Posted on 05/07/2004 7:59:33 AM PDT by van_erwin
Unlucky Lynndie England. She is the girl in the photo aiming at the genitalia of naked inmates at Abu Ghraib prison.
A New York Times reporter ain't gonna write her autobiography. The state Democratic Party ain't gonna supply her with a lawyer named Goodwin. "People" magazine ain't gonna take her to White House Correspondents dinner.
Unlucky Lynndie is the anti-Jessica Lynch.
The latter is blonde, the former brunette. The latter wants to be a teacher, the former plucked chickens. The latter joined the Army to get a job, the former really wanted to be a soldier.
Look, I know what sort of column I am supposed to write. I am supposed to denounce Unlucky Lynndie.
Certainly, I do not like what I see in the photos.
It is as if the late Robert Mapplethorpe got another government grant, this time to visit Iraq.
But just as I could not bring myself to write a Jessica Lynch column a year ago, I cannot bring myself to denounce Unlucky Lynndie.
It is not a matter of not wanting to pile on. I can be as impolite as the next guy.
No, it is a matter of the truth. Just as tall tales of Jessica Lynch vaporized a year ago in the light of day, this story may have holes in it.
Lynch did not go down in a blaze of glory. Lynch did not have body parts amputated.
I am sure that Unlucky Lynndie and her fellow soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company will be duly punished for their actions.
But let us get real about what those actions are. What we know today does not support the allegations by the Gazette of torture.
Sorry. Humiliation is not torture. Sleep deprivation is not torture. Lying to inmates is not torture.
Consider the words of "the man in the hood" as the (London) Independent described Hayder Sabbar Abd:
"Americans did not mistreat me in general. But these people must be tried.
"I can't tell you my feelings. The Americans got rid of Saddam Hussein. They told us about democracy and freedom. We are happy about that.
"Then (the soldiers) did this to the seven of us. I am asking, ‘Is that democracy, is that freedom'?"
The reports on Abu Ghraib prison began with Seymour Hersh, who copped a Pulitzer Prize for unveiling a real atrocity, My Lai in Vietnam. Since then Hersh has become a boy crying wolf about the American military.
Compared to the massacre at My Lai, this at its worse is schoolyard bullying.
One thing is clear: Intelligence officers were trying to extract information from these inmates.
This leads me to conclude that these inmates were not your average Iraqis. They were the bad boys.
I wonder how many of them tortured, raped and killed their countrymen at that very same Abu Ghraib prison.
As far as I know, no limbs were amputated to make the disgusting pictures we now see.
And I wonder just what sort of information was extracted from these inmates. I wonder what Sept. 11th was prevented because a few intelligence officers got the job done at Abu Ghraib.
How easy it is to dismiss Unlucky Lynndie.
The headline in the (London) Evening Standard said, "Trailer park girl turns into torturer."
Having spent time in London and six years living in trailer parks, I think an apology is due.
Just as inmates have their rights, so do corrections officers. I want to hear Unlucky Lynndie's side of the story before joining the parade.
Surber may be reached by e-mail at donsurber@dailymail.com.
Well, those guys posing there, smiling while they 'work' has cost us BIG TIME in credibility over there. I don't think this helped. do you?
Enemy POWs must be interrogated, and of course they won't voluntarily say anything. So for all of time, prisoners have endured less-than-pleasant treatment at the hands of their interrogators. Interrogation is nothing new or improper.
How they did it is the problem. Even if you cast aside morality and decency and all discussion of how bad this looks, etc, what they did was ineffective and stupid. Let's look at it from a purely functional level.
You want some guy to talk. He doesn't want to. So you strip him naked, put him on a leash and make him simulate gay sex? Put womens' underwear on his head? Pile guys in a naked pyramid and take pictures?
Good Lord, what an incredibly ineffective and stupid technique. Do you think that guy is going to talk now? No, now he hates us more than ever and he even hates himself. He probably thinks we are insane perverts. He's still not gonna talk, moreso than before.
Unfortunately, good old fear and pain are what makes men talk. Not humiliation. Not perversion or photos. Maybe spies in the cold war turned people with perverted photos, but not these muslims with prison antics. Someone came up with the bright idea to do stupid, ineffective stuff for interrogations. I doubt it was just the troops in the pics. I also doubt it was Rummy.
The man on the left basically made the decision that put the man on the right in a situation where the man lost his leg. Both men are seen jogging and smiling. The man on the right has obviously lost a lot. The man on the left has too. He will never be safe. His family will never be safe as long as they live. Many people want to kill them all.
Both men seem at peace with themselves....
