All I can say, Mr. Auster. is that these are the times that try our souls (to paraphrase Charles Dickens). As for Iraq, this has turned into a disaster for the reasons cited by yourself and the other talented posters on this site. The entire premise of changing a medieval Islamic society into the Sweden of the Middle East is so completely absurd that leaves one nearly speechless - like the remark cited on a earlier thread about how Allah was just another word for God. Those who are busily spouting all the grandiose Wilsonian rhetoric have no concept of what real liberty and freedom mean. Listening to Tony Blair, the head of an near-Orwellian semi-totalitarian state, talking about democracy is an utter farce, We just as well send Robert Mogabe to do the cheerleading.

Bush, along with his neocon and corporatist advisers, has led the country into a war with Islam but cannot see it for what it really is - or name our enemies as who they really are. This at the very point where the erosion of the white, Anglo-Christian culture through a degenerate popular culture and endless streams of leftist agitprop is nearly complete. The very thing that is essential to defeating the Islamic tide is denounced and repudiated - not only the ruling elite, but by vast numbers, perhaps a majority, of ordinary Americans. This nation is frankly in no shape for such a war. We’re falling apart within from the rot of liberalsim, and our enemies know it. It is horrendous to realize that our young soldiers are basically being asked to die for the expansion of gay marriage and feminism (“freedom”) to Iraq and the Middle East. The antics at Abu Ghraib wouldn’t have been possible without the glories of MTV and feminism.

The Iraqi Excessive Bad News Syndrome— otherwise known as “Arabies”?

Something that people have touched on, but that no one on VFR but me has mentioned explicitly (as far as I can tell).
Is anyone disturbed by the fact that we are seeing women perpetrating sexual abuse?
Now that there have been some reports of Iraqi guards raping young boys and I think one or two of an American raping an Iraqi women, is it possible that we are going to have a case before too long where a female soldier is accused of rape?
Is this the end result of sexual integration of the military - female abusers, and ultimately perhaps female rapists?

Mr Auster, take heart. The Bad News Syndrome is nothing compared to what’s to come. Imagine George W. Bush declaring to the world in limping Arabic that we are packing the goat and withdrawing from Iraq, last man out quench the oil lamp, please.

World magazine has an interesting article about the situation in Iraq and the satanic State Department/Paul Bremer and their fiascos at http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/05-15-04/cover_1.asp

To paraphrase Thomas Paine: These are the times that try one’s soul. Sometimes we give thought to the possibility that scandals of one kind or another haver been pre-arranged by malicious people for either profit of character assassiantion. That aside, think back to Ground Zero. At that time and place, the nation rallied behind our President. No one could ever imagine that 911 would come under scrutiny and controversy. No one ever imagined that our role in Iraq would be still debated today. And certainly, no one conceived that prisoner abuses of the type we have been exposed to would ever happen by a nation that respects the rules of the Geneva Convention. Are there parties behind the scenes who manipulate certain events for future gain? Who knows. Whether true or not, we seem to inherit bad things too often. No President is immune to these sudden changes. And none are prepared to avoid them. At best, we put on our true face and make apology. What elese can we do? Now we are told that these pictures were purposely posed to throw fear in other prisoners: the sight of naked males interwined in a kind of sexual orgy. The Moslem’s dislike for homosexuality is well known. This kind of degradation would certainly force a prisoner with such strong beliefs to cave in. And where dies the accountability stop? To believe that it ends with the lower grade officers is stretching the imagination. The guilt must extend to the perpetrators and their immediate officers in command and upward as far as the responsibility must carry it. I do think that it will stay within the prison facility and not extend itself further. What a shame to our country. Have we lost the ability to see the far reaching consequences of our acts?

What is discouraging to me is not the news, but how easily so many of my fellow Americans get discouraged. Have we truly become “soft America?” Now I have never subscribed to the silly idealistic neo-Wilsonian rhetoric that was necessary to cover any move away from the complete passivity in the face of repeated attacks we have suffered from murderous Islam. I don’t think the President really believes it either, but in any case, reality will set limits to it. We are surely proceeding as rapidly as practicable towards handing over government in Iraq to Iraqis, for better or worse. It seems to me we have had great success in our most important goal, creating a message to the third world thugocracies: dabble in terror, even surreptitiously, and you may be finished. Now that success is under attack by those who hate us abroad and those at home who see bringing about disastrous defeat as a means of political advancement. They want to bring us to a state where the thugocracies conclude that is once again safe to play that game, since the US is so traumatized that it will never respond. This was the conclusion Bin Laden drew from our previous passivity, and 9/11 was the price we paid for not only lack of leadership in the White House, but for being “soft America,” which constrained politicians more risk averse and less responsible than the current President. Casualties have been amazingly few, though they continue (who ever thought they wouldn’t?), and instances of wrongdoing are to be expected, and can be dealt with. My concern is that it seems to take so little to completely demoralize even those who understand that passively awaiting the next mega-terror attack was simply not an option.

