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Dave the Wonder Boy said:
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Dave said:

Yet again, Dave, you are comparing American democracy to Nazi Germany, totalitarian China and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.



No, yet again, you are deflecting the true issue, by boxing my statements into a dismissive category.

I am comparing well-known atrocities over the last hundred years, and saying: these Abu Ghraib harassments by a few unauthorized U.S. soldiers, while a serious crime, are overblown by the media and partisan liberals and other anti-American groups worldwide in being falsely labelled as "atrocities".
Well they're not !
They're harrassments, they're abuses by 7 U.S. soldiers, that are being prosecuted and punished by the U.S., not by some outside power that had to come in and clean up some massive genocide that the U.S. perpetrated.

As opposed to slaughters, systematic abuse of authority, and mass graves evident in historic war crimes, and complete lack of disclosure and accountability in the other well-known atrocities, true atrocities, of the other nations listed.

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Dave said:
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Running an argument which says, "Look, compared to that, we're clean!" doesn't work.



That's not what I said at all.

I said these are crimes by these 7 U.S. soldiers, 6 superior officers, and 4 civilian intelligence officials.
And that they are being prosecuted, and were being prosecuted, by the United States, well before CBS made these events public, and that while these Abu Ghraib harassments are crimes, they cannot fairly be labelled the same as the well-known genocides and atrocities ( true atrocities) that I listed.
The U.S. military investigated and stopped these abuses itself.
To allege they are the same as real atrocities, and not just crimes, un-authorized and abberant within the U.S. military system, is just so much anti-American liberal partisan spin.




Well, hang on. You've just compared it again to Iraq's former regime.

You're saying, it seems, that there is only one standard. Everyone should be measured by the same moral yard stick. As a consequence, there is no comparison with Saddam's regime, the Jewish Holocaust, the PRC etc.

My issue is that there are two standards. This may seem a little unfair - that the US is jusdged by a higher standard than other tinpot regimes, but this is the essence of what Mccain was getting at, and I think it equally applies to other Western countries.

So are they "real" atrocities? There was no mass murder, no rapes (just the simulation of such), no unmarked graves. So, no, it doesn't compare to the Jewish Holocaust. But the USA is not Nazi Germany. There was certainly mental torture and huimilaition, and several allegations that it was done so on orders, and further it appears to have been systemic at least within that one prison.

The Us (and the West) holds itself to a higher standard. Turkey has been denied EU membership for a long time, and one of the reasons is systemic torture in Turkish prisons. US soldiers should be conducting themselves professionally, not like thugs. I think we can both agree on that, anyway.

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I didn't say '"we're clean".
I said that it's an abberant and unauthorized crime, not representative of the United States. An embarassment and an outrage to the military, people and government of the United States.
A crime, but not atrocity, not genocide, and not lowering the United States to same level as Saddam Hussein and other rogue governments that have perpetrated real atrocities in the well-established definition.
It's an embarassment to the U.S., it's an abuse that fell through the cracks, for a few months. But unlike rogue governments that commit real atrocities, the United States, far from encouraging such abuses, took full blame for the abuses, is prosecuting the guilty, and has revised policy to be sure the abuses are not repeated.

so... it does not lower the United States to the same level of governments that commit real atrocities. The two are not the same.
The United States takes responssibility and punishes the guilty.
The other governments do not.




Quite so.

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Dave said:
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The US holds itself to higher moral standards.



Yes, it does.
But apparently to yourself and other anti-Ameican elements, taking responsibility and adhering to thoise standards is the same as being a rogue nation that commits atrocities with impunity.




No that's not the case. Even if it was systemic and on the orders of a senior administration official, it would not be the case, for the reason you stated before: the democratic institutions would prevail, and the official would be brought to justice.

Now onto your most contentious point:

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Dave said:
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As for the "premature disclosure" by CBS.... how could any reporter worthy of the name not report a news story with those photographs? This is blame shifting: you can't blame CBS for reporting something the fault of which lies in a breakdown in the chain of command.



CBS could have waited until the investigation was complete before making a disclosure. They know the rage those photos will inspire in the muslim world, in the half-investigated, half-defined context they were released a week ago.
Responsible journalists, patriotic journalists, would have waited until the full investigation was concluded, before releasing inflammatory pictures that will only inspire more rage and violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.

Instead, it's another case of journalists going on the air, saying "We don't relly know what happened, but here we are on the air reporting it first and exclusively."

That's sensationalism, not journalism.



Three things out of that:

1. Your defintion of "patriotism" subsumes "independent reporting". I remember watching a reporter on CNN once who said he would not vote in the US elections because it would compromise his independence as a reporter. I have two views on this: first, media outlets should not be patriotic, because it subordinates their independent reporting to their allegiance to a government. Second, even if that is wrong, the most patriotic thing you can do is challenge your government, if you love your country (I know Rob doubts with this). Governments are at the behest of the people. Challenging a government on its conduct lets a government know that it is being watched, and this is to the benefit of the people. Blind adherence to a party line leads to totalitarianism, and undermines democratic institutions. Responsible journalism involves reporting without fear or favour. The consequences result from the conduct, not the reporting of the conduct. Blaming the reporting, as I said before, shifts that blame from the people who did it, and the organisation (the military) to which they belong to for allowing it to happen.

2. When would the investigation have been completed? If the reporters had waited an indefintie time, would they have been complicit in keeping the story secret? Isn't secrecy in a government's operations an anaethema to transparency in a democratic government, as well as a judicial investigation?

3. It didn't generate rage just in the Muslim world. Many people here, including myself, are repelled by the photographs and think that it casts a poor light on the US occupation, regardless of how representative it is of the occupation as a whole. That may not be fair to the many people trying to do good in Iraq, but something of this nature is going to inherently do that. Like it or not, it did happen, and reporting fairly on such an event is not sensationalism. I see it as an obligation by a fair and impartial press to keep people informed as to their government's conduct (the soldiers forming part of the government at the time).

Pimping my site, again.

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