Can this be the America I Know?

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This is quite astounding to me, but it should not come as a surprise. It's too bad that these stories, if they are true, are kept in the backpages, away from larger public scrutiny. I am always confident in the basic goodness of the Amercian people, once an issue is placed before them. It's really too bad that the electronic media is so self-serving these days.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2576-2005Mar2.html

This makes me even more ill:

 

The "if they are true" portion of your comments is a big issue with the media. I, for one, put reporters just above attorneys on the "I believe everything you say" scale (I know that's going to offensive to attorneys and reporters alike to be compared like that). I think most of America did in a poll a few years ago.

Anyone can tell stories. Dan Rather apologized for one not too long ago. The names Blair and Glass may ring a bell for some. I remember seeing a pickup truck explode during a newscast -- only to be told the reported put an explosive device in the gas tank to make the story more dramatic.

It is too easy to report rumors, I have far more respect for the journalist who reports facts.

 

There are many many many many such stories, all of them brushed off as fabricatons, exaggerations and the like. What I wonder if how anyone can think that war and occupation can be waged without such methods. As I have said before and will say again, any war you support you also support and condone all the atrocities committed in said war. You can't have one without the other.

 

T2Bruno,

Are facts like Gitmo and the interrogation tactics there more of your taste?

The story about this man's death isn't that far off form the reported Gitmo methods, just that this time they were executed in a more sloppy and less 'professionalised' way that resulted in the death of the detainee.

'Probably unfounded rumors from uncritical press', as I hear out of your reply, is eqiuvalent to singing la-la-la with the hands on your ears and your eyes shut after Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

The point herer is not so much 'if it is true' but rather 'when it is true as well ...'.

 

I do not delude myself into thinking such things could not happen, I merely suggest such reports could also be false. The most convincing lies (and the most damaging) are those that have some bearing of truth to them. 'Rumors' from 'government officials' are not enough for me to pass guilt on to 'some newly minted CIA case officer' -- in my opinion the American press does not have the integrity it once did.

By the way, your arguement feels more like a personal attack rather than a difference of opinion.

 

Well, there is not much doubt in my mind that this story is true and I'm sure it's one of many such attrocities that have occurred in this war and other wars since the beginning of time.

Thinking more on this, I'm not sure if it's a case of conditioning (kill or be killed) gone way wrong or a robotic response to orders given by others. Either way, Chandos, I don't think we've even touched the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to these types of incidents. And I would suspect that the initiators of these types of crimes have become so immune to their own behavior and effects under the umbrella of "war", that they just see it as an acceptable byproduct or worse -- job well done.

My opinion of the American press has never been particularly high -- but in recent years, we've hit new lows. Where there is no drama, they will stage it. Where there is no fact -- they try to create it. They intrude into private lives where they have no business. An example of this is when a famous person here died recently (Johnny Carson -- late night talk host)-- they pestered his wife with cameras outside his residence -- trying to get a response from this poor woman a day after his death. The question was "So, how are you feeling now?" and the big answer was "I'm feeling pretty bad -- this is the worst day of my life" or something to that effect. Like they expected any other response?? Come on -- they're like vultures circling their prey. I found the whole thing to be moronic, rude and shameful. I don't know what's happened, but our measure of reporting excellence has somehow been forgotten.

 

Sounds like the people working for Women's Day! Seriously though, I think the press regardless of country will always try to sensationalise stories in order to sell. I expect hard facts in my daily newspaper, instead I am bombarded with opinions and creative writing. If I wanted creative writing I'd be reading a book. Even the facts they do report are carefully selected. You are shown the facts *they* want you to see. A grey area becomes black and white all of a sudden. The media is wonderful at polarising opinions.

 

One of the things puzzling me here is that people still cling to the 'a few bad apples' thesis, ignoring all circumstantial evidence pointing in a different direction.

Yes, a handful of apalachian hillbillies have cruelly maltreated prisoners. That's fact. There have been other cases, too - and there is the testimony of ex-detainees who were released as innocent, and so were only subject to punishment without trial by the U.S. gvt.