Thucydides raises a good point about the achievement of one important goal. Toppling the thugocracies of the Taliban and Saddam was a real strategic success in the war against Islam - one that sent a very clear message. The problem surfacing now is a return to the Clintonian PC way of doing things - most notably in retreat from the military response to the organized attacks and horrendous atrocities in Fallujah.

Was Bush so afraid of offending the soccer moms in an election year that he ordered the pullback? Or, is it yet another miserable example of Clinton’s appointees being left in important posts to wreak havoc upon our policies? Bush and his neocon advisors seem more interested in denouncing those who question the suitability of liberal democracy in Iraq as racists than in effectively opposing the left’s strategy of emboldening terrorists to attack us again. Either way, it demonstrates that Bush must actually believe in all of the PC nonsense that so frequently falls from his lips. Toppling Saddam and the Taliban were unprincipled exceptions to Bush’s liberalism. The whole occupation and nation-building fiasco shows his liberalism re-asserting itself. Islam will never be defeated through liberalism. Liberalism is fundamentally incapable of facing up to the true nature of our enemies. Thanks Miss Vail for correcting my erroneous late-night attribution.

Carl,

We’ve have been under attack by Islamists for sometime now. How, exactly, did Bush and Co. “lead” us into a war with Islam? If anyone can be shown to have “lead” us into it, we’d have to go back all the way to when Harry Truman recognized Israel, and the resulting aftermath of that. Not that I don’t support Israel, but what we are experiencing is the “natural” way of things when you try to help a friend out, sometims your going to raise the ire of his enemies.

Anyhow, back to the topic.

The bad news does get me down. But what really gets me down even more are the people (mostly leftists) who use this opportunity to skewer their enemies. Rumsfeld for example, if he resigns, what are the chances of Bush getting another SecDef approved? Slim to none, unless the Senet Dems decide to get some principle for a change, but that’s probably asking far too much.

joan vail writes:

“No one could ever imagine that 911 would come under scrutiny and controversy. No one ever imagined that our role in Iraq would be still debated today. And certainly, no one conceived that prisoner abuses of the type we have been exposed to would ever happen by a nation that respects the rules of the Geneva Convention.”

You must be kidding. The worst failure of intelligence in our history and there will be no scrutinity? To make sure that we learn nothing and will have a few more 8/11s?

Even outside of the anti-American left, the conduct of the Iraqi war if not the the war itself was and should have been controversial. Many hard-nosed conservatives were and are all for punishing Iraq and against any occupation/PC welfare program for the people who basically hate us and menatlly reside in 12th century.

The last statement is just plain silly. 250 thousand troops rotated thru that garbage of a country. To expect that no one, anywhere, will step on the rules that DO NOT even apply to those bastards, well, you must be living in alternative universe.

Do you know about a city of 250K people that for a year did not have as much as a parking violation? Because what those MP fools did in that jail is a prisoner treatment equivalent of a parking violation.

If Rumsfeld is forced to resign it will be the final sign that the United States is a neurotic, soft, degenerate “great power”, unable to intervene forcefully to defend or advance its interests or even to retalliate when grievously injured. I’m sure the paleocons and leftists (for their views on American power and foreign policy are very similar) will delight in America being in such a weaked, feeble state.

Michael Jose writes:

“Is anyone disturbed by the fact that we are seeing women perpetrating sexual abuse?”

It seems such a tiny PC issue compare to the fact that we very well might loose this war in the same way we lost Vietnam - winning militarily and loosing American people support at home.

“Now that there have been some reports of Iraqi guards raping young boys and I think one or two of an American raping an Iraqi women, is it possible that we are going to have a case before too long where a female soldier is accused of rape?”

Entirely possible, indeed it is probable. And you solution will be what? Outlaw human nature?

“Is this the end result of sexual integration of the military - female abusers, and ultimately perhaps female rapists?”

Yes, in some abstract irrelevant way. If we are to remove ALL females from the service, we will not have female abusers, as well as female thiefs, cheaters, female going AWOL, pregnant soldiers, etc. If we remove females from the work force we will not have white color crime by females, crooked female exec, etc.

