The Telegraph reports (via The Daily Beast) that retired Major General Taguba says the unreleased photos of detainee abuse show rape and sexual abuse taking place. These descriptions seem to immediately refute the argument, put forward at the point when Obama did his U-turn, that there is nothing new that these pictures say about Abu Ghraib. "The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it," Taguba says. Yet Obama was quoted saying, "I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib." Sorry: something doesn't add up here.
Maybe we don't need to see the pictures if they're so horrendous. But we do need to see justice taking place. Trite assurances that the individuals have been "identified, and appropriate actions taken" is just not good enough. At the very least we need a detailed, independent account of the crimes committed which these photographs provide evidence of, the names of the people involved, and detail of the punishment the perpetrators received. Are these people in prison? Or did they just get a demotion and told not to do it again? We just don't know. Were these actions ordered from above, or were they a product of an atmosphere of inaccountability at the local level? Let's face it, we never got adequate answers to these questions back when Abu Ghraib first broke. Why should we be satisfied with such weak, internally contradictory, and possibly misleading statements now?
Think Of the Children
1 hour ago
5 comments:
Until the photos are released, such rumors and stories will simply spread and escalate.
Until the photos are released, no matter how bad they are, people will imagine even worse.
Until the photos are released, jihadist rabble-rousers will stir up the Muslim world with speculation, perhaps even creating and distributing fake photos worse than the real thing (as they did with the Muhammad cartoons).
Until the photos are released, the administration will never be able to even begin getting past this.
I don't know if it's true, but I heard that he recanted. I could be wrong, but I think that's what I heard. No matter, I still wish Obama had released the pics. Thx Alex. MB
AS long as the pictures remain suppressed, I will simply imagine the absolute worst---------
Mothers forced to butcher their own children with jagged pieces of broken glass, drink their children's blood and eat their kids' steaming intestines at gunpoint.
And then the waterboarding begins.
Hey, it's the Bush adminstration we're talkin' about here. Anything is possible!!
There's worse things going on in the world than the abuse of a few prisoners in a warzone. You're blowing it all out of perspective...it's a terrible situation, but you can be assured that millions of people are doing worse things in the world.
In the last few days thousands have been killed in African civil wars, a British prisoner has been executed in Mali, there have been numerous violent, sickening murders and sexual assaults around the world.
Why are you focusing on this, just because it's US soldiers taking part? It's just another part of the victimisation soldiers who are bravely fighting on are subjected to. Yes, they have stepped out of line; blogs like this, though, just give armed forces a bad name, when it is merely a minority. The culprits should be reprimanded and told if anything of the sort happens again they will be dismissed and charges will be pressed. We can't afford to lose any good troops.
See the big picture.
Well, a fairly obvious difference is that the people being killed in African civil wars and the British prisoner recently killed in Mali were not killed/abused by us. And in both cases our governments go to great lengths to condemn these activities.
If the governments of the United States and Great Britain want to adopt a realist position that they don't care about these issues - because "the big picture" is about ensuring Western dominance over the world and if some people get abused along the way, etc. - then fine. But they don't. They adopt a position of moral superiority precisely because they claim to hold to a higher standard of conduct than their enemies. I don't see what's wrong with then holding them to the standards they profess.
Moreover, the claim that the army is being victimised by me is, frankly, nonsense. I think with hundreds of billions of dollars of weaponry and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, they can probably get over the terrible damage caused by little old me. This is not to mention the fact that at no point have I ever said that this kind of abuse was endemic to, or reflective upon the armed forces in general. In fact, I think I've made it fairly clear that I believe this is a policy that stemmed from civilian politicians.
So I don't see how this is a case of me giving the armed forces a bad name. The people who conducted this abuse were the ones who gave the armed forces a bad name.
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