft's advance team, who knew their boss considered the animals 'instruments of the Devil/'

Okay Walker, but I stand by what I said, I knew Bush was a Christian Fundamentalist "doing god's work" since a few months after he was in power. I only need to hear/see a few of his speeches to know this for sure...

EDIT: Denoir, indeed words do matter, they may not matter for some of us, but they matter for most people in how they understand a situation. It can be extremely frustrating...

[Tim Pink 0]

Intelligence Agents Encouraged Abuse

Quote[/b] ]By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Several U.S. guards allege they witnessed military intelligence operatives encouraging the abuse of Iraqi prison inmates at four prisons other than Abu Ghraib, investigative documents show

Court transcripts and Army investigator interviews provide the broadest view of evidence that abuses, from forcing inmates to stand in hoods in 120-degree heat to punching them, occurred at a Marine detention camp and three Army prison sites in Iraq (news - web sites) besides Abu Ghraib.

That is the prison outside Baghdad that was the site of widely published and televised photographs of abuse of Iraqi detainees by Army troops.

Testimony about tactics used at a Marine prisoner of war camp near Nasiriyah also raises the question whether coercive techniques were standard procedure for military intelligence units in different service branches and throughout Iraq.

At the Marines' Camp Whitehorse, the guards were told to keep enemy prisoners of war — EPWs, in military jargon — standing for 50 minutes each hour for up to 10 hours. They would then be interrogated by "human exploitation teams," or HETs, comprising intelligence specialists.

"The 50/10 technique was used to break down the EPWs and make it easier for the HET member to get information from them," Marine Cpl. Otis Antoine, a guard at Camp Whitehorse, testified at a military court hearing in February.

U.S. military officials say American troops in Iraq are required to follow the Geneva Conventions on POWs for all detainees in Iraq. Those conventions prohibit "physical or moral coercion" or cruel treatment.

The Army's intelligence chief told a Senate panel this month that intelligence soldiers are trained to follow Geneva Convention rules strictly.

"Our training manuals specifically prohibit the abuse of detainees, and we ensure all of our soldiers trained as interrogators receive this training," Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander told the Senate Armed Services Committee (news - web sites).

The Marine Corps judge hearing the Camp Whitehorse case wrote that forcing hooded, handcuffed prisoners to stand for 50 minutes every hour in the 120-degree desert could be a Geneva Convention violation. Col. William V. Gallo wrote that such actions "could easily form the basis of a law of war violation if committed by an enemy combatant."

Two Marines face charges in the June 2003 death of Nagem Sadoon Hatab at Camp Whitehorse, although no one is charged with killing him. Military records say Hatab was asphyxiated when a Marine guard grabbed his throat in an attempt to move him, accidentally breaking a bone that cut off his air supply. Another Marine is charged with kicking Hatab in the chest in the hours before his death.

Army Maj. Gen. George Fay is finishing an investigation into military intelligence management and practices at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq. Alexander and other top military intelligence officials say they never gave orders that would have encouraged abuses.

"If we have a problem, if it is an intel oversight problem, if it is an MP (military police) problem, or if it's a leadership problem, we have to get to the bottom of this," Alexander told the Senate panel.

Most of the seven enlisted soldiers charged in the Abu Ghraib abuses say they were encouraged to "soften up" prisoners for interrogators through humiliation and beatings. Several witnesses also report seeing military intelligence operatives hit Abu Ghraib prisoners, strip them naked and order them to be kept awake for long periods.

Other accusations against military intelligence troops include:

_Stuffing an Iraqi general into a sleeping bag, sitting on his chest and covering his mouth during an interrogation at a prison camp at Qaim, near the border with Syria. The general died during that interrogation, although he also had been questioned by CIA (news - web sites) operatives in the days before his death.

_Choking, beating and pulling the hair of detainees at an Army prison camp near Samarra, north of Baghdad.

  _Hitting prisoners and putting them in painful positions for hours at Camp Cropper, a prison at Baghdad International Airport for prominent former Iraqi officials.

