Marines in Iraq

I know that I get a lot of my news from the cynics at NPR, but I can't help but feel that you (and Ryan, recently) are understating the level of nastiness that took place in Abu Gharib. If if were simply a case of a few forced "naked whoas" and dogpiles, I might agree. But from what I've seen, this isn't the case. What I've seen reported includes:

- impersonation of sexual acts
- soldiers posing with a dead, bloody Iraqi (why he's dead is unclear)
- sexual humiliation involving a woman (yes, this is a knock against Islamic patriarchalism, but I'd find it pretty dreadful, too)
- prisoners cringing away from dogs

And that's just what I've picked up from brushing through the Times on my way to A. O. Scott's film reviews. I really do see what you're saying about the humiliation being a way to mock the self-importance of Arabic cultures, and I'm still thinking about whether I agree. But remember that everything done at Abu Gharib was done at gunpoint, to men wearing hoods, who couldn't be sure if they were going to be killed or not.
I think you've aced one point, though: the West and the East have different styles of error we gravitate toward. The West tends to be value freedom, and we go off the deep end by forcing a perverse "freedom" of mores on prisoners. The Middle East sees order as foremost, and they cut off hands to "keep the peace." But I think instead of asking, "which is worse?" we should ask why either culture goes so far at all. I think it's an issue of power: whenever a minority gains absolute power over the majority (and I mean absolute), it's only a matter of time until some sort of torture starts. We should be grateful that the American abuse of absolute power has, in this case, been limited to one military prison, and has not infected an entire culture -- as has often been the case in Muslim countries.

But Mesh, thus far, from when I've read in NYT and MSNBC most of those things are unsubstantiated rumors. Until we see the photos that have not been released, I think it's a bad idea to draw conclusions from what is, at best, the claims of former Abu Ghraib prisoners, personally I don't trust most of them.

Well, there are substantiated photos of all of the acts I mentioned. Some of them have been released to the public. Some have been seen only by military and congressional officials, and have only been described to us. But we know that these things happened. The claims of former prisoners are in fact much, much worse, and I declined to use them in my argument.

But I guess the bigger question is: why are you in such a rush to argue that what happened at Abu Gharib wasn't torture? Granted, you -- and Ryan -- have a much stronger ingrained respect for the military than I do. (I respect the military -- from a safe distance, where none of them can scream at me.) But it seems like your respect for American culture should include a righteous indignation for the people who pervert our ethos. If somebody were to take some of the traditions I most admire from Catacombs -- wearing dresses to dinner, for example -- and force these activities onto other people at gunpoint, I'd be furious. Where's the patriotic anger here?

Mesh,

OK, I dunno what Ryan has to do with any of this. I mean, I understand why you're referencing him, but, if you take a gander at my posts and our conversations, I think you'll realize he doesn't have anything to do with this conversation.

But onwards:

Well Mesh, the big reason why I'm hesitant to call it "torture" is because I think it's a really loaded word. Calling a naked dogpile, even if forced by gunpoint "torture" puts it in the same camp as US POW's in vietnam who had bamboo slivers shoved underneath their fingernails. It just feels different to me.

Now, if its true, something like the wires attached to prisoners genitals and such that are rumored to have occured at Abu Ghraib, now that's torture. Somebody cowering because of a barking guard dog, well, I just don't feel that's torture. Letting the dog bite the man while staring and laughing, that's torture.

But then there's the whole humilation category, like the girl with the dog collar around the guy. That's just sick.

But here's the thing: we've got images, but we don't have a story. I wanna know the context, I wanna know what the heck is going on in some of those photos, and really, in the age of photoshop, I wanna know the story OF the photos. Where did they come from? Who took them? The one of the girl smiling with the dead body, that's just, well, weird.

