Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Photos: Lynndie England

Family, friends defend soldier in abuse photos
'She follows orders,' sister says
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/05/07/abuse.family.reax/index.html

"She follows orders. That's what her job in the military is to do -- follow orders of her superior officers," Klinestiver said, adding that she is proud of her sister and "anybody else in the 327th."

Hmm, seems to me this is the same excuse used at Nuremburg in 1946, Oh yeh and Sieg Heil was the other saying.

She is proud of her sister and the rest of the abusers, who or what are these people, bet they were the ones waving the flags on the corner and calling all the antiwar people unpatriotic.

The perps should be punished in the same way, in the same place. Let's see England and Graner naked on leashes. Then America can be forgiven.

She has some heavy sins, crimes if you wish, to expiate.

But before you all go painting horns and hooves on her, read what it says above about her family, her community, her life so far. One bad marriage already. Pregnant, it says, by a man twice her age. Chosen to be the goat to atone for America's sins. This is a poster child for the army taking screwed up kids and turning them into tiny monsters.

If we do not pray for her forgiveness, who will pray for ours?

Insha'llah. And we.

What she have did is not good. But war is always not good and dont forget in war happend lots bad things and not Lynndie England is the only person that was bad..forget not the man that was dead and the iraq people hang him on the bridge and the italian man he was shot when he was a hostage.Whe dont know what all happend in Iraq.i think on both sites happend bad things,and not only from usa militair

I am a citizen of the United States of America. I dont know what the punishment is for not following orders is, but if it is Court Marshall, I think I would have chose to be court marshalled over not following these orders than to dehumanize the men in the photos. I am from the area the female is from and I can not beleive she was raised like this.
lets put the shoe on the other foot and let the Iraqis come here and put us in that position, as West Virginians, or Americans. What would we do? We are really showing how etical we are. No matter who gave the orders they were carried out, and the ones that carried them out had a brain. They should have used it.

The soldier Lynddie England is RIFFRAFF. I'm not sure if it is a woman or a man or what, it looks like an androgynous elf. Besides, she is very ugly, she has the ugliness typical of those monsters without feelings, mercy and love.

I think soldier Lynddie England represents very exact the United States Army and the people of the United States (I didn't write "America", because America is a continent, not only one country without name). She is racist, cruel, uncultured, stupid, zionist, vile, amoral, promiscuous... and a whore, she got a pregnancy in Irak, maybe in an orgy... she's not married (of course), so she is going to be another single mother, like millons do in the United States. Gringos don't have families, so, they don't have family values, neither moral values. I think soldier England begin its sexual life at the age of 12 or 11, maybe before, and that she has sex with many many soldiers, like a heat dog! I think she grew in an ugly home and ugly familiy, its parents must be like her!

Militaries of the United States (and also from Israel) are scum. Soldiers of the United States, steal, destroy, torture, rape, kill, they kill children, they disembowel babies. Israel soldiers teach soldiers from the United States how to torture, kill and smash human beings. United States Army is zionist, they are destroying the world to take care of jewish money.

The United States and Israel are gangrenous pustules of Earth planet. A better world will come when those pustules disappear.

Soldier Lynddie England was very cruel with inocent people in Irak just because she is uncultured and racist. She is evil she is garbage, she is not a human being, she is a monster! Now she has an evil monster inside her, another monster gringo is coming! What a bad luck!

P.D. Sorry, but really I am very afraid of the United States. When are you going to stop? Who is the next? Siria, Cuba, Jordania, Venezuela, Brasil, Mexico...? WHO???!!!

Read the title, asshole.

Listen. I'm typing on a computer. I've found my way to the SF Bay Area Indymedia website. I have teeth. I find the spin to be rather impressive. I don't know whose ass the KKK was pulled from, but anything to embellish the story, I suppose. I've never heard anything about the Klan here, and I too have lived here all my life. All the stories I've read have been like, "We interviewed Sally Mae, who works behind the counter at Bubba Boy's Bar and Grill..." The people that they interview are hardly authorities, they're just local fatasses who have nothing better to do all day than hang around at local gathering places. If you interview idiots, you're going to make the town look stupid, and since that's precisely the effect they're going for, great. But don't wonder why people never flag writers like Jayson Blair for making shit up, because from our point of view, it's hopeless.

It's interesting that Mexican Fairy feels free to make generalizations about the people of the United States, talk about how we have no values and characterizes us as moralless and valuelesss, refers to US Americans as gringoes and then has the nerve to characterize England as a racist. Granted--what England participated in was a vile, heinious situation that makes me sick to be an American, but Mexican Fairy's posting made me wonder.

I wonder how many babies Mexican Fairy has personally seen an American soldier disembowel? Do I care when Mexican Fairy believes England's sexual life began? Why is he/she/it dwelling on it?

What's interesting to me as well is that I currently live around quite a few English speaking Mexicans and not a one of them speaks the way Mexican Fairy writes. And they don't speak like they are consulting a thesarus or dictionary one minute and then break down into third grade English the next. There is too much work going on here. I notice a certain familiarity with non-American (as in continental American) propaganda. Bahgdad Bob! Mr. Iraqi Information Minister, is that you?

I think, however, Mexican Fairy should come clean, get some guts and stop pretending he or she is something he or she isn't and stop trying to mix things up.

I am a born and raised American. I used to be proud of the country in which I live, as a natural born citizen. In recent times, however, my patriotism has waned tremendously. We live in such a corrupt society. Lie after lie, scandal after scandal, and cover-up after cover-up has been a real eye-opener. I can understand why foreign country natives hate us. It's the greed, power, excesses and arrogance of US citizens.

I hung my head in shame when the abuse/humiliation photos surfaced. I can't say that I was surprised. Nothing seems to shock me about my own people anymore. If our own president can manipulate the rest of this country into believing that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction" in order to fascilitate a all out war, then why wouldn't our own soldiers follow suit and cause such a scandal and think that they can simply explain it away?

Explain it away all that you want. I think Lynndie England was enjoying herself when she posed in those photos. She certainly didn't look like she was doing anything that she didn't want to be doing. If that's a fallacy, then she definitely missed her calling as an Oscar winning actress. I'm appalled and disgusted that our government thinks that we, the American people, can be so easily persuaded. How insulting! At least to my intelligence it is. If people want to walk around blinded, then I guess ignorance is bliss to them. I don't find ignorance blissful in the least. People, do your research, please! Our government is messed up!

Until I can write some more, good day.

I do not feel a damn bit sorry for Lynndie. As a soldier, you can dis-obey an unlawful order. Every single person knows the difference between right and wrong. She may be from bumpkin West Virginia, but I'm sure she knows that what she was doing was wrong. The Army is not using her as the scape-goat. She chose to pose and she was proud of it. She even enjoyed it.

For her family to actually believe that she was "ordered" to pose, they are really stupid. She did it because she wanted to. She could not even name the illeged superiors that told her to do it, because she is lying.

Also, getting pregnant while deployed is illegal under UCMJ. I hope she gets busted for that one as well.

If you want to feel sorry for her, make sure its for her stupidity/lack of common sense, not that the military "framed" her.

Non-mexican/Fairy - I totally hear that odd anti-American (and yes, I mean the country, so everybody, get over it) sentiment in the writing of Mexican Fairy. I, too, have several friends whose parents were born in Mexico and they speak nothing like this individual - and have no such info on the babies either. Very peculiar.
I do disagree with one statement you made, although I am sure it was to validate how serious you feel about the actions of England and co. Still, I will never find myself saying that something made me sick to be American. In my world, people do die for crimes of murder, but they don't find themselves beheaded for something that took place thousands of miles away. For that, I am grateful and I will always be thankful for living in a better place. If I am wrong, somebody educate me.

What a shame this young lady is being treated this way!!! In liberal society this may be considered abuse by some high minded members, but they are too good to dirty thier hands by even serving in the Armed Forces or they try for Purple Hearts so they can get out of the action, so what do they know about WAR

If her actions and the pictures taken resulted in gaining us any information from the ENEMY, I say give her a medal. If her actions are considered as abuse, the Geneva Convention needs to be reconsidered, hopely ignored. You can't tie the hands of our soldiers and expect us to win. When you fight you have to fight by the other "guys" rules or you'll lose everytime and 911 will just be the first installment.

I think that England should be punished to the fullest extent. The prisoners in Iraq probably did nothing to deserve the unfair treatment that they were given by the American Soldiers. I think that she should be made an example out of. Citizens of United States think that the Citizens of Iraq are killing the other Americans and Soldiers just to get revenge, well let me ask you a question. What would you do if Soldiers from Iraq came and took YOU and put them in filthy, full, and bacteria invested little rooms where they could not bathe or get in contact with there family? Well that is what we are doing to them and their family members so just think about that before you say that the citizens of Iraq are crazy and they deserve to go to HELL.

In your text, you write that you are no longer as proud of being an American. That "U.S. citizens" are driven by greed, excess, arrogance - I live in an extremely poor Southern state. I work for $5.50 an hour despite earning an Associates Degree - not the best, but I was pleased. As I went to community college, I still worked, took care of my children and managed to help out my elderly parents. I certainly don't want a medal for that - but tell me, what greed? What excesses? Yes, the photos were totally disgusting. England's demeanor is disgusting. The way our government is being run is disgusting. But I truly believe most average Americans don't want to be tangled up in all this mess in other countries and don't want to stoop the level of the actions at the prison facility. (Although given the choice between standing naked with a hood on my head or having said head sawed off - I'll take the former.) We are not perfect as a nation, but don't defend why other countries hate us. Don't we hate their crimes as much? Or did we deserve 9/11? I'll certainly make my voice heard when I vote, but I still love my neighbors and my country. As you said when you contridicted yourself, our government is manipulating us (the citizens) and it may blow up in all our faces, but the "people" are not the leaders of all this government chaos. Some of us are just average people with enough to get by and we don't deserve to be the target of this "punishment" for our expensive lifestyles. My idea of expensive is a $125 grocery visit - so stop generalizing.

I think you have serious issues "Mexican Fariy". Yes what England did was demeaning and this also includes everyone an anyone involved in the haneous acts of abusing these prisoners. I definitely think that the individuals responsible for this need to be punished... but really... if you don't like "Americans" in general... then how about you get the hell out of America? You say that England represents very "exact the United States Army and the people of the United States"... and that "gringos" don't have families and yada yada blah, blah, blah... If I remember correctly, the statistics say that the majority of youngsters that have sex in the early ages are those of hispanic descent... which would include you miss mexico in that ratio. Let's not put down ALL americans who live in the US... there are always bad apples in a bunch but not everyone is racist, cruel, uncultured, stupid, etc... (like you mentioned before). In no way am I making excuses for the actions of England and her tribe. I was really quite "ticked" off at the fact that it happened, and better yet that the media (who happen to be wolves in need of "juicy" stories) even posted all these pics... You're right in using the "switch effect". But from the video of our fallen American who was beheaded, it goes to show that we are not dealing with human beings. We are dealing with vultures. I say we move out all the civilians in Iraq and nuke the damn place.

Brrrr. Give me a break! After seeing the photographs of Ms Englad, I'd rather don't see her without clothes.....

Lynndie England has become a overnight celebrity within the international BDSM and consensual slavery communities. She will have no problem finding well paid and lucrative employment whipping males for $150 a hour once she serves her time.

America, stop and think. No Private in any of our armed forces is going to be in charge and give orders on any military cell block. Where is the Rank when these pictures were taken? America, stop and think. We see a pile of at least 6 men...naked and in prision. Comon sence tells us you dont take 6 prisoners out of they're cells without guards....atleast 10. I've found one staff sargent listed for charges. Who was in charge of this cell block? Only active duity and Vets know what training one goes threw in the military. Let me share with you.....one is taught to do as commanded. Trust me, you dont question commands. Trailor trash? Thats media trash. The majority of our military, are young men and weman who are looking for a step up, out of the lower economic status they came from . Easy scape goats, easy to lead like sheep to slaughter. It is sad that this type of thing happens in prisons. Personally I have little faith the commanders in charge of this prison will face charges. I cant get the image out of my mind of the pile of naked men.....or how many "Guards" were not in the picture. Someone was in charge of staging that picture....and it was NOT a Private in OUR Military! Pvt. Lynndie England....Americas #1 Scape Goat

Whether Lynndie England was a scape goat or not, she is definately a goat. This little trailor trash troll obviously enjoyed this display of sexual deviation . You can tell by the huge smile on her disgusting face. Even when interviewed live, she was still smirking and proud. Throw her in prison and lose the key because she will never do anyone any good. What really makes me sick is she will make money from this scandal and that is just wrong.

1) I was in Desert Storm and witnessed, first hand, the exploitation of our female troops ...especially of pfc's and below. I'm not saying all these women were saints, but not all of them were corrupt either. It's obvious from the pictures that Lynddie is following orders. Can't you tell the difference from a staged smile and one of actual enjoyment? She doesn't particularly look thrilled to be in any of the pictures I've seen -including the one where she's smoking and pointing at the prisoner's genitals. Is that a natural pose? Of course not.

2) What she's said is completely believable and understandable. This was "PsychOps" to threaten higher ranking Iraqi officers to divulge information. IN THEORY it would be effective because of the sexist ways of their culture (*evident in hooded veils, second class citizenship of their females) no Iraqi soldier would relish the thought of someone whom they consider inferior putting them in subservient situations. It's also humane. I'd much rather have an Iraqui woman smiling and pointing at my genitals, than have them hooked up to electrodes -like Iraqis do to THEIR prisoners. (Which is a fact by the way: look hard enough on the internet and you can see pictures of this -just like the pictures of Lynndie!)

Finally, what do you think? This PFC female said "Hey guys, let's take some naked pictures of these Iraqui prisoners" and all her superior officers just went along for the ride? Come on, people. Wake UP!

I am a veteran and a government employee. A "higher-up" may have told her to do the things she did, but think who her higher-up was....it was her "fiance". And somebody even said "you can tell she was following orders". That is pure bull-shit. When I was ordered to do a mission I did not want to do, I don't recall smiling and giving a thumbs up.

Maybe that the mentality of reservists is that warped. That's why they are only weekend warriors. They couldn't handle the real deal. Tell me how many corrupt issues there were with the Regular Army Soldiers. Now, tell me how many issues there have been with the Reservist. I guess that when you don't know how to be a real soldier, you act like a freaking idiot.

A person knows the difference from right and wrong. She knew what she was doing was wrong. Her friends and family says that she is not that type of person, well obviously she is. She tries to play the innocent role but she is far from it. Scapegoat??? Right. She's just an idiot. She needs to get the strictest punishment.

Having an "relationship" with her supervisor is against Army Regulations. Having sex while deployed is also against Army Regulations. Going against the Geoniva Convention is also against Army Regulations. So, lets think about this....she needs to be court martialed.

It amazes me how people feel sorry for one idiot all because she comes from a "poor" area of the United States. For all those who are downing our United States, if you don't like it here, then leave. There is no country that is perfect. Yes, ours may have some serious issues right now, but it's still a better country than most if not all others. Get out if you don't like it.

http://www.lynndieengland.net

You know , i dont see what all the hub-bub is about with this abuse ,,, It seems to me we are forgeting why our Militery is there ! If this is the worst thing we do to get the info we need from theese peeps ,,well i say DO IT......We are there to stop more attacks on our soil and, and do what it takes ..Some seems to forget this !!! The most theese people did was hurt thier feelings ,,,THIS IS WAR ,,, What happen to ,"All is fare in love ans WAR " ? I agree that this female military person went a little to far . But how do we know what really went on ? We dont unless we where there !!!!!

You are a complete moron and loser. America is not a continent you ignaramous. North America and South Amreica are continents. Do you live in an Anti American Trailer Park??

why would she do such a sick thing to those soldiers? I can't believe that someone would do that!

You gotta be kidding me!! I am supposed to feel sorry for a bunch of Muslim KILLERS. O.K., Hows this, Poor little sand monkeys. They deserve a lot worse than they got. What about the guy they b-headed, how about the 4 they burned to a crisp? most all of the conflicts in the the world today are caused by MUSLIMS not getting along with NON- MUSLIMS.Dont want to believe that,, Tough Shit, the truth is the truth and has no bearing on what You or I believe. TOFA

What is the problem with our troops putting the Iraq army through some of the same harassment that they have been giving their own people for years. Look at Jessica Lynch if they want to talk punishment what our folks did is nothing compared to what the Iraq military have done and will continue to do.

Please! The Iraqi prisoners are in prison because they are murderers that kill there own people not to mention they are terrorist. Where is the outrage of civilians being burned alive and hung from bridges or having their heads cutoff. Those civilians where just trying to help rebuild Iraq and had nothing to do with the military unlike the Iraqi prisoners. The pictures from the prison are more horrific and disgusting than the bodies hanging from the bridge?
I think worse things have happen in our own prisons than in the pictures from Iraq. Those poor Iraqi prisoners how will they ever look AL-Zarqawi in the eye again from the humiliation.
Maybe the aforementioned people who emailed are right we are wrong to be there, we should leave and have tyranny rule that part of the world.
I am done ranting.

Ha Ha Ha... I can't help but chuckle at these photos. They should just line them all up and start asking questions. When they don't answer them the way we want them to, cut off their heads and put them on a stick for all to see. I bet they would start being a little more straightforward with their answers. I say do this, because they look at our sympathy as a weakness. They understand only one thing... POWER. These acts hardly qualify as abuse. Take the guy with the panties on his face. Some people would pay for that. Also, at least he still has a head to put panties on. Allah Akbar.

I don't see any blood, No decapitations, No burned bodies !!!!
PFC ENGLAND is being railroaded by candy a--es like Ted Kennedy and Kerry!

YOU DO CERTAINLY SOUND LIKE AN ARMY VET. I THINK THE REAL CRIME IS THAT THERE ISN'T SOME MANDATORY TREATMENT FOR EVERY VET BEFORE BEING ALLOWED BACK TO SOCIETY. IT'S INHUMAN, INDOCTRINATED, UNEDUCATED DEGENERATES LIKE YOU AND TRAILER TRASH LYNNDIE THAT PUT THIS COUNTRY INTO THE DANGER IT IS IN-- ALL OF THIS STEMS FROM ONE COMMON TUMOR- BUSH AND THEN BUSH JR. PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE JUST TOO STUPID TO HOLD THE SMALL FEW ACCOUNTABLE. THOSE WHO DRAG YOUR DUMBASS TO YOUR GRAVE WHILE THEY SIT WELL PROTECTED BEHIND THEIR WALLS OF MONEY. OPEN YOUR EYES, IDIOT.

http://www.lynndieengland.net

Dear Mr./Miss NOT AS BLINDED,, Sau miki lau poki. Tofa, PIA

If you arabS and reading this. I give you this message from all true blooded Americans: FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKEN ALLAH I just saw the execution of Berg by your barbarian raghead friends and I sure hope we can get revenge on you lower than dogs bastards. FUCK YOU

AH, GOOD ONE. YOU KNOW , CHRIST WAS ARAB. LET ME
GUESS, YOU'RE A VET TOO. I HAVE A BETTER IDEA--
RE-ELECT BUSH-- I'M SURE WHEN HE NEEDS THE DRAFT AGAIN,
YOU'LL GET YOUR CHANCE TO KILL LEGALLY-- JUST LIKE HIM---
EXCEPT I'M SURE YOUR COWARD ASS, WHEN REALLY CONFRONTED WITH ALL THE KILLING YOU'D LIKE TO DO, WILL
HAVE NOTHING BUT YELLOW DOWN YOUR LEG AND UP YOUR SPINE.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Oh, yeah, I love Haliburtion, re elect W, and listen to your Zionest Masters. They know whats best.

how sad it is to see anyone treated so harshly. I don't know why anyone would ever let those pics out.