Military officials say they're investigating all of those incidents.

One focus of the incident at Qaim is Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshover, an interrogator with the Army's 66th Military Intelligence Group. Welshover told The Associated Press on Friday: "I am not at liberty to discuss any of the details."

Welshover was part of a two-person interrogation team that questioned former Iraqi Air Force Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, 57. Military autopsy records say Mowhoush was asphyxiated by chest compression and smothering.

Army officials say members of a California Army National Guard military intelligence unit are accused of abusing prisoners at a camp near Samarra, north of Baghdad. The New York Times has reported those accusations include pulling prisoners' hair, beating them and choking them to force them to give information.

The Red Cross complained to the military in July that Camp Cropper inmates had been kept in painful "stress positions" for up to four hours and had been struck by military intelligence soldiers.

One of the military intelligence soldiers interviewed in the Abu Ghraib probe claimed some prisoners were beaten before they arrived at Camp Cropper.

Cpl. Robert Bruttomesso of the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion told Army investigators he reported that abuse to his chain of command. The report of his interview, obtained by The Associated Press, does not include details on what action, if any, Bruttomesso's commanders took.

[denoir 0]

Here's an interesting article written by Susan Sontag on the Abu Ghraib pictures, putting them in a historical and contemporary perspective. I found it very interesting to see that in the first part she is bringing up the same lynching post cards that Bernadotte brought up a while ago.

Anyway:

Regarding the Torture of Others [New York Times]

Quote[/b] ]

By Susan Sontag

I.

For a long time -- at least six decades -- photographs have laid down the tracks of how important conflicts are judged and remembered. The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one. Photographs have an insuperable power to determine what we recall of events, and it now seems probable that the defining association of people everywhere with the war that the United States launched pre-emptively in Iraq last year will be photographs of the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans in the most infamous of Saddam Hussein's prisons, Abu Ghraib.

The Bush administration and its defenders have chiefly sought to limit a public-relations disaster -- the dissemination of the photographs -- rather than deal with the complex crimes of leadership and of policy revealed by the pictures. There was, first of all, the displacement of the reality onto the photographs themselves. The administration's initial response was to say that the president was shocked and disgusted by the photographs -- as if the fault or horror lay in the images, not in what they depict. There was also the avoidance of the word ''torture.'' The prisoners had possibly been the objects of ''abuse,'' eventually of ''humiliation'' -- that was the most to be admitted. ''My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture,'' Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference. ''And therefore I'm not going to address the 'torture' word.''

Words alter, words add, words subtract. It was the strenuous avoidance of the word ''genocide'' while some 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda were being slaughtered, over a few weeks' time, by their Hutu neighbors 10 years ago that indicated the American government had no intention of doing anything. To refuse to call what took place in Abu Ghraib -- and what has taken place elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay -- by its true name, torture, is as outrageous as the refusal to call the Rwandan genocide a genocide. Here is one of the definitions of torture contained in a convention to which the United States is a signatory: ''any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.'' (The definition comes from the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Similar definitions have existed for some time in customary law and in treaties, starting with Article 3 -- common to the four Geneva conventions of 1949 -- and many recent human rights conventions.) The 1984 convention declares, ''No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.'' And all covenants on torture specify that it includes treatment intended to humiliate the victim, like leaving prisoners naked in cells and corridors.

Whatever actions this administration undertakes to limit the damage of the widening revelations of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- trials, courts-martial, dishonorable discharges, resignation of senior military figures and responsible administration officials and substantial compensation to the victims -- it is probable that the ''torture'' word will continue to be banned. To acknowledge that Americans torture their prisoners would contradict everything this administration has invited the public to believe about the virtue of American intentions and America's right, flowing from that virtue, to undertake unilateral action on the world stage.

Even when the president was finally compelled, as the damage to America's reputation everywhere in the world widened and deepened, to use the ''sorry'' word, the focus of regret still seemed the damage to America's claim to moral superiority. Yes, President Bush said in Washington on May 6, standing alongside King Abdullah II of Jordan, he was ''sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.'' But, he went on, he was ''equally sorry that people seeing these pictures didn't understand the true nature and heart of America.''

