Sam Harris

New abuse photos from Abu Ghuraib . I feel so angry when I see these photos. I can't believe the depravity. This will spawn 1000 (a humble estimate) more mujahideen.

I’m kinda neutral on it. 
The soldiers who broke the law (and then took pictures of it) are idiots and deserve to get punished, but I get way more angry at the muslim world for their response to it (murderous riots, jihad). 

And I’m sure a lotta those pics can be explained away.  Sure theres pics of bloody prisoners and blood on the floor, but that’s probably because they were injured while fighting US forces and are being treated now that theyre in the prison infirmary.  One of the pics is even of a medic with latex gloves on.  So if anybody thinks they were being beaten they’re probably wrong, you don’t put latex gloves on to beat somebody up.

That just leaves a few pics of prisoners being stripped and embarrassed.  I know it’s way wrong, but I’m not really too offended by that.  That’s probably a shocking thing for some people to hear, so sue me.

The images are, as the state department’s legal adviser put it, disgusting. Chained, terrified and humiliated Iraqis people the photographs.

One man - apparently deranged - slams his head against a wall while a video camera runs.

Detainees are forced to perform sexual acts. A young girl holds up her shirt, bearing her breasts for the soldier’s camera.

A man stands naked and smeared with excrement.

These new images seem to depict abuse worse than anything we had already seen.

They imply much greater violence. Empty cells inexplicably spattered with blood, a man with a serious gash across his throat, another with blood leaking from a head wound, corpses, a torso dotted with small circular wounds - are they cigarette burns?

A few of the images appear to have been taken for medical purposes. Most do not.

They are all fresh and awful reminders of what happened in Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

More here .

——

Once you lose your humanity, it’s all over.

This is really, really, really, really OLD NEWS! 

However, that will not stop the NYT, the main stream press, Algazeera, etc. from exploiting it and making it front page headlines for the next several weeks, trying to stir up anti-Bush and anti-American sentiment, and riots in the “Arab Street”.

BTW, unlike many Americans who have been taken hostage, it appears to me that these people still have their heads attached.

You got it CA. Photographing this crap, much less doing it had to be the the most idiotic thing I’ve heard of.

Except that I was wearing some panties that said “Saturday”, all the pictures remind me of my fraternity hell week…just no blood involved back then…and no dogs. But hoods, pileups, strain positions….familiar. I wonder if some of the soldiers were Sigma Phi Epsilon?

Blindfolded and with vaseline in my nose “to kill the smell”, I had to take a bite out of a “turd” (mashed banana and chunky peanut butter) that I had to grab out of the toilet. Barf!!!

More if you’re interested.

Rod

Um the cells aren’t “inexplicably” splattered with blood, I explicted’ the reason for you.

They were wounded while trying to blow up US troops most likely.  A few soldiers can get out of line and flash their breasts at inmates but theres no way they tortured them.
The Iraqi who was beating his head against the wall was probably trying to rough himself up so that knee jerk americans would jump directly to that conclusion.

Your really suggesting a lot by trying to say differently with the cigarrette burn remark and such.  I’ll bet you anything that that Iraqi bastard was wounded from his own IED. 
Hell, the medical pics could have been taken as PROOF that the Iraqis were wounded before they came to the prison, but just seeing the pic of it with no context makes it look really bad. 

“Chained, terrified and humiliated Iraqis people the photographs. “
Aww, the poor terrified Republican Guard soldiers who years before were raping and killing innocent people and only hours ago were trying to kill our troops.
Cry me a river

Mega dittos to you MAC!  Truth be known it was Bill and Hillary and Ted Kennedy who orchistrated this whole thing to make Bush look bad and got the financing for it from the same Jews who flew the planes into the trade center.

Oh come on don’t be like that!
I’m not a fruitcake conspiracy theorist.  I just know how those troops operate and their not torturers, they’re just idiots.

You seem to have a blind faith in America mac. You “know” American troops don’t torture? The blood (which is in the prison cells) was “most likely” caused by them trying to blow up Americans? Most likely, you’re absolutely wrong.

You’re full of guesses and trying to pass it off as truth.

[quote author=“mac”]Aww, the poor terrified Republican Guard soldiers who years before were raping and killing innocent people and only hours ago were trying to kill our troops.
Cry me a river

Ummm, did they have a trial so you know that they were from the Republican Guard? Actually, the Abu Ghraib prisoners:

fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

And:

A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained—indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

Some MIGHT be from the Guard but who knows? Some MIGHT not have anything to do with anything. America has evaded the rule of law and justice throughout this war (though it is good that some people were locked away for this, though nobody senior was dealt with) and it is causing them more and more problems as they go.

