A little hysteria amid the torture perspective, please

[troublemaker]

After reading 160+ replies to a similarly titled post I must say we are pathetic! A horde of over-excited posters crowing about how they're going to get the thread locked, the poster tomb stoned, etc.. The rules exist to allow civil discussion without disruption, not to provide a crying-to-mommy tool to validate the views of individuals over other individuals. Every one here has some views that royally piss off someone else here. If you think a post is disruptive then don't reply to it... that makes the post go away. But no, everyone has to go on record about what a good person he/she is so the objectionable post stays front and center forever.

re: the torture pictures The actions shown are indefensible. That said, it's embarrassing to see people trying to pump up their own self-image through showy, silly recreational outrage. War crimes! War crimes! I hate that woman!! She's the Devil!

I wouldn't want to hang out with that woman but she's not one of history's great villains. Christ, she's probably been raped by our own troops a few times already. (Again, an absolutely predictable turn of events) She's a dumb woman (little more than a girl) reacting to her environment in an ugly way. She may be half crazy for all I know. The problem isn't her innate evil, but rather the environment we have created and thrust her into.

If you don't understand that you might act just like that horrible woman in the right circumstances then you have learned nothing in life. I would like to think I wouldn't be broken by the war ethos... that I wouldn't sink to that level. But of course she probably thought the same thing at one point. Environmental factors do not excuse or justify her actions, but they suggest she's not the uniquely evil person some here seem to think. It's ever so easy to say she is EVIL, and we are GOOD. (It always helps to dehumanize the enemy)

The problem is the war itself. We all knew this would happen, right? This is the true face of war, right? So why focus blame on the individual soldiers? They are doing exactly what we all knew they would do. That's why war is to be avoided.

The prisoner abuser gets nothing but my disgust. I'll save my outrage for Bush for ordering actions that would inevitably lead to this and much worse.

[smiley_glad_hands]

1. Kick.

[brokensymmetry]

2. Now there you go, being rational.

Don't you realize that simply isn't done? (Yes, I'm kidding).

Seriously, you make some very good points.

[rumguy]

3. prepare for the incoming

[acmavm]

4. Right now she IS public enemy No. 1 because, AS I SAID IN ANOTHER

POST, American men and women who would never in a mllion years dream of doing that vicious, depraved, sick, sadistic crap are going to end up paying for it. Because right now, as we sit here and read and type, Arabs in the Middle East are absolutely outraged by these pictures, and they're freaking out. Journalists in the Arab world are writing columns about this, it is getting air time and news exposure like crazy. And now, even if there were any people left there who may have had a half-assed good opionion of the American people, it is gone now. But we'll sit here and we won't be the walking targets that the poor kids over there will be. (Crap, ended that sentence poorly, didn't I?). What these sick two-legged freak shows did was make Americans look depraved and vicious, and they're going to be asking us "Who has the rape rooms now".

edit: Just to clarify the fact that I think the 'rape room' thing was just a figment of bush*'s sick mind.

[troublemaker]

9. But is it really about her?

Arabs are outraged first and foremost because we are in Iraq. The rest is mere expression of that underlying outrage. The focal point of their rage drifts from checkpoint massacres to indiscriminate aerial bombing to an absurd flag to prison abuse, but the real crime was going in there in the first place.

I'm sure she's a dreadful person but if she lives to be 100 she'll never even begin to be as evil as Bush; a rich man with every opportunity in life who, after taking it all in, couldn't think of anything better to do than kill people.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

11. I disagree....synergism

She makes Bush possible Bush makes her possible...evil isn't measured in degrees but in opportunities to present itself...crimes might be measured in degrees...evil isn't.

[LibertyorDeath]

16. troublemaker, nothingshocksmeanymore is kicking your ass bigtime.

:)

[acmavm]

31. She willingly participated in this obscene action. She made that

choice, I don't see anyone holding a gun to her head. There were things she could have done, walked away, spoke out about what was going on, whatever. But she chose to be in those pictures, she chose to participate in the torture and torment of those people, and what's more, she looks like she thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean, those thumbs up signals are kind of a dead give away.

