31-05-2005 11:37									#151
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yeah I was aware of that - its government for and by stupid people

but my hypothesis is simpler - intelligent people don't get involved in politics

	31-05-2005 12:33									#152
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did the judge release these photos yet? I want to see Lyndie England naked.

	31-05-2005 12:35									#153
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you are sick

	31-05-2005 19:28									#155
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quote: Originally posted by Ted Striker Speaking of media mouthpieces, here is one of the biggest jokes I've ever seen. "Cheney offended." Who gives a **** if Cheney is offended?! This has been the lead story ALL DAY on CNN.com. Really, is that the most important story that we need to know? I'm offended he lied to everybody to go invade Iraq. **** Cheney. What a moron.

I agree with you -- as if people have the right to be free from being offended anyway? So what if Cheney is offended?

If you believe that United States never makes mistakes and never does anything delibrately wrong then yes, you're bound to be offended due to your warped view of United States.

	31-05-2005 20:06									#156
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Yesterday I had the "fun" of flipping through channels as the "Asman Report" or something Asman on Fox News was pontificating about the Amnesty International report yesterday. The essence of the piece was that a viewer, offended as Cheney was, went online to view the Berg beheading, and that "put things into context". Then they pulled up a Natan Sharansky quote of how in free societies abuses on human rights are found and dealt with but in 'fear' societies human rights are never violated because they don;t exists.

The end of the piece said that viewers should go out there and thank US military personnel and also thank them for having to deal with "idiots" like Amnesty International for daring accuse the US of Human Rights violations, while we are fighting EVILTM

I wanted to chuck something at the screen.

The Grand Irony of that beiong that it is thanks to Amnesty International and such groups that Human Rights abuses in free societies ARE reported and dealt with (and Amnesty International more than reports about human rights abuses in the 'fear' societies), even more Ironic, if Fox News were the sole news channel, then the abuses would never have stopped since the fine, patriotic dunces at Fox would never actually besmirch the fine name of Der Fuehrer by publishing such scandalous things as reports that dirty sandnigger terrorists were being "manhandled" by our brave young troops.

	31-05-2005 23:59									#157
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quote: Originally posted by DanS I wonder what purpose will be served by publishing further Abu Ghraib abuse photos. We wouldn't think of publishing murder photos or video. We wouldn't think of publishing rape photos or video. Indeed, we try to avoid publishing explicit war photos and video. So what's the use of publishing and publicizing them in this case?

Murder or rape are rarely committed under color of authority, and we try to avoid publishing explicit war photos and video because the vast majority of Americans have been conveniently spared the sights, sounds and smells of fresh traumatic amputation courtesy of some raghead and his poor-man's artillery of choice, the RPG. After all, public support for a war is more predictable if the public is insulated from the effects, right?

quote: I don't want to see these photos and feel like they're being forced on me by a pressure group seeking to discredit the military (the ACLU). Rumsfeld's account of them are detailed enough for my account and in any event the text references are sufficient to know what happened. It's going to be weeks of this crap -- every time I turn on the TV or walk down the street and see it on the front pages of the newspapers.

So they should be censored and kept inaccessible because some people aren't interested? So much for the First Amendment - maybe we should just strip references to speech, the press and redressing government, and leave it as an amendment to protect religion via the establishment clause?

	01-06-2005 00:10									#158
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quote: Murder or rape are rarely committed under color of authority

That is true, thankfully. But ask yourself whether such photos would be published and publicized if the perps were police officers. Would pictures of the Louima affair in the heat of the action be published? Would the ensuing riots and mass nausea be an acceptable price to pay to "cleanse our souls" at having employed these sick fvcks?

I want to know about the broomstick, but feel like I gain nothing by seeing the broomstick in use and think a broad swath of the public would be traumitized by seeing it.

	01-06-2005 00:12									#159
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quote: Originally posted by DanS That is true, thankfully. But ask yourself whether such photos would be published and publicized if the perps were police officers. Would pictures of the Louima affair in the heat of the action be published? Would the ensuing riots and mass nausea be an acceptable price to pay to "cleanse our souls"? I want to know about the broomstick, but feel like I gain nothing by seeing the broomstick in use and think a broad swath of the public would be traumitized by seeing it.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. it's even more important to release these pictures if they are police officers. The police are there to serve the public. Not to hide behind a cloud of secrecy.

	01-06-2005 00:14									#160
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I don't think it would be secrecy not to release the photos under such a circumstance. The pictures would have been used at trial and we would have had text descriptions of the photos. In the end, we know what the police did to Louima in detail and that is enough.

	01-06-2005 06:03									#161
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quote: Originally posted by DanS That is true, thankfully. But ask yourself whether such photos would be published and publicized if the perps were police officers. Would pictures of the Louima affair in the heat of the action be published? Would the ensuing riots and mass nausea be an acceptable price to pay to "cleanse our souls" at having employed these sick fvcks?

Louima doesn't have thousands of tenth cousins and fellow believers willing to strap dynamite to their chests just for the chance to send a few of us to hell on an ongoing basis. If he were part of that kind of threat, I'd want to know everything possible about how our national command authorities and those to whom they delegate operational responsibility are handling the Louimas and their tenth cousins.

quote: I want to know about the broomstick, but feel like I gain nothing by seeing the broomstick in use and think a broad swath of the public would be traumitized by seeing it.