To have the American effort in Iraq summed up by these images must seem, to those who saw some justification in a war that did overthrow one of the monster tyrants of modern times, ''unfair.'' A war, an occupation, is inevitably a huge tapestry of actions. What makes some actions representative and others not? The issue is not whether the torture was done by individuals (i.e., ''not by everybody'') -- but whether it was systematic. Authorized. Condoned. All acts are done by individuals. The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.

II.

Considered in this light, the photographs are us. That is, they are representative of the fundamental corruptions of any foreign occupation together with the Bush adminstration's distinctive policies. The Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, practiced torture and sexual humiliation on despised recalcitrant natives. Add to this generic corruption the mystifying, near-total unpreparedness of the American rulers of Iraq to deal with the complex realities of the country after its ''liberation.'' And add to that the overarching, distinctive doctrines of the Bush administration, namely that the United States has embarked on an endless war and that those detained in this war are, if the president so decides, ''unlawful combatants'' -- a policy enunciated by Donald Rumsfeld for Taliban and Qaeda prisoners as early as January 2002 -- and thus, as Rumsfeld said, ''technically'' they ''do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,'' and you have a perfect recipe for the cruelties and crimes committed against the thousands incarcerated without charges or access to lawyers in American-run prisons that have been set up since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the photographs reveal to have happened to ''suspects'' in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib. ´

The lynching pictures were in the nature of photographs as trophies -- taken by a photographer in order to be collected, stored in albums, displayed. The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib, however, reflect a shift in the use made of pictures -- less objects to be saved than messages to be disseminated, circulated. A digital camera is a common possession among soldiers. Where once photographing war was the province of photojournalists, now the soldiers themselves are all photographers -- recording their war, their fun, their observations of what they find picturesque, their atrocities -- and swapping images among themselves and e-mailing them around the globe.

There is more and more recording of what people do, by themselves. At least or especially in America, Andy Warhol's ideal of filming real events in real time -- life isn't edited, why should its record be edited? -- has become a norm for countless Webcasts, in which people record their day, each in his or her own reality show. Here I am -- waking and yawning and stretching, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting the kids off to school. People record all aspects of their lives, store them in computer files and send the files around. Family life goes with the recording of family life -- even when, or especially when, the family is in the throes of crisis and disgrace. Surely the dedicated, incessant home-videoing of one another, in conversation and monologue, over many years was the most astonishing material in ''Capturing the Friedmans,'' the recent documentary by Andrew Jarecki about a Long Island family embroiled in pedophilia charges.

An erotic life is, for more and more people, that which can be captured in digital photographs and on video. And perhaps the torture is more attractive, as something to record, when it has a sexual component. It is surely revealing, as more Abu Ghraib photographs enter public view, that torture photographs are interleaved with pornographic images of American soldiers having sex with one another. In fact, most of the torture photographs have a sexual theme, as in those showing the coercing of prisoners to perform, or simulate, sexual acts among themselves. One exception, already canonical, is the photograph of the man made to stand on a box, hooded and sprouting wires, reportedly told he would be electrocuted if he fell off. Yet pictures of prisoners bound in painful positions, or made to stand with outstretched arms, are infrequent. That they count as torture cannot be doubted. You have only to look at the terror on the victim's face, although such ''stress'' fell within the Pentagon's limits of the acceptable. But most of the pictures seem part of a larger confluence of torture and pornography: a young woman leading a naked man around on a leash is classic dominatrix imagery. And you wonder how much of the sexual tortures inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib was inspired by the vast repertory of pornographic imagery available on the Internet -- and which ordinary people, by sending out Webcasts of themselves, try to emulate.

III.

To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one's life, and therefore to go on with one's life oblivious, or claiming to be oblivious, to the camera's nonstop attentions. But to live is also to pose. To act is to share in the community of actions recorded as images. The expression of satisfaction at the acts of torture being inflicted on helpless, trussed, naked victims is only part of the story. There is the deep satisfaction of being photographed, to which one is now more inclined to respond not with a stiff, direct gaze (as in former times) but with glee. The events are in part designed to be photographed. The grin is a grin for the camera. There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them.

