How did the issue go from horror at any torture to what level is accceptable? Makes you wonder if the release of the photos was on purpose in order to get torture legalized. Yeah, yeah, that would mean the Bush people would have to be smarter than they seem. However…
How the Abu Ghraib images lost their power to horrify
At the time [the photos were released], we referred to Abu Ghraib as a “scandal.” The images were a searing reproach to virtually any American with a soul and a conscience.[…]
But in hindsight, Abu Ghraib wasn’t a scandal for the Bush administration. It was a coup. Because when the Senate passes the president’s detainee bill today, we will, as a country, have yet more evidence that yesterday’s disgrace is today’s ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years.
So, what happened between April 2004 and September 2006 that has so deadened American outrage? What has made Democratic senators who were prepared to filibuster over a judicial nomination unwilling to do so now, or even to express horror over the brutalization of enemy prisoners? Is it that in the intervening time we have made a hero out of 24’s Jack Bauer, a man who tortures so that the rest of us may walk free? Is it that if you see enough “iconic” photos of a man in a hood with electrodes, they lose their ability to turn your stomach? Or is all the legalistic jive talk—the brazen congressional hairsplitting over abuse that results in “severe” vs. “serious” vs. “extreme” pain—numbing us to the reality of what remains unconscionable conduct?
Reality check, what happened at Abu Graib was not torture. It was humiliation and it put the US in a bad light, but it wasn’t torture. Torture is sticking spikes up the anus of prisoners, cutting off limbs, and pulling off fingernails. These are some of things Saddam did to his prisoners. And if you really want to know torture, just research how the Japanese treated their POWs in WWII.
While what the US did was embarrassing, lets not confuse it with real torture.
I believe that just like pictures of Katrina devestation do not portray the true devestation where sometimes video footage does, still images of torture do not give Americans a sense of what is really taking place. If they were to see video, even a portrayal with actors, I’m sure people would think differently about what went on there.
Funny how recently cnn showed some of the tactics being used with poorly rendered cg characters – water was being splashed on them and there was a stereo on a table in a room.
see for yourself what I mean about katrina..
compare http://tinyurl.com/n8va7
to
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ubbjgLDKGyk
gquaglia: But that’s exactly the point. At the time of Abu Ghraib, many were considering what happened there as torture according to the Geneva Conventions. Now it’s what level of “real” torture is OK and for whom. The argument has changed.
Uncle Dave, for people like us, torture is objectionable to say the least. But we have to look at the history of the Bush people who are mainly Christian Right and Southerners. These people take delight in seeing othes suffer. Never forget the postcard lynchings that they sent among themselves in the early 20th Century. This is historical fact that they took amusement and pride in other’s torture. Bush and the people like him have a Hitler gene that is embedded in their very souls. Sure, they have been able to mask this so that they can get on with their dirty, secret lives without bringing attention to themselves. Abu Ghraib is an exposure of these sick fucks. They are depraved human beings with a “God” that takes satisfaction in the destruction of human liberty.
No, it was Lewinsky under the desk in the Oval Office.
RBG
Abu Graib was not torture. It was humiliation
You’re an idiot.
People DIED from what happened to them at Abu Graib and places like it. You don’t DIE from embarassment, you buffoon.
These people are criminals…..they are not citizens of this country…….The do not have the rights that we do here…….that is not to say that I am ok with hurting these people to get information, but give me a break a little humiliation? Are you that concerned with the “feelings” of these pieces of garbage? Man you libs its all about not hurting anyone’s feelings even if that means that we will be less safe or you have to compromise your morals…..what a joke…..get beck to the real world here. What these idiots when through is no worse than what some kids go though in 12 years of public school
I think this guy is on the right track:
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=7074
If we want to prove that our methods are not torture, we should be willing to use them against our own people.
Have our Senators & Representatives place their names in a hat, and draw a few names – winners to be waterboarded in the Rotunda of the Capitol, in front of the Press Corps.
What fun!
See how long the Republicans can hold-out before agreeing to vote for Hillary!
Find out how long the Democrats can resist admitting they want to privatize Social Security!
Just imagine the sound-bite quotes: “Wow!, that was intense! – but not extreme… Not by any means.”
Dave, are you really mad about what happened at the prison, or are you mad that the left is so weak they couldn’t leverage it?
#6 you are very naive, best you go back to watching survivor and American idol and leave the real business of the world to those who know better. The insurgences would have used any excuse to kill. It is you who is the buffoon.
#4 More anti Bush dribble with no real point. I refer you to what I told #6.
The frog is pretty much cooked right about now.
I don’t think the I.Q. of the Bush team was ever be in doubt. These guy managed to get a C- president elected twice. Seems pretty smart to me…
I am definetly not happy with the left not filibustering this until habeus corpus was reinstated. What “used” to make us better then terrorists were of freedom and our fair and balanced trial system, now we are the terrorists,
The Japanese tortured, The terrorist dont have any respect for humanity why give it to the terrorists?
Because we are better than that. This is a slippery slope which will eventually lead to the destruction of all our morale values, becuase the terrorists dont have any. If we give into the terrorist we are no better than them, humiliation, torture, an unfair trial, guilty until proven innocent, its a mockery of what we stand for. This is not being weak against terrorism, this is being morally strong against an evil adversary.