Humans...

Jesus was a Jew you dope....if you can't get a 2,000 year old fact straight then you are definately not a reliable wellspring concerning current events....

JUST KILL ALL THE FUCKING JEWS!

It is clear to see that Beheader and So Blind share the identical writing style that is unique and different from all the other poster. Obviously, he is one and the same person and I say that it is his caliber of hateful ignorance, which is evidenced here for all to see, which is the culprit of the present day situation in the Mid-East and thru the innovation of Terrorism, throughout the world. The Jew and The Arab. Two countries which behave like children. "The Jew did this, The Jew did that so I did This to The Jew", says The Arab. "The Arab did this, The Arab did that so I did this to the Arab", says The Jew. Hardly the mentality you would expect from so-called "advanced" societies. It was said that America protects Israel. Rightly so. If not for America (Britian and Russia included), genocide would have befallen the Jew under Hitler and if not, most certainly would have befallen it thru Arab hands. One thing that is failing to be seen here is why America went to war with Iraq. Our media has turned and churned this reason a thousand ways and have obscured the real reason why. It was not about oil or liberating the Iraqi people from a dictatorship. After his ouster from Kuwait Saddam was to have disarmed. U.N. Inspectors were not supposed to play "find the weapons". Saddam was to have all weapons which could threaten his neighbors accounted for and destroyed. Saddam did not see fit to do this. I read on Al-Jezeer website where they spoke about the horrible sanctions imposed on Iraq and how Iraq suffered. I am sure they did suffer. The Iraqi people suffered for the consequesces of Saddam's actions right up until the day of his loss of power. Now the Iraqi's are reaping a benefit from Saddam's actions for a change. He lost his power and his bloody rule over them and they are a free people at the moment. Insofar as America's occupation of Iraq is concerned and the outcry over it is concerned, I say that Saddam "occupied" that country since 1979 and hasn't done much for it or his people. In 1980 he led them into an 8 year war with Iran in which deathtolls show the Iraqi's suffered much more miserably than any imposed sanctions ever caused. Let's not forget his domestic brutality and oppression. Let's not forget his Invasion of Quwait and his extrication of some of it's populace and subsuquent dissapperance of same. And he should have been allowed to have no global reprimand via U.N. sanctions?? Sure, that is easy to say if it wasn't your brother Saddam had killed or if you are inifferent in every respect to life or just plain old ignorant. America has done more for Iraq in one year than Saddam ever did in his 25 year blood-reign.
The nations of the Mid-East need to stop behaving like children, this includes Israel, and allow thier children to enjoy a much better life than they have afforded to themselves. As much hatred and contempt as the nations there have for America, it seem to me that people from all nations flock to it's shores year after year after year. Conversely, we don't see large numbers leaving our shores. There must be something in our society and way of life that has an appeal to people and cause them to see it as thier best hope. The Mid-East nations should pinpoint that element and employ it themselves as thier best hope and the best hope for thier children. I'll even help them to define it. It is called Love. Love goes hand in hand with respect for life and the liberty and rights of others,. Compassion, Patience and Understanding are part of the Love equasion. Without Love, none of these can exist without these things being present, neither can peace. It is a matter of "how bad do you want peace?" Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Hate takes so much more energy to perform and the toll it exacts is not worth the effort.

Unfortunately in every group of people - there is normally at least one who will let their side down. Thats goes for everyone, the world over. I understand America's point of view after 9/11 and the multiple terrorist attacks of the past - however, the task at hand is becoming too costly. After the initial infiltration, had the Iraqi's cooperated - the country would be in the process of being rebuilt. BUT, the Iraqi's haven't cooperated - half of them want US help, the other half hate westerners (that's their free choice) and will continue to cause havic (that isn't their right). This being the case, I see only two options. 1) Pack our bags and leave making sure all means of making weopons in the immediate future is disabled - they can fend for themselves 2) Isolate the Iraqi US supporters (physically relocate them) and wipe out the rest of them (with whatever it takes) so that they can no longer hinder further progress. People are innocently trying to rebuild the place and are being put at risk..........................that risk needs to be stopped. I'm not going to comment on what else has happened or why the free world is even there. But what can we do now given the situaton? Ur thoughts?

In case you didn't know, not all vets are for war and killing. Most vets have joined the military for education purposes only. Since everybody in this country was not born with a silver spoon in their mouth, some of us actually have to work for an education.

Unfortunately, when you join the military you swear to protect the dumb f***s that are against the military (like some of you). There are a lot of muslims in the U.S. military who are over there fighting against Iraqi's. It is people like yourself that is making this into a religion war when it is (supposedly) about democracy.

Not all vets and active duty members are for Bush, but he is our Commander in Chief so we just do our jobs. So, before you start criticizing the members of our military who are over there doing the right thing, get your facts straight. Don't just assume, it makes you look like an ass.

JCH, you said that the Iraqi people have not co-operated and to some degree you are correct. The bulk of the Iraqi people have co-operated and do want a change to take place in thier society. Anyone there under the age of 35 have never known life without Saddam. The man even made his presence known in children's math text books. The Iraqi's who are presently resisting are, for the most part, the same people who removed thier uniforms, both military and ba'athist part members, and melted back into the general populace. These people have no want to see a society change. It means that instead of being able to live in thier previous lifestyle of power and financial comfort thru raping and pillaging thier constituents, they must now work for a living and earn thier way thru the sweat of thier brow instead of thru the blood of thier victims. This is not sitting well with them and they seem to feel that they can generate enough trouble to sway both the Arab and American populaces that they have had enough of the trouble. America has already said they would not leave until the job was done and the military has done thier part in making that evident to all. Insofar as gathering all viable Iraqi's together and cloistering them away and then eradicating the remainder via "any means necessary", then we (Americans) would have to "Rule" as the Romans did. If the romans were opposed they crushed thier opposition completely and totally. That is not our nature. America is a light unto this world. A becon of hope and prosperity. Turn out the light, and the roaches of this world will cover the globe in darkness. We will be a planet of eyeless, earless, tootless and handless people under a Muslim banner.

I do understand the "shock" being expressed over the Iraqi prisoner stories and photographs. The soldiers involved in this incident are not line combat troops. They are reserves. They are military police reserves. Police and jailers, acting quite frankly, like police and jailers. I don't believe that many people who have been in the custody of loosely supervised police and jailers would be very surprised by any of this. Rodney King wouldn't be.

IT'S EASY TO TRY TO LOOK FOR IDEALOGICAL OR
HISTORICAL PATTERNS DATING BACK TO ROMAN RULE AND MUSLIM HOLY WARS AND WHY WE NEED ISRAEL
AS A DEMOCRACY IN THE MID EAST. IT GIVES US A REASON TO SUPPORT OUR LEADERS AND THEIR
MILITARY DECISIONS----BUT---IF YOU LOOK AT THE FACTS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN- WHO HE IS, HOW DID HE GET THERE, WHO REALLY PUT HIM THERE AND WHY DO WE WANT HIM REMOVED (OR MORE ACCURATELY WHO WANTS HIM REMOVED) YOU WILL SEE A VERY SIMPLE TRUTH EMERGE. THIS IS ALL ABOUT RICH PEOPLE SECURING FURTHER RICHES. THE IRAQII PEOPLE HAVE SUFFERED BECAUSE A LUNATIC WITH CONSISTANT GENOCIDAL BEHAVIOR PLUNDERED THEM.
BUT HE HAD HELP. THE US GAVE HIM MONEY, WEAPONS, SPECIALISTS, AND ANY AIDE TO CONTROL
HIS MASSES, TO INVADE IRAN AND SECURE HIM AS A
LEADER AMONG OTHER LEADERS IN OUR MIDEAST ENTOURAGE. ( SEE RUMSFELD SMILING AND SHAKING HIS HAND, PATTING HIM ON THE BACK, A GREAT ALLY
OF THE US- FIND THIS FOOTAGE EASILY) SKIP AHEAD-
HUSSEIN WANTS KUWAIT--- ASKS U.S. FOR PERMISSION- BUSH SR. LETS THE DICE ROLL-- LETS THE OTHER MAJOR OWNERS OF FOSSIL FUEL COME TO HIM-- HE DICTATES TERMS SECURING GREATER WEALTH FOR HIMSELF AND HIS SELECT POSSE AND THEN DECLARES HUSSEIN AN ABOMINATION-"THIS WILL NOT STAND". SKIP AHEAD-- GULF WAR- U.S. ENLISTS THOUSANDS OF IRAQIIS TO FIGHT AGAINST HUSSEIN- PROMISES THEM DEMOCRACY,ETC..- HUSSEIN DEFEATED BUT ALLOWED TO STAY IN POWER- FURTHER TERMS FOR GREATER WEALTH FOR BUSH AND HIS POSSE---U.S. LEAVES ALL OF THE IRAQII HUSSEIN RESISTANCE TOTALLY EXPOSED TO WHATEVER RETRIBUTION FROM SADDAM-- SKIP AHEAD--BUSH JR HAS PREPLANNED AGENDA FOR THE
DIVISION OF RESOURCES OF IRAQ- FURTHERING THE WEALTH OF HIS SELECT POSSE--- 9/11 ATTACKS- AL QUEDA ATTACKS US (ALMOST ALL THEM FROM SUADI ARABIA)-- BUSH SWARES REVENGE ON THE ATTACKERS- SENDS 10,000 TROUPS TO AFGHANISTAN-
THEN ANNOUNCES, INEXPLICABLY, THE REAL THREAT
IS FROM HUSSEIN. CONVINCES A NATION IRAQ HAS
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, IS EXTREMELY CLOSE TO HAVING NUCLEAR WEAPON AND HAS DIRECT LINKS TO AL QUEDA-- NONE OF WHICH IS TRUE--
CONFUSES A NATION INTO BELIEVING IRAQ IS TO BLAME FOR THE DEATH OF 3,000 PEOPLE ON 9/11.
UNABLE TO GET A SOLID COALITION OF NATIONS
TO INVADE IRAQ- BUSH SAYS WE WILL GO IT ALONE--U.S. ( AND A FEW LITTLE COUNTRIES) INVADE IRAQ-- BUSH SENDS 150,000 (NOT 10,000) TO IRAQ- HUSSEIN REGIME TOPPLED IN 2 WEEKS- WITHIN THAT TIME US KILLS 10,000 AND WOUNDS OVER 100,000 IRAQII CIVILIANS-- BUSH CONFUSED WHY IRAQII PEOPLE AREN'T WELCOMING THE US INVASION-- CITIES IN MASS
CHAOS--VERY FEW SECURE LOCATIONS-- EXCEPT FOR
THE PIPELINES PUMPNG OIL AND NATURAL GAS- INTERNATIONAL REBUILDING CONTRACTS DENIED-- BILLION DOLLAR CONTRACTS GRANTED TO COMPANIES
OWNED BY BUSH POSSE (EVEN THOUGH OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE OF FINANCIAL CORRUPTION)---I CANNOT GO ON NOW... WILL CONT. LATER.... FIND OUT ABOUT THESE FACTS FOR YOURSELF!...

hey...i am an american and i'll tell you this much: all this "money" we americans are supposed to be scooping up due to this war....where the hell is that information coming to you from?? I see no friggin dollars coming in from this war...i do see 80 billion dollars going out. as for the oil, do your own research...no oil from iraq is coming here pal. Gas is now $2.12 cents a gallon here in new york. so much for that theory. and this small band of friends we brought into this war...lemme tell ya this. WE DON'T NEED ANYONE TO GO TO WAR WITH US. If i had my way, the entire middle east would be nothing but a giant smoking hole. Friggin people over there don't even have respect for each other let alone anyone else. They'll cut your throat just as soon as look at you. Who needs them?? Send the nukes in and get this shit over with.

Jessica Lynch was brutally raped by her Iraqi captors.
That is the shocking revelation in "I Am a Soldier, Too," the much-anticipated authorized biography of the former POW. A copy of the book was obtained by The Daily News yesterday.

Best selling author Rick Bragg tells Lynch's story for her, often using her own words. Thankfully, she has no memory of the rape.

"Jessi lost three hours," Bragg wrote. "She lost them in the snapping bones, in the crash of the Humvee, in the torment her enemies inflicted on her after she was pulled from it."

The scars on Lynch's battered body and the medical records indicate she was anally raped, and "fill in the blanks of what Jessi lived through on the morning of March 23, 2003," Bragg wrote.

"The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/134264p-119598c.html

Fuckin Nuke All Them Raghead Cocksuckers!!!!!

JUST TOO ROUGH AND JUST TOO DUMB---
YOU DESERVE ANOTHER 4 YEARS OF BUSH----
FATCS DON'T SEEM TO MEAN MUCH- QUANTITY
OF HUMAN WORTH DOESN'T EITHER---
1 SOLDIER GETS RAPED, 2 CIVILIANS GETS BEHEADED-
10,000 CIVILIANS DIE---- ANSWER IS TOO KILL EVERYONE-----
THAT'S IT FOR ME.... SEE YA.

After reading the "Mexican Fairy's" entry I nearly fell off my chair I was laughing so hard, so much so that the vice president of the company I work for came down the hall to see what all the comotion was about. This individual seems to have fooled you all.................he's not mexican at all. He is without a doubt an arab. The use of such terms like for example "gringo" is merely his/her feeble attempt at disguising their true identity. The reason I'm nearly 100% sure i'm right on this call is the repeated mention of "zionist" and the fact that apparently the Israeli defense forces teach the american army the best way to disembowel babies. This article was written by someone who hates Jews and the Israeli state even more than they hate "America" and that my friends to the south of the border is a muslim arab. Oh and by the way he/she was right about one thing, Lynndie England does remind me of "SNL's Androgenous Pat"
I AM CANADIAN

It is a shame how many people are so up in arms about some mild harassment dished out to terrorists when so many Americans were killed on 9/11/01 and killed overseas while trying to liberate thankless Muslims from the terror of Saddam Hussian. I've heard enough garbage from the "America Haters" , especially Senator Kennedy who is an embrassment to the memory of his brothers.

http://www.lynndieengland.net

Thanks, finally someone with a brain in their head. She is an utter idiot who does need to be court martialed, along with everyone else involved. She was told what to do and the photos were posed....right. I am from West Virginia an am ashamed to say that she is too.

David Duke is a malignant narcissist.

He invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and the trappings of power further exacerbate this. Real life authority and David Duke’s predilection to surround him with obsequious sycophants support David Duke’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience.
David Duke's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as "victims of persecution".
Duke fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, and mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Duke is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people - or humanity at large - should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, Duke became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman".
But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral.
In this restricted sense, narcissistic leaders are post-modernist and moral relativists. They project to the masses an androgynous figure and enhance it by engendering the adoration of nudity and all things "natural" - or by strongly repressing these feelings. But what they refer to, as "nature" is not natural at all.
Duke invariably proffers an aesthetic of decadence and evil carefully orchestrated and artificial - though it is not perceived this way by him or by his followers. Narcissistic leadership is about reproduced copies, not about originals. It is about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable atavism or true conservatism.
In short: narcissistic leadership is about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and be subsumed by it), the leader demands the suspension of judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis is tantamount, in this narcissistic dramaturgy, to self-annulment.
Narcissism is nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very language and narratives are nihilistic. Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism - and the cult's leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irresistible force of nature.
Narcissistic leadership often poses as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the superpowers, the corrupt order. Narcissistic movements are puerile, a reaction to narcissistic injuries inflicted upon David Duke like (and rather psychopathic) toddler nation-state, or group, or upon the leader.
Minorities or "others" - often arbitrarily selected - constitute a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of all that is "wrong". They are accused of being old, they are eerily disembodied, they are cosmopolitan, they are part of the establishment, they are "decadent", they are hated on religious and socio-economic grounds, or because of their race, sexual orientation, origin ... They are different, they are narcissistic (feel and act as morally superior), they are everywhere, they are defenseless, they are credulous, they are adaptable (and thus can be co-opted to collaborate in their own destruction). They are the perfect hate figure. Narcissists thrive on hatred and pathological envy.
This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler, diagnosed by Erich Fromm - together with Stalin - as a malignant narcissist. He was an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary, mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of our souls.
Duke prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments. His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - Duke having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels. The tireless and constant prestidigitation ceases and the entire edifice crumbles. What looked like an economic miracle turns out to have been a fraud-laced bubble. Loosely held empires disintegrate. Laboriously assembled business conglomerates go to pieces. "Earth shattering" and "revolutionary" scientific discoveries and theories are discredited. Social experiments end in mayhem.
It is important to understand that the use of violence must be ego-syntonic. It must accord with the self-image of David Duke. It must abet and sustain his grandiose fantasies and feed his sense of entitlement. It must conform David Duke like narrative. Thus, David Duke who regards himself as the benefactor of the poor, a member of the common folk, the representative of the disenfranchised, the champion of the dispossessed against the corrupt elite - is highly unlikely to use violence at first. The pacific mask crumbles when David Duke has become convinced that the very people he purported to speak for, his constituency, his grassroots fans, and the prime sources of his narcissistic supply - have turned against him. At first, in a desperate effort to maintain the fiction underlying his chaotic personality, David Duke strives to explain away the sudden reversal of sentiment. "The people are being duped by (the media, big industry, the military, the elite, etc.)", "they don't really know what they are doing", "following a rude awakening, they will revert to form", etc. When these flimsy attempts to patch a tattered personal mythology fail, David Duke becomes injured. Narcissistic injury inevitably leads to narcissistic rage and to a terrifying display of unbridled aggression. The pent-up frustration and hurt translate into devaluation. That which was previously idealized - is now discarded with contempt and hatred. This primitive defense mechanism is called "splitting". To David Duke, things and people are either entirely bad (evil) or entirely good. He projects onto others his own shortcomings and negative emotions, thus becoming a totally good object. Duke is likely to justify the butchering of his own people by claiming that they intended to kill him, undo the revolution, devastate the economy, or the country, etc. The "small people", the "rank and file", and the "loyal soldiers" of David Duke - his flock, his nation, and his employees - they pay the price. The disillusionment and disenchantment are agonizing. The process of reconstruction, of rising from the ashes, of overcoming the trauma of having been deceived, exploited and manipulated - is drawn-out. It is difficult to trust again, to have faith, to love, to be led, to collaborate. Feelings of shame and guilt engulf the erstwhile followers of David Duke. This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder.

re: TO ARMY VET

You are the one who could use some counseling (especially when it comes to typing with the caps lock on). I am an army soldier and I will venture to say that I am a better citizen than you will ever be. What have you ever done to contribute to our country? I would be highly surprised if you have done anything besides sponge off our freedom like a tick.

To those that dont know about the Military you are required to follow orders or you can be Court Marshaled. However you have a brain and you know the diference between right and wrong, if you dont you are taught this in the military in boot camp. It is real easy to understand there is this small thing called the Geneva Convention the spells out EVERYTHING IN BLACK AND WHITE. There is also this thing called a unlawful order, if it violates the U.C.M.J. (uniform code of military justice) you are not to obey this order. What this discrace of a soldier and her fellow cohorts have done is disregard everything that we are taught to do in the Military. As far as I am concerned she and the others involved to include those that may have given this order should be thrown in jail and left to rot.