“The Iraqi who was beating his head against the wall was probably trying to rough himself up so that knee jerk americans would jump directly to that conclusion”

You really believe that? I’m sure as he was slamming his head against the wall he was thinking “This will trick those knee-jerk Americans, if this video ever gets leaked out into the public!” Come on.

Your really suggesting a lot by trying to say differently with the cigarrette burn remark and such. I’ll bet you anything that that Iraqi bastard was wounded from his own IED.

That “Iraqi bastard” (are you racist as well?) could have been a simple family man but picked up off the streets by the Americans because somebody somewhere “suspected” he was someone worth worrying about. And it’s unlikely he could in any way inflict those wounds on himself which are just above and over his backside.

A few soldiers can get out of line and flash their breasts at inmates but theres no way they tortured them.

Actually, the breasts were of a young girl (looks under 16) - and she was forced to expose them at the behest of the Americans. This is called sexual assault and the man would be locked up for doing this in our countries. There is also instances of forced sodomy, forced masturbation etc. Are these crimes or not? http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/

Americans done this shit and it’s wrong. Can’t see why that’s so hard to admit.

[quote author=“treblinka”]Thanks should be forwarded to Donald Rumsfield, Condi Rice,
and the Neo Con team who placed our troops into this debacle. 

This motley group of trotskyites ( descendants of Leon and friends)
proves how dangerous it is to allow zionists and other pro Israeli

OK I gotta hear this one.

How are the neocons trotskyites?

I’m not trying to pass anything off as truth, that’s why I use phrases like “most likely” and “could have” you retard! 
I’m not the one making the claims here!  I’m just defending the servicemen because I was one until a few months ago and I spent enough years in uniform to know how the military operates.  There are plenty of below average IQ’s in the service but not a lotta sadistic torturers.  Scumbags get weeded out pretty quickly in an envirornment like we had. 
I actually posited pretty reasonable theories about what happened in the pictures, and your brilliant argument against them is something like “do you really believe that?”

YES.  I really believe what I said.
I believe that the Iraqi who was slamming his head against the wall was doing it to rough himself up and make us look bad.  Saddam is claiming he is being beaten while in custody.  Same exact type of thing.

“”“”“” You really believe that? I’m sure as he was slamming his head against the wall he was thinking “This will trick those knee-jerk Americans, if this video ever gets leaked out into the public!” Come on. “”“”“

YES.  That’s exactly the kind of thing they do.

I REALLY BELIEVE that the pics of blood are explainable.  People bleed in war.  Doesn’t have to mean there was torture. 

I REALLY BELIVE that the Iraqi with the wound in his lower back was not burned by cigarettes, but was wounded in battle with US troops. 

“”“”“”“”“"That “Iraqi bastard” (are you racist as well?) could have been a simple family man but picked up off the streets by the Americans because somebody somewhere “suspected” he was someone worth worrying about. And it’s unlikely he could in any way inflict those wounds on himself which are just above and over his backside. “”“”“”“”“

So you accuse me of guessing by guessing.  Great debating and logic skills. 

Oh and for the record, I have great disdain for middle eastern culture.  I’ve been around the globe a few times and I’ve never felt the palpable sense of evil that I felt while in UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. 
Ever been there? It’s a huge festering shithole.

you retard!

And in reply, great debating skills. This is getting ugly. Believe what you want to believe, despite evidence to the contrary. It’s all about faith anyway. I suppose that guy shoved that thing up his own butt and that underaged Muslim girl lifted up her top out of her own will, as we all know Muslim girls are want to do. Anyhoo .

And yes, I have been there. Shithole? Yeah, a bit like Europe before the Enlightenment - and that’s when Muslims were on top of the world and looked down upon us. They are at a different level of development, they’ve yet to go through anything like the Enlightenment and it’s not at all probable that they will. You probably felt that evil ‘cause you were there as a serviceman (if you were there as a serviceman). I’m sure if an Arab military were in your country, you wouldn’t be running to hug them either. In fact, I assume you would be the first one to cast them evil glances.

Muslim culture has got a lot wrong with it by our standards, but that doesn’t mean we should treat Muslims as less than human beings. They need to be enlightened - it’s a massive task which may not even happen - but that’s all.