If we give into our fear and hate we will surely lose the war on terror.
you call what was dipicted in the Abu Graib photos “torture”?…. it unamerican for sure… but torture??? ppl still don’t seem to grasp that a radical faction of moslems have declared a terriorist war against the west… and did so along time ago and no amount of denial is going to make them go away. seems to me older “60’s” type yippies insist on framing this debate in terms familar to themselves… a hegelian thesis vs antithesis dialetic that states america is alway wrong and others, no matter who they are, be it communists or radical moslems, always right. this type of 60’s type antiestablishment rederic of blaming the victim not the criminal and “make peace not war” cut and run leaving you friends and allies in the lurch may have worked in the 60’s, but i don’t think it’s going to do it this time… seems to me the lesson of 9/11 is we can run..ie bill clinton… but we can’t hide.
#7, Rob,
These people are criminals…..they are not citizens of this country…….The do not have the rights that we do here…….that is not to say that I am ok with hurting these people to get information, but give me a break a little humiliation? …
Why do you say they are criminals? Were any of them found guilty by a Judge? Or, were they just being softened up to find out what they know, even if they didn’t do anything except be Iraqi.
Being an American is irrelevant to the issue. The vast majority of people held in Abu Graib and other prisons were picked up in sweeps that grabbed more innocents then bad guys. All someone needed to do was say their neighbor was a Baathist or sympathizer to be picked up. There didn’t need to be any evidence.
When you say a “little” humiliation, are you including scaring a prisoner to the point the soil themself? I understand you wouldn’t mind putting the womens underwear on their heads, shoot, if you can wear it all the time, why can’t the prisoners. Hey, but you’re not OK with hurting them a little bit. So if no one got hurt waterboarding the prisoner that would be OK. Or because severe cold isn’t painful, that is OK too. I guess you could say the same thing about long periods of loud music not hurting.
#14, so what is your point? I see a lot of drivel. Unintelligent sure, but what are you trying to say? You need a new key board because that doesn’t work? Or would you just be demonstrating your pseudo intellect? Or you are just trying to let everyone know you are an idiot.
#15
Why is it that all you libs always resort to making fun of the opposition instead of dealing with the real issues. Could it be becuase you dont really have any solutions?
This prisoner lost their right to exist in my eyes.
Rob, what if, for a second, you put yourself in someone else’s shoes? An innocent man, but you were picked up in a sweep with some suspected terrorists… first you’re being humiliated, now you’re being water-boarded…
Anyone who goes through that experience would surely be against this kind of treatment. When you come right down to it, it’s really a failure to see from other perspectives than your own that causes many social ills.
david,
So we should really just stop doing anything to anybody because they might not have done what we think they did. why put people in prison at all they may not have done what we think and they did and we might hurt someone’s feelings
Who cares if they lost their right to exist, that doesn’t make torture ok, just execution. I think what changed in a few years isn’t the aversion to torture, but Democrat overreaching as usual. When Nancy Pelosi and Co. cheer getting terrorists into courts and released, then people went the other way. The above posters are right, that by and large what Americans saw at Abu Ghraib wasn’t torture, it was humiliation, and Fusion is right that people died there from actual torture, but for the most part, those details are just written and not in pictures. The aversion to Abu Ghraib was because that wasn’t for intelligence purposes.
# 4 0113addiv ,
Say what you want about Bush and the Christian Right but to blanket all Southerners just shows you are bigoted as any Klansman ever was. Please keep in mind that both B. Clinton, who the left loves so much, and the log that Bush beat the first time around were both Southerners.
#20 – Last I heard, “a trial by a jury of your peers” is a little bit different than “just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
24. “I don’t understand the madness of fear that’s infected so many seemingly normal Americans, however.”
Four crashed passenger jets, three leveled skyscrapers and nearly 3,000 dead in one go tends to do that to some people. Others just want to do something about that.
Re-read your post and then tell me who is infected with the madness of fear. eg: “They’re lying and trying to better control their population.”
RBG
“Because we are better than that. This is a slippery slope which will eventually lead to the destruction of all our morale values, becuase the terrorists dont have any. If we give into the terrorist we are no better than them, humiliation, torture, an unfair trial, guilty until proven innocent, its a mockery of what we stand for. This is not being weak against terrorism, this is being morally strong against an evil adversary.”
Exactly right, and when the American people feel comfortable with torturing our enemies, then hey, maybe a little of it on our own dissidents in this country is in order,. Its called conditioning, the Neocons have learned it well from the Nazis.
I would much rather deal with the terrorists than the loss of freedoms from our own government. Other countries have been dealing with terrorism for a much longer time than we have. You dont see them wetting there pants every time a so called “threat” emerges. Its something we will have to learn to live with, but not let change our system and way of life. To do so is defeat. I think a lot of the so called threat is a diversion to get the Noecon agenda into place.
Still objectionable here.
Like I said, the only ones I hear crying are people like yourself, the rest of us are determined to do something about things rather than just taking it quietly as you would have it.
RBG
“Abu Graib was not torture…”
Electrodes connected to testicals… not torture? Prisoners beat to DEATH… not torture?
I BEG TO DIFFER. I’m retired USN. What I saw was TORTURE.
Another Left Wing Liberal Nut post from Uncle Dave.