People made a big fuss about Clinton lying under oath and frolicking around with Lewinsky, and here we apparently have U.S. gvt executives ordering maltreatment of foreigners on a massive scale - in a saddening number of cases leading to their death - and people and public react lame and lukewarm at best, if not outright apologetic like FOX News.

Some of them, outspoken or unspoken, withdraw on 'Hey, at least we didn't pull out fingernails - so we're still better than Saddam!'. The horrors inflicted in 1984's torture chamber - Ministry of Love, Room 101 - were mental more than physical and were more effective for that reason. Nevermind.

How about all the unanswered questions? A senate investigation won't lead far anyway because I can't imagine a GOP controlled senate to really get tough on a GOP administration over this, so they will be AWOL here anyway.

Leaves press and public.

Why the consistent testimony about the role of 'other gvt agencies', that is CIA, and military intelligence officers guiding, say: throwing, the 'bad apples'? How about Rumsfeld ordering to 'gitmoize' Abu Ghraib - and how about that General Miller who led Gitmo and his trip to Iraq to promote the Guantanamo methods - and how about the sudden ememergence of Gitmo methods in Iraq, too, soon after?

It it's an aberration - why did the legal counsel and now attorney general of the president find it necessary to prominently deal with the Geneva Convention and the Convention against Torture in an essay long before Graner's jolly crew got busted? Torture and it's implications has been subject of dispute in the administration for quite a while before Abu Ghraib.

I think I understand why Gonzales made up this memo for the president. The Bush crew had decided to deal with terrorism using the tools of war only to find out that even there there was a price tag - like obedience to the Geneva Convention, the Convention against Torture.

They wanted it all, both ways, and for free, and right now and so they decided to use a tool, that might have made sense with high-level terrorists, on peasants picked up in broad street sweeps, just as you'd use a hammer to crack an egg - so they wanted to 'gitmoized' Iraq's prisons.
Here, one has to keep in mind that that sort of approach weas used in Afghanistan since the beginning.

In that light, Abu Ghraib style is basically not all that different than the siege and levelling of Fallujah, just your normal, that is hamhanded, neocon approach: Force, force, and if that doesn't work, more force.

The memo was legal backpedalling - after they first thought that war would give them more leeway to deal with terrorists, to get down and dirty with them, they found out that in fact there were stills rules to be obeyed. And they didn't like it.
The Pentagon leaders recognised that their orders, after the rules of Geneva and the CAT, would bring the grunts out in the field, and of course themselves, in danger to ge indicted for war crimes.

That is why Gonzales withdrew basically to the hypochritical line
'Oh, sorry, we would prosecute it, if it only happened on our territory and under or jurisdiction'

Still people say: Ah well, just a few bad apples, just rumours - you know - and other nonsense. How about this fictious one? 'These ex-detainees are just biased after we treated them like sh*t and locked them up for two years, so you cannot believe these disgruntled hacks'

And that's just crazy. America, where are your principles? 'Rule of Law' ... 'and justice for all'

One can't blame that on the media.

 

Because all the points you mention should be a part of the national dialogue over the self-serving policies that the Bushies have pursued over the last four years. The "few bad apples" scenario is what they are told by their government, through an uncritical media, and thus the American people believe it. Until the media moves such a dialogue to the forefront there will not be a serious challenge to the policies that are driving the Bushies, only the same old propaganda. The media is full of corporate nonsense, intended to drive ratings.

But FOX is for the devotees; it is the only TV "news" network devoted to an exclusive ideology, which is the self-serving ideology of the Bush administration. Thus there is a tacit agreement between those who watch it and those programming it that anything the Bushies proceed with is OK. In the meantime, they contniue with policies which bankroll themselves, their pals, and their schemes at the great expense of the American people. The Bushies are riding the gravy train for all it is worth, and in the process, disregarding basic human rights, civil liberties and bullying the rest of the world, and at the sametime, driving America into the ground. The rest of the American people are doing the only reasonable thing they can do, given the lack of a serious dialogue: tuning it all out.