Rumsfeld Apology Fails to Calm Arab Anger [warning: graphic photos]

YAHOO News ^ | Sat May 8,11:28 AM ET | By Andrew Hammond

[Catspaw]

The incidents anger me because of how it makes the rest of the military look among decent people.

Our local Army Reserve unit just returned from Iraq. It's a Civil Affairs unit and they spent a year getting hundreds of schools up to snuff--and there were collections in the area to send over school supplies for the kids--as well as working on infrastructure--water, electricity, etc. I don't want to see their work and the work of so many other fine units in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard to be dragged down by these idiots.

[FreedomCalls]

"He¹ told me they² took their² rifle butts and knocked out all their³ teeth, young and old"

The quote annotated for your reading pleasure.

1 = The man Race Bannon worked for and U.S. soldier in Germany.
2 = The U.S. soldiers
3 = The German POWs

He wasn't saying the POWs knocked the teeth out of the dead soldiers.

[prairiebreeze]

Why does their anger matter so much??

Their anger gets MUCH better press than ours does.

Prairie

[ArmstedFragg]

Interestingly enough, if the Iraqi blogs Road of a Nation and Iraq The Model are any indication, the "Arab Anger" doesn't extend to most of the Arabs who live in Iraq.

I guess you have to be a Jordanian consultant or former Saddam administration flunkie in order to get quoted.

[RaceBannon]

You dont love the man who is trying to kill you, you kill him first.

Loving an enemy does not include letting him kill you to prove it.

[Bob Eimiller]

The mental illness of liberalism has reached epidemic proportions... I certainly hope it can be eradicated but I have a feeling the disease may have a terminal effect on our liberty.

[RaceBannon]

Then let me explain it in more detail

The Germans peed on the dead Americans

The Americans who were guarding the Germans, used their American Rifles and knocked out the teeth of the Germans

Eisenhower also allowed the death of 10,000 Germans or more, some think as many as 100,000 at the end of the war. We kept them behind barbed wire, didnt feed them, no toilets, they died from dysentary.

Also, Ike handed back many Poles who fled to the west to escape the Russians, only to have IKE send them back to the Russians. I worked with one Polish man who wa almost sent back, but his Dad fled to Britain before the war, and when they made it west, they were able to meet up with him, and he brought them home.

The officer in charge of sending the camp back to Russian held Poland was later an Army officer in the Ct National Guard, and this man met up with him later in the late 50's and told him off as much as a Lt could tell off a Major. He told the Major all the people's names he knew were sent back to face a Gulag.

So, all this talk that Americans are so pure that we wont act like hardened warriors falls on deaf ears.

We have made plenty of mistakes in all wars, and these people were a LITTLE over the line, but not enough for people to run around and act like COWARDS concerning the treatment of people who were actively trying to KILL AMERICANS.

These tactics saved more lives than they ruined, and that makes it perfectly ok in my opinion!

This is a myth that we as Americans never did strong tactics to people, we can be just as hard if we want to.

Only now, when it is imperative that we show strength, we are acting like a bunch of weak willed women.

We need to tell them to stick it.

[lstanle]

"It's naive to think that the apology was meant to influence the "arab street"

I think the apolgoies are intended to defang the libs and dims.

[Republic Rocker]

I'm gettin a 'lil PO'D...!

[wtc911]

"I think the apolgoies are intended to defang the libs and dims."

Exactly right if you add Eurabia. The arab street, whatever that is, couldn't care less.

[isthisnickcool]

Thanks for the links. Interesting read...

[abovethefray]

The fact that these photos of murdered,mutilated Americans does not cause widespread anger in our country is disheartening....these are American sons and daughters suffering medieval (real) torture and desecration by savages. Viewing these horrific photos, I wonder, who built the bridges used as garrots for our dead ? This kind of construction seems rather advanced for them...

[ClearBlueSky]

Well then, it's past time that OUR anger became a lot more VISIBLE and PUBLIC- don't you think?

[I_saw_the_light]

Here is an interesting article about American feelings about the abuse...

Link

Heres the best quote from it.... "Excuse me, if I see somebody dragging my people through the streets and hung up on a bridge -- I mean, the bible even says an eye for an eye," said retired Vietnam War veteran Robert Zalewski, 56, drinking a beer at Pete's Parkview Tavern and Grill."

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for posting. Ef those effin raghead medieval Islamofascists.

There...I REALLY feel better now.

[virgil]

Much worse abuses were going on during Sadam's regime and nothing was done about it. Here, some foreign prisoners are humiliated and the POTUS and Sec of Defence have to apologize. The Iraqi dum-asses have been doing a lot of bitching about America's mission lately. This should remind them of what they had before and the complete difference in the way its handled by an open democratic system. It should be a good lesson since the only thing they seem to understand is torture and oppression.

[BOOTSTICK]

It's time to cut the crap, the MP's did nothing wrong. This whole story reeks of hypocrisy. Anyone remember what happened to the major Al Quaeda operatives caught in Pakistan, and Afghanistan? I remember plenty of Free Republic posters snickering about how those prisoners were to be treated once turned over to Egyptian Security Technicians, and how those folks would not be interrogated by US forces, since the foreign interrogators can get away with much more abuse. How quickly some forget.

[GreatOne]

Completely disagree with you - the major Al Qaeda operatives had information vital to our success, and which needed to be extracted in any manner available. These guys were not being tortured or humiliated in an effort to obtain information, but were being treated in a manner to bemuse the MPs watching over them. I don't buy this "softening up" b.s. That's not accomplished by making a naked Iraqi pyramid.