Did Abu Ghraib shock your conscience?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Good to know that DNI Blair has a torture-loving Cheney-mole in his office. Not surprising though.
yes.
Yes it did.
Another argument for the banality of evil?
People just didn’t do their homework?
No, I was not shocked. What shocked me was the general public indifference.
So what now about the lies from Rumsfeld and others? Will we be told again to “move on and let history judge”? I’d rather let a jury judge. And what about the General who was court-martialed? Her defense was that control was taken away from her. It looks like she was probably right. Will there be a White House investigation? Will she be vindicated. Will those who lied to the public and Congress be punished? Oliver North was convicted of the felony of lying to Congress. What about Rumsfeld and everyone down the chain who lied about Abu Gharib? Or wouldn’t that be “bi-partisan”?
nothing is shocking at this point… put it all into the context: 50 percent of eligible voters do not vote. they’ve opted out of the system- nothing surprises them.
the other fifty percent? TOO busy keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.
A lot more people vote than you think. Minnesota almost hit 80% in the 2008 elections.
Booman, please, with all due respect.
we have to face this issue if we are serious about our “democratic republic”.
it’s not “what I think”. the statistics on this are well known. NOT enough people vote, period. a fifty percent rate is garbage.
until we repair this problem, we’re getting nowhere.
I just gave you the numbers. Over 61% voted. Make your point using facts, not made up facts.
Correction: you gave me the percentage for ONE state.
last time I looked, we have what? 51 states voting? I really hope you’re not pretending the nationwide statistic is 80 percent.
HERE’S THE FACT:
Only 54 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots during the last four decades of presidential elections.
unfortunately, Booman, you are making up “facts” to prove your concept of what is factual regarding actual vs. eligible voters nationwide.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_eligible_Americans_vote
I’m seriously considering joining that 50%. Choosing between Caesar and Pompey (or Edwards and Duke) doesn’t appeal to me.
contrary to the whiners and naysayers, not voting is in fact a vote– AGAINST the system we have.
but obviously that action alone is not enough to bring about the needed changes.
again, it’s more or less over for the democratic party in terms of basic credibility. they are not going to deliver on EFCA, single payer health care, Obama already flipped on FISA, and there will be no significant prosecution for torture.
add this to the long list of other major policies which just never get changed, and there’s a big problem for the so called democratic party.
I essentially agree with this. I was not personally shocked. As an amateur scholar of the Holocaust and a keen observer of the dark side of our government, it came as neither a shock nor a surprise. But I too was taken back a little by the “general public indifference,” at least for a little while. Then I thought about how willing the majority of this country is to ignore any inconvenient little disruptions in their complacency: election fraud, mountaintop removal, an illegal war, global warming, the destruction of labor, declining water quality and availability, the corporate takeover of the media, etc., etc., etc. Then I was too sad and too angry to be shocked or surprised, and then I threw myself into the political process and worked hard to get Obama elected,and petition, call, write, and generally harass the legislature, both state and federal.
And I don’t intend to stop.
Abu Ghraib shocked, horrified and sickened me but my conscience was clear in that I didn’t vote for Bush or support any part of the war in Iraq. I was ashamed of my government and knew immediately that it wasn’t a case of a “few bad apples,” that the rot came from the top down. I felt then — or rather hoped — that the world would see the distinction between those in control of the US government, at that time, and its citizens who would never approve of torturing fellow humans…
BUT, as this current public debate unfolds, as more and more citizens are voicing their approval of torture, my disgust is expanding and I’m beginning to feel more personally responsible. I should have done more, written more letters, made phone calls to demand immediate action from Congress. I should not have assumed that the wheels of justice would roll forward, slowly but surely, without being pushed — forcibly.
The other day, my husband, the ex-Marine, said he’d been thru SERE and it “wasn’t that bad… every soldier knows the risks of capture…” And I just exploded in his face: REALLY, did they hook electrodes up to your balls? Did they cut your dick with a scalpel — repeatedly? Did they waterboard YOU?