Looking at these photographs, you ask yourself, How can someone grin at the sufferings and humiliation of another human being? Set guard dogs at the genitals and legs of cowering naked prisoners? Force shackled, hooded prisoners to masturbate or simulate oral sex with one another? And you feel naive for asking, since the answer is, self-evidently, People do these things to other people. Rape and pain inflicted on the genitals are among the most common forms of torture. Not just in Nazi concentration camps and in Abu Ghraib when it was run by Saddam Hussein. Americans, too, have done and do them when they are told, or made to feel, that those over whom they have absolute power deserve to be humiliated, tormented. They do them when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior race or religion. For the meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.

Even more appalling, since the pictures were meant to be circulated and seen by many people: it was all fun. And this idea of fun is, alas, more and more -- contrary to what President Bush is telling the world -- part of ''the true nature and heart of America.'' It is hard to measure the increasing acceptance of brutality in American life, but its evidence is everywhere, starting with the video games of killing that are a principal entertainment of boys -- can the video game ''Interrogating the Terrorists'' really be far behind? -- and on to the violence that has become endemic in the group rites of youth on an exuberant kick. Violent crime is down, yet the easy delight taken in violence seems to have grown. From the harsh torments inflicted on incoming students in many American suburban high schools -- depicted in Richard Linklater's 1993 film, ''Dazed and Confused'' -- to the hazing rituals of physical brutality and sexual humiliation in college fraternities and on sports teams, America has become a country in which the fantasies and the practice of violence are seen as good entertainment, fun.

What formerly was segregated as pornography, as the exercise of extreme sadomasochistic longings -- as in Pier Paolo Pasolini's last, near-unwatchable film, ''Salo'' (1975), depicting orgies of torture in the Fascist redoubt in northern Italy at the end of the Mussolini era -- is now being normalized, by some, as high-spirited play or venting. To ''stack naked men'' is like a college fraternity prank, said a caller to Rush Limbaugh and the many millions of Americans who listen to his radio show. Had the caller, one wonders, seen the photographs? No matter. The observation -- or is it the fantasy? -- was on the mark. What may still be capable of shocking some Americans was Limbaugh's response: ''Exactly!'' he exclaimed. ''Exactly my point. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time.'' ''They'' are the American soldiers, the torturers. And Limbaugh went on: ''You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever heard of emotional release?''

Shock and awe were what our military promised the Iraqis. And shock and the awful are what these photographs announce to the world that the Americans have delivered: a pattern of criminal behavior in open contempt of international humanitarian conventions. Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies. Secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to be invited on a television show to reveal. What is illustrated by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality.

IV.

The notion that apologies or professions of ''disgust'' by the president and the secretary of defense are a sufficient response is an insult to one's historical and moral sense. The torture of prisoners is not an aberration. It is a direct consequence of the with-us-or-against-us doctrines of world struggle with which the Bush administration has sought to change, change radically, the international stance of the United States and to recast many domestic institutions and prerogatives. The Bush administration has committed the country to a pseudo-religious doctrine of war, endless war -- for ''the war on terror'' is nothing less than that. Endless war is taken to justify endless incarcerations. Those held in the extralegal American penal empire are ''detainees''; ''prisoners,'' a newly obsolete word, might suggest that they have the rights accorded by international law and the laws of all civilized countries. This endless ''global war on terrorism'' -- into which both the quite justified invasion of Afghanistan and the unwinnable folly in Iraq have been folded by Pentagon decree -- inevitably leads to the demonizing and dehumanizing of anyone declared by the Bush administration to be a possible terrorist: a definition that is not up for debate and is, in fact, usually made in secret.