Is it about her alone? NO. Is she one sick cookie? YES. But her blatant ignorance is only topped by her lack of humanity and decency. And should hers be the only name out there? NO. But being a woman, the shock of her actions is even more repellant to decent people everywhere. But I say let's be fair. Release the names of all of them, because they deserve it and they have brought even more shame on this country, we who already have so much to be ashamed about. And let's not forget about the bush* administration, that nasty bunch of people who brought us to the point we are at today.

But my point is that because of her actions, American military personnel are going be put in an even more dangerous position than they are already in. Have you even read any of the reactions of the Middle Eastern media? And they are painting the entire American public with that same brush. Any possible hope of a reasonable solutions to the problems we are having now are pretty well down the old drain because these pictures just confirmed in the minds of almost all of the Middle East all the things that people like bin Laden have been saying for years; that we are a debauched, depraved bunch of repressive thugs.

[West Coast Democrat]

5. I was just outraged that apparently the poster saw those....

photos on some sort of porn site. I think that's how this whole prisoner abuse thing was discovered...because those photos were on the web somewhere.

It's gross. I just think the guy wanted attention. He was horny or something.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. I have enough outrage to go around and thanks for the lecture

but one HUGE problem with America is that people cannot recognize right from wrong. The fact that even on this web-site for so called progressives peoplewould use their sick sexual fantasies to minimize a war crime makes me all the more hopeless.

YOu might wish to notice that the thread starter set the pace by dismissing everyone else's opinions as hysterics which is not the first time that asswipe has used that particular rhetorical device in order to start a flamefest.


So ....save the lecture for someone else..the wonderful thing about free speech is that offensive fuckheads are free to be offensive and we are free to take them to task on it.

If rules are broken, that is the duty of the mods and admin to correct.

Personally, I think the thread starter started that thread with his member firmly in hand and is jacking off at the flamefest he started...

[West Coast Democrat]

10. I agree. And he'll be back soon..........

and I'm sure he's reading now.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

22. Right, nothingshocks, but what's the point of having posters whose primary

goal is to start pointless flamefests? Isn't that what board guidelines and moderators are supposed to prevent?

I noticed that you posted to that "instigator" that you "know" they are not a freeper but that they just post like one. First of all, how do you know this? And if by "posting like one" you mean they post inflammatory garbage designed to incite a flame war and than insult everyone who criticizes them with profanity and sexual terms, chuckling with glee at how easily people's buttons are pushed, how does that benefit the board?

It's not purely "free speech" on this board or else we would have all the John Birchers and Rushbots posting their RNC talking points all over here all the time. So I'd appreciate some clarification.

BTW I did a search on that "instigator's" name but couldn't find conclusive evidence one way or the other. It was merely their behavior on the thread that convinced me that they had nothing constructive to offer and just wanted to piss people off and laugh.

[troublemaker]

43. Perhaps he was drunk. (Friday Night and all) n/t

[SlavesandBulldozers]

7. oh?

maybe you should forward your concern to the Arab world, let them know how you feel about it.

And, I think you are gravely mistaken about how all real soldiers would behave in wartime.

[troublemaker]

13. Not ALL real soldiers

The atrocities are usually done by a small group, but without a war they wouldn't be done by anyone. I know I'd be likelier to be Michael J. Fox in CASUALTIES OF WAR, rather than Sean Penn, but likelier still is that I'd hang back neither committing atrocities nor putting my ass on the line to prevent them... just trying to survive.

This frigging war is making a Christian out of me... I just can't see casting the first stone at this rotten woman in such a target rich environment for stone throwing. I suspect much of the outrage is because she's a woman... it's a dog-bites-man thing. Somebody is holding the camera, right? There are a lot of people involved but she's the one in the picture, so she's the target. It's like TV news -- no picture, no story.