See:

http://www.sfimc.net/news/2001/10/106592_comment.php#106603

In todays world, we have no idea who is friend or fo. Our own government keeps the American people out of the loop of knowledge, so much that we are left to believe anything the Media has to say.( Which i believe is controlled by out government), by one means or another. With regret i must say after 911 that the Moslem terrorist's have made their whole nationality or religion or whatever they are, under suspect. I say Kill Them All And Let God Sort It Out. I do realise that there are many that contribute to society, but the ones that cohert with the extreamists should just be killed on Foreign or Domestic ground.
Instead of protecting the citizens, our government wants total controle of us, and we are foolish enough to go along with it By using the fear factor our government feeds ourmind with the idea that there are a few bad apples in the mosilm tree. and only our millitary have the power to search out each one.
By playing many cat and mouse games we pop from one issue to another, never staying on an issue long enough for the people to get the truth. so i believe that our government needs these bad apples, these apples show us citizens that without our current system of government, we are not safe. The men we suposidly elected to office are not in my book doing enough to let the problems of the world be terminated. In this world liberals rise to fight any cause that has passion and attention.I feel these people don't want to fight for a cause. they just want a fight.
We need to get our heads out of the sand and build back up the country,( super power) we once were. We need to stop leting so few make decisions based on who padded who's pockett this morning as they are swayed by rich influential industries that are just moving out of the country asd soon as the tax break deal is done.
Ill leave with this

LET GOD SORT IT OUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't judge Americans by this asshole. More than half of us are against Bush's Folly, and the number is growing daily.

For all of you ridiculous morons who seem think that America is one, one union of poeple, races and communities, you are pathetic to think such ideas. Can you not see that even in your opinions you differ, all of you who are commenting are American! Why is it that every time a person committs an action you have to refer to them as if their name was America. I think that all of you are idiots, including the mexican fairy who is not mexican, (Word of advise, mexicans don't use big words, we use spanglish) if you have something to say, say it with some pride and don't try to stand behind a race whom suffers already on a regular bases. Ok, what I am trying to say here is that you are all a bias bunch of individuals because you tell the world to not let this England character ruin the Image of America. You say that her actions have nothing to do with the way that the people that make up America act. And you are exactly correct, I would kill myself before I undressed a poor foreigner at gun point and took pictures of the event. So if this is the way that it is, that the people of America are not all sick minded racist who committ gory acts of torture. Then why the F**K do you say "kill them all" when you are referring to middle eastern people. That is so bias of you because you are oppressing a race for the actions of certain individuals. I am 19 years old and I want to finish with this quote that I hope reaches every individual. Every time you refer to middle eastern individuals as terrorist and racially attack them, you are calling yourself a perverted American racist.
"The day middle eastern people are the same as Osama Bin Laden is the day that Americans are the same as Lynddie England."

Peace out everybody and sorry for making you use your brain for 5 seconds.

"It should be clear to the bias individual that racism is just as bad as terrorism."

For all of you ridiculous morons who seem think that America is one, one union of poeple, races and communities, you are pathetic to think such ideas. Can you not see that even in your opinions you differ, all of you who are commenting are American! Why is it that every time a person committs an action you have to refer to them as if their name was America. I think that all of you are idiots, including the mexican fairy who is not mexican, (Word of advise, mexicans don't use big words, we use spanglish) if you have something to say, say it with some pride and don't try to stand behind a race whom suffers already on a regular bases. Ok, what I am trying to say here is that you are all a bias bunch of individuals because you tell the world to not let this England character ruin the Image of America. You say that her actions have nothing to do with the way that the people that make up America act. And you are exactly correct, I would kill myself before I undressed a poor foreigner at gun point and took pictures of the event. So if this is the way that it is, that the people of America are not all sick minded racist who committ gory acts of torture. Then why the F**K do you say "kill them all" when you are referring to middle eastern people. That is so bias of you because you are oppressing a race for the actions of certain individuals. I am 19 years old and I want to finish with this quote that I hope reaches every individual. Every time you refer to middle eastern individuals as terrorist and racially attack them, you are calling yourself a perverted American racist.
"The day middle eastern people are the same as Osama Bin Laden is the day that Americans are the same as Lynddie England."

Peace out everybody and sorry for making you use your brain for 5 seconds.

"It should be clear to the bias individual that racism is just as bad as terrorism."

Obviously, Not So Blinded (NSB) has issues with Bush 1 and 2. Just as obvious is NSB's ignorance of geopolitical affairs, world governance and aggression, international law, macroeconomics and war. I tire of the pseudo-intellectualism Iof such ilk, yet here I am responding to the like.
OK, NSB, let's look at the "facts" you propose to have the corner on. Iraq and the U.N. and War.... at the end of coalition hostilities with Bush One (B-1), we declared a cease fire dependent upon Iraqi compliance with UN Resolutions... non-compliance will result in the resumption of hostilities. Pretty clear... result? 14 re-tooled UN Resolutions with no response or consequences. You give a mouse a cookie...
Was the 1st conflict over the free flow of oil?... partly... Was it over getting those nasty capitalists (read Bush et alia)
wealthy?... Hardly. If you want to get wealthy with a capitalist system, there is no way to do it through war... please read that statement carefully, because it is 100% true in todays'
world. The idiocy I read that the rich get richer with this war shows a fundamental lack of understanding of macro-economics. You won't corner the market on world oil supply and processing anymore than the people tried to corner the market on Whale oil supply in the 1870's of Silver in the 1980's... but I digress...
This current conflict... a resumption of hostilities based upon UN Failures to follows its own resolutions... not the ' cowboy go it alone ' pablum I see spewed forth from NSB et alia, but a difficult measured response to a very dangerous situation. If you are so daft as to believe that this is not a part of the war on terrorism, ask Nick why Osama's #3 man beheaded him in Iraq.
I could go on... but again, to what end? I could present indisputable facts, successfully applied theories, and measurable positive changes in regards to many areas of this debate but without the openess of rational thought ... well, you'll get the rantings and ravings of hate-filled demagogues like NSB.
Freedom has never been free. So often, the price has been the blood of many... innocent or not.. incalculatable... heaven knows the price of such a prize... and it is a dear one not to be so lightly scoffed as it is so easily done here.

'Nuff said for now... I wish you well.

Trash is always trash, no matter how you present it!

This is the norm for 70% of correctional officers, I have been one for 23 years and many a time I have had to straighten a young C/O out concerning his or her conduct towards the convicts. I had to be straightened out when I was a newbie. This conduct happens alot in Americas prison system, its just not photographed, I have witnessed and been directed to strip search several convicts and to leave them naked in front of female officers who would stand there and look at the convicts genitals and if the convict said a word he would get taken to segregation naked!

Abuse is abuse. Jessica Lynch in my opinion didn't suffer much abuse, if she way she would not have been in a hospital being treated for her injuries when were brought on because her humvee hit the back of the vehicle in front of her. Also keep in mind she was also having sex with her superior which is a no no in the military. If England was given an order like that she cold have said no and not be punished under the UMCJ code. She parcipitated freely and should be punished with the rest of them. All soldiers are trained on how to handle and treat EPW's (enemy prisoner of war). It doesn't matter if you are a MP, infantry a paper pusher or a REMFS (rear escelon mother f****rs), to the vets remember the 5 S's, one of them is to safegaurd the prisoners from abuse. Yes they are still consider EPW's even after the war is technically over because the area of operation is still a combat zone. For those who think I don't know what I'm talking about with concern to the military. I had 15 years in and have done combat as a grunt (infantry) during the last Gulf war (Bush Sr. war) and have worked as a military corrections NCO. I know there are people out there that behead and torture americans because they don't like us. Hell damn near the whole world hates us whether they admit it or not and it pisses me off, but that doesn't give us the right to treat prisoner or civilians that way.

about a "a rogue Lieutenant . . . who seemed to think that the Geneva Convention or the rules of warfare just simply didn't apply to him," and how he was dealt with:

http://www.transbay.net/~nessie/Pages/fred.html

First of all i think that you are a hypocrit.....#1 when the press talks to the local drunk at the bar....or the fatass sitting on the corner in fort ashby then you will portray Lynndie's hometown as "bumpkin west virginia" but who gives you the right to say a god damn word? please educate me and tell me how you know so much? #2 if you look at some of the websites telling lynndie's story you will see that she was home in fort ashby at one time, and has had vacation periods therefore she wasn't "deployed" and as we country bumpkins would say "on the clock" so who gives a shit who she is pregnant by and when she did so. If you had a life you wouldn't be worrying about what a 21 year old girl is doing in HER FREE TIME!!!.

You say that lynndie should be punished. You also say that the iraqis probably did nothing to deserve what has happend to them....DID PEOPLE IN THE TWIN TOWERS AND THEIR FAMILIES DESERVE WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?

SHUT THE FUCK UP

What we Europeans do NOT understand is why are you the so-called 'free' Americans allowing your government to feed you lies.How can you believe the associations they give you?The Image that your current government has offered to the world is one of a BULLY going around and punishing , invading, controlling , dominating...America was not admired because of its super Army BUT because of its Ideas...What ever happened to that America, especially the Democratic America that we as children were taught about at school? I wonder...

How am I a hypocrite? Just tell me that. Free Time? When you are deployed (meaning sent to a cambat/war zone) you have no free time. You may have personal time but you are not allowed to have sex and definitely not with your superior. That is a definite NO in the military. When you are in the military you are a soldier 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. You are government property. Even if she was on "down-time" or "vacation", she is still being paid by the military and is still subject to UCMJ. And who gives me the right to say anything? Well, freedom of speech, being a veteran (who knows right from wrong), and an an employee of the JAG Corps. She has a list of things she can be charged for, I just hope she gets nailed for them all. Any more questions?

You are completely right. Every soldier, sailor,and marine is taught the Geneva Convention from day #1 in the military. If you are giving an unlawful order, then you are to disobey it. IF she was given an unlawful order, she knew she did not have to obey it, but she did so by choice and willingly. She knew what she did was wrong, therefore, she should not play the poor me role. I don't think she was saying poor me in the gang bang in front of the Iraqi prisoners.

I do not for one minute think that this girl did one thing wrong. So these prisoners had to pose naked and be humiliated big deal. Did anyone stop to think that maybe there getting there just rewards for pulling our nation apart? And also one more thing... our soldiers are out there fighting for our country and are trying to help save us and all you fuckers can do is trash talk our troops. What a bunch of assholes. I cannot believe that people would do that to people who risk there lives everyday while we sit on our asses on our computers. I think you should all take a look at your beliefs. The Iraqi prisoners deserved what they got... paybacks a bitch

(1.) No Iraqi ever harmed America, or harmed any American, until after America invaded their country. What would you do, if your country was invaded, collaborate or resist.

(2.) Two wrongs never make a right.

I was not "trashing" our troops. If you read what the discussion is about, you'd know that. All we are saying is that (from personal experience) all military personnel have to follow the rules and regulations of the military. Everything Lynndie England did was wrong. You are not allowed to go against the Geneva Convention. These few soldiers involved in this scandal did not do what is expected of a U.S. Soldier. What they did was illegal. I have been a U.S. soldier deployed, I am not one of the few on this website that has "sat on their asses". Therefore, unless you have been or are a member of the U.S. military, don't say what they did was right. Everybody who is blaming the Iraqi's for 9-11-01 is completely wrong. You need to blame Afganistan not Iraq.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *snort* you are such a dumbass. get your facts straight, you are the ignorant one, Iraqis have been attacking EVERYONE for years. stating that no iraqi has ever harmed America or an American until we invaded is like saying no fish has has ever existed until people started fishing. If you look at the terrorist attacks since the 1950's(or earlier?) over 90% of them have been committed by Islamic males between the ages of 19 and 30.

You win wars by making the other guy die for his country. - Patton.

9-11 was just a wake up call for American’s to finally see the rules of the Geneva Convention as everyone else seems to. AND to make good on the many “those responsible for such and such will pay.” - Look at it this way. I know the Iraqi prisoners are detainees, but are they really POWs? And if they are, then shouldn’t they have been caught in their uniform? If they weren’t then does the Geneva Convention still apply? And since everyone’s on the topic, what exactly does it says about finding the enemy out of uniform who is fighting? It can’t be any less worse then if an American soldier deserts the front lines during time of war…

Those who equate America or any of the Bush’s to the Nazis are merely poor historians who haven’t yet learned that they don’t know everything. Stop reading the bloated half-truths that feed your disillusions. Really, it’s intellectually dishonest and shows an unwillingness to at least be part of any discussion that can go forward.

Those who think the UN should have conducted all this can’t be serious. After all, wasn’t it the UN that determined the land that Israel owns, the source for many a Palestinian hatred? And the UN’s track record in Bosnia and numerous other C- examples? The UN is about as useless as the League of Nations, even more so with the food-for-oil snafu by, of all people, Anon’s son.

Those who think that America shouldn’t have done anything after 9-11 but to suck up to the Palestinian’s faux-cause should look at Osama’s quote, “people always follow the strong horse.” - I don’t at all agree with what the soldiers did to the prisoners, but if they aren’t under the Geneva Convention then all bets are off. And does the prisoner abuse with panties-on-head and playing nude-tower-of-ass by a lowlife-female-anything compare to what Saddam had with his more-regular rape and more-realistic torture rooms with baby brain spattered on walls in front of moms and dads? Maybe culturally, but only that. As to the strong horse, many thought America would NOT do anything in retaliation. That was the fun poked at America that Tuesday. Many opinions have since changed. Like it or not, the US took out the world’s 4’th largest army, AND it was LEGAL, AND it was part of defense plans based on ensuring another 9-11 did not happen, along with Kobar towers, the Cole, etc. etc. etc.

Saddam sucked at running his country so badly that even he was convinced that he was further in his WMD programs than he actually was. Still, that didn’t let him off the hook for proving that he got rid of the old WMD in return for leaving him in power after the first gulf war. But, alas, all of the old WMD of which the US, Iraq, and, yes, the UN, recognized Iraq having was NOT accounted for. It was not a phantom and did exist… so where is it now?

Those who feel that the US is down the wrong path may find themselves being mal-reformed by others, so easily, by surprise, without remorse, like Chechnya, or Spain. Many in the US are ready. Are you?

No wonder they hate us. Charles Y. Young lives here.

please forgive them

i think we should just turn it all to glass. theyve been fighting over there for thousands of years. they dont like us, we dont like them. those that never served in the military shouldnt have anything to say, because hey know nothing about it. your a fool to think our soldiers dont get beat like hell when taken prisoner over there. only difference is over here with all the god damn tree huggers we make a big deal outta it. what she did was wrong, shell get punished. i can only pray that our troups only got panties on the head and towering asses than the fucked up beheading, beatings...etc. anyone who feels sry for them, i call you out as a traitor. they bombed us a 9-11 with our own planes. thousands dead you dont think we should do anything. why dont you go feed the enemy then. and if you dont like it, move there. then well see how you really think when you get back

After WW II when the 'Nazi' Army soldiers were asked why they did all the torture and killings, they said....."WE WERE JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS"..........Any thoughts on that my friends?

History repeats itself and the strong powers always behave to the world in the same manner. The Nazis strongly believed they were the superior people who would show the world their version of a civilised world.But behind this were their true wishes to control.Therefore I do NOT believe in any of the so called " we will show you what civilisation is you inferior people of Iraq" . American lies as far as I am concerned...The true intentions are about financial control...and many more.

And something else...DEMOCRACY can Never be imposed through torturous force and the invasion of a Super Duper Army.It can only be brought by peaceful and respectful manners.

Do not underestimate any nation on this planet .You have no right to do so...You are not Superior , You are not controlling everything on this Earth.

There is a HUGE difference between the U.S. Army and the Nazi Army.

In the U.S. Army, you have what is called the Geneva Convention. In the Nazi Army you had what was called Hitler.

Hey, Chad, in the first place, they(the Iraquis) never bombed us with our planes or their planes.That's the kind of sloppy thinking so popular in Washington these days.Hey, macho man, go sign up yourself, put all that racist anger to use, and p.s., do natural selection a favor, don't reproduce, okay?

http://www.lynndieengland.net

us army ,good ,great,

A lot of allied soldiers are alive today because the German army, <b><i>didK/i></b> believe and follow the Geneva conventions at least as far as treatment of foreign <b><i>military</i></b> forces were concerneed. But to the military mind, once the regular army is defeated, all bets are off as to how you treat any guerilla hostilities .Apart from their reprehensive genocidal treatment of the jews, ( all the jewish poulation in Germany as well as the rest of occupied europe), German treatment of occupied civilian poipulations was no worse than ours in Vietnam, or the British in Kenya during the Mau-Mau, or the French in Algeria, or any other place that has had civilians wage a war of liberation against an occupying army.

Y'all seem to mix up 9/11 and the war in Iraq. There is no connection between the two. (Apart from you attacking Iraq after 9/11)

I personally don't understand what the hell you're doing there. (in Iraq) And nobody has yet been able to brief me with a logical explanation either.

One reason many people in other countries don't get as upset about the beheading of the american guy vs the systematic prisoner abuse in Agu Dabi might be that you always wage war in other countries. You never had a war on your own soil in modern time. That's a big difference I think. (Yes, thans for WWII, you seem to live on that merit still.) The agressor has a bigger responsability.

Best of luck in the future!

to get back on the topic... lynndie england isn't even a good soldier. yesterday in the nytimes (5/27/04) there was an article concerning how she & sgt granier were continually being reprimanded for sleeping with each other in their rooms. they were so blatant about it they would flaunt it in front they superior officiers. And as we have all read, Lynndie also had group sex, everyone naked, in front of the detainees. And you can defend that? The expressions on her face when photographed say it all. Court martial her!

Any one with a partial brain who believes that the lowest ranking private who was the secretary is repsponsible for the planning, coordination, and implemtation of the abuse is close to qualifying as educably learning disabled. The Buck does not stop at the bottom of the chain and all those big old Officer, Secy of Defense, hiding behind a young female clerk says more than any picture. I am a retired E-8 and I am a female and I can tell you that today Pvt England is being courtmartialed on Ft Bragg, an Army Post that has always exhibited a propensity for domestic violence, failure to address females in danger, and is chauvanistic. How is she going to get a fair trial? How many of you ''opinionated critics'' are ready to put on a uniform and go take her place? Get in line .. the YELLOW ONE with Rumsfeld, Generals, and Bush-Cheney.

My dear M. Fairy,

Should the United States that you refer to as 'a gangrenous pustule' ever disappear, where then will all the Mexicans go to seek a better life? Iraq, maybe? With all of it's faults, I still can think of no other country that I would rather call home. Thousands and thousands of people from all over the world come to AMERICA with the same belief. You, however, are not welcome here.

John Webb

THE WORLD SITUATION - A LETTER TO MY SONS This was written by a retired attorney, to his sons, May 19, 2004.

Dear Tom, Kevin, Kirby and Ted,

As your father, I believe I owe it to you to share some thoughts on the present world situation. We have over the years discussed a lot of important things, like going to college, jobs and so forth. But this really takes precedence over any of those discussions. I hope this might give you a longer term perspective that fewer and fewer of my generation are left to speak to. To be sure you understand that this is not politically flavored, I will tell you that since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led us through pre and WWII (1933 - 1945) up to and including our present President, I have without exception, supported our presidents on all matters of international conflict. This would include just naming a few in addition to President Roosevelt - WWII: President Truman - Korean War 1950; President Kennedy - Bay of Pigs (1961); President Kennedy
-
Vietnam (1961); eight presidents (5 Republican & 4 Democrat) during the cold war (1945 - 1991); President Clinton's strikes on Bosnia
(1995) and on Iraq (1998). So be sure you read this as completely non-political or otherwise you will miss the point.

Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII). The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means.

First, let's examine a few basics:

1. When did the threat to us start? Many will say September 11th, 2001. The answer as far as the United States is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us: Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979; Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983; Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983; Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988; First New York World Trade Center attack
1993; Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996; Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy
1998; Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000; New York World Trade Center 2001; Pentagon
2001. (Note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide).

2. Why were we attacked? Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter.

3. Who were the attackers? In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims.

4. What is the Muslim population of the World?
25%

5. Isn't the Muslim Religion peaceful? Hopefully, but that is really not material. There is no doubt that the predominately Christian population of Germany was peaceful, but under the dictatorial leadership of Hitler (who was also Christian), that made no difference. You either went along with the administration or you were eliminated. There were 5 to 6 million Christians killed by the Nazis for political reasons (including 7,000 Polish priests). ( http://www.nazis.testimony.co.uk/7-a.htm). Thus, almost the same number of Christians were killed by the Nazis, as the 6 million holocaust Jews who were killed by them, and we seldom heard of anything other than the Jewish atrocities. Although Hitler kept the world focused on the Jews, he had no hesitancy about killing anyone who got in his way of exterminating the Jews or of taking over the world - German, Christian or any others. Same with the Muslim terrorists. They focus the world on the US, but kill all in the way - their own people or the Spanish, French or anyone else.. The point here is that just like the peaceful Germans were of no protection to anyone from the Nazis, no matter how many peaceful Muslims there may be, they are no protection for us from the terrorist Muslim leaders and what they are fanatically bent on doing - by their own pronouncements - killing all of us infidels. I don't blame the peaceful Muslims. What would you do if the choice was shut up or die?

6. So who are we at war with? There is no way we can honestly respond that it is anyone other than the Muslim terrorists. Trying to be politically correct and avoid verbalizing this conclusion can well be fatal. There is no way to win if you don't clearly recognize and articulate who you are fighting.

So with that background, now to the two major questions:
1. Can we lose this war?
2. What does losing really mean?

If we are to win, we must clearly answer these two pivotal questions.

We can definitely lose this war, and as anomalous as it may sound, the major reason we can lose is that so many of us simply do not fathom the answer to the second question - What does losing mean? It would appear that a great many of us think that losing the war means hanging our heads, bringing the troops home and going on about our business, like post Vietnam. This is as far from the truth as one can get. What losing really means is:

We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but rather will steadily increase. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us over the past 18 years. The plan was clearly to terrorist attack us until we were neutered and submissive to them.

We would of course have no future support from other nations for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they would see we are impotent and cannot help them.

They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do, will be done. Spain is finished.

The next will probably be France. Our one hope on France is that they might see the light and realize that if we don't win, they are finished too, in that they can't resist the Muslim terrorists without us. However, it may already be too late for France. France is already 20% Muslim and fading fast. See the attached article on the French condition by Tom Segel.

If we lose the war, our production, income, exports and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us if they were threatened by the Muslims. If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else? The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war and therefore are completely committed to winning at any cost. We better know it too and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.

Why do I go on at such lengths about the results of losing? Simple. Until we recognize the costs of losing, we cannot unite and really put 100% of our thoughts and efforts into winning. And it is going to take that
100% effort to win.

So, how can we lose the war? Again, the answer is simple. We can lose the war by imploding. That is, defeating ourselves by refusing to recognize the enemy and their purpose and really digging in and lending full support to the war effort. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. If we continue to be divided, there is no way that we can win.

Let me give you a few examples of how we simply don't comprehend the life and death seriousness of this situation.

- President Bush selects Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation. Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between
17 and 40 years of age, Secretary Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war. For the duration we are going to have to give up some of the civil rights we have become accustomed to. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently. And don't worry that it is a slippery slope. We gave up plenty of civil rights during WWII and immediately restored them after the victory and in fact added many more since then. Do I blame President Bush or President Clinton before him? No, I blame us for blithely assuming we can maintain all of our Political Correctness and all of our civil rights during this conflict and have a clean, lawful, honorable war. None of those words apply to war. Get them out of your head.

- Some have gone so far in their criticism of the war and/or the Administration that it almost seems they would literally like to see us lose. I hasten to add that this isn't because they are disloyal. It is because they just don't recognize what losing means. Nevertheless, that conduct gives the impression to the enemy that we are divided and weakening, it concerns our friends, and it does great damage to our cause.

- Of more recent vintage, the uproar fueled by the politicians and media regarding the treatment of some prisoners of war perhaps exemplifies best what I am saying We have recently had an issue involving the treatment of a few Muslim prisoners of war by a small group of our military police. These are the type prisoners who just a few months ago were throwing their own people off buildings, cutting off their hands, cutting out their tongues and otherwise murdering their own people just for disagreeing with Saddam Hussein. And just a few years ago these same type prisoners chemically killed 400,000 of their own people for the same reason. They are also the same type enemy fighters who recently were burning Americans and dragging their charred corpses through the streets of Iraq. And still more recently the same type enemy that was and is providing videos to all news sources internationally, of the beheading of an American prisoner they held. Compare this with some of our press and politicians who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners - not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them. Can this be for real? The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense. If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can. To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned - totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world. Neither we, nor any other country, can survive this internal strife. Again I say, this does not mean that some of our politicians or media people are disloyal. It simply means that they absolutely oblivious to the magnitude of the situation we are in and into which the Muslim terrorists have been pushing us for many years. Remember, the Muslim terrorists stated goal is to kill all infidels. That translates into all non-Muslims - not just in the United States, but throughout the world. We are the last bastion of defense.

- We have been criticized for many years as being 'arrogant'. That charge is valid in at least one respect. We are arrogant in that we believe that we are so good, powerful and smart, that we can win the hearts and minds of all those who attack us, and that with both hands tied behind our back, we can defeat anything bad in the world. We can't. If we don't recognize this, our nation as we know it will not survive, and no other free country in the World will survive if we are defeated. And finally, name any Muslim countries throughout the world that allow freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of the Press, equal rights for anyone - let alone everyone, equal status or any status for women, or that have been productive in one single way that contributes to the good of the World.

This has been a long way of saying that we must be united on this war or we will be equated in the history books to the self-inflicted fall of the Roman Empire. If, that is, the Muslim leaders will allow history books to be written or read.

If we don't win this war right now, keep a close eye on how the Muslims take over France in the next 5 years or less. They will continue to increase the Muslim population of France and continue to encroach little by little on the established French traditions. The French will be fighting among themselves over what should or should not be done, which will continue to weaken them and keep them from any united resolve Doesn't that sound eerily familiar?

Democracies don't have their freedoms taken away from them by some external military force. Instead, they give their freedoms away, politically correct piece by politically correct piece. And they are giving those freedoms away to those who have shown, worldwide, that they abhor freedom and will not apply it to you or even to themselves, once they are in power. They have universally shown that when they have taken over, they then start brutally killing each other over who will be the few who control the masses. Will we ever stop hearing from the politically correct, about the "peaceful Muslims"?

I close on a hopeful note, by repeating what I said above. If we are united, there is no way that we can lose. I believe that after the election, the factions in our country will begin to focus on the critical situation we are in and will unite to save our country. It is your future we are talking about. Do whatever you can to preserve it.

Is it really not that obvious?? The reason we dont have war on our own soil is because we stop it before it gets here. It seems to me like that is a great idea! <smirk> The attacks on 9-11 and the War in Iraq ARE connected to each other, as well. If 9-11 would have never happened, there would be no "War on Terrorism". I really-REALLY don't understand why people don't "get it". It's really pretty plain and simple.

I agree with the comments this person made. We need to look in our history books and find out why we as americans are despised in the middle east. They despise Israel for being the strongest country there. And us for putting it on the map(to save the jewish people). They make comments like we are going to war to protect jewish money. They don't understand principles, because they have none. Obviously they way they display our burning soldiers and leave heads in refridgerators for us to find is great examples of this. But they do understand power and weakness. They have found our weakness is having a conscience. And they will exploit that to the fullest. These pictures are gross, no doubt. But not as herendous as our soldiers being beheaded or burned alive. Get a grip people, these crimes are not equal. We are a civilized world dealing with a third-world country. They are filled with hate a jealousy for our freedom and opportunity. Now that Iraq is free, it may take a while for the people to appreciate this, due to many generations brought up on hate. It takes much more energy to hate than to forgive.

Dear Duh!
I guess that living in a trailer park making out with your cousin while listening to gerry falwell or maury are the limits of your universe but there is something more to it trust me. Have you ever been in any major combat operations? No? Well I have and it would have taken part in some you would not preach for more wars!
When I see some stupid yank with a Napoleonic comlex bragging about how strong their nation is, all I have to say is: take a peace pill, read a book or two and look on a world map there is something else than your degenerate country.

French Canadian who was in Somalia, Yougo and desert storm. English is not my first language but I can still play with you.
Take care.xxx

Which Geneva Convention are you talking about??? Wake up....

In the US you produce too many stupid senseless Hollywood big cash $$$ movies, then you go to war according some self-made convincing arguments, then you start bombing a foreign country and then you torture their people. Than some wise guy tells you that “this is not representing the real America” and “we defend human rights”; if this were true you’d be in Africa helping out. But since the common denominator is and remains to be the US$, you care shit about it. The US has become the biggest hypocrite nation where you regard sex as taboo (remember the nipple of the Jackson girl on TV!) but you produce the worst porno movies, where you regard that throwing something on the street is a crime, have you forgotten about Kyoto / you contribute 25% of the worlds pollution and you do shit about it, probably you think too much about yourself and forget about your kids. Now your lives are threatened with "possible terror attacks" and paranoia is part of your daily breakfast. Nobody is perfect but America is far from being perfect.

If ther was a voting .. your comment would score big time on a ww basis- lets hope next elections will give America a chance to change, otherwise the world will suffer for it

I saw the latest article today on the Internet about Lynndie England. I happened upon all these comments and felt I needed to put in my two cents. I was born and raised Army. I was in the Air Force. I was married and became a mother in the Air Force. I have a son currently in the Air Force. So I think that I am fairly knowledgeable about the military. Ms England (I won't aknowledge her rank), was wrong and out of line for a number of reasons. She has given the military and all Americans a black eye. This is not what we have been raised to stand for. Yes 9-11 was a horror that I pray we will not see again. But the actions she perpetrated are in a way much more wrong. As an American she should know better. Yes, we could condone what she did or for that matter we could condone all acts of this nature by saying rude things about people from the Middle East. But that would make us worse than they are. Are we not better educated? Were we not raised to believe that two wrongs never make a right? Are we not taught that we should not judge an entire race or religion on the acts of the extremists? We as a nation have always fought on the side of freedom. To act in the way that these 7 people have is to destroy the very things that our nation has stood for for over 200 years. I am not saying we should not fight to protect ourselves or those who are less fortunate than us but there are acceptable ways of doing so and unacceptable ways. What those 7 people did accomplished little more than to lower the opinion of the world with regard to our nation. If we condone their actions in any way we will have lowered the opinion we have of ourselves. Both of those opinions should be important to both ourselves and the world at large. When will the hatred and prejudice stop? And have we learned nothing from what the fanatics of this world have done to all peoples at one time or another? The Crusades killed the "infidels" in the name of God. The Spanish inquisition killed in the name of Catholism. Hitler tried to wipe out a religion in the name of racial purity. The Ku Klux Clan killed for the same reason. The Arab world tried to destroy Israel because of land and religion. Americans destroyed the Indian nations for land and a misguided notion of "civilization". The Romans subjugated more nations than I care to think about because they were "superior" and "civilized". Japan almost destroyed us at Pearl Harbor because of fuel. It saddens me that we have not learned from our various histories. The world at large needs to look at themselves and realize that we all have to live on this planet together and that hating each other and trying to destroy each other is not the way the way to solve the problem

I think this woman obviously needs some psychiatric guidance. She is exhibiting perverted tendencies - maybe learned from the trailer court! I think she should have the book thrown at her - its embarassing as an American woman to have these pictures shown - I wouldn't even do things like she did to dogs.

AMAZING!!!! How is it a joto like you has any room to comment about anything?? You are apparently an idiot! Ther are so many spelling errors in your posted comments that I can only guess you were sucking off another mexican faggot while you wrote it! You can't spell her name,Iraq,as well as at least 10 other words.If your so scared of the United States, why is your ass here?? It's obvious your not in Mexico,but here,pissing on a counrty you probably entered illegally in the back of a fruit truck to steal jobs from our people and suck cocks on street corners.Maybe you could go over there and blow some ragheads as it is apparent you don't need or want to be here!

> you probably entered illegally in the back of a fruit truck to steal jobs from our people and suck cocks

Let me make an observation about one of your statements.

"The Spanish inquisition killed people in the name of Catholicism"
It should really read:
The inquisition in every European country killed people in the name of Christianism.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hiding The Truth

Subject: Treason In Wartime
Name: John McCarthy Date/Time: 9/25/2004
September 25, 2004
Los Angeles, CA

How much longer can the US Government hide and ignore the pattern of behavior that allows the so called Intelligence Community to continue to subvert the Constitution, the President's and the Congress of the United States?

The following URL's contain and discuss once Top Secret National Security Council documents declassified by the State Department in 2000, much to the chagrin of the CIA. Now we know why; Treason in Wartime!

http://www.jenmartinez.com/vetsturn/

The following URL's contain the nexus for the treason. In context, they show blatant disregard for Presidential Directives issued during National Security Council meetings where all members were present. When discovered, these treasonous acts caused a sitting president, LBJ, to announce he would not seek nor accept his parties nomination for reelection as President of The United States.

This is how serious this issue is and the ramifications of these treasonous acts continue to this very day.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/Mac.html
http://www.geocities.com/larryjodaniel/17.html
http://www.spiritone.com/~pazuu/pow...ohnMcCarthy.htm

Links to unanswered letters addressed to Senator's and the Attorney General are located in Larry O'Daniels site, above.

History repeats itself in the blatant fabrication of "intelligence" for the justification of the preemptive attack on the sovereign nation of Iraq. The United States has become the aggressor nation by the manipulation of whole cloth lies and deception in violation of the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal with respect to crimes against humanity for it's conduct of the War in Iraq.

This asinine criminal adventure for the obvious control of mid-eastern oil reserves will eventually come before the International Crime Commission, The Hague, with disastrous results in the exposure of the conspiracy between the United States and Great Britain to defy the United Nations in their headlong rush to the unwarranted, unjustified war in Iraq.

The information in the above URL's shows the pattern of behavior with respect to the criminal element whose defiant manipulation of past conflicts orchestrates a continuing modus operandi in todays conflict.

Regards,
John McCarthy
President and Chairman of The Board of VERPA
http://www.verpa.org
jmac1369 [at] earthlink.net

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hiding The Truth

Subject: Treason In Wartime
Name: John McCarthy Date/Time: 9/25/2004
September 25, 2004
Los Angeles, CA

How much longer can the US Government hide and ignore the pattern of behavior that allows the so called Intelligence Community to continue to subvert the Constitution, the President's and the Congress of the United States?

The following URL's contain and discuss once Top Secret National Security Council documents declassified by the State Department in 2000, much to the chagrin of the CIA. Now we know why; Treason in Wartime!

http://www.jenmartinez.com/vetsturn/

The following URL's contain the nexus for the treason. In context, they show blatant disregard for Presidential Directives issued during National Security Council meetings where all members were present. When discovered, these treasonous acts caused a sitting president, LBJ, to announce he would not seek nor accept his parties nomination for reelection as President of The United States.

This is how serious this issue is and the ramifications of these treasonous acts continue to this very day.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/Mac.html
http://www.geocities.com/larryjodaniel/17.html
http://www.spiritone.com/~pazuu/pow...ohnMcCarthy.htm

Links to unanswered letters addressed to Senator's and the Attorney General are located in Larry O'Daniels site, above.

History repeats itself in the blatant fabrication of "intelligence" for the justification of the preemptive attack on the sovereign nation of Iraq. The United States has become the aggressor nation by the manipulation of whole cloth lies and deception in violation of the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal with respect to crimes against humanity for it's conduct of the War in Iraq.

This asinine criminal adventure for the obvious control of mid-eastern oil reserves will eventually come before the International Crime Commission, The Hague, with disastrous results in the exposure of the conspiracy between the United States and Great Britain to defy the United Nations in their headlong rush to the unwarranted, unjustified war in Iraq.

The information in the above URL's shows the pattern of behavior with respect to the criminal element whose defiant manipulation of past conflicts orchestrates a continuing modus operandi in todays conflict.

Regards,
John McCarthy
President and Chairman of The Board of VERPA
http://www.verpa.org
jmac1369 [at] earthlink.net

I can not believe what a big deal this is. Maybe I'm the only one that remembers what happened Sept. 11th. Does our government really think they are doing justice? To the Iraqs this is just more proof of how stupid we can be. When the rolls have been reversed, they have tortured and beheaded our people. I think they deserve more than being posed naked. They came to our country, instilled fear, killed thousands, and tried to distroy a nation. These are not rational people, they are animals. They pride themselves on creating children, and breeding them to be killers. Lyndie England should not be treated like a criminal. If she was under orders, or acting on her own free will, there are alot of Americans, myself included that think she is a hero for defending our country, and should be thanking her for risking her life for us and our freedom. Those prisoners should be thanking her too. At least they left with their lives.

Not a single Iraqi was involved. Iraq had nothing to do with it.

As said here before, the whole thing was a hoax, the worst part is that many innocents were sacrificed just to give FEMA more power.To get rid of some falling buildings and to justify war on iraq.

Bush is awful but he is just a puppet. Kerry and Bush are two different brand names for the same product. Attempt of world domination. And who suffers? Everyone, USA included.

Guys like Michael Moore try to blame everything on the redneck who looks like a poor Prince Charles cover and pretends to reveal things, but only hides them giving another set of more conveniently elaborated lies. Osama is Bushs friend and the most popular actor recently. The whole 9/11 was also a sign. Either this or they discovered that some alien artifact or the arc of covenant was buried there and they had to dig to find it =P.. who knows lol.

I can't believe what I just read. If you actually believe all that you are really a sick stupid ass. Get a life MORON!!

Pfc England is a whore.
I hope she burns for a long time............

Look at her mom, she justified the things they did at Abu Gharib as pranks, yet before the war, people were shouting abuse about US p.o.w's being shown on tv. Some folks get shown on tv and we complain.

Yet when some girl does it, her family and friends say shes cool, so it makes it okay. Hell, if she was back in US she'd treat anyone different to her the same if it was acceptable.

I've seen those photos, shes smiling, those aren't poser smiles, shes having fun. Now she should pay with her career and people should know what she did so they know its not acceptable.

People say shes a scapegoat, well I think she should be and everyone else involved too. Her mom should be ashamed and trying to justify it just shows you what kind of person they all are there.

