Well, T-Dave, while I disagree with some of your last post, I do appreciate the more polite discourse, and even your acknowledgement on a few points.



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Originally posted by Dave:
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Originally posted by Dave the Wonder Boy:
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If four cops in L.A. beat up a suspect, that doesn't undermine the criminal justice system in California. Those are the actions of four cops, not those of the legal system of California. And those cops are accountable before the California legal system for the laws they violated.




Actually, I think it does undermine the legal system in California, and so did the rioters who protested when the cops in the Rodney King trial were acquitted. Perhaps you've picked a bad analogy.

In any event, we are not talking about 4 bad cops bashing a guy on the street. What we have here is an already volitile situation where many soldiers tortured prisoners, and who say they were told by their superior officers to do this.





I think the analogy is still a good one. Four L.A. cops wearing badges ostensibly represent the legal system of California.
But they were not acting in a manner consistent with California law, and they were charged with those violations.

Similarly, the 7 U.S. military police, their 6 superior officers who looked the other way and let it happen, and the 4 U.S. non-military intelligence interrogators who ostensibly encouraged the abuse, are all being prosecuted, either(the enlisted men) by military court or (the civilians) by U.S. civil law.
The law endures, the violators will be prosecuted. The U.S. is not, by any attempted stretch of the Arab or European press, who have had nothing good to say about the United States anyway, whether a month ago, a year ago or five years ago, no matter how well the U.S. was/is adhering to democratic principles.

The one part that bothers me is that I think the pre-set punishments for these prisoner abuses are not enough. To merely be dishonorably discharged or have their careers ruined is not enough. They should face jail time of at least a year or two each.

If the order for these abuses came from up the chain of command from the Joint Chiefs, Rumsfeld, or even Bush himself, democratic institutions will reveal the truth and oust the guilty.
( I don't believe for a second it goes even as high as the field commanders, but I want to put that argument to rest, regardless).
But if it did, Bush and Rumsfeld would be prosecuted, and democratic institutions would still be proven to endure, even in that worst-case scenario.

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Originally posted by Dave:
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Dave the Wonder Boy said:
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That's not a "strawman argument", it's your own lack of clarity, and your own wordplay and circumnavigation of your previously stated views. Or perhaps just your not fully realized understanding of the full ramifications of covering "the story" in the manner you suggest.


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The sad thing about the story and how it portrays U.S. democratic institutions is that it was disclosed by the "liberal press".
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Many Arabs are going to think, "oh, those soldiers are being court marshalled and punished only because the stories were shown on TV by an independent press".
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It took 60 Minutes to bring this to light. The photos were not disclosed by the US government in a "we're coming clean and we're willing to make amends" press conference. If not for 60 Minutes, the photos might never have seen the light of day, and the soldiers would have been honourably discharged at the conclusion of their tours. And many people in the Middle East, and elsewhere, are going to rapidly draw that conclusion from the damage control that the White House has mounted.
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So, hooray for the liberal press.
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A question for those people who believe in "an eye for an eye" justice..... Seeing the beheading by the terrorists of the American man no doubt makes many people think that the terroists should be treated in a similar manner. Its a barbaric crime, and many people understandably might think it deserves an appropriately gruesome response.
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Bear in mind that this crime was reportedly in response to the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers - clearly, this was disproportionate as well as inhuman and cruel. How do you think the American soldiers should be dealt with, if you believe in an "eye for an eye"? Wouldn't it also be inhumane to force them to engage in the same poses for photographers?



I say, screw the liberal press, for even concocting that notion.

As the TIME cover story article I posted makes clear, these abuses and photos are from the October 2003 to December 2003 period.

Letters reporting the abuses were written to Senators --both Republican and Democrat-- to military commanders in Iraq, to the civilian authority in Iraq (Paul Bremer's office), to the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs, to Rumsfeld's office, and to President Bush himself. Many of these inquired with each other, and yet all took took several months time to see that it was a real situation.

I dislike how this is portrayed as "Bush's failure of leadership". Everyone in the checks and balances system made a similar failure of leadership, for about 8 to 12 weeks.
But it was a short-term lapse, not a total failure of the system. Which I think is a reasonable period of time for questions of impropriety to be investigated.
It could have happened faster, but 8-12 weeks is not outrageous. It wasn't like this went on for years, unchecked.

Investigation began in January, and the military police in question were relieved of duty within days.
The investigation has been going on since January.
The involvement of the press (the liberal press) did nothing but compound, exploit, exacerbate and distort what truly occurred, before all the facts have been investigated, creating a distorted Arab rage that further endangers U.S. troops (specific example: Berg's beheading four days after the story broke).

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And yes, I did read your exchange with britney. I don't agree with your interpretation, that your exchange with britney gave any clarity to your prior comments that I somehow missed.
And I certainly always read the previous posts to a topic before I post a response.