[mouse7]

8. All I have to say is...

...They disrupted poorly.

[drfemoe]

15. Well it FINALLY occurred to me!!!

The solution: establish a plethora of greek fraternities in Ira*!
Then they will realize - it's just all part of the FUN!! :nuke:

[slinkerwink]

18. thank god!

[nostamj]

12. how pathetic

and disingenuous.

the tombstoned originator of that thread blew off the torture/humiliation as nothing more than a "hoo-ha" fraternity hazing.

and then defended his POV with nothing but empty invective.

he never even attempted 'civil discussion' (you DID read it, right?)

[meow mix]

14. i know - whats so civil about such disgusting pukey trash?

this argument applied to that thread - makes no sense whatsoever.
*shrug*

[troublemaker]

19. The poster was a jerk

But so what? Why try to out-jerk a jerk? I guess it's just me, but the Salem witch hunt game is as offensive as a jerky post. Shutting people up is, as a general proposition, an ugly anti-American anti-Democratic thing. Shutting someone up may be nessecary, but it's nothing to be gleeful about. Ugliness begets ugliness.

His post wasn't much as civil discussion because it was inflamatory for the sake of being inflamatory, but the underlying "thought" had some validity--that the reaction here to the photos seems rather overwrought considering that we have killed innocent people every single day during this war.

Since the post was so stupid (it was) why does it have about 300 replies while interesting thoughtful posts sink almost unread every day? Because that thread became THE DAILY HATE. Grrr... Grrr...

[West Coast Democrat]

20. Because he was just too offensive to ignore

I couldn't bear to leave the computer until he was tombstoned.

[nostamj]

21. oh tell me about 'thoughtful posts sinking everyday'

but that was a sado-masochistic travesty that had to be challenged.

it went on WAY too long. (mods are doozing maybe, as they were alerted well before the lock)

and, i'm in a REALLY pissy mood tonight and was sucked in.

but, i did ask real questions (at the start)

and I'm no 'jerk'

thank you very much

[drfemoe]

23. And whatever we do ..

don't address stupidity or ugliness for what they are. Turn a blind eye. Then what would be the point of being here?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

28. Because the guy kept pushing people's buttons with his insulting,

baiting replies, and people took the bait.

[Pithlet]

17. When someone equates torturing human beings

with typical fraternity pranks, that's going to touch a nerve with most people. We're just funny that way.

[incapsulated]

24. This is my problem with your post

Your post makes a lot of assumptions. It assumes these people where somehow abused themselves and/or driven to act the way they did by the horror of war.

I know nothing about them and what their experiences were prior to these acts. For all I know they could have arrived in Iraq after the invasion and been there a few weeks, never seeing any combat or losing one friend.

I have a couple of close personal friends who are Vietnam vets. They have confessed to me things that they have done that would truly make this look like childs play. However, these were, at the time, teenagers, drafted into a horrific war, who had been fighting in the jungle for months and months on end, surrounded by death and fear. That they were driven, under such circumstances, to do what most people would judge to be criminal, is horrible, but understandable.

This group, however, needs a hell of a lot more background before they get any "understanding" from me.

[troublemaker]

29. I don't know either

But I'm hesitant to judge without knowing.

Though we have an all volunteer army I question whether our use of the reserves doesn't feel much the same as being drafted, in that this dumb woman probably had no notion she would ever be in a war zone and didn't chose to be.

God knows these folks need to be punished somehow, but I take no pleasure in the thought.

[incapsulated]

33. The only reason I am judgmental

Is precisely because these are not soldiers in the field. Nobody is shooting at them, killing their buddies, driving them mad with constant tension.

They are running a fucking prison and these people are at their mercy. This took time and deliberation, these weren't acts committed under stressful circumstances, they were in complete control of the situation.

That's what makes them scary. They were acting exactly like the guards that ran that prison before we came there. Sadistic and crazy.