Its basically a question of education levels. Ms England and her colleagues obviously enjoyed tormenting, humiliating, degrading and showing themselves as superior species to these incarcerated individuals. However, I am unable to accept that people of far higher positions knew nothing of these barbaric events. The Graner- England Mob were plainly given the green light to 'have fun'. Lord of the flies comes to mind ! The attrocities we are unaware of carried out by this ignorant crew will be beyond any sense of normal comprehension, of that you can be sure ! There will be many wishing to seek revenge on the perpetrators of what has been made public knowledge and their actions against the 'Graner- England' mob will no doubt rear up with drastic consequences once they feel the dust has settled. George W and his buddy Tony took us into a totally un-necessary conflict with Iraq opening much much more than a can of worms. The cost to date in young American & Brtish lives is deplorable. The innocent citizens, men women & children of Iraq who knows the death toll in these quarters ? The hatred being installed into the minds of the Islamic fraternity in general and for what ? If Bush & Blair possessed an iota of sense between them, they would re-instate Saddam immediately give him assistance to re-establish himself as 'Tyrant Of The Euphrates' and get the **** out of there pronto.

I am sending it in case you might be interested.

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Commentary
February 2005
The War Against World War IV
Norman Podhoretz
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A Second-Term Retreat?
Will George W. Bush spend the next few years backing down from the ambitious
strategy he outlined in the Bush Doctrine for fighting and winning World War
IV?
To be sure, Bush himself still calls it the "war on terrorism," and has shied away
from giving the name World War IV to the great conflict into which we were
plunged by 9/11. (World War III, in this accounting, was the cold war.) Yet he
has never hesitated to compare the fight against radical Islamism, and the forces
nurturing and arming it, with those earlier struggles against Nazism and
Communism. Nor has he flinched from suggesting that achieving victory as the
Bush Doctrine defines it may take as long as it took to win World War III (which
lasted more than four decades—from the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine in
1947 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989).
Even more than the Truman Doctrine in its time, the Bush Doctrine was
subjected to a ferocious assault by domestic opponents from the moment it was
enunciated. Then, when Bush actually started acting on it, the ferocity grew even
more intense, finally reaching record levels of vituperation during the presidential
campaign. But in defiance of everything that was being thrown at him, and in
spite of setbacks in Iraq that posed a serious threat to his reelection, Bush never
yielded an inch. Instead of scurrying for protective cover from the assault, he
stood out in the open and countered by reaffirming his belief in the soundness of
the doctrine as well as his firm intention to stick with it in the years ahead.
Thus, over and over again he said that he would stay the course in Iraq; that he
would go on working for the spread of liberty throughout the greater Middle East
(and democratic reform as a condition for the establishment of a Palestinian
state); that he would continue reserving the right to take preemptive military
action against what in his best judgment were gathering dangers to the security of
this country; and that he would if necessary do so unilaterally.
Why then, given that he was reelected on this pledge, should a question now be
raised about whether he will keep it? And why—more strangely still—should the
answer most often be that he is indeed about to renege?
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Because, comes the response, whether he likes it or not, and whether he intends
to or not, he will simply have no other choice. Either his resolve will be sapped
by the knowledge that he lacks the necessary political support to push any further
ahead with the Bush Doctrine; or he will be prevented by a certain "law" of
democratic politics governing Presidents who win a second term; or he will (as
Irving Kristol famously said of liberals who turned into neoconservatives) be
mugged by reality.
War and Moral Values
The notion that the Bush Doctrine lacks solid political backing derives from the
widely publicized National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll. According to this poll,
more voters (22 percent of the sample) were motivated primarily by a concern
with moral values than by anything else, and it was among these voters that Bush
did best against his Democratic opponent John F. Kerry; and while he also won
overwhelmingly among the smaller group (19 percent) who were mainly worried
about terrorism, he lost by a correspondingly large margin with the still smaller
proportion (15 percent) who chose Iraq as their paramount concern.
Not surprisingly, the President’s liberal opponents have interpreted this poll to
mean that the election did not constitute a ratification of the Bush Doctrine. This
is why they have been only too happy to second the claim pressed by spokesmen
for various groups on the religious Right that Bush won because of the "faith
factor" and the mobilization of the faithful around "family issues, including
marriage [and] life."
As it happens, a few commentators associated with the religious Right are
themselves opposed to the Bush Doctrine, which gives them, too, an incentive for
minimizing its role in the President’s victory. But even those religious
conservatives who support the Bush Doctrine have inadvertently played into the
hands of his antagonists, both domestic and foreign. That is, by claiming the
lion’s share of credit for November 2, they have made it a little easier for the
antiwar forces to deny that the election held on that day was a referendum on the
Bush Doctrine, and that it has the wind of a solid majority of the American
people behind it.
Yet for all its intensity, this entire debate over the relative importance of moral
values and the Bush Doctrine may stem from a complete misreading of the polls.
For it is not in the least self-evident that the vague category of moral values was
taken by the people who participated in the NEP survey merely as embracing
abortion and gay marriage alone. On the contrary: in all probability they
understood it more broadly to mean the traditionalist culture in general.
Recently the novelist (and former Secretary of the Navy) James Webb has been
arguing, convincingly, that this traditionalist culture is rooted in and still fed by
the Scots-Irish ethnic group that comprises a very large proportion of the
population of the "red" states. It is a group, he writes, whose members are
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"family-oriented"; they "measure leaders by their personal strength and values";
they "have a 2,000-year-old military tradition"; and they "are deeply patriotic,
having consistently supported every war America has fought, and [are] intensely
opposed to gun control."
Looked at in this light, what the NEP poll reveals is that the "moral values"
voters were in effect endorsing the very qualities needed in a wartime leader.
Bush would therefore be justified in concluding (as I strongly suspect he has
done) that these voters should be added to, and not posed against, the big
percentage that supported him on the issue of terrorism. He would be equally
justified in inferring that antiwar zealots must have been heavily represented
among the 15 percent for whom Iraq was the burning issue, and that this (along
with the relentlessly negative media coverage of the battle there) explained why
he lost out by a great margin to John Kerry with that group of voters.1
In 2000, Bush surprised everyone by proceeding to act boldly even after losing
the popular vote to Al Gore. Why then would he become less forceful in pursuing
his own policy after besting John Kerry in 2004 by three-and-a-half million
votes, and after receiving such vivid evidence that the American people consider
him the right man for the job of commander-in-chief in fighting the war on
terrorism—which is to say, World War IV?
Post-Election Signals
Which, climbing up the ladder of plausibility, brings us to the second reason that
has been advanced for speculating that, willy-nilly, the President will back away
from the Bush Doctrine in his new term. In a piece entitled "Governing Against
Type," Edward N. Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
assures us that
reelected Presidents tend to disappoint their most enthusiastic
followers by changing direction: they go Right if they started on the
Left (or vice versa); become active when they were passive; turn
dovish if they were hawkish; and in all cases converge toward the
center of gravity of American politics, as well as toward the
mainstream foreign-policy traditions.
In backing up this thesis, Luttwak notes that Ronald Reagan became less rather
than more hawkish in his second term, while Bill Clinton, after neglecting
foreign policy in his first term, immersed himself in it with a vengeance once he
was reelected.
Unlike other commentators, Luttwak does not attribute such turnabouts to "a
desire on the part of the President to be more widely loved, or to court the
approval of future historians." In his view, the driving force is instead "entropy,"
or the "natural tendency of democracies to revert to the moderate mean rather
than go off the rails." Therefore, even if Bush tries to "go off the rails" (that is, if
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he insists on sticking with the Bush Doctrine), a kind of natural law of American
politics will prevent him from doing so.
What we see here is yet another of those famous "misunderestimations" of
George W. Bush. In common with almost every pundit and every inhabitant of
every foreign ministry on the face of the earth, Luttwak fails to recognize the
exceptionally strong leader America has found in this President, or to take the
measure of his boldness, his determination, and his stamina. The poll-driven Bill
Clinton may have reverted to "the moderate mean," but Bush, although an
immensely skillful politician, is not nearly so poll-driven. And while the Bush
Doctrine was certainly inspired and influenced by Ronald Reagan, Bush will just
as certainly travel a different road from the one Reagan took in his second term.
During the campaign, at the very moment when things seemed to be going so
badly in Iraq that even some previously enthusiastic supporters of the war were
jumping ship, and when the abuse being hurled at him was reaching hurricane
force, Bush was heard to say, "I’m just gettin’ started." That he meant every word
of it became clear almost the minute he was reelected.
For openers, having dismayed his more hawkish supporters (myself included) by
pulling back from Falluja in April, he now ordered a full-fledged assault on that
terrorist stronghold. He also gave the go-ahead to similar operations against other
pockets of the insurgency struggling to drive us out of Iraq and to prevent any
further progress in the process of democratization.
At the same time, Bush moved with comparable forcefulness against the
insurgency within his own administration. First he sent Porter Goss to the CIA
with a mandate to clean out the officials there who (apart from providing faulty
intelligence) had been hell-bent on sabotaging the Bush Doctrine. And then he
turned his attention to the State Department. Under Colin Powell, it, too, had
been actively undermining the President’s policy to the point where it came to be
described by those in a position to know as the "most insubordinate" State
Department in American history.
Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic provides a number of blatant examples, of
which the most outrageous concerns the very essence of the Bush Doctrine.
When, he writes, the President "proposed an ambitious and concrete plan to
promote democracy in the Middle East," the State Department bureaucracy,
responding to the objections of Arab leaders, watered down the
eventual proposals beyond recognition. . . . And when, on the eve of
the war in Iraq, Washington distributed talking points in defense of
its position to U.S. embassies abroad, several ambassadors in the
Middle East cabled back to Foggy Bottom protesting that they would
not make the case for war.2
In replacing Powell with Condoleezza Rice, Bush was putting Foggy Bottom on
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notice that such activities would no longer be tolerated. As his National Security
Adviser throughout the first term, Rice was a fierce loyalist, and she can now be
counted upon to push the State Department bureaucracy into supporting the
policies of the President it is supposed to serve instead of setting its face against
them.
Or can she? Some "experts" think not. In fact, Kaplan reports that several of her
former colleagues were spreading the word that Rice, "far from purging the State
Department’s ranks," will try to mollify them. Other observers, mindful that Rice
cut her teeth in government under Brent Scowcroft—a leading member of the
"realist" school (about which more in a moment) and one of the most relentless
critics of the Bush Doctrine—have raised doubts about how firmly committed
she may be to Bush’s "own bent toward idealistic and assertive American
missions." Concurring, Edward Luttwak points to "early signals that Ms. Rice
will devote serious attention to the Europeans who did not support the Iraq war,"
and he takes this as additional evidence of an impending drift away from the
Bush Doctrine.
These signals, however, such as they are, surely amount to nothing more than
diplomatic politesse, no more portending a second-term retreat than the President
did when, late last November, he declared that "A new term in office is an
important opportunity to reach out to our friends," or announced that the first
"great goal" of his second term was to build "effective multinational and
multilateral institutions" and to support "effective multilateral action." That Bush
was here practicing a little diplomatic politesse of his own was acknowledged by
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. The President, Milbank reported, "made
clear that such cooperation must occur on his terms, and he did not retreat from
the first-term policies that angered some allies." What is more, Bush’s bow to
"multinational and multilateral institutions" carried a sting in the tail:
With Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin sharing the stage, Bush .
. . implicitly rebuked Canada and the United Nations for not
supporting the invasion of Iraq. "The objective of the UN and other
institutions must be collective security, not endless debate," he said.
"For the sake of peace, when those bodies promise serious
consequences, serious consequences must follow."
Mr. Blair Goes to Washington
An even more telling indication that there will be no retreat from the Bush
Doctrine in the second term—and also that Rice is no longer, if she ever truly
was, under the influence of Brent Scowcroft—involves policy toward Israel.
During the campaign, it was widely rumored that if Bush were reelected, he
would change course on Israel. The thinking here was that he owed a debt to the
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had risked his own political career by
supporting him on Iraq, and that the currency in which Blair needed this debt to
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be paid was greater pressure on Israel and more indulgence toward the
Palestinians on the part of the United States. Then came the death of the
Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in November. In the eyes of Blair and just about
everyone else in the world, this event opened up an exciting new opportunity to
restart the stalled "peace process." So off Blair went to Washington on a postelection
trip whose purpose, as he himself announced in advance, was to get
Bush to do just that.
On several earlier occasions when Bush, after seeming to tilt toward Israel, had
then turned on the Jewish state for taking this or that action, it was assumed that
he was trying to accommodate Blair (repaying the debt by installments, so to
speak). But whether or not this was the case on such occasions, the situation
changed dramatically after June 24, 2002. Having realized that, under the terms
of his own doctrine, there could be no meaningful peace process so long as the
Palestinians were living under the tyrannical, kleptocratic, and murderous regime
led by Arafat, Bush now made American support of a Palestinian state contingent
upon the emergence of new leaders who would devote themselves to building
"entirely new political and economic institutions based on democracy, market
economics, and action against terrorism." In the meantime, Israel was justified in
defending itself by military and other means, including through the security fence
beginning to be built by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Under this new dispensation, Bush or one of his spokesmen might from time to
time still chide the Israelis for going too far. But there would be an end to the
zigzagging from green light to red that had characterized his position before he
found his footing on this issue.
In an effort to get Bush to reverse course again, Blair came in November bearing
two proposals designed to resume the old pressures on Israel while relaxing the
demands the President was making on the Palestinians. One of these proposals
was that Bush dispatch a special envoy to the area, and the other was that he
convene an international conference. Contrary to Blair’s evident expectations,
however, Bush rejected both proposals. He did so politely and gently, but reject
them he did. The upshot was that, far from being "paid back" in the currency of
pressure on Israel, Blair returned home empty-handed except for Bush’s fervent
praise of him for participating in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Much as I hate to agree with anything the President of France says, Jacques
Chirac was right for once when he sneered that Bush had given Blair nothing for
his pains.
Then, sending out a very different signal from the one Edward Luttwak imagined
he was hearing, Condoleezza Rice followed suit. In a meeting with Jewish
leaders held about a week after Blair’s departure, she enthusiastically underlined
the President’s rejection of the two Blair proposals. Immediately after this, the
President once again picked up and ran with the ball: in his speech in Canada, he
reiterated in the most unequivocal terms that he was, if anything, more firmly
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committed than ever to the conditions he had attached on June 24, 2002 to
American support for the establishment of a Palestinian state:
Achieving peace in the Holy Land is not just a matter of pressuring
one side or the other on the shape of a border or the site of a
settlement. This approach has been tried before without success. As
we negotiate the details of peace, we must look to the heart of the
matter, which is the need for a Palestinian democracy.
So much for "entropy"; and so much, too, for the idea that once Rice is installed
in her new office, she will dependably revert to the tutelage of Brent Scowcroft
or morph into another Colin Powell.
Mr. Rumsfeld Stays in Washington
Finally, we come to the most plausible of all the reasons that have been given for
predicting (or rather hoping) that Bush will spend his second term backing away
from his own doctrine. This one can be summed up in a single word: Iraq.
The idea here is that Iraq represents the first great test to which the Bush Doctrine
has been put, and that the count is now in on its miserable failure. The retrograde
"red-state voters" may have been hoodwinked by the lies emanating from the
White House and the Pentagon and amplified by Rush Limbaugh and the Fox
News Channel, but everyone who knows anything knows that Bush’s entire
foreign policy now lies buried under the rubble of Baghdad and the smaller cities
of the Sunni triangle.
Apart from all its other faults, this analysis is vitiated by the implicit assumption
that, in his heart of hearts, Bush himself has come to agree with its take on Iraq in
particular and the Bush Doctrine in general, and that he will now bow to reality
and act accordingly. Yet if Bush believes that Iraq has been a disaster, why
would he have decided to keep Donald Rumsfeld as his Secretary of Defense?
As the architect of the battle for Iraq, Rumsfeld has been blamed for almost
everything that opponents of the invasion (and even some of its vocal supporters)
tell us has gone wrong there. He has been accused of underestimating the number
of boots that would be needed on the ground; of doing nothing to prevent the
looting and the general breakdown of law and order that followed upon the
capture of Baghdad; of failing to anticipate, and therefore to deal effectively
with, the insurgency that developed; of creating a climate that fostered the
mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other such crimes. In short, "having
ignored the State Department’s postwar planning" (as the Washington Post
delicately put the conventional wisdom in its story on Rumsfeld’s
reappointment), he led this country into a great debacle that has discredited the
very policy whose viability it was intended to prove.
But if Bush accepted this version of how and why the battle for Iraq has gone and
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is going, it is unthinkable that he would have come down on the side of the
adviser supposedly responsible for all the "mistakes" and "crimes" instead of
embracing Powell, the putatively wise counselor whose spurned advice could
have averted the whole disaster.
Insurgents
All things considered, then, I feel safe in predicting that Bush will not reverse
course in his second term, and that he will continue striving to implement the
doctrine bearing his name throughout the greater Middle East—that, in short, he
will go on "sticking to his guns, literally and figuratively," as Time put it in
naming him "Person of the Year." But I feel equally safe in predicting that the
forces opposing him, both in the region and at home, will persist in their struggle
to nip this immense enterprise in the bud.
In Iraq, the insurgents—a coalition of diehard Saddamists, domestic
Islamofascists, and foreign jihadists—have a simple objective. They are trying to
drive us out before the seeds of democratization that we are helping to sow have
taken firm root and begun to flower. Only thus can the native insurgents hope to
recapture the power they lost when we toppled Saddam; and only thus can the
Iranians, the Syrians, and the Saudis, who have been dispatching and/or financing
the foreign jihadists, escape becoming the next regimes to go the way of
Saddam’s under the logic of the Bush Doctrine.
The despots tyrannizing these countries all know perfectly well that an American
failure in Iraq would rule out the use of military force against them. They know
that it would rob other, non-military measures of any real effectiveness. And they
know that it would put a halt to the wave of reformist talk that has been sweeping
through the region since the promulgation of the Bush Doctrine and that poses an
unprecedented threat to their own hold on political power, just as it does to the
religious and cultural power of the radical Islamists.
But the most important thing the insurgents and their backers in the neighboring
despotisms know is that the battle for Iraq will not be won or lost in Iraq; it will
be won or lost in the United States of America. On this they agree entirely with
General John Abizaid, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, who
recently told reporters touring Iraq: "It is all about staying the course. No military
effort that anyone can make against us is going to be able to throw us out of this
region." Is it any wonder, then, that the insurgents were praying for the victory of
John F. Kerry—which they all assumed would mean an American withdrawal—
or that the reelection of Bush—which they were not fooled by any exit polls into
interpreting as anything other than a ratification of the Bush Doctrine—came as
such a great blow to them?
But too much is at stake in Iraq for them to give up now, especially as they are
confident that they still have an excellent shot at getting the American public to
conclude that the game is not worth the candle. General Abizaid again: "We have
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nothing to fear from this enemy except its ability to create panic . . . and gain a
media victory." To achieve this species of victory—and perhaps inspired by the
strategy that worked so well for the North Vietnamese3—they are counting on
the forces opposing the Bush Doctrine at home. These forces comprise just as
motley a coalition as the one fighting in Iraq, and they are, after their own
fashion, just as desperate. For they too understand how much they for their own
part stand to lose if the Bush Doctrine is ever generally judged to have passed the
great test to which it has been put in Iraq.
Isolationism, Right and Left
Consider—to begin once more on the lowest rung of the ladder—the isolationists
of the paleoconservative Right. Their line is that a conspiracy of
"neoconservative" (i.e., Jewish) officials holed up in the White House and the
Pentagon is dragging this country, against its own interests, into one conflict after
another with the sole purpose of "making the Middle East safe for Israel."
The words come from the pen of this group’s leading spokesman, Patrick J.
Buchanan, who expatiates in characteristically pungent terms:
Cui bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that
holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us
to survive" Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between
the West and Islam" Answer: one nation, one leader, one party.
Israel, Sharon, Likud.
Buchanan also claims, on the basis of one of Osama bin Laden’s fatwas, that a
major cause of 9/11 was "the United States’ uncritical support of the Ariel
Sharon regime in Israel."
This screed has elicited a trenchant comment from James Taranto of the Wall
Street Journal’s website OpinionJournal:
Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel in 2001, three years after
the fatwa that, according to Buchanan, condemned his "regime." . . .
Labor’s Ehud Barak won election in 1999, and that didn’t stop al
Qaeda from attacking the USS Cole in October 2000, even as
President Clinton was struggling to broker an Israeli-Palestinian
peace deal.
In addition,
Al Qaeda’s first attacks on American targets were in Yemen in 1992
and at the World Trade Center in 1993—at a time when Labor’s
Yitzhak Rabin was Israel’s prime minister. Rabin later reached an
accommodation with Arafat. . . . Bin Laden does not appear to have
been appeased.
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Buchanan’s writings, emitting as they do an unmistakable whiff of anti-
Semitism, have already marginalized the paleoconservative isolationists. If the
Bush Doctrine passes its test in Iraq, there will be fewer and fewer ears to hear
what will more and more sound like the crackpot talk it always was.
So, too, with the isolationists of the hard Left. These—exactly like their forebears
in the late 1930’s who fought against America’s entry into World War II—have
made common cause with the paleoconservatives at the other end of the political
spectrum. True, the isolationism of the Left stems from the conviction that
America is bad for the rest of the world, whereas the isolationism of the Right is
based on the belief that the rest of the world is bad for America. Nevertheless, the
two streams have converged, flowing smoothly into the same channel of fierce
opposition to everything Bush has done in response to 9/11.
In the years before 9/11, Noam Chomsky, Buchanan’s counterpart on the Left,
was very largely forgotten. After achieving great prominence in the 1960’s, he
had come to seem too extreme—or perhaps too naked in his hatred of America—
to serve the purposes of the New York Review of Books, through whose pages he
had first made his political mark. But after 9/11 he found a newly receptive
audience for his contention that this country had brought the terrorist attacks
down upon its own head, and for his denunciations of our response to those
attacks as nothing more than the latest stage in the malignant imperialism of
which he had long since been accusing the United States.
Like Buchanan, Chomsky will go on railing against the Bush Doctrine for as long
as his lungs hold out. So will Michael Moore and all the other hard leftists holed
up in Hollywood, the universities, and in the intellectual community at large.
Fixated as they are on the idea that America is the greatest force for evil in the
world, they will always apologize for or side with—sometimes openly,
sometimes only tacitly—any totalitarian despot, no matter how murderous,
provided only that he is ranged against the United States. To these people, as they
themselves cannot but recognize, an American success in Iraq will mean the loss
of their mass audience and a return to the narrow sectarian ghetto from which
they were able to break out after 9/11.
Superhawks
With no mass audience to lose, no such worry bothers the exponents of another
line of attack on the Bush Doctrine that has emanated from a neighborhood on
the Right where utter ruthlessness is considered the only way to wage war, and
where the idea of exporting democracy is thought to conflict with conservative
political wisdom. On the Right though it obviously is, this neighborhood of
superhawks is as distant from the precincts of paleoconservatism as it is from the
redoubts of the anti-American Left.
The most prolific member of the group is Angelo M. Codevilla who, in a series
of essays in the Claremont Review of Books, has accused the Bush administration
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of "eschewing victory" by shying away from "energetic policies that might
actually produce" it, and who makes no bones about his belief that we are losing
the war as a result. In the same vein, and in the same magazine, Mark Helprin
writes that we have failed
adequately to prepare for war, to declare war, rigorously to define
the enemy, to decide upon disciplines and intelligent war aims, to
subjugate the economy to the common defense, or even to endorse
the most elemental responsibilities of government.
In then piling a commensurate heap of scorn on the idea of transforming "the
entire Islamic world into a group of peaceful democratic states" (Helprin), these
two eloquent and fiery polemicists are joined by the more temperate Charles R.
Kesler, the editor of the Claremont Review. If democratization is to succeed in
the regimes of the Islamic world, a necessary precondition is to beat these
regimes into "complete submission" and then occupy them "for decades—not just
for months or years, but for decades" (Kesler). Even then, our troops may have to
"stay and die . . . indefinitely on behalf of a mission . . . concerning the
accomplishment of which there is little knowledge and less
agreement" (Codevilla).
Of all the attacks on the Bush Doctrine, this set of arguments is the only one that
resonates with me, at least on the issue of how to wage war. I have no objection
in principle to the ruthlessness the superhawks advocate, and I agree that it would
likely be very effective. The trouble is that the more closely I look at their