Women are to stay in military, what is needed is a non-PC analysis where they can and cannot serve. Women, in all civilized countries for last 100 years served in medical field. No women, as far as I know ever served in Special Service Operations, in any country. There is a plenty of room in between to satisfy reasonable non-PC people without an axe to grind.

thucydides writes:

“My concern is that it seems to take so little to completely demoralize even those who understand that passively awaiting the next mega-terror attack was simply not an option.”

My immediate surroundings may be different from most people. After all, my extended family, 30 or so people, two thirds are the first or second generation immigrants, have had 2 kids serving a tour in Iraq. It is twice as many as 535 US Senators and Congresscriiters managed to supply.

Majority of opinion is rather simple: what is this abuse fuss is all about? Should not most of those prisoners have been executed by now?
Why Falluja is not a parking lot?
Why Bremer,Sanchez and that empty General uniform-spokesman are not fired?
Find a semi-sane strongman, put him in charge, declare victory and go into Kurdistan.

Rumsfeld should be fired for continually exhibiting bad judgment and incompetence in the Iraq matter from the start. Getting rid of him would not, in itself, demonstrate lack of determination. President Truman fired Secretary of Defense Johnson early in the Korean War for offenses that were probably less serious.

I have been horrified by several things: first the photos of the abuse, second by the apparent collapse of will as people realize that we are not going to democratize Iraq overnight by snapping our fingers. (Does noone recall that even in Germany and Japan, success required an occupation of several years? Noone even thought of turning power over to local governments within a little over one year!) I heard Senator Graham, on “Meet the Press,” declare that we will have failed if we don’t produce a democratic Iraq. In other words, if we don’t IMMEDIATELY install the latest and most difficult political order in this miserable country, we’re sunk! This is crazy. I am more open to the possibility of having an eventual democratic Iraq than most here, but it would be the work of many years and will require some sort of authoritarian bridge in the interim. Americans have simply refused to think about how to deal with the problem…

I don’t know what I think about this. Bush has staked his presidency on this war. Rumsfeld is the chief architect of the war. For Bush to dismiss Rumsfeld would be tantamount to saying that the main policy of his administration has failed. What policy would he replace it with? Edging out the door? Allow Iraq to sink into chaos, with Ba’athists and Jidadists ensconcing themselves? This would be leaving Iraq more dangerous than it was before.

The core of the problem, which troubled me before the war, though I failed to draw definitive conclusions from it at the time, is that we have never seriously calculated the things that would have to be done in order to re-create Iraq (even leaving aside the utopian goal of Iraqi democracy) as a stable pro-Western country, and whether we had the means and will to do those things.

The neocons are coming under a lot of attack, from me as well as others, for their unforgivable naivite about the prospects of Iraqi democracy. But to be fair, the neocons’ policy was not carried out in the post-war situation. It was the neocons who wanted transitional power transferred quickly to Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and pro-American Kurdish leaders. So it could be argued that this horrible mess is the result of Powell’s shutting out the neocon approach. But at the same time, wasn’t the neocons’ naivite about post-war pro-Americanism and democracy building responsible for our failure to impose order on the country? So, is this a failure of neoconservative empire-building, or a failure of PC liberal softness? Take the issue of de-Ba’athization. Apparently the pro-Chalabi thinkers wanted de-Ba’athization, but they also wanted the installation of the INC and related groups to replace the Ba’ath. The more liberal types like Powell wanted less de-Ba’athization, and to keep out the INC. But what we got was a fatal combination of the two—de-Ba’athization, combined with the exclusion of the INC, as a result of which there was no Iraqi face on the immediate postwar forces of order.

I guess I don’t have any overall point here, except to complain about the intellectual incoherence that has characterized both the postwar policy and the debate about the postwar policy for the last two years and still characterizes it. The sheer difficulty of the issues makes you realize why Rumsfeld deliberately chose before the war NOT to consider post-war contingengies carefully, because he recognized that the sheer complexity of the problems might paralyze our will to fight the war. Ok, but if that was the case, if the postwar situation was prospectively so daunting that they didn’t even want to think about it, shouldn’t that have indicated to them that they MUST think about it and plan for it more carefully prior to preceding with the war itself?