[troublemaker]

41. I agree

There's a German movie I saw on cable recently called THE EXPERIMENT about a psych experiment where they divided volunteers into prisoners and guards. In a matter of days the "guards" were doing this type of stuff to the "prisoners."

I have very little sympathy for these folks, but I feel morally obliged to maintain perspective. Aerial bombers do terrible things with pure coldness and deliberation, but it doesn't have the evident malice of this prison torture business, and they (pilots) are following orders. Still, they do terrible damage.

The prison guards are clearly more fucked up than the pilots, but from the victim's perspective... given the choice of being sexually humiliated versus having a 2000 pound bomb dropped on me I wouldn't have to think too long.

Anyway, the whole situation is fucked up. I blamed people for things they did in Vietnam and then learned over time to not be so judge mental, so this prison business makes me more sad than angry. Everything about the situation is just fucked.

[incapsulated]

44. Well, you are right...

We like to make judgments about people based more on the circumstance than the reality of the damage. Just as we hold Bush ultimately accountable for all of this, and most would rather blame the individual soldier committing a specific act up close and personal.

They are all moral choices, and some are easier to rationalize than others. Some clearly take more mental instability to carry out than others, as well, but I think on some level, the psychic toll is the same. If you know that the bomb you dropped killed and maimed hundreds of people, regardless of the rationalizations and the distance from the event, there is a part of you that knows exactly what that means.

[BlueJazz]

25. I posted something similar to this before..

but it needs repeating. These soldiers have probably killed several of their own
comrades by performing the actions as they have done.
The soldiers who are captured from now on will be in grave danger that (perhaps) before this incident, would not even exist.

The pictures that will be in the minds of men who capture our soldiers from now on, will be a dangerous thing, indeed...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

26. The original post here is kind of the same points made as in the

other thread. The language is just toned down. No "buttfuck" and equating with frat pranks. I guess I just disagree with the thrust of it. We should be outraged at the mistreatment of our prisoners, as well as at Bush and the whole war. Most of us have plenty of outrage to go around.

[EV1Ltimm]

27. i'm disappointed.

and for those of you who are wondering, here's why i'm defending him right now...

with the precedent set in that thread, if i make 1 stupid comment or start 1 stupid thread, is someone going to "not log off until i'm tombstoned" or follow me around the thread and constantly remind me of how much they're going to enjoy having me canned? that's not a discussion that's a lynch mob. this kind of behavior shouldn't be condoned at all.

just my $.02

[incapsulated]

30. On the other hand...

There is a big difference between saying something "stupid" and starting what anyone who has that many posts should know is going to infuriate people here.

He got what he wanted, undue attention.

[EV1Ltimm]

34. that goes without saying.

but that thread would be unlocked, on page 4 with 17 posts if it wasn't for everyone chiming in with comments about the posters intelligence, alert notifications and smart remarks about his impending doom.

i say, hit the alert button, ignore the thread and move on to the lounge to talk about kittens.

[incapsulated]

36. Yes, well...

Some people prefer flame threads to kittens. That's their choice, and a political forum like DU is going to give them plenty of diversion.

God knows, I can't claim to be above wallowing into such threads on occasion. So, I won't throw stones. :)

[EV1Ltimm]

40. true

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

55. Right, but you are ignoring the original poster's guilt. He/she could

have just said, "okay, well we disagree", or "you know, I was a bit off base with that" but instead used every post to verbally flip everyone off, to "fan the flames" as was obviously their intent. Obviously it succeeded bigtime. It's true people shouldn't let their buttons get pushed so easily. But you seem to be condoning this sort of behavior by focusing on the respondents. It shouldn't be allowed on a board like this.

[West Coast Democrat]

32. It was one stupid comment after another and another and another

the guy was acting like a complete wacko. Maybe if he had said, "I'm sorry I offended all of you and I didn't really mean what I wrote. I was being stupid."