The charges against most of the people detained in the prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan being nonexistent -- the Red Cross reports that 70 to 90 percent of those being held seem to have committed no crime other than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in some sweep of ''suspects'' -- the principal justification for holding them is ''interrogation.'' Interrogation about what? About anything. Whatever the detainee might know. If interrogation is the point of detaining prisoners indefinitely, then physical coercion, humiliation and torture become inevitable.

Remember: we are not talking about that rarest of cases, the ''ticking time bomb'' situation, which is sometimes used as a limiting case that justifies torture of prisoners who have knowledge of an imminent attack. This is general or nonspecific information-gathering, authorized by American military and civilian administrators to learn more of a shadowy empire of evildoers about whom Americans know virtually nothing, in countries about which they are singularly ignorant: in principle, any information at all might be useful. An interrogation that produced no information (whatever information might consist of) would count as a failure. All the more justification for preparing prisoners to talk. Softening them up, stressing them out -- these are the euphemisms for the bestial practices in American prisons where suspected terrorists are being held. Unfortunately, as Staff Sgt. Ivan (Chip) Frederick noted in his diary, a prisoner can get too stressed out and die. The picture of a man in a body bag with ice on his chest may well be of the man Frederick was describing.

The pictures will not go away. That is the nature of the digital world in which we live. Indeed, it seems they were necessary to get our leaders to acknowledge that they had a problem on their hands. After all, the conclusions of reports compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other reports by journalists and protests by humanitarian organizations about the atrocious punishments inflicted on ''detainees'' and ''suspected terrorists'' in prisons run by the American military, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, have been circulating for more than a year. It seems doubtful that such reports were read by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice or Rumsfeld. Apparently it took the photographs to get their attention, when it became clear they could not be suppressed; it was the photographs that made all this ''real'' to Bush and his associates. Up to then, there had been only words, which are easier to cover up in our age of infinite digital self-reproduction and self-dissemination, and so much easier to forget.

So now the pictures will continue to ''assault'' us -- as many Americans are bound to feel. Will people get used to them? Some Americans are already saying they have seen enough. Not, however, the rest of the world. Endless war: endless stream of photographs. Will editors now debate whether showing more of them, or showing them uncropped (which, with some of the best-known images, like that of a hooded man on a box, gives a different and in some instances more appalling view), would be in ''bad taste'' or too implicitly political? By ''political,'' read: critical of the Bush administration's imperial project. For there can be no doubt that the photographs damage, as Rumsfeld testified, ''the reputation of the honorable men and women of the armed forces who are courageously and responsibly and professionally defending our freedom across the globe.'' This damage -- to our reputation, our image, our success as the lone superpower -- is what the Bush administration principally deplores. How the protection of ''our freedom'' -- the freedom of 5 percent of humanity -- came to require having American soldiers ''across the globe'' is hardly debated by our elected officials.

Already the backlash has begun. Americans are being warned against indulging in an orgy of self-condemnation. The continuing publication of the pictures is being taken by many Americans as suggesting that we do not have the right to defend ourselves: after all, they (the terrorists) started it. They -- Osama bin Laden? Saddam Hussein? what's the difference? -- attacked us first. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, before which Secretary Rumsfeld testified, avowed that he was sure he was not the only member of the committee ''more outraged by the outrage'' over the photographs than by what the photographs show. ''These prisoners,'' Senator Inhofe explained, ''you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in Cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands, and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.'' It's the fault of ''the media'' which are provoking, and will continue to provoke, further violence against Americans around the world. More Americans will die. Because of these photos.

There is an answer to this charge, of course. Americans are dying not because of the photographs but because of what the photographs reveal to be happening, happening with the complicity of a chain of command -- so Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba implied, and Pfc. Lynndie England said, and (among others) Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, suggested, after he saw the Pentagon's full range of images on May 12. ''Some of it has an elaborate nature to it that makes me very suspicious of whether or not others were directing or encouraging,'' Senator Graham said. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said that viewing an uncropped version of one photo showing a stack of naked men in a hallway -- a version that revealed how many other soldiers were at the scene, some not even paying attention -- contradicted the Pentagon's assertion that only rogue soldiers were involved. ''Somewhere along the line,'' Senator Nelson said of the torturers, ''they were either told or winked at.'' An attorney for Specialist Charles Graner Jr., who is in the picture, has had his client identify the men in the uncropped version; according to The Wall Street Journal, Graner said that four of the men were military intelligence and one a civilian contractor working with military intelligence.

