You reap what you sow

[sombrefan]

You can not expect to humiliate Iraqi prisoners and get away with it. What sort of training are these soldiers getting. Where does it say you must force a Iraqi prisoner to masterbate in front of a female American soldier. Shame on you Rumsfield for you trying to hush this up. Shame on you American media for being so muted at the start. Shame on you Bush for not forcing Rumsfield to resign. You have confirmed the Arab people's worst fears about American intentions in the Middle East. We learnt that to our cost about that in the UK when we had an Empire.

Comments

Jack Lessenberry is the local alternative weekly blowhard.

[thecuckoo.livejournal.com]

Despite that fact, he wrote a pretty cogent op-ed this week. He pointed out that the US couldn't have done more to lose the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people if it had tried. And the lack of appropriate punishment (resignations should be the light alternative) is merely compounding the problem.

I really don't know what will happen from here, but I'm pretty sure it will be an even worse mess than we already had.

[simonf.livejournal.com]

It's a disaster for the UK and the US. I was very ambiguous about the war but really hoped we could win the peace and we are not winning. More troops are going in. Troops are not being sent home. And then along comes this bombshell, and it's going to cause further setbacks. I mean when the King of Jordan feels it necessary to snub Bush you know something is changing in the relationship between the Middle East and the US (and this was before the photos came out).

Al Qaeda must be loving this. We've handed them the best possible propaganda weapon.

[electrcspacegrl.livejournal.com]

Woah. I hadn't heard of this. Do you have a newslink?

[simonf.livejournal.com]

simonf
2004-05-06 12:47 (link) Select
Here's the link for that particular prisoner I was talking about

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4061316,00.html

And I'd recommend the BBC News site for uptodate coverage as well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

[electrcspacegrl.livejournal.com]

Thanks. God that pisses me off. "Bush is sorry for abuse" Yeah right.

You're of course familiar...

[kuzibah.livejournal.com]

with the Stanford Prison Experiment. The problem appears to be that the natural default for unsupervised human behavior is brutality. The commanding officers just *expect* the guards to know better, or get caught up themselves. They need more vigilant supervision by an outside body.

I had no idea

[swersfreakshow.livejournal.com]

that is awful.

I will say this though--the BBC continues to be a better source for what's going on in America than any U.S. network. And that's a scary thought.