position, the more clearly does it emerge as fatally infected by the disease of
utopianism—the very disease that usually fills critics of this stripe with revulsion
and fear.
When these critics prescribe all-out war—total mobilization at home, total
ruthlessness on the battlefield—they posit a world that does not exist, at least not
in America or in any other democratic country. To the extent that they bother
taking account of the America that actually does exist, it is only its imperfections
and deficiencies they notice; and these, along with the constraints imposed by the
character of the nation on its elected leaders, they wave off with derisive
language, as when Codevilla refers sarcastically to "the lowest common
denominator among domestic American political forces."
Yet while Codevilla, writing in his study, is free to advise ruthless suppression of
these limiting conditions, no one sitting in the Oval Office can possibly do so.
And even so, the wonder is not, contrary to Mark Helprin, how "irresolute" and
"inept" Bush has been but how far he has managed to go and how much he has
already accomplished while working within those constraints and around those
imperfections.
As for democratization, Kesler is of course right: it is a hard thing to do, and it
cannot be done overnight. But recognizing this truth is a very far cry from
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suggesting that it cannot be done at all unless the most stringent conditions are
met. The conservative skepticism Kesler preaches on texts from Montesquieu and
John Adams is all very well in the abstract; in practice, decades need not be
required to get a process under way—to clear the ground and sow the seeds and
help to water them as they flower and grow.
Unlike all other opponents of the Bush Doctrine, the superhawks are not driven
by the fear that they will be discredited if the Bush Doctrine should succeed, if
only because none of them imagines that a strategy based on so many false
premises, and so much timidity and weakness, ever can or ever will succeed.
Therefore they can be depended upon to go on excoriating those policies no
matter what.
Liberal Internationalists
Moving now away from the margins and closer to the center, we come to one of
the neighborhoods inhabited by the foreign-policy establishment.
Here—housed in bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings
Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment, and surrounded by the populous
community of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s)—live the liberal
internationalists, with their virtually religious commitment to negotiations as the
best, or indeed the only, way to resolve conflicts; their relentless faith in the UN
(which they stubbornly persist in seeing as the great instrument of collective
security even though its record is marked by "an unwillingness to get serious
about preventing deadly violence"4); and their corresponding squeamishness
about military force. Among their most sophisticated spokesmen are Stanley
Hoffmann of Harvard, Charles A. Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations,
and G. John Ikenberry of Georgetown.
Under Jimmy Carter (whose Secretary of State, Cyrus R. Vance, was a devout
member of this school) and to a lesser extent under Bill Clinton, the liberal
internationalists were at the very heart of American foreign policy. But while
George W. Bush has thrown a rhetorical bone or two in their direction, and has
even done them the kindness of making a few ceremonial bows to the UN, he has
for all practical purposes written off the liberal-internationalist school. Nor has he
been coy about this. As he declared in a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002:
We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best.
We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign
non-proliferation treaties, and then systematically break them.
The liberal internationalists were not slow to pick up on what statements like this
held in store for them. While Kupchan thought that a number of other forces had
already weakened their position before, it was, he said flatly, "the election of
George W. Bush [that] sounded the death-knell for liberal
internationalism" (defined by him as "a moderate, centrist internationalism that
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manages the international system through compromise, consensus, and
international institutions"). Ikenberry, on the other hand, blamed Bush alone:
[A] set of hard-line, fundamentalist ideas have taken Washington by
storm and provided the intellectual rationale for a radical post-11
September reorientation of American foreign policy. . . . [This] is not
leadership but a geostrategic wrecking ball that will destroy
America’s own half-century-old international architecture.
What Ikenberry does not say is that, thanks to the workings of this "wrecking
ball," the liberal internationalists have been reduced to a domestic echo chamber
for the French and the Germans. All they seem able to do is count the ways in
which the "unilateral" invasion of Iraq has done "damage to the country’s
international position—its prestige, credibility, security partnerships, and the
goodwill of other countries" (Ikenberry). Since they refuse even to consider
whether 9/11 demanded a "reorientation"—whether, that is, it demonstrated that
"the tools and doctrines of the [old] system had outlived their utility" and had to
be replaced with a "new set of rules for managing the emerging threats to
international security"5—they can hope for nothing better than a reversion to the
status quo ante.
This dream, thinks Stanley Hoffmann, could yet be realized by a scuttling of the
Bush Doctrine through a withdrawal from Iraq that
would bring about a reconciliation with friends and allies shocked by
Washington’s recent unilateralism and repudiation of international
obligations, and thus do much to restore . . . American credibility
and "soft power" in the world.
As against Hoffmann, neither Ikenberry nor Kupchan envisages so rosy a future
for their common creed, even in the exceedingly unlikely event that the Bush
Doctrine is abandoned. If, however, the doctrine should be vindicated by Iraq,
they all fear—and rightly so—that it will be almost impossible, in Kupchan’s
words, to "bring the U.S. back to a liberal brand of internationalism." Or, I would
add, to bring its exponents back to the center of the foreign-policy establishment.
Realists
But of all the groups making up the coalition against the Bush Doctrine, the one
with the most to lose is the realists.6
The realist perspective is shaped by two related precepts. The first is that in
international affairs the great desideratum is stability, which can be achieved only
through a proper balance of power. Following from this is a very old principle,
going all the way back to the arrangements of the 16th century that allowed for
more or less peaceful coexistence among perennially warring Catholic and
Protestant principalities. In its original form this principle was expressed in the
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Latin motto "cuius regio eius religio" (the religion of the ruler is the religion of
the region). Translated into secular terms, it holds that the internal character of a
sovereign state is strictly its own affair, and only the actions it takes beyond its
own borders are the business of any other state.
In contrast to the liberal internationalists, the realists are not in the least
squeamish about the use of force. But under the dictates of their basic principles,
force is justified only in repelling another state’s aggressive effort to upset a
previously stable balance of power, while to make war in order to institute
"regime change" is almost always both wrong and foolish. A good example of
these dictates at work was the first Gulf war, when George W. Bush’s father,
with Brent Scowcroft as his National Security Adviser, used force to undo
Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait but stopped short of removing him from
power in Iraq.
Until 9/11, the realists undoubtedly represented the single most influential school
of thought in the world of foreign policy, with all others considered naïve or
dangerous or both (though a patronizing pass might occasionally be given to
liberal internationalists). It would not be going too far to say that for everyone of
any great importance in that world, whether as a theorist or a practitioner, the
realist perspective was axiomatic. And being, as it were, the default position, it
was almost automatically adopted by George W. Bush, too, in his pre-9/11
incarnation. But on 9/11, Bush’s more or less reflexive realism took so great a hit
that it collapsed in flames just as surely as did the Twin Towers.
Bush made no secret of his repudiation of realism, and he did not pussyfoot
around it:
For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for
the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability
and much oppression, so I have changed this policy.
That took care of the first guiding precept of the realist perspective. And Bush
was equally forthright—almost brutal—in giving the back of his hand to the
realist prohibition against using force to transform the internal character of other
states:
Some who call themselves realists question whether the spread of
democracy in the Middle East should be any concern of ours. But the
realists in this case have lost contact with a fundamental reality:
America has always been less secure when freedom is in retreat;
America is always more secure when freedom is on the march.
Farewell, then, to cuius regio eius religio as well.
What Bush was declaring here was a revolutionary change in the rules of the
international game. If we are to grasp the full significance of this change, we
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have to start by recognizing that the invasion of Afghanistan was only a partial
application of the new doctrine. Because the terrorists who had attacked us were
based in Afghanistan, and were protected and supported by the Taliban regime
ruling that country, going after it did not constitute a preemptive strike. It
represented, rather, a conventional retaliation against an unconventional
aggression: they hit us and we hit back.
Being nothing new, the invasion itself was not opposed in principle by the
realists (even though some of them considered it crazy to think that we could win
where so many other armies—most recently the Russians—had come a cropper).
But the operation in Afghanistan did begin to conflict in principle with the realist
perspective when it went beyond toppling the Taliban regime to sponsoring a
replacement government pledged to democratization.
Still, the main criticism leveled by the realists at this point took a prudential
form: our political objective, they said, was even more foolhardy than our
military effort. This suggests that they were slower than the liberal
internationalists in fully grasping what Bush was throwing at them. Probably
unable to imagine that he could possibly be serious when he talked about
reshaping the political character of the entire region, they seem to have consoled
themselves with the notion that Afghanistan was just a one-shot overreaction to
9/11.
If so, they were soon to be stripped of this cold comfort by the invasion of Iraq.
And even then, it still took another while before the realists felt the full force of
the gale being whipped up by George W. Bush. What caused the additional delay
was the almost exclusive focus of the debate over Iraq on weapons of mass
destruction.
WMD vs. Draining the Swamps
When Bush charged Saddam Hussein with refusing to give up his weapons of
mass destruction, he was relying in good faith on what the CIA—and every other
intelligence agency in the world—assured him was the case. He was also acting
in good faith when he warned that Saddam might put such weapons into the
hands of terrorists, and when he then invoked this danger in an advance
justification of the new policy of preemption ("If we wait for threats to fully
materialize, we will have waited too long").
But there would be a heavy price to pay for placing so much stress on the issue of
WMD. Not only did the failure to find them severely injure the case for invading
Iraq; perhaps even more injurious was that the emphasis on WMD obscured the
long-range strategic rationale for the invasion. For while the immediate objective
was indeed to disarm Saddam Hussein, the larger one was to press on with
"draining the swamps"—whether created by religious despots, as in Afghanistan,
or by secular tyrants, as in Iraq—that were in Bush’s view the breeding-grounds
of terrorism in the greater Middle East. Nor could those swamps be drained only
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by strong-arming the regimes under which they had been festering. It was also
necessary in this view to replace these regimes with elected governments that
would work to fulfill the hopes of "the peoples of the Islamic nations [who] who
want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every
nation."
All this pretty much disappeared from the debate over Iraq in the months before
the invasion. Nevertheless, it gradually sank in among the realists that they had
been wrong in dismissing Afghanistan as a one-shot affair, and that disarming
Saddam was not the be-all or the end-all of the invasion of Iraq. Hard though it
was for them, they finally had to face up to the incredible fact that Bush had not
just been making rhetorical noises when he said that his ultimate strategic aim
was to push all the states in the greater Middle East—every last one of them—
toward democracy.
Worse yet, there was no dissuading him by argument, not even when close
advisers of his father like Brent Scowcroft and James Baker were telling him that
it was a mistake to invade Iraq. Brainwashed (as the realists along with many
others had concluded) by the neoconservative ideologues who had wormed their
way into his mind, he refused to recognize that by far the most important obstacle
to solving all our problems in the Middle East was not Saddam Hussein but Ariel
Sharon. And he remained calmly impervious to the objection that pursuing his
new doctrine of democratization would destabilize the region (maddeningly, he
even responded that this was exactly what he wanted to do) and would also
increase rather than lessen the danger of terrorism.
An interesting wrinkle in the story of the realist offensive against the Bush
Doctrine is that it did not enlist the services of Henry Kissinger, the universally
acknowledged leader of that school. Most of his disciples—including such
prominent former assistants of his in the Nixon and Ford administrations as
Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger (later to become Secretary of State himself
under the first George Bush)—lined up against the invasion of Iraq. But
Kissinger himself, after hesitating a bit, came out in favor of using force against
Saddam; and once the battle had begun, he was adamant about the need to stay
the course and win. In sharp contrast to his less flexible students, Kissinger
understood that what was at stake in the greater Middle East was American
credibility, and that the loss of this credibility would constitute the worst
imaginable threat to the very stability that realists were supposed to pursue.
Given his special take on Iraq—and even though he remained deeply skeptical
about the short- or even medium-term prospects for democracy there and in the
region at large—Kissinger did not and would not add his voice to the campaign
against the Bush Doctrine mounted by other realists in the innumerable articles
and books that came pouring out of them.7 These polemics, like those of the
liberal internationalists, were on the whole more restrained in tone than the
ravings of the isolationists—more patronizing than hysterical—but in substance
and underneath the surface they were no less apocalyptic.
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Rooting for Defeat
This comes through with great clarity in a long and highly sympathetic survey of
books attacking the Bush Doctrine that were produced before the election by a
mixed bag of realists and liberal internationalists who mostly reside in the
academy.8 Entitled "A Dissenter’s Guide to Foreign Policy" and published in
World Policy Journal, the survey was written by David C. Hendrickson, a
professor of political science at Colorado College and a member of the Coalition
for a Realistic Foreign Policy.
Hendrickson begins by implicitly placing the things America has done under
George W. Bush on a par with the "iniquities" of the Soviet Union under Stalin,
from "the horrors of collectivization, the show trials, the devouring of the
children of the Revolution in purges and assassinations" and up through "the
Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939." For just as all this caused many Communists
elsewhere to lose their faith in the benevolence of the Soviet Union, so, to the
realists and the liberal internationalists surveyed by Hendrickson,
the sheer enormity of what the Bush administration was attempting
provoked a fundamental reevaluation of the belief that the United
States was essentially, and despite imperfections, a tremendous force
for good in the world. For them, as indeed for this reviewer, that
proposition is now in grave doubt.
To which all one can say is that if, because of the "unholy propensities" of the
Bush Doctrine, the end of America as a force for good is about to descend upon
us, it will arrive in the form of an attack by terrorists armed with weapons of
mass destruction, and that such an attack is far more likely to occur if these
"unholy propensities" are prevented from working themselves out than if they are
allowed to take their course. But what is certainly true is that if these same
"unholy propensities" succeed, the realists (like the liberal internationalists) will
be confronted with the impending end of their world. In the unkindest cut of all,
their ideas will come to be dismissed as, precisely, unrealistic, and their standing
will suffer a possibly fatal blow.
Before November 2, some realists had feared that Bush’s reelection would, in
Hendrickson’s words, "confirm and ratify the revolutionary changes he has
introduced to U.S. strategy." Having calmed down a bit since then, they are now
hoping to avert the apocalypse through another possible outcome that some of
them envisaged before November 2: namely, that "once revolutionary zeal
collides with hard reality, . . . the Bush policies . . . will end in tears."
One can only admire Hendrickson’s candor in admitting what is usually hotly
denied: that even many leading realists, along with many liberal internationalists,
are rooting for an American defeat. Direct action not being their style, they will
not participate in the "mass demonstrations and civil disobedience" advocated by
Tom Hayden, who advises following the playbook of the "peace" movement of
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the 60’s (of which he was one of the chief organizers) as the way to get us out of
Iraq. But neither will they sit back passively and wait for "hard reality" to ensure
that the Bush Doctrine "ends in tears."
Instead of taking to the streets, the realists and the liberal internationalists will go
back to their word processors and redouble their ongoing efforts to turn public
opinion against the Bush Doctrine. Mainly they will try to do so by
demonstrating over and over again that the doctrine is already failing its first
great encounter with "hard reality" in Iraq.
"All the News That Fits Their Spin"9
Along the way, they will get more than a little help from their de-facto allies on
both political flanks and from acolytes in the media like Chris Hedges of the New
York Times (writing on this occasion in the New York Review of Books a few
weeks after Bush’s reelection):
We are losing the war in Iraq. There has been a steady increase in the
assaults carried out by the insurgents against coalition forces. . . . We
are an isolated and reviled nation. We are tyrants to others weaker
than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals.
Like Hedges, the various groups within the anti-Bush coalition will continue to
pronounce topsy-turvy judgments of this kind (the most startling being Hedges’s
claim that a policy whose heart and soul is the spread of democracy signifies that
"we have lost sight of our democratic ideals"). Like Hedges, too, they will make
the most of every piece of bad news, every kidnapping, beheading, and bombing,
coming out of Iraq. And if by some unhappy chance the news is not bad enough
or sufficiently plentiful in its own right, they will exaggerate its dimensions or
misrepresent its significance.
This is exactly the game they have been playing since we first went into Iraq. For
instance, when looting broke out in Baghdad shortly after the city had fallen to
American troops in April 2003, opponents of the war blamed the Pentagon. But
as hardly anyone bothered to notice, this may well have been the first time in the
history of warfare that looting was carried out not by the invading army but by
the local populace—acting, moreover, against the wishes of the invading army
itself.10
An even more egregious case of how bad news has been exaggerated and
distorted was the scandal of Abu Ghraib, where a half-dozen or so American
guards had inflicted humiliations—mostly of a sexual nature—on a few Iraqi
prisoners. And yet Senator Edward M. Kennedy equated Abu Ghraib with
Saddam’s jails, where untold numbers were physically tortured and murdered;
former Vice President Al Gore compared it to Stalin’s Gulag, where literally
millions died of starvation and disease; and the financier George Soros said that it
was as bad as the attacks of 9/11.
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A more recent example of exaggeration and distortion turned up in a piece in the
Washington Post by Brian Gifford, a research fellow at the University of
California. According to Gifford,
the focus on how "light" casualties have been so far . . . serves to
rationalize the continued conduct of the war and prevents us as a
nation from confronting the realities of conditions in Iraq.
This claim—that American casualties in Iraq have not been proportionately light
by historical standards—was ridiculous on its face (compare the 6,600 men who
died on D-Day alone in World War II with the approximately 1,000 killed in
combat over the entire span of the battle of Iraq), and it was soon shown to rest
on faulty statistics and mathematical miscalculations.11
Then, at the crest of the latest wave of distortion and defeatism, came two
classified and rather gloomy documents that were leaked by the CIA to the New
York Times. Never mind that the agency had all along been leaking similarly
morbid assessments of the situation in Iraq and even authorizing direct attacks on
the Bush Doctrine from within.12 Never mind that the agency’s new director,
Porter Goss, had just distributed a memorandum in which he had to instruct CIA
employees not to "identify with, support, or champion opposition to the
administration and its policies." Never mind that these latest reports amounted to
nothing more than the personal opinions of officials with whom other officials on
the scene strongly disagreed. Never mind that the CIA has been wrong about
almost everything connected with Iraq, from the question of whether Saddam
possessed weapons of mass destruction to the role of Ahmad Chalabi.13
In spite of all this, the two new reports were still reverently touted as "an
unvarnished assessment" on "matters of politics, economics, and security" that
was self-evidently more credible than the optimistic "public picture being offered
by the Bush administration."
As the anti-Bush coalition goes on exaggerating the bad news through such
distortions and overstatements,14 it will simultaneously go on ignoring the good
news coming out of Iraq. Nothing will be heard from these quarters about the
progress being made in getting a free political system going, in reconstructing the
economy, and in establishing law and order throughout most of the country, even
as the more aggressive measures being taken against the insurgency are having
an effect within the Sunni triangle.15 Since such news does not jibe with the
antiwar coalition’s take on Iraq, it does not qualify as "hard reality."
As I write these words, about a month before elections are scheduled to be held
in Iraq, the insurgency is stepping up its murderous campaign to frighten people
away from the polls and to force a postponement. My guess is that these terrorist
attacks (which took the lives of more than 60 Iraqi civilians on a single day in
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December) will not succeed, and that even if they do, the postponement will not
be indefinite and elections will take place sooner rather than later.16
Suppose, then (as I do), that in a year or so, a duly elected coalition government
is in place in Baghdad; that it is guided by a constitution guaranteeing political
freedom and minority rights; that the economy is improving; that Iraqi soldiers
and policemen have taken over most of the responsibility for dealing with a
severely weakened insurgency; that the number of American troops has been
reduced to the size of a backup force; and that fewer and fewer Americans are
being killed or wounded. What then? Will the realists and their liberal allies bow
to this reality? Will they be mugged by reality?
I think not. I think they will do unto a success in Iraq what they did when Hamid
Karzai was sworn in as the president of Afghanistan this past December. In a
powerful report on how the press chose to cover that story, Peter H. Wehner of
the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives reminds us of what the realists
always said about Afghanistan: that it "was too backward; too fractious; too
medieval and religiously fanatical; and too ungovernable to ever move toward
democracy." Yet only three years after the war to liberate Afghanistan from the
horrific Taliban regime, "a free election was held and a civilized, modern, pro-
American president was sworn in." Wehner then describes how the press treated
what he calls "this momentous event":
The New York Times carried the story on page A8. The Washington
Post carried the story on page A13. USA Today had the briefest
mention possible on page A5. The Los Angeles Times carried the
story on page A3.
But merely burying the story was not good enough for the news pages of the Wall
Street Journal (whose point of view is much closer to that of the New York Times
and the Washington Post than to the conservative position of the Journal’s own
editorial page). The paper’s coverage, carried in the "What’s News" column,
consisted entirely of a one-sentence mention that "Karzai was sworn in as
Afghanistan’s president," immediately followed by this: "Taliban rebels attacked
a military base near the Pakistani borders, killing four soldiers. U.S. troops killed
two assailants." And the Los Angeles Times went the Journal one better by taking
the occasion to dwell on how much opium is still being produced in Afghanistan.
The syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer summed it up pithily:
What has happened in Afghanistan is nothing short of a miracle. . . .
[A]nd what do liberals have to say about this singular achievement
by the Bush administration? That Afghanistan is growing poppies.
Good grief. This is news? "Afghanistan grows poppies" is the sun
rising in the east. "Afghanistan inaugurates democratically elected
president" is the sun rising in the west. Afghanistan has always
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grown poppies. What is President Bush supposed to do? Send
100,000 GI’s to eradicate the crop and incite a popular rebellion?
Concluding that "Afghanistan is the first graduate of the Bush Doctrine of
spreading democracy in rather hostile places," Krauthammer laments that instead
of being greeted with so much as a moment of celebration, it has been either
denigrated or sent down the memory hole.
Not, however, by Hamid Karzai himself, who had the following largely
unreported words to say on "graduation day":
Whatever we have achieved in Afghanistan—the peace, the election,
the reconstruction, the life that the Afghans are living today in peace,
the children going to school, the businesses, the fact that Afghanistan
is again a respected member of the international community—is
from the help that the United States of America gave us. Without
that help Afghanistan would be in the hands of terrorists—destroyed,
poverty-stricken, and without its children going to school or getting
an education. We are very, very grateful, to put it in the simple
words that we know, to the people of the United States of America
for bringing us this day.
Long before "graduation day," of course, enemies of the Bush Doctrine who were
banking on it to crash and burn had already begun shifting most of their chips
from Afghanistan to Iraq, which was looking like a much more promising bet.
Now, with so much riding on a failure in Iraq, no effort will be spared to make
sure that even a victory there ends up being defined as a defeat.
Impossible? Take a look at the story of the Tet offensive mounted by the
Communists in Vietnam in 1968.
The Lesson of Tet
At the time, American officials asserted—and the evidence was there to back
them up—that the offensive had ended in military defeat for the North
Vietnamese and their Vietcong surrogates. But the almost universal impression
created by press and television coverage was of a defeat instead for the
Americans and the South Vietnamese. On every point the situation was
misrepresented by misleading stories and pictures and even by outright
falsehood.
Thus the media continued to harp on the successes of Hanoi even after the
North’s assault on South Vietnamese cities had been blunted; they spoke of rural
areas having fallen under Communist control that were in fact being held by
American and South Vietnamese forces; they said that the South Vietnamese
troops in the provinces were refusing to fight when in fact they were refusing to
cave in; and so forth and so on. To top it all off, when the American commander,
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General William Westmoreland, or President Lyndon Johnson, or any of their
spokesmen tried to counter these false impressions, they were ridiculed for
"singing the same old song" of progress and optimism that had already exposed
them as a pack of liars.17
The same triumph of spin over reality is what the enemies of the Bush Doctrine
will desperately try to achieve if (or when) Iraq proves to be a success. Of course,
things are a little different now. In 1968, when Walter Cronkite, speaking in his
characteristically solemn tones from the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News,
endorsed the view that Tet had been a defeat for us, Johnson realized that there
was nothing further he could do to counter this blatant falsehood, and that he
himself was for all practical purposes finished. But with the rise of alternatives to
the mainstream media like talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere, when in
2004 Cronkite’s successor, Dan Rather, tried to palm off a falsehood about
George W. Bush, it was he and not Bush who was for all practical purposes
finished.
Even this does not necessarily mean that a success in Iraq will be invulnerable to
a Tet-like treatment by the anti-Bush Doctrine forces. There will inevitably be
more than enough Iraqi counterparts of the "poppies" and "Taliban rebels" of
Afghanistan for them to harp upon. Still, under the circumstances of today, they
will have a harder time than their forebears of 1968 did with Tet. It may even
come to pass th