[EV1Ltimm]

35. himself and others kept perpetuating the cycle.

they'd insult, he'd insult, ad nauseum.

i'm sure out of his 1200 posts there were some insightful, well thought out posts. if everyone had ignored him (including myself, mea culpa) he'd have probably had moved on to some topic more productive. and no one would be cursing his name.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

37. I'm never sure of anything like that. After reading all those crappy

insult replies in that thread I could easily see the guy posting over 1K posts of similar crap, maybe spaced out enough and occasionally toned down, to avoid bannage.

[West Coast Democrat]

39. Perhaps some of his posts were insightful....

but suddenly he turned into a psycho pervert.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

42. Do a search and say that

[EV1Ltimm]

45. just did

they're not all well thought out, but they're not all crazy either.

but if i always thought before i spoke, i wouldn't say anything :)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

47. It's the written word

one can edit. One can retrospect.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

38. History matters.

His own travelled with him.

[troublemaker]

46. The perverse angle is that

if the guy's just a republican disruptor why would he care if he was banned? The whole Freep paranoia thing is very red scare-ish.

I worry about being banned all the time because I capitalize "Republican" and refer to the President as "Bush" or Bush II," rather than as * or chimpy-macSmirk or whatever. It's not a sign of respect, it's just English.

Speech codes suck. (I probably don't belong here anyway because I'm a die-hard civil libertarian, and when political attitudes harden civil liberties go out the window. One the other hand, it seems perfectly okay to bash Kerry here, which I would never do because he's currently all that stands between us and fascism.)

[incapsulated]

48. That's DU for ya

Hey, I've gotten in trouble for using mildly sarcastic comebacks that broke some rule that I forgot because the list is too long and subjective.

Don't even get me started about the banned words. :puke:

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

50. I think you think others got him banned

I disagree. There are posters who are Republicans who post here and people who post the controversial.

In every conversation, it's not just what you're saying, it's who you're being. If he had no history of being disruptive, freeper or not, I don't believe he would be gone.

If you are a civil libertarian then certainly the notion of personal responsibility isn't lost on you.

And civil liberties are preserved here. We all post at the pleasure of admin and since it is their site, they are free to terminate our account ( on their property, a just as important civil liberty) if they feel we suck more life out of the place than we inject.

[incapsulated]

52. But

Didn't this guy, who I admit I don't know, have over 1000 posts? He managed to function here without getting banned until now.

I don't know anything about him and his history, though. This isn't my usual forum, I'm in the real mudslinging forum, usually (Campaign). Or, at least it used to be. :)

[troublemaker]

54. He may have snapped

There's a lengthy thread about how the woman isn't human, a dumb bitch, white trash, and so forth.

For some of us Republicanism has less to do with policy than with tone and method. We prefer to think lynching is more a Republican thing and get very upset when progressives start talking like Republicans. Lots of comments about that woman made here at DU are similar to Free Republic doesn't-it-feel-good-to-lose-my-temper exaggerated public virtue posts.

None of that excuses his tone, but not every reply was exactly Noel Coward. It was an ugly thread all around.

[Old and In the Way]

49. I don't know enough to make an informed decision.

I seen a few disgusting pics of this girl who obviously looks like she's enjoying the humiliation/torturing of the prisoners. But would this be irrefutable proof of her criminality? I honestly don't know.

On the strength of the pics, she appears guilty, but I'm wondering if I know the whole story. Jessica White was cast as a war hero when the story initially broke, but the facts later painted an entirely different picture. Could this be Jessica, in reverse? I don't know.

[incapsulated]

51. Under the Geneva Convention, Yes

Her participation would be criminal, I would think.

It wasn't just the photos though. They only reinforced the stories about beatings, rape, mental and emotional torture (if you fall off this box, you will be electrocuted), etc. etc.

[Solly Mack]

53. The pictures alone are proof of her committing a war crime

Pictures that humiliate detainees/EPW's are against Geneva..as are actions that would cause humiliation-even without pictures.

She's guilty under Geneva. She's guilty under the Law of Land Warfare.

All those soldiers who participated are guilty.