Abusing Soldiers vs. Abusing Prisoners

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Sorry, I don't get your point, Ragusa. Do you think Gates left his nice, comfy job at Texas A&M just to be another Bush lacky? At this point, Bush has to know what he has on his hands - another Vietnam. He looks deperate for a way out - like a mouse in a maze. He's probably counting the days to get out of office and leave the mess for someone else, at least regarding Iraq.

Edit: Speak of whistling in the dark - I thought this was quite ironic:

[ March 05, 2007, 18:56: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

Chandos,
I have a quite cynical view of what the Bush administration is capable and incapable of, Gates qualities, motives and credentials nonwithstanding. Don't get your hopes up.

What they made Pace and Gates say is telling. They both must clearly know the 'surge' as proposed by Bush is a gamble, to be charitable. Their subordinates will have told them that. Just listen to recently retired officers, they're aghast. Yet they did say it anyway, played with the team. Under Bush that's probably all that's required from them - loyalty. Bush, being the decider, decides. The rest of the crew either follows and sticks to the talking points, or is out of the game.

That's what I meant. If things get crazy, like when Bush finally decides when to attack Iran, all Gates can do is step down.

 

That's rather beside the point; you don't have to make an 'educated guess without any information' (isn't that a contradiction?). Plenty's been written about the, um, efficacy--or lack thereof--of the govt.'s methods of identifying, detaining, and interrogating terrorists and/or sympathizers.

 

Ragusa - I think the attack on Iran is coming. Recently, there was a report that some 40 pilots left a local airfield here outside Houston (Ellington) for the Middle East - with another 450 pilots to follow. I wouldn't know why Bush needs 500 F-16 pilots to fight "terrorists" in downtown Baghdad. It seems he might be planning something larger.

Nevertheless, I'm not a big fan of any of these guys. But I feel that Gates is a big improvement over Rumsfeld. IMO, the only solution is to carve-up Iraq between the sects, and the army should gradually "redeploy" to Afghanistan over the next year, where they can destroy the Taliban, and Al- Qaeda, and finish the job they started there. If Bush really wants to "bring democracy" to the ME, he can start there. There is only one problem, of course - it has no oil. Is there a UN plan for "democracy for oil?"

I still think, however, that you would not see the recent firings of high level officials, regarding the Walter Reed scandal, if Rumsfeld was still running things.

 

Chandos,
as for bringing democracy ... if there is a march of democracy anywhere - it's in Europe. Maybe the EU expanded too fast, but still they countries are standing cue to join. And we didn't need to bomb any of them to persuade them to their choice. And as for Iran ...
... this is increasingly getting

I think the greatest advantage of Gates over Rumsfeld is an exponentially lower degree of arrogance and ego. That helps a lot in a job where you have to work with people. Wether he wouldn't have fired the Generals ... who knows, the point is moot now he's out of office, which is a good thing.

 

Since this thread has started to die down, I'm going to hijack it.

If you want to talk about sentencing fiascos read this.

 

Are you familiar with that psychology experiment where volunteers were randomly assigned duties as prisoners or guards in a mock-prison? Unchecked authority leads to abuse. While I don't doubt that someone high in the administration wanted plausible deniability, and a lack of oversight so they could torture if necessary, on rare occasions, I seriously doubt any of them intended things to get anywhere near as bad as they did.

 

NOG,
I am familiar with the experiment. The US administration should have known it too, and tacitly sanctioning use of violence in interrogations they should have known it would inevitably get out of hand. That's what all the professionals warned about, not to mention the questions of utility and morality. It's not only that it is illegal what they did, it was predictable it would lead to excess. The Marquis de Talleyrand was quite right: "It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder!"

I think the US administration, as much as larger parts of the public, were in a revenge mode after 9/11 and didn't really care what happened to the presumable 'bad guys'. CIA's grim Cofer Black told the president after 9/11 that there were going to be flies crawling across the terrorist's eyeballs. He also who told Congress that there was a “before 9/11” and an “after 9/11,” and that after 9/11, the gloves come off.

9/11 changed the US approach in terrorism to a presumption of guilt. What's euphemistically labeled 'tough interrogation' is nothing else but just that. It's about: You're a bad guy, we know you know something, and you gonna tell us, or else. Tough luck if you were indeed only a cab driver from Kandahar who had been sold as a 'terrorist' to settle some old score.

Just look at the initial reactions by the apologists, which often amounted to: 'Eh, they are terrorists, they deserve it.' America was in the mood for a lynching. I remember how an American colleague at work, nice guy, told me about that incident in London when the Brits shot a guy in the underground: 'They shot a terrorist in London in the tube. Too bad ' Too bad he was innocent.