Here are my honest and totally conflicting opinions. I am against the war. I hate Bush and wish he would drop dead. What she did was totally wrong and inexcusable. She also looks like shes been hit a few times in the mug with an ugly stick. Yet, despite all that, seeing those photographs and knowing she willingly and gleefully took part, does make me want to be locked in a room with her. Give her some ben franklins to drag me around on a leash and kick me. Just being honest.

Let me speak on this a bit further. I feel so strongly about this bother utterly heinous, yet totally tremendous, situation, that I am promoting a wrestling match based solely on Lynndie http://www.jrbenson.com/abughraib.htm

THE MAJORITY OF THE CITIZENS LIVING IN FT. ASHBY W.VA ARE VERY DECENT PEOPLE, I KNOW THIS, CAUSE I HAVE RELATIVES THERE !! DON'T EVER THINK THE KLAN WAS EVER PRESENT THERE, THOUGH IT MAY NOT BE A BAD IDEA IF THEY DO DECIDE TO TAKE UP RESIDENCE !
AS FOR THE "ARAB" PEOPLE , HEY, I DON'T KNOW ANY OF THEM AND THEY DON'T KNOW ME. BUT I'LL TELL YA THIS, I WOULDN'T MIND SEEING THE MAJORITY OF THEM EXTERMINATED ! HEY I THINK THE WORLD WOULD BE A HAPPIER PLACE WITHOUT MOST OF THEM.
AS FOR MS. ENGLAND, I THINK SHE IS TAKING A LOT OF HARRASSMENT UNDESERVING TO HER. LET HER COMMDRS. STEP UP AND TAKE THE BRUNT OF THE BLAME BEFORE THEY DECIDE TO PASS IT ON. I KNOW WHAT SHE DID IS WRONG, BUT DAMN, GIVE THE GIRL A BREAK, SHE DIDN'T KILL ANYONE OR MAME PEOPLE , LIKE MOST OF THE ARABS IN THOSE PICS DID, HEY THEY'RE IN PRISON, NOT A COUNTRY CLUB PEOPLE !! GET OVER IT !!
I'M OUTTA HERE !! BORN & RAISED IN CUMBERLAND MD AND DAMN PROUD OF MY REDNECK WHITE HERITAGE !! THANK YOU..........

"BUT I'LL TELL YA THIS, I WOULDN'T MIND SEEING THE MAJORITY OF THEM EXTERMINATED ! HEY I THINK THE WORLD WOULD BE A HAPPIER PLACE WITHOUT MOST OF THEM."

Funny, that's what I've always thought about all of you ignorant shitkickers...

By the government's own admission, most prisoners at Abu Ghraib were totally innocent, and were later released.

The rest were Iraqi patriots, who were "guilty" only of defending their country from a foriegn invader.

I trust we can enlist you for Adolph's new army. He held many of the same views as you. If those Ay-rabs are different, it can't be right so hey, let's have a genocidal party!

Ya know Glave, many of us still live here whose families actually fought in the American Revolution. With all their racist shortcomings and faults, they still would not welcome the dumbfuck, murderous ignorance espoused by those like yourself who wrap themselves in the American flag. I suggest you become a true patriot and bunk up with Miss Liberty and her welcoming ways. Vive le France!

"AS FOR THE "ARAB" PEOPLE , HEY, I DON'T KNOW ANY OF THEM AND THEY DON'T KNOW ME. BUT I'LL TELL YA THIS, I WOULDN'T MIND SEEING THE MAJORITY OF THEM EXTERMINATED ! HEY I THINK THE WORLD WOULD BE A HAPPIER PLACE WITHOUT MOST OF THEM."

Open your eyes and take a deep breath and smell the war. To say Pfc. England's mom should be ashamed is a outrage. Englands mom should be very proud of her child and I put a big emphasis on CHILD. We as Americans are enlisting our children straight out of high school into our military services under the marketing campaign of the military services offering a education that some of us Americans can't offered in the civilian world. Thats another subject, The smile I see in the photos of Pfc. England is a smile of happiness that she is alive. She had orders to guard these prisoners, for all she knew these were the same people that killed her fellow military personal. I am willing to bet that England was on a need to know basis and she felt she was guarding animals that would kill you and your family in a heart beat. I mean family as her fellow military personal cause every branch of military is family over there in the desert, thats all they have. It's a real shame that people dont see the over all picture that discrimination and humiliation doesn't count when your in a war where you dont know your friend or foe. Fellow americans making comments about this young soldier and how ashamed she should be and how ashamed her mother should be are probaly the same fellow americans that thrive off of shame and humiliation for entertainment purposes from our lovely american t.v brodacasts. We need to support this soldier and say a prayer for her cause she is looking to do time in prison for offering her life to gaurd our enemies. That same type of humiliation goes on in our american prisons, but when a prisoner here in america screams " I have a right" they get a response like" you have no rights anymore, your a prisoner, you lost that right when u commited your crime". I'm amazed at all the anger written in comments about Pfc.England when probably a majority of the people making comments are safe at home and live a life of luxury without someone wanting to kill them. Take it how you want.
I'm with you all the way Pfc.England and I'm sorry for the actions and comments of your fellow americans. I'm praying for you CHILD.

What makes me sick is all of us can sit around judging these soldiers and saying they deserve punishment and what they did was heinous. TRY BEING THEM! WAKE UP YOU DUMMIES. THIS IS WAR. IT'S NOT PRETTY. You wanna see heinous? Find some of the prisoner of war torture sites and look at those pictures...that's heinous...and it's being done to AMERICAN soldiers. But, let's stand by the IRAQIS, shall we? Again, WAKE UP!!!!!!

Calling Lynddie England trailor trash because she grew up poor is RUDE also and I don't get that mentality. Are we who live in homes better? Why?? Those of you picking on her because of her lot in life should get lives because you sound like stuck up, judgmental, morons who probably bitch when your neighbor leaves the trash can on the curb too long after trash day. God, you need something better to do!

That was so wonderfully put. I couldn't agree more.

It is very sad to me that anyone could think the treatment of those men was just in any way. They were treated inhumanely, regardless of circumstance. I understand that "war isn't pretty" as everyone is fond of saying, does that empty phrase validate what these soldiers did? Orders or not? How did these actions aid anyone? It definetely gave people something to think about in regard to the pointless brutality of our armed forces when dealing with prisoners. For what it's worth, I come from a military family in the US. With that in mind, I still think this is wrong.

Look, I'm sorry you feel that way, but you need to open your eyes to what's really going on in the world, that girl was most importantly wrong for what she did, but not all the military is like that I'm sure not I would never hurt a child or a human being at least not purposly so you really need to get your facts straight, before you start accusing people. I bet you don't even know that most military personnel don't even want to go over there or even engage in arguements with these people, but that's our job keep this country safe so they don't come over here and do that stuff to you or our family so get your facts straight. Now think about that stuff and may God Bless You.

God, gimme a break! Anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of psychology would know that England was in an unwinnable position.She was a junior officer, she was in love with the man above her, who was ordered to do certain things to get certain extremists to 'talk', by the 'brass'... I am an 'army brat'in that generations of my family have proudly served in U.S forces. I do not like the way Bush runs his foreign policy but I hardly think it is right nor fair to use a person in her position as the scapegoat! She was just following orders; and yes, to all you ppl screaming "That's what the Nazis said", that is true- but all any army are taught that or they can be court marshalled and convicted, imprisoned or even executed for 'not following orders'. Plus, she was romantically involved with her superior officer... This makes me sick- I love the U.S- I hate what the recent publicity has done to it, and I hate what it's doing to this small-town girl who just wanted money to get through college...
Mad as Hell.

Anyomous.... I think you need to read your paragraph, First of all were not engaged in arguments with Irag. We are engaged in war. I would hope our troops don't wont to be there, they are there, once again following orders as did Pfc.England and for a comment to be made that your not sure if you were to hurt a child or human on purpose. You will do what your ordered to do. There are no facts to get straight other then the media does not need to be covering a war. What the media needs to do is leave our military alone and step foot undercover into some of our prisons in the states and see first hand the abuse our prisoners go through. When were in war our militarys job is to eradicate. humilate, and desipate our enemy. If you think fighting in this war is going to stop attacks on America you got another thing coming. The only thing you can do is pray for the people it does affect and hope your not around. Think about that!!!!!!!!

After WWII the policy makers at the top of the Nazi ranks were judged at Nuremburg. The implementers of those atrocious policies whom were found to only be carrying out orders were allowed to move forward with their lives.
Now we have the policy-makers not taking responsibility and putting all of the heat on their lowest underlings.
The world turned upside-down.

Wow- a sane voice amongst the hyperbole. I believe you are so very right, yet I also see that there are many who will continue to hamper the efforts of the West to stop the terrorist threat,not because they are bad (my own mother is one of those people) but because they just don't understand the nature of the threat...
It is not just Americans who must unite, not just Christians, and not just ethnically 'white' or any other race; it is those who believe in freedom and democracy who must fight - and MUST win- if we wish our children to have the very freedoms that these 'politically correct' people are attempting to save for the extremists...
We must use our heads; speak softly and carry a big stick- we are in grave danger, and now is not the time for arguing amongst ourselves.
It is time to stand up for what we believe in!
These people do NOT care about civil rights, and will not stop just because we yell about the Geneva convention.
I feel sad to say it, but it sure 'aint the summer of love anymore folks- we have to get real or lose our freedom.

you are sadly brainwashed. so-called "terrorists"(just to get into the definition would require some complexity) who target the US don't do it because they "hate freedome/democracy/our way of life" as the failed bush admin. would have you believe----they hate our foreign policy. I won't go any further, as you probably won't respond---just another poster who's unwilling/unable to debate.