I understand your point, but I think the issue here is not gratuitous exploitation of pics of someone like Louima, but rather, how severe are the violations and how widespread? I think (from polls I've seen) that there's a good portion of the population that doesn't give a damn what we do in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib - I fall partly in the middle, in that I have a realistic understanding of prisoner treatment, especially of recent captures or irregular fighters. My concern isn't particularly with the poor insurgents who got captured before they got close to Allah, but with the efficiency of our operations and the level of discipline, command and control, and the degree of value we get out of our MI processing of insurgent prisoners.

	01-06-2005 06:14									#162
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In related news, the New York Times decided it would be a good idea to reveal the names of the shell companies the CIA uses in covert ops to ferry agents and prisoners around the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/n...=rssnyt&emc=rss

Thanks, guys...

	01-06-2005 06:24									#163
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten In related news, the New York Times decided it would be a good idea to reveal the names of the shell companies the CIA uses in covert ops to ferry agents and prisoners around the world. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/n...=rssnyt&emc=rss Thanks, guys...

Do you really, honest to God believe that the major intelligence services in the world, including some with leaky ties to our enemies, don't know who these companies are or what they do?

The only people who've been fooled are the American people.

	01-06-2005 06:26									#164
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I'm sure the intelligence services knew and have for a long time. It's going to be more difficult for them to look the other way now that everybody in the world with access to the NYT website knows what these companies are and who they work for, though.

	01-06-2005 06:28									#165
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quote: Originally posted by DanS That is true, thankfully. But ask yourself whether such photos would be published and publicized if the perps were police officers.

When police officers brutalized Rodney King, I remember seeing the video footage quite often on television:



And I don't think the media exposure that was given to the photos of the Kent State massacre would have been any less had it been police officers and not National Guards acting in the capacity of police who did the killing.

	01-06-2005 06:34									#166
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You know, you would think people would remember the outrage caused by the Rodney King tape and the Kent State shooting and realize that it might not be the best idea to unnecessarily release photos that will most likely cause similar anger and outrage in a population we need to win the hearts and minds of if we plan to be successful in our current geo-political struggle...

	01-06-2005 06:39									#167
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Anger over the Rodney King situation was not sparked solely by the tape, but by how the situation was handled after the tape came to light.

As for Kent State, I doubt the news of troops shooting university students would have remain silent without the release of photos, beyond the fact of course that both these events happened out in the public, so specially for Kent State 0 assumption of secrecy ever existed.

	01-06-2005 06:44									#168
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I never called for secrecy. I'm just pointing out that, as people have already said, photos are more visceral and inflame emotions much more than the printed word. As such, unnecessarily releasing photos that will more than likely cause outrage in the Muslim world and give our terrorist opponents another valuable propaganda tool seems pretty stupid, IMO at least.

	01-06-2005 06:46									#169
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If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

There are costs to be had for messing up, and this will be one of the costs for the admin. Serves them right.

	01-06-2005 06:47									#170
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I'm glad to see you take such a responsible POV as regards the fight against Islamism.

	01-06-2005 06:48									#171
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten I never called for secrecy. I'm just pointing out that, as people have already said, photos are more visceral and inflame emotions much more than the printed word. As such, unnecessarily releasing photos that will more than likely cause outrage in the Muslim world and give our terrorist opponents another valuable propaganda tool seems pretty stupid, IMO at least.

No, what's stupid is leting the scenes depicted in the photos happen in the first place.

It's only right that the photos are shown when these thigns do happen - the USA needs to own up to it's dark little secrets for once.

	01-06-2005 06:48									#172
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten I never called for secrecy. I'm just pointing out that, as people have already said, photos are more visceral and inflame emotions much more than the printed word. As such, unnecessarily releasing photos that will more than likely cause outrage in the Muslim world and give our terrorist opponents another valuable propaganda tool seems pretty stupid, IMO at least.

IMO, winning the hearts and minds = whitewashing questionable and outrageous actions

	01-06-2005 06:51									#173
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How is it being whitewashed if the actions have already been reported in the print media?

	01-06-2005 06:53									#174
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Pictures are worth thousands of words -- printed media only covers part of the story, IMO.

	01-06-2005 06:54									#175
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So it's being whitewashed if you don't see a picture of it?

	01-06-2005 07:00									#176
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If you choose to only tell part of a story, you are not presenting the whole story accurately.

Pictures go a long way in explaining the entire story in conjunction with printed media. With a printed story about an outrage, you can get some sense of the extent of the wrongfulness of the particular act.

But pictures bring about a much more clear, vivid realization of that wrongfulness. This is one reason why some would not want pictures publicized -- it would send a much stronger message of the wrongfulness and the injustice of such an act.

That is how I come to my opinion that omitting pictures is a form of whitewashing when it is motivated by a desire to minimize the impact of the story on readers and listeners.

	01-06-2005 07:00									#177
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten more than likely cause outrage in the Muslim world and give our terrorist opponents another valuable propaganda tool seems pretty stupid, IMO at least.

When they get outraged over things that never happened, I say we give them something real to moan about.

	01-06-2005 07:01									#178
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Why stop with photos? Why not prohibit publication of anything critical of the Bush administration's mishandling of the war?

	01-06-2005 07:02									#179
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten I'm glad to see you take such a responsible POV as regards the fight against Islamism.

I am glad you are so willing to "win hearts and minds" by making sure the Muslim world knows that while we torture them (something they can read all about), we feel them too backwards and ignorant and violent to be allowed to see the fruits of our labor

	01-06-2005 07:05									#180
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Oh look, a hole in the ground! Let's stick our collective head in it and pretend that by refusing to release the photos and the peoples' right to see (or not see, if you can't stomach them or are otherwise "offended" by any mention of wrongdoing on our part) what our government is doing in our names makes everything better ... somehow.