From The Telegraph
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.And from Naomi Wolf...
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."
These photos go to exactly why Obama is burning what is left of the shreds of the Constitution by calling for preemptive detention for about 100 detainees. It ain’t because they are "too dangerous," his pathetic justification. It is because their bodies are crime scenes. It is because the torture, including possibly the sexual assault, they experienced is likely to be so horrific that if they were ever to have their day in court it is others whom Obama needs who would be incriminated.Humans are really fucking screwed up. Raping detainees? Sick bastards. Trying to sweep it under the rug? Just as fucking sick.
At least Clinton's sex crimes were consensual.
3 comments:
Can one abort ones self from the human race? I don't want to play for with this team anymore!
Evil has always existed and always will. I will never be able to understand how one person can treat another in such a fashion. Yeah I get made, yeah I have wanted to punch some faces a little... but it has never occurred to me to torture someone with water, ram a baseball bat into someones anus or to get a bunch of my friends to help me kick a kick to death because they were gay or dressed in all black.
I don't know about that... people do terrible things, and it sometimes seems like it's less to do with character than with opportunity and what they believe to be necessary.
I think it's naive to think that war won't result in terrible crimes. As soon as you start using force against people to control them, it opens the door to horror. We all know veterans from various wars, but we have no idea what they did during their time or why they felt compelled to do it. All of my grandfathers fought hand-to-hand in WWII, and they don't talk about it. Maybe they're war criminals. I'll never know.
I do know that I would do terrible, terrible things to protect my children. Intellect doesn't always trump instinct. It would be a lot easier to look at these things and call them evil, because it allows us to distance ourselves. Unfortunately, evil seems to be done primarily by humans (I don't buy into the idea that "the devil made me do it" -- it's a cop out). Those who hold out and refuse to participate when their time comes seem to be the anomaly.
Try reading Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men" -- it's a very disturbing look at how and why atrocities happen, and how the guys who do them are just like us.
Just because it is prevalent doesn't mean it isn't sick and/or abhorable.
More importantly, rape of detainees is torture and it is a war crime by the standards set in international law (which, let's face it, aren't really laws).
I also understand fully that war absolutely will result in terrible crimes. It is part of the reason I don't support ANY war. People everywhere need to refuse to participate in wars. They're worse for you than smoking a carton of GPCs every day.
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