Bring it on...what have you got to say that will change my 'brainwashed mind' hahahaha... Or would you rather just boo-hoo away in a corner with a bunch of your like-minded bleeding heart friends??? I have nothing against the Islamics having their own religion, I do have something against tying the hands of our soldiers as they fight those who themselves do not have any restraints when it comes to fighting Americans...nor Westeners in general.Please, let us debate I look forward to it...
.

your quote--"it is those who believe in freedom and democracy who must fight "
a few questions for you--

1. Do you actually believe/trust Bush?

2. Do you actually believe that the 'terrorists' simply don't like us because they hate freedom? Or is it possible that it is because of what the U.S. does in terms of foreign policy--as well as their perceptions of our motivations?

3. Do you really believe that international law, Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act passed by US congress, ect. are "tying our hands"?

I'm anxious to know your thoughts on this as I just attended a forum at the World Affairs Coucil last night on just this subject.

1- No...I don't trust Bush as far as I could throw him. In my opinion, his foreign policy is indeed bringing world war ever closer,and I fear he may have worsened the political landscape in such a way as to render us incapable of anything but fighting for our own survival, or giving up life as we know it- in large part due to a kind of megalomania and in a smaller part due to greed and arrogance. That is, of course, beside the point. I do not feel I have the political skill nor background to be able to offer a sound alternative, now that we are in this dangerous position, though I'd love to hear one if someone has an alternative!. I don't think Bush started the Arab/Christian/Jew war that is gathering momentum daily- but I do believe he has exaccerbated it greatly.That does not mean we should not attempt to win it. That's like deciding to protest for peace AFTER you've been thrown in the ring with Ali...

2-No. I actually believe that most Muslim extremists begin as idealistic, perhaps nationalistic and proud of their faith and their country. They are constantly bombarded with propaganda about the West, how corrupt and evil we all are...how our society is fat and greedy and mistreats it's women, disrespects God, and is generally debauch... they are taught in many fundamentalist schools to distrust the West and to blame us for their own poverty, war and social problems. Leaders of numerous Arab countries (though they are not alone) have preached hatred of the West, especially America, and that we are the Infidels... They are taught that democracy is not freedom, but slavery to the capatalist pigs, similar to extreme Communist philosophies.... They (the 'terrorists') believe they are freedom fighters! If you die killing Westerners in the name of Allah you get a number of virgins in the afterlife (and your family is showered with honors after you die, as a hero)
They are all the more dangerous because they see us as the terrorists. Even sacking Bush isn't going to change the long-term animosity that has built around these issues...there is too much history and we will soon be into a true world war. It is sad, but it is true. Sitting on the fence will only lead you to a sore bottom before you get shot by one or both sides...

3- Now this is a very difficult question. I believe that war is made up of a series of larger and larger crimes, which occur when a country feels it no longer has any choice but to kill it's percieved enemies. I do not think war can be civil. I do not think war can be avoided either, not with the nature of mankind...
Having said that, of course it would be idyllic if we could ensure that all the countries involved would abide by certain carefully laid out rules and procedures...wonderful! However, if you have a look at every war on Earth- killing ones' enemy is the entire point and ALL wars include brutality on both sides...The victors write the history and we hear only of the evilsof those who were defeated.
Not 'humilliating' them or 'offending' them while you go about it is a little bit of a moot point. I hate that we must do it, but I say fight fire with fire.
One exception to that; I do not agree to sending soldiers in to battles where they will almost certainly die, even if it means a bigger victory for our side in the longer term. Hence, I don't believe we should use the trully disgusting 'suicide' bomber approach. Just my opinion, of course.

By the way- how very impressive that you have just attended the conference at the World Affairs Council last night... Funnily enough, my uncle works in the U.N and is an avid proponent of the Geneva Convention, War Crimes Act etc... and I am certain he is better informed than I as he was the Deputy PM in a European country for years, as well as having been Minister for Foreign Affairs.

However, I am just the voice of the ordinary citizen- sitting in my little rented house and seeing that we are in big trouble. Those guys will not play by the rules and I am sick of political correctness being used as an excuse not to fight back with all our might.

Extremism is a very real, very current threat- perhaps we need to put down our white flags before they cover them with our blood?


Look forward to your reply...

Why is a BAY AREA site flooded with nazis?

You look at the topics on this board and 1/3 to 1/2 of them are just insane anti-israel garbage, the same crap you find on white supremecist and neo-nazi sites

Have they been infiltrated, or merely paid off?

I appreciate the thorough response--I almost would have missed it with the spam/mudslinging crap posted in front of it.

I won't comment too much on #1 as it sounds like you recognize that the Bush administration is a dangerous boil on the face of humanity. Also, that the US's history of disasterous foreign policy didn't just start w/ Bush(the lessor)but has certainly been worsened/intensified in a negative direction.
2. You say that that Muslims in the middle east are 'bombarded with propaganda'. While there is some legitamite arguement that there is some anti-western indoctrination, there is more arguement supporting that that sentiment is nurtured by US actions in that region--and the rest of the world---that they see with their own eyes that acts in a more persuasive way (to induce anti-west-US sentiment). They don't need any propaganda to have ill-feelings towards the US, all they need is to see our actions around the world. I would actually argue (especially when viewed from a global context, looking at all the news around the world, especially from more democratic societies) that is the US people who are the victims of porpaganda. If a democratic society depends on an informed citizenry, then in a large country it is the media's job to do that informing and the mainstream media has, sadly, dropped the ball. Without even considering obvious examples like Fox--CNN, NBC and the rest of the big ones essentially acted as cheeleaders up to the Iraq war--offering little real questioning or analysis or criticism---which should be their job to do--not just repeating the white house/pentagon press releases and saying Go 'Merica!! People in the Middle East don't just see what we do there, they see what we do in Latin America, too. And it doesn't look good to too many people around the world, except when viewed through the extremely ethnocentric lenses of our mainstream media. The solution isn't to keep bombing them---you can't drop enough bombs to stop it--remember vietnam--especially when it's guerrilla warfare--in fact, with each bomb dropped, it has the effect of recruitment and radicalization of the much larger population that may have been sitting on the fence.
3. My last sentence serves as a segueway--countries like Ireland, the UK and Israel have learned (from much more experience than the US has) that torture has poor efficacy in dealing with 'terrorists" (I put this in quotes, because one man's terrorist is, truly, another man's freedom fighter). Torture has not only proven to be less effective in gaining info, but it acts as a recrutiment tool for 'terrorists'. Sweeping detentions of large population(as we speak a massive building of prisons in Iraq is planned --for 16K more prisoners)also serves to radicalize/encourage hating of the perceived oppressor. I say perceived because it really doesn't matter if you think that the oppressor is in the right or not--the perception of the people feeling the oppression is all that matters in terms of this conversation.
Also, remember that many of these people swept up in Iraq--and Afghanistan--are just farmers, ect.--they are not all resistance fighters---and they will get released---and what do you think they will do after this experience? I'd lay my money on them walking to the nearest training camp.
This was one of the subjects I've seen talked about a t length in various forums (at World Affairs Council and other places) and it truly doesn't work.
We have to look to the root causes and stop attempting to treat the symptoms--as they will keep popping back up, and getting worse otherwise.

Your response makes a lot of sense. Both sides see themselves as right and morally superior, and the actions of each in aid of their cause further enrages the other...

Perhaps I am too pessimistic, but I do believe we have got ourselves into a deep hole, and just don't see how we are to get out of it!

I did not see the American coverage (maybe a tiny amount over here on the Leher news hour) and the majority of Aussies do not like the war though they like the States- but I have previously lived in the States for many years and realise how the media acts as a PR machine for the gov't, however this is the same in every country. As each country becomes more and more deeply involved, the citizens are treated to more and more slanted information; and for good reason. There would be no point in encouraging sympathy for those we are war with!..

There is already much division when a country fights another, let alone when we gear up to fight an entire group... I think the media are carefully follwing the same orders that any countries' media would recieve at a time like this; if the war gets even worse, the propaganda must also as we need everyone possible behind rallying to the cause...

It is like a soccer game; you don't go cheering for the other team and you don't stop if you're beating them... and you don't stop if you are not, either- until it is over...

I agree that there have been major problems with US foreign policy worldwide, but I don't think that means we should now sit back and help the enemies we have (whether we helped create the situation or not).

It's kind of like when you have a child and you say "You are grounded!" Then, you must keep them inside or they will never listen to that again, and you'll have to be harsher next time...

I realise that many of the people caught up in the Net will be enemy civilians (and that is what they are until this ends...) but that is the nature of war. War sucks.

But we are in it now...so what do you suggest? Leave them to set up a new totalitarian regime? To fight it our amongst themselves? Stay and deal with the angry masses who try to kill and torture our engineers as we try to rebuild for them?
It's a bloody nightmare.
If you have an answer- then please do tell.
The residents of Bagdad and Iraq in general must truly hate our soldiers... I don't really think we can manage this situation with kid gloves.
I look forward to your reply.

*****I think the media are carefully follwing the same orders that any countries' media would recieve at a time like this; if the war gets even worse, the propaganda must also as we need everyone possible behind rallying to the cause...******************

I just broke my arm, so won't be making my usual elaborate response. I wiil say, though, that wartime or not, there is no excuse for the media to become a propaganda machine, serving to 'rally' folks behind a war. That is antithetical to democracy.

*****It is like a soccer game; you don't go cheering for the other team and you don't stop if you're beating them... and you don't stop if you are not, either- until it is over...******

This is not a soccer game, nor can it be reduced to such a simple analogy (although it is understandably tempting to do so). We are dealing with people, in all their complexity; along with political, social, economic, psychological, cultural and religious factors--all intertwined. It's just not a soccer game. And I would never 'cheer for my team' if they were in the wrong. I don't believe the spirit of democracy has anything to do with blindly cheering my govt.'s actions--whether in regards to foreign or domestic policy--
This is not a 'war' that can or will ever be 'won' through force. It simply won't work and that is obvious when we view it from a macro, cause-effect context. We have to treat the problems, not the symptoms.

*******I realise that many of the people caught up in the Net will be enemy civilians (and that is what they are until this ends...) but that is the nature of war. War sucks.*****

This, once again, is a simple rationalization that doesn't address the issues.
The fact--as history tells us--is that these civilians (innocent) getting swept up are some of the most powerful recruitment tools for resistance groups. Simply saying 'war sucks' and that 'we can't treat them w/ kid gloves' rationalizes further torture--which, again, has been shown to be innefective in obtaining info, but effective in radicalizing/recruiting more to resist.

Obviously, creating the complex socio-economic-political solution to the mess over there now isn't easy--but it is primarily the US's responsibility to clean up.
The fact is is that whatever system is set up--unless totally controlled by the US--will not look like expected--you can't install democracy at gunpoint and decide for others how to do business.
I have yo go, my arm is hurting--more on possible alternative solutions later.

Hi, 'To Mad As hell',
Sorry for taking so long to reply . In fact, I still don't really have the time to do so properly. I am studying as soon as my kids crash until I can't stay awake any longer (finally trying to finish my psych/human biology degree) Anyway- my view is that I identify Lynddie with my young cousins being sent to fight in Iraq (the last of which was sent off last week- at 18 and scared out of his wits). I think of my Uncle crying and my father at the goodbye dinners and I know they do not go to 'do harm'. I believe that England is the same kind of soldier as generations of my family. I would not cheer my gov't for doing wrong- but I will always back the American kid following orders. I am proud to be an American. Call me a Nazi if that's what you believe but Bush's misuse and abuse of our youngsters does not correlate to them being evil-only him
Got to go...many stats to work tonight...
MAH

bush is a joke and we should never be overseas

While I certainly don't condone Lyndie England's actions. If it was true she was following orders, I strongly believe a thorough objective investigation should be given to who all did the orders. Ms. England says her ex boyfriend, commanding officer Charles Graner gave her orders. Was Mr. Graner under orders himself. Not presuming he was. Just wondering.
Many people are charging Donald Rumsfeld with condoning torture, oops I mean abuse. Didn't the US Attorney General Gonzeles condone abuse for war prisoners? My point being how can everyone blame this woman. Then ignore the fact one of Bush's top administrative personnel is for torture?

After looking at the satanic pictures that crossed the globe, how can we, American, ask the people around the world to believe us and to trust our promises and policies as rescuers of the world? The behavior of our soldiers in Iraq has unmasked our hypocrisies and shown the rotting of our society. The Bush administration has left much doubt if Saddam is more merciful or our policies of freedom and democracy.

ohw my god, you american people will never learn. Always trying to "save the world". Everytime you guys come into a war, things get messed up, always.. It's time to stand up against the foolness of america so they can't just run into a war anymore. american people think they're all that, but in fact they aren't shit. You people are to stupid to recognize your behaviour in the world and what it has done to it.
Stop being this arrogant and do something that makes sence!

ohw my god, you american people will never learn. Always trying to "save the world". Everytime you guys come into a war, things get messed up, always.. It's time to stand up against the foolness of america so they can't just run into a war anymore. american people think they're all that, but in fact they aren't shit. You people are to stupid to recognize your behaviour in the world and what it has done to it.
Stop being this arrogant and do something that makes sence!

Where's the one that took the picture

The degree of civilisation of a country is determined from the way one treats prisoners. America supports the death penalty and humiliation of prisoners and as a result is not a civilised country.

to belieive,we are liberators is like beliieving hitler was too, In what moral reference as americans can we condone the actions and non responseive actions of so called representatives of my country,i do not consider them americans but subhuman being with a lack of morals and or the qualities that make americans a great people, they have gave us a black eye that will take life times to heal! I hope ms England enjoied her preverted sexual fantacires,played out for the world to see, i just am glad that she does not represent the women i know,yes i do believe she grew up in a yraler okay? hummm what trash!

LYNNDIE IS NOT TRAILOR TRASH I HAVE YOU TO KNOW SHE IS A BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL YOUNG LADY. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE SHE IS MY NIECE, AND ANOTHER THING WHY DON'T YOU STOP AND THINK ABOUT HER SON CARTER ALLEN, HE NEEDS HIS MOTHER.

Torturer, That was a genuine smile on her face in those pictures. Wonder how she'd like a leashe around her neck?

to the aunt, i find it scary to think that she has a child. for anyone to think it is ok to treat people like that, its hard to imagine her parenting skills. good luck to you and yours you'll need it.
it sounds as though people think she is a hapless victim, no she is neck deep like the rest. she needs to do some soul searching and reshape her mentality and life. she is a mother now
i have no mercy for her, this "victim" has victims of her own. it is a small punishment for what was done to those iraqi
the military spends impossible amounts of money on weapons, yet their people that run the day to day stuff are ignored, paid miserably, and recieve the least amount training possible. no books on prison camp ethics? no brains in you head to tell you whats wrong or right?
and to the other person sayin"stupid americans", just look at all the responses and tally up how many think this is acceptable behavior
finally, remember, you're only as good as your help

As a Veteran of One and former Senior Military Police Instructor with the 3388TH USAR SCHOOL TAMPA, FLORIDA we trained MP's with the 810th Military Police as well as National Guard MP's. NEVER in the history of the MP's have any Americans used such tactics nor would they even begin to think of such things without MILITARY INTELLIGENCE and Senior Military Leaders coming up with such. Reading Brig. Gen. Karpinski's book tonight it is abundantly clear that the photo op was Military Intelligence related and keyed to specific Orders received from perhaps Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. I doubt very seriouisly if the President or Vice President had a CLUE as to what techniques, including MURDER, were being introduced into GITMO and ABU GHRAIB. The soldier and her boyfriend were UNDER ORDERS for such actions to be taken and like GOOD SOLDIERS followed the Orders based upon information received that higher up's needed the material to break down the combatants who were prisoners. Sadly the actions were in violation of the GENEVA CONVENTION and threaten any military or civilian combatant from the United States in the future UNLESS the President calls for immediate FULL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS and lets NO ONE BE PARDONED OR GIVEN CLEMENCY FOR MURDER! Every Veteran, every Veteran's family and friends should start a letter writing campaign to the members of Congress, President and Vice President PLUS the FBI and local politicians calling for a full criminal investigation immediately! The book by Brig. Gen. Karpinski clearly indicated even SADDAM used TRUTH SERUM to get information from victims. The GENERALS and OTHERS including Rumsfeld should be given TRUTH SERUM under Medical Care then interrogated because many have been trained to beat the POLYGRAPH by such tactics as excessive SNIFFING. INTERPOL would be better than the FBI as they are controlled and will no doubt not properly Investigate these events without Congressional supervision and the President control on the FBI is obvious like the Secret Service. Many of US old Veterans who were trained in Criminal Investigation would gladly volunteer to be called back into military service for any such investigation IN A HEART BEAT! Please write those letters and it only costs some 37 CENTS to get one sent to the President, Vice President and Congress of the United States. Remember 911 and implications found on http://www.reopen911.org or http://www.democracynow.org who exposed Abu Ghraib and demotion of Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade who controlled the 7,000 inmates with only perhaps 300 MP's from the 372nd. ODD when in GITMO there are always perhaps 2 MP's for each prisoner at all times. PLEASE ask for the Criminal Investigations and do not forget 911 MURDERS at the World Trade Centers, Pentagon and those who were strewn over the country approach to the crash in PA. AMERICA NEEDS THESE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS and Col. Janice Parkinski should be returned to DUTY in her ONE STAR position IMHO as she was NOT ABLE TO JUMP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND WHO SET HER UP keeping Reserve understaffed units in that situation and turning over the entire prison population to MI. Ralph Charles Whitley, Sr. 110105 0448 ZULU

I’ll be sure to respect your opinion that the people in Fort Ashby are very decent people after you went on to say you’de welcome a KKK presence, and that the majority of Arabs should be exterminated. What a wonderful spokesperson you’de be for the area!

I think the world would be a better place without any extremism – including you & your white supremacist ways. Tell me, what in the world makes you feel that the world would be a better place if it was filled with redneck trash like you? I can guarantee that if morons like you ruled the earth, you’de destroy everything on it in a single generation. Your good friend Bush is well on his way to trying…

Many of the Iraqi detainees were innocent – massive roundups have been done where everyone in the vicinity of a terrorist attack was taken into custody. So many detainees were only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can you imagine if the NYPD had rounded up all the people surrounding the WTC on 9/11, thrown them in prison for months without letting their families visit, abused them & humiliated them?

Englund should be shot dead. I don't care about her kid, she should have thought about that before acting like an arrognt american jackass.

Speaking as a Gringo, I was saddened by the reference to us by the the imitation Mexican.
But then, the imitation fairy is only an imitation. He, she, or it should be ashamed.

Charles Young, you owe me money.

What happened in that time period was that people were following orders and from far up the chain of command.

There is a book written by Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats.( And other books as well.). Though the George Clooney film was comical, the book was not, but a far cry and very dark and sinister. It speaks about psychological warfare. Another book that damns the chain of command is Naomi Klein's book SHOCK DOCTRINE.

When you hear shock and awe many times by the then President Geo W Bush, he unwittingly spilled the beans on the traumatizing technique of individuals and possibly nations through the use of Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron, for geo political purposes. Dr. Cameron's research was well intentioned , supposedly, into trying to alter for the better , people with severe mental conditions. His various techniques were very questionable and typically a failure. There is a government agency , claiming to use techniques for "national security purposes" implemented the techniques used by Dr. Cameron on a large scale, often with horrific results on citizens of foreign nations.

In short, the blame goes way up, farther up, the chain of command. The lowly soldier becomes the patsy to those who issued the orders. Even the politicians who eagerly gave the nod and approval should all be made accountable.