Then why bother to impune the man's integrity with false inferences? Even in the court of public opinion we still require some semblance of supporting evidence or fact.
What a brain teaser that is…
Not really. Keep an open mind and you'll figure it out.
… This is the story , factual..
Nice thread. If it comes from USA Today it must be fact.
By the way, did it turn out to be true?
Anyway, if there's any truth to this report, it speaks to strategy. I totally disagree with our present day strategy in the Suni Triangle.
Rumsfeld publicly “took responsibility”. But it’s common knowledge that the intell people are “softly” torturing the worst prisoners. Yet when the photos leek out, we go after a half dozen guards. If we prosecute those guys for being dumb-a~s’s by taking photos, fine, but not for abuse unless we prosecute everyone.
From all I can tell from reports, soft torture and turning a blind eye to it is endemic. Prosecuting everyone involved would rip the core out of our interrogators if we prosecuted them like those on film.
So what’s likely to happen? 1) Scapegoat a few local guards? 3) Destroy our interrogation/translation teams in the middle of the war? or 3) Rumsfeld stays true to his words and “really” takes responsibility for the abuses?
I think #2’s was just placed off limits with Rumsfeld’s claim of responsibility. That let everyone not directly involved in the photographed incidents know that they were off the hook. All that’s left is to see if Rumsfeld does a Poindexter and really stands up for setting the environment which those being prosecuted are going down for. I’m not holding my breath..
"By the way, did it turn out to be true?"
That Marines were ordered to stop the all out attack on the Fallujahn insurgents? AFAIK.
It was obvious from the beginning to anyone who understands the way Marines fight. Marines never choose not to deliver on a threat. They are not structured or trained for taking a town by sniper. They use all the equipment at their disposal. They don’t endanger their men by choice by sending snippier after mortar positions like they had to do. Whey they’re told to do so, a good general finds a way out, like this Fallujah brigade BS.
The day after 25 kia in one day and hundreds of Iraqis dead they went into a cease fire. There was every reason to believe that they were forced to change strategies in response to political demands. But people here with unwavering loyalty to Bush’s vague claims that the military was deciding how to fight in Iraq wouldn’t accept the obvious - that the Marines were just told “how” to fight in a more PC way (or at lest told how not to fight.)
That thread reported on the first evidence of that, from the lead foreign reporter of a paper introduced on Fox as the “paper of record for the war in Iraq”. The information has never been contradicted, and as you can see on that thread - many tried with all their heart. Some did what you just did, trying to discredit the reporter for reporting the obvious.