V.

But the distinction between photograph and reality -- as between spin and policy -- can easily evaporate. And that is what the administration wishes to happen. ''There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist,'' Rumsfeld acknowledged in his testimony. ''If these are released to the public, obviously, it's going to make matters worse.'' Worse for the administration and its programs, presumably, not for those who are the actual -- and potential? -- victims of torture.

The media may self-censor but, as Rumsfeld acknowledged, it's hard to censor soldiers overseas, who don't write letters home, as in the old days, that can be opened by military censors who ink out unacceptable lines. Today's soldiers instead function like tourists, as Rumsfeld put it, ''running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise.'' The administration's effort to withhold pictures is proceeding along several fronts. Currently, the argument is taking a legalistic turn: now the photographs are classified as evidence in future criminal cases, whose outcome may be prejudiced if they are made public. The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia, after the May 12 slide show of image after image of sexual humiliation and violence against Iraqi prisoners, said he felt ''very strongly'' that the newer photos ''should not be made public. I feel that it could possibly endanger the men and women of the armed forces as they are serving and at great risk.''

But the real push to limit the accessibility of the photographs will come from the continuing effort to protect the administration and cover up our misrule in Iraq -- to identify ''outrage'' over the photographs with a campaign to undermine American military might and the purposes it currently serves. Just as it was regarded by many as an implicit criticism of the war to show on television photographs of American soldiers who have been killed in the course of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it will increasingly be thought unpatriotic to disseminate the new photographs and further tarnish the image of America.

After all, we're at war. Endless war. And war is hell, more so than any of the people who got us into this rotten war seem to have expected. In our digital hall of mirrors, the pictures aren't going to go away. Yes, it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable.

Susan Sontag is the author, most recently, of ''Regarding the Pain of Others.''

[Pathy 0]

Very good article.

What she says about the pro-american defence some people are using reminds me of some things ive read in this thread

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.time.com/time....cnn=yes

Quote[/b] ]When Saddam Hussein was rousted from his spider hole in Dawr, a town near Tikrit, by U.S. soldiers last December, Iraq's fallen dictator was clutching a pistol. He is now in detention at an undisclosed location, being questioned by American authorities and awaiting charges for war atrocities and crimes against humanity. But what ever happened to the pistol?

The sidearm has made its way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sources say that the military had the pistol mounted after the soldiers seized it from Saddam and that it was then presented to the President privately by some of the troops who played a key role in ferreting out the old tyrant. Though it was widely reported at the time that the pistol was loaded when they grabbed Saddam, Bush has told visitors that the gun was empty—and that it is still empty and safe to touch. "He really liked showing it off," says a recent visitor to the White House who has seen the gun. "He was really proud of it."

The pistol's new place of residence is in the small study next to the Oval Office where Bush takes select visitors after pointing out better-known White House pieces like the busts of Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower and a watercolor called A Charge to Keep, which gets its name from a Methodist hymn. The study—the one where Bill Clinton held some of his infamous trysts with White House intern Monica Lewinsky—has become a place where Bush keeps the memorabilia that hold special significance for him. Another of the room's mementos: a photograph of special-forces soldiers in Afghanistan praying after burying a piece of the World Trade Center there as a tribute to those who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

1. AFAIK, handguns are prohibited in Washington D.C

2. the room where its kept better have a name like 'memorial room' or something

[Pathy 0]

Lol but heavy machine guns and high power rifles are allowed....

[EiZei 0]

Lol but heavy machine guns and high power rifles are allowed....

Didnt know that one could conceal machineguns or real rifles under their jackets..

[Pathy 0]

No, but if you put a passenger in the boot of your car with a sniper rifle.......

Nah i was just joking....same as Ralph was.....