There were other problems Rumsfeld failed to deal with, not just the question of postwar political policy in Iraq. He clearly would not listen to advice on force numbers and took the most optimistic possible view of the resistance we would encounter — among other errors. To fire a bungling subordinate or change course doesn’t necessarily mean giving up in a war — though to people like Bush 43 (excuse me, 41.1) it may seem that way. I cited the case of Truman earlier, but think of Abraham Lincoln, firing general after general while carrying on the war with inflexible determination…
The neocons probably are most to blame for the “democracy overnight and nothing but” attitude, but one would expect even country club Republicans, who are supposed to be practical men of affairs, to see through such slogans…

Mik wrote: “Find a semi-sane strongman, put him in charge, declare victory and go into Kurdistan.”

Well said, sir. Unfortunately the search for an exit strategy has been proceeding along Palestinian lines — never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Not surprisingly, it’s yielded Palestinian results. The best options we could have had a year ago (Mohammed Hakim, Nouri Badran) we can’t have today and the best options we can have today (Ali Sistani, Ibrahim Al-Jafaari) we might not be able to get a year from now.

Thucydides’ comment that “passively awaiting the next mega-terror attack was simply not an option,” suggests what expectations we ought to have from a future Iraqi regime, especially one that doesn’t need American troops to prop it up.

Having them accept a permanent American military presence (outside Kurdistan) is probably not possible anymore. Turning their economy into the laboratory of laissez-faire is also doubtful. But getting a guarantee that they won’t enrich any uranium and give it to Al Qaeda is still doable.

The Lincoln analogy does not hold. Lincoln was unable to find a competent general who would fight and seek victory as Lincoln wanted. When he found one, he kept him. That’s not the situation here. Bush and Rumsfeld have been as one.

Mik writes:
“Women are to stay in military, what is needed is a non-PC analysis where they can and cannot serve.”
Precisely. Which I why I used the term “sexual integration” rather than “women in the military.”
My concern is that by treating the women in the military as if they were men, and by putting them in all of the positions that men are put into, we are turning them into men, so to speak. I don’t deny that women can serve their country, I am just concerned that we have been operating under the assumption that they should serve in all of the same capacities as men.
Specifically, I don’t think that women should be in positions where the job is likely to require that they become brutal (I am, however, fine with the idea that they should be able to defend themselves, I just don’t think that poositions that are conducive to combat, or that involve lots of direct contact with non-wounded enemy (prison guards, physical interrogations) are appropriate for women.

Iraqis seem to be much less upset about the abuse scandal than Americans are:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595061679,00.html

I have no problem with the concept of “women in the military” as distinct from “sexual integration of the military,” so long as it’s understood that women are different from men, that they are not trained with men, that they have separate units and residences from men, and that they are kept away from any combat-related functions. Why can’t we go back to something like the WACS and WAVES of World War II?

Alan Levine:

“I have been horrified by several things: first the photos of the abuse”

I maybe naive. Or my senses may be dull as one can see similar or worse photos at every newsstand around Castro district in the Sodom city of SF. But horrified?

Perhaps a quick search for a video of 9/11 jumpers, shown only outside of USA as American people are too tender, will help?

Or reviewing video of gloating bastards having fun with hopefully dead by then contractors in Faluja?

Or realizing that hundreds of US soldiers have witnessed their friends being burn alive in blown up vehicles while bastards (of course, per Bush, fully ready for the democracy, US style) celebrate across the street?

This “horrification” is an impulse not worthy of a thinking rational individual and, if occurs, must be fought like any bad impulses (alcoholism, smoking, etc) with any means necessary.

I disagree with Mik. These are photos of American soldiers grinning as they impose sickening, perverted punishments on helpless prisoners under their power. To paraphrase Mik, to deny the horror of these photos is not worthy of a thinking rational individual.

It may be true that you can see similar photos at newstands in the Castro district of San Francisco. However, they usually involve onsenting adults. It is far worse to have people doing this against their will. Remember, the difference between making love and rape can be as small as the word “no.”
(Not to say that the pictures in the Castro district are not, in and of themselves, horrifying).
As for the pictures from Fallujah, I think that if we can find the people who were desecrating dead contractors, we should execute them. Heck, I don’t know if I want us to give the guy from Portland to the Spanish for trial for 3/11, because the Spaniards don’t execute (try him here! Try him here!)
Nonetheless, we must measure our behavior against our own standards, not against those of terrorists. Not that there are not cases where circumstances should exonerate unusual behavior - I regard the guy who found out information by shooting a gun next to a prisoners ear to be heroic. However, gratuitous tormenting of prisoners is not okay.