Well, no, he admitted sullenly. I ranted on: Then, don’t pretend for a minute that any of it is acceptable! Don’t justify one bit of it even in the recesses of your gung-ho indoctrinated brain! He had been falling under the influence of co-workers who are Rush-dittoheads and they are repeating this idea that TORTURE isn’t “that bad.” Gawd help us all!
I realize now that Obama’s election is not enough. The implied rejection of the Bush regime’s practices and policies is not enough. We MUST prosecute, we MUST punish, we MUST go thru the most public display of collective humiliation possible to eradicate every germ of thinking that torture is ever acceptable.
But that would be divisive and partisan and looking-backward.
You got two out of three right. It wouldn’t be partisan. A great many members of the current Democratic power structure would have to admit, at the least, that they failed to do their duty and beg the public for forgiveness. They’d have to explain how reading the words “water treatment” and “interrogation techniques” on paper didn’t fully impress them with the fact that what was going on was TORTURE.
And if it comes out that they actually read the OLC memos or other such documents, that they fully understood what was being done and condoned it then, they have to go to jail with Rumsfeld and Yoo. All of them are going to use the “I was told it was legal” defense and prosecutors will have to elicit just what was in front of them to determine for juries where it was obvious that certain techniques crossed the line into cold, cruel clinical EVIL.
I’m a reasonable person. I expect POW’s to be beaten and deprived of basic comforts. War is hell, ya know. But, when you’ve got medical personnel standing by and you’re systematically inflicting pain and duress… if they knew about that and allowed it to continue, they broke the law.
pelosi was fully briefed
she went along
she goes to jail with the rest of them
these things will never happen
people dont care….their conscience isnt shocked….they love 24 and jack bauer.
we now return to our regularly scheduled programming
You see, what does “fully briefed” mean… really. Pelosi is a grandmother, for goodness sake. I want to ask her, What did they say to you? What did you read? Did you realize that “water treatment” meant making someone feel like they were drowning? Did you understand that “harsh techniques” meant electrodes on genitals? I’d like to give her the benefit of doubt. I’d like to believe that she trusted them when they told her the CIA wasn’t doing anything illegal, that it had all been vetted by the OLC.
…when, awhile before these, other photos and descriptions surfaced, concerning how the captives were bundled and restrained while being transported for captivity. That all by itself was profoundly inhumane. After those, it was only a matter of time until the real bad news started trickling out…
I knew about Abu Ghraib and a lot more months and months before Sy Hersch “broke” the story, and Iraqis knew . Dahr Jamail, among a few others, was reporting clear cases of torture in American detention facilities, including torture that lead to death, by summer of 2003. Iraqis knew about it from their relatives who were released, some already dead.
Did it shock my conscience? The invasion shocked my conscience. Everything else that followed and continues to follow is fruit of that poisonous tree.
There’s only one answer and it better be the right answer or you’re a fucking scumbag.
Shocked isn’t the right word. Deeply disappointed, saddened, and defeated is more like it.
I was not in support of the invasion, but if Bush was committed to invading/removing Saddam I was clear in my mind that they absolutely can’t allow it to fuck up. It had to be done totally right.
I still think the management of the war was the greater crime because putting neocon ideology aside (the won the election, Congress went along) they still have a moral obligation to go to war prepared.
Anyway, the prison photos told me instantly that the war was being run incompetently and that we had just done nearly irreparable damage to our “cause” that would take years to dig out from.
I wrote the first letter to the editor of my local paper when Abu Graib broke. What especially got to me was a report that the whistleblower was ostracized from his home town for ratting out the thugs.
Following that letter I wrote several more and started calling my congressional reps every time a vote came up like FISA etc.
There were a few rebuttals published and I got phone calls at home by a couple of people calling me a commie and shit.
But more importantly (and astonishingly) strangers called to say thanks for expressing what they felt. They had felt abandoned and voiceless as the magnitude of the torture regime became evident. It is sad to consider that writing a letter to the editor in a small town newspaper was considered a courageous act. But I was told that too a bunch of times.
It was/is a sad crazy tragic time that our country is going through and Holder must appoint a special prosecutor to begin to heal the deep gashes that Bush/Cheney left on our nation.
Hell yes!!