And finally: you wont find a jail in America without stories of prison riots and prisoners trying to escape and being beaton and/or shot or guards being killed etc. A prison is a horrible place. It holds the worst sort of people, with the worst sorts of inclinations and tendencies. I lived once with a guy who did 13 years in Folsom for arson & attempted murder. The stories he told me make the Abu Ghraib images seem mild.

But what does make Abu Ghraib scary, and it is what makes me mad, is that american servicewomen were the perpetrators of evil. The questions is what's the context and why?

I certainly do not condone any of the Abu Gharib events; however, I think it's important to put things in perspective. If a man walked into your house today, and raped and murdered your family, would you really be that concerned about him being humiliated by prison guards in jail? Even moreso, would you be concerned about the police using humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques in order to get him to talk about his friend, who is planning to commit the same crime tomorrow? These are not innocent bystanders that are being mistreated; many of them are ruthless, and some are calculating, brutal murderers. What we have found is that, often times, the only way to get any real information from these people is to use these techniques. If we were picking up bystanders and trucking them off to prisons so that we could humiliate them, then that would be a different issue.

I think that it should frustrate us that Americans in general are far more concerned with these irresponsible antics than they were/are with Saddam's brutal torture and murders of men and women far more innocent than any of these Abu Gharib prisoners. I think it should outrage us that the media has filed many, many more reports about this prison mistreatment than Saddam's atrocities (as reported by the Washington Times, "[A Media Research Center study of the] abuse stories from April 29 through May 11 on NBC...found that the network aired 58 stories on the abuse in that period. The MRC also found, however, that in the past year, NBC had aired only five stories on mass graves found in Iraq from the Saddam Hussein era. ").

Ultimately, I don't think that the people that are dwelling on the prison abuse truly, genuinely care about it. Rather, people that hate America, and Americans that hate either the current administration or the war in Iraq are clinging to this story so that they can use it as justification for their hatred.

Wow. How many Muslims do you know, Josiah? Because you talk about Muslims as though you are an authority. I know a lot of Christians and a lot of them are way too serious, but I still don't think it's legitimate to make blanket statements about people who practice that faith.

You clearly signal your penchant for and delight in journalistic irresponsibility, but this comment steps over the line from irresponsibility to immorality:

"BUT, I can't help be feel that shennanigans at Abu Ghraib were meant, purposely, to poke really unhelpful fun at super-stringent islamic sexual mores..."

Although the soldiers in the pictures seem to be having a great time, these were not "shennanigans." Being forced to fuck myself in the ass with a banana is not fun & games, no matter how amusing it might seem from the perspective of my captors.

Whatever you call it, it was meant to destroy the will of the prisoners so that their interrogators could enjoy better success. Its purpose was not to "poke really unhelpful fun" because sexual humiliation and abuse IS helpful to the war effort insofar as it produces useful intelligence. These sorts of interrogation tactics are extremely effective. That's why they were used at Abu Ghraib.

Marty, I grew up in a church that was half Pakistani, now they were muslim "converts", but I also knew many of their community who were still muslim.

And, I think, you're taking a statement I made way outta context. I was discussing what I thought might be SOME of the moitivations of the purpetrators of the crimes at Abu Ghraib, not condoning it in any way. My hope is to understand the crimes more, to understand the perpetratores more, and ot undersatnd the culture context and the victims of said crimes.

What bothers me a little, though not much, is that I feel a good group of people simply condone the acts as evil and leave it at that. The very same standards which deamnd a closer look into the culture and context of the 9-11 attacks are the very same standards by which we out to strive ot understand Abu Ghraib, and Daniel Pearl, and Nick Berg.

And finally, and this is a side note: with a little bit of study you can read some books and research on torture as an interrogation technique. It is very very limited in its ability to generate real information. Now, that may still have been the motivation at Abu Ghraib at least in part, but then the perpetrators would be, well, ignorant AND immoral.

I just wanna know what actually happened at Abu Ghraib. If somebody reall was forced to fuck themselves in the ass with a bannana, like you say, somebody needs to be held accountable. Until that's actually proven, I'm not sure how helpful it is to talk in such terms.