When Mik refers to “the rules that DO NOT even apply to those bastards”, which rules are those? Both the U.S. and Iraq are signatories to the Geneva Convention, so unless one side, or both, abrogated the terms of that pact, those should still be in force.

On the other hand, the rules of just war were meant for Christians fighting Christians, so those would not apply here.

So, any of you guys have any suggestions as to how we might extract information from POW’s, terrorists and other interesting parties to save American lives or prevent another 9/11??
Any would be appreciated.

What can I say about the prisoner abuse scandal? If we are not better than our enemies: what’s the point of bringing “freedom” and “democracy” to Iraq? Frankly, I feel personally offended — as an American — by the shameful actions of these so called solders.I never thought the day would arrive that I would be ashamed of being an American…That day, alas, has now come. Indeed, how much more bad news CAN we take?

As has been discussed, there are all kinds of methods of getting prisoners to talk short of either causing them permanent physical harm or imposing on them sexual humiliation of a perverted nature: sleeplessness, crouching, shaking, and so on. We don’t know yet what types of sexual humiliation of the Iraqi prisoners were authorized, and what types were the the result of these MP’s running amok. In any case, can anyone imagine American soldiers in World War II even conceiving of using such perverted methods on prisoners to get information? I don’t think we should be doing this.

Don’t get me wrong. If it was determined that information must be extracted from a prisoner to prevent the imminent loss of lives, and that only something monstrous such as this sexual humiliation would get the prisoner to talk, I would approve it. But we’re a long way from knowing that that was the case here.

Also, when it comes specifically to Al Qaeda types, there’s frankly almost nothing I would stop at: wrapping them in pig skin and burying them; threatening to kill their families, whatever. These are the most deadly dangerous people in the world and we have to deal with them accordingly.

I was ashamed on the day that Bush apologized to the Iraqi POW’s who were no choir boys, btw, and I was absolutely mortified when Rumsfield not only apologized to the POW’s but promised reparations. Are we going to make millionaires of our enemies?

We are fighting a war. This is not a tea party. War is brutal. If we don’t have the stomach for doing whatever it takes to win a war, we should dress our military in those funny little blue UN bowler hats as peacekeepers like other socialist countries do and not boast about “fighting” terrorism.

I have no compunction about humiliating POW’s if they have vital information. The Geneva Convention addresses rules of engagement between 2 civilized nations and their soldiers in uniform. The argument about taking the higher road is fine if you don’t mind losing a war. But if you expect other people to put their lives on the line on your behalf, then I think taking a higher ground is rather selfish to your proxy fighter’s welfare. Do any of you honestly believe the greatest generation won the war against the Axis powers following the Geneva Convention? Depriving POW’s of sleep and playing loud shrieky music will not break the will of a hardened Baathist fighter. New parents suffer similar deprivations of sleep and stress of loud wailing and we all have survived just fine, without coming undone.

As for women in the military, I believe that women have used affirmative action to get the leg up in college acceptance and job placement. They want to be equal. I have no problem putting them in areas of high risk just like their male counterparts. What’s good for the gander is the good for the goose. Most American women outweigh skinny Muslim men and certainly their feministra coarseness is every bit a match for our enemy.

I have no desire for this country to glibbly sacrifice young men on the front lines while protecting the so called fairer sex in medical positions. And whereas publicly, Muslims claim they loathe homosexual behavior, we know in practice that is far from the truth. In fact, in the Russian-Afghan war, it was not uncommon for Russian POW’s to be sodomized by the Muslims. So the fairer sex is no more at risk for sexual abuse than young males are.

This PC war on terror has been an unqualified disaster. If anyone should be fired, it should be the Prince of Darkness, Paul Wolfowitz. Ditto for the affirmative action appointees, Sanchez, and Abizaid, and last but not least, that dapper example of the State Dept’s finest, Paul Bremer. I actually respect Rumsfield for being a bonafide decorated WW II war veteran, for being a former CEO who is capable of managing a 1.5 million employee base within the Defense Department. I think if Rumsfield had his way, he would have been in and out of Iraq 1.5 years ago and Iraqis would not be as hostile to our nation and to our GI’s as they are now.

In this Iraq War, we have exposed more of our “softness” with neocon’s ridiculous “winning hearts and minds” charade than if we had just sat tight and did nothing. How does paying reparations to scumbag POW’s for photographing their privates show us to be any tougher or more effectual than when Clinton lobbed a few rockets at aspirin factories in Iraq?