Here is the funniest post on the Iraqi prison photos I have seen here in the past few days.
Remember, noone loves us(the U.S.). Our so-called friends or allies are only fair-weather, at best. Just remember recent history, i.e. France, Germany. And, when has the Arab world or street loved us. Never!!
The fact needs to be faced that most of the world and many in this country, including apparent American citizens, would dearly enjoy seeing the U.S. fail, and fail completely.
I'll bet those creeps were Ba'athist to the core, probably had dinner and drinks with Saddam, followed by rape runs along with Udai and Qusai! They're behaving like crybabies because VICTIMHOOD SELLS.
If being berated by a no-burka-wearing Western female is worse for them than being raped, electrocuted, fed to a shredder, and having their parts sent home to mama in a Hefty bag, then these guys are a bunch of pansies. No wonder our forces routed them so soundly last year.
I don't remember where this quote came from, but it goes like this: "Arabs are dogs, fit only to be whipped."
I stand by our troops, and only regret that they are not allowed to give these creeps the agony they truly deserve.
I agree with you.
The way so many Freepers
have so vilified
these prison soldiers
ties my stomach into knots.
Just a few days back,
a Freeper referred
to these soldiers as psychos.
This is the first time
in my life freeping
that I've considered taking
time off because I
just can't stand seeing
what fellow Freepers put up.
United We Stand.
EXACTLY!
They're going to hate us and snipe at us anyway, no matter the magnitude of our good works and charity. We might as well give them something to f*cking cry about.
If the fantasies of those anti-American cretins were true, their cities would be in ruins, their populations would be enslaved or dead, and American citizens would be taking and settling their lands for the Yankee Empire.
What a bunch of spoiled-rotten, pampered, spiteful, envious children. It must be pretty humiliating to our European distant cousins for the descendants of those they kicked out of the Continent to surpass them in every way. Except for maybe in wine, cheese, and crazed, utopian totalitarian ideologies of mass murder and genocide.
I don't have trouble facing that. I know that, and the media is definately included in that group. Now.... What does that have to do with this story?
Yep, give the perps a fair trial before a fast public hanging.
Sen. Warner, Kennedy, et.al., are grasping onto this, even though they probably knew about it while they are saying they don't. Anything to discredit this administration, which in turn discredits this country's effort to civilize and democratize the world.
And, the media has jumped on this with both feet because they dearly wish for the good old days of Vietnam and Watergate when they actually had credibility, in their own minds.
I don't doubt that thirty or more years of the sewage that passes for entertainment has permeated American society and corrupted working class rural whites as much as ghetto blacks and the country club crowd. The female in two of the photos grew up more than two hours from Charleston or Pittsburgh, but she was probably exposed to smut on a routine basis through cable and satellite TV, movies, popular music, and the Internet that would have made a Victorian era pimp or whore blush. The female was also indoctrinated with the dogmas of feminism and male bashing through the same media channels, with further support from the public schools she likely attended.
However, these morally debased working class whites from West Virginia and neighboring states were in this National Guard unit not to play S&M games, but to supplement their income and to express their patriotism. Patriotism, loyalty to a nation as an extension of your family, is a difficult emotion to suppress (though the mass media has been trying!). The ancestors of these "hillbillies" fought to free America from British rule in 1776, to preserve the Union in 1861 (northern West Virginia and the adjacent counties in PA and MD were pro-Union), and to fight in our foreign wars from 1898 to 2004 in numbers exceeding their proportion of the U.S. population.
The blame for the humiliation lies not with the Weekend Warriors, but with their superiors, whose ideas of pacification and "winning hearts and minds" are imbued with the same hubris and lack of common sense that plagued their predecessors in Korea and Vietnam. Rather than use the full weight of American firepower to crush the rebels, these "perfumed princes" and well-paid consultants seek to use what they regard as subtle strategies and psychological manipulation. Thus, they engage in these attempts to humiliate Iraqis who are mostly low ranking soldiers or irregulars in order to do police-type counterinsurgency work. What these self-styled experts forget is that half measures have not worked in the past, and will not work.
The effect of the "subtle strategems" of these so-called sophisticates is that what was won in the battlefield in 2003 is being lost in places like Fallujah in 2004. We need more MacArthurs, LeMays, and Schwartzkopfs, and fewer Achesons, McNamaras, and Powells. Furthermore, whether the revelation of the abuse was planned by enemies of our actions within our ranks (which is likely the case) or not, the net effect is that our "high ground" with regard to the Ba'athists and the Islamic extremists is undermined.
We need to win this war and get out. There is no substitute for victory.
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