Marty,

Wow...harsh, straight forward and I almost want to say valid. I'm sure there's some truth to what you say and I'm quite sure the methods used have been effective at some point in time.

With all that said, does it make it right, regardless of how "helpful to the war effort insofar as it produces useful intelligence."

No one is arguing those observations. The point of concern is was this morally right? Is it ever right to sexually embarass and harass to gain any sort of information or cooperation. I don't think so and that's why this is and was and will always be wrong.

Yeah, it could just be photoshopped. And admittedly, I'm depending on Sy Hersh's _New Yorker_ piece to draw my conclusions about what motivated the abuses. If you agree with Richard Perle that Hersh "is the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist" then you're perfectly justified in dismissing this. But essentially, he's arguing that the Abu Ghraib junk was working, generating intelligence that folks at the Pentagon found useful.

The Washington Post reported on the release of hundreds of new photos and video clips this morning. An excerpt:

"The photos continue, showing an array of abuse in what appear to be different rooms, cells, showers and hallways of Abu Ghraib.

"Hooded and cloaked men are handcuffed to hallway rails. A prisoner in flexible handcuffs is made to use a banana to simulate anal sex. Two naked male detainees are handcuffed to each other. A naked detainee hangs upside down from a top bunk. Another naked detainee grimaces, his face pressed against the ground, a soldier bending his arm behind his back. Blood covers the detainee's left knee, and another soldier grabs his right leg.

"In one photo, a detainee is stripped to his underwear, in a hood. He is standing, crouched, on top of two boxes of MRE military meals, his arms cuffed around his left knee, his right ankle chained to a cell door.

"Another detainee appears to be the victim of a cruel joke: A photo shows the man's deformed left hand emerging from an orange jumpsuit, the words "The Claw" written in English on his left breast pocket. A crude drawing of the man's hand appears on the back of his jumpsuit in another photo, with "The Claw" scrawled across his shoulder blades in black ink."

Incidentally, according to the same article, Rummy himself warned the world on May 8 that there were far more images & videos on hand, and that if they came to light it would "make matters worse".

And Marie, I believe that war itself is an unspeakable evil, and I have been grieving ever since my birthday in 2001, when the US military began dropping bombs on people in Central Asia in retaliation for the horrible tragedy of 9/11.

Marty and all. The problem is that we once again find our media taking delight in doing what it can to discredit the good that is being done by many, if not most, of our men and women who are in harms way. Why don't they show pictures of our troops out among the Iraqi people providing medical care, food, clothing and many other good things? I'm not surprised that things like what happened Abu Ghraib prison took place. Afterall, men are sinners and when they get power over other men these things happen. And they should be punished appropriately. However, these things pale in comparison to the atrocities of Sadam Hussein and his gassing of the Kurdish people, his torture chambers, his kidnapping and murder of untold numbers of his own people, his evil murdering, rapist sons, etc. 100s of thousands Iraqis died under the Saddam the worse weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. And then there are the murdering Islamic terrorists who will cut a civilian's head off as a public show of their faith as they yell Allah Aqbar (god is great)! No I don't justify what happened at Abu Ghraib, but I'll say it again, it pales in comparison to the murdering suicidal thugs of Islam.
But it is the American way to show to the world our sins, our weaknesses, our failures. And why do we do this? Because we do believe in justice for all and we apply it to ourselves as well as to the world.
And that's all I have to say (for now). 1 Cor.3:11

"These are not innocent bystanders that are being mistreated; many of them are ruthless, and some are calculating, brutal murderers."

Ben,
According to national media outlets, approximately 90% of those incarcerated at Abu Gharib are entirely innocent, grabbed off of the street and released months later with no explanation or accusations against them.

These ARE mostly innocent bystanders.

P.S. That's why they are always releasing those huge numbers of inmates that you've read about.