I said I would approve brutal methods if they were warranted, but Regina seems to want brutal methods, not because they’re justified by any necessary end, but just because they’re brutal. That is not the way to go.

First thing, “Prince of Darkness” is the term usually used for Richard Perle, not Paul Wolfowitz (perhaps Regina was re-appropriating it, but as Wolfowitz is often thought of as a fellow-traveler with Perle, I thought it might be a mistake).
Secondly, the issue here basically is that it doesn’t look as if these people were abusing the prisoners as an interrogation method, but for fun; certainly, smiling while people are stacked naked in front of you seems unnecessary. If one needs to humiliate the prisoners to scare them, one could do so in a more professional manner (say, strap them naked to a chair so that their private parts are exposed and then have a panel (of women, if that would be most effective - perhaps women who are completely covered except for the eyes, to emphasize the prisoner’s nudity) question him.
I don’t want interrogators smiling and presenting their prisoners as trophies. This is not the type of job where you want to have the people who do it enjoy it, because frankly, people who enjoy such things are perverts.
In many cases, though, I would think that unnecessary. The whole point of sleep deprivation and other similar interrogation methods is not to hurt the prisoner, but to disorient him so as to decrease his inhibitions.

Mr. Auster, I said that in order to win a war brutal methods are necessary. Why fight a war if you do not intend to win?

Because, Regina, you’re not justifying brutal methods in a rational manner according to any particular end to be attained by the brutal methods. You’re just saying, “War is brutal, therefore all brutal methods are justified in war regardless of what they actually accomplish.” This is a savage philosophy of cruelty for the sake of cruelty. It has no relationship to the way Americans and Westerners have fought and won wars.

Indeed, I re-appropriated the Prince of Darkness label to Wolfowitz because Perle left the Administration a while ago. Wolfowitz wears the title well, I think.

Sleep deprivation and moving prisoners to other location is time consuming. As well, with the frequent insurrections in Sunni Iraq, moving high value POW’s is risky.

I suspect the Military Police who posed for pictures with grins on their faces are not the sharpest knives in the military drawer, otherwise they would not be taking pictures, would they?

Whether or not the MP’s enjoyed the humiliation is of little consequence to me. These GI’s were trying to extract information from POW’s that could save GI’s lives. No doubt, there may have been a little payback to the POW’s for crimes the latter committed against their fellow GI’s, that had gone unpunished.

These Military Police will be court marshalled for their transgressions. End of story, from my point of view. These men have likely witnessed horrible crimes against their brothers-in-arms. I have no desire to vilify their actions because I cannot imagine the stress they face each day they are posted in that hellhole called Iraq.

Mr. Auster, winning a war is the goal, is it not? War is brutal. You may want to fight a war against savage terrorists according Roberts Rules of Order and the Geneva Convention. Indeed maybe that’s what the Western approach to war has become. Sadly we’ll lose the war on terrorism, but we will lose honorably.

It’s evident that Regina is unable to follow the argument.

David Hackworth has commented on another factor in this case: the attempt of the military brass to protect the career of the female General in charge of the prisons in Iraq. I’ll second Regina’s view that these MP’s weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. One would think that at least the officers in charge would be aware of the potential disaster in this type of situation given the fact that a leftist-owned and operated media is on hand in swarms looking for any excuse to go after the US military. Affirmative action, PC and sheer stupidity all seem to go hand in hand.

I want to thank Clark Coleman for the riveting article in World Mag about the evil idiot, Bremer. Still, bad as Bremer is, I have to think that the buck stops with Bush II. I have to believe that Bush has been really hurt politically by the photos and continued stories and soon-to-be court martials. His poll numbers are the lowest of his presidency. He is in trouble.

Because he is in trouble, I have heard that he is somehow “pandering to the right”. After pushing amnesty for illegals down our throats for the second time in his presidency and while he refuses to say that the War on Terrorism is actually the “War Against Militant Islam” or Islamo-facism, he continues to
“apologize” to Arabs and in doing so gives comfort and strength to the enemy. While the economy is no longer an issue, the Iraq mess is. I wonder who is doing worse on the political stage—Bush or Kerry. Kerry has made himself a laughing stock with hypocrisy and flopping, but Bush hasn’t taken advantage of Kerry’s errors and that is a huge loss for Bush.

Bush again refuses to fire anyone—Bremer, etc. One has to wonder how many “losers” Bush will keep in important positions in Iraq. Bringing in one of Saddam’s generals looked very week and capitulatory. This is definitely NOT a “take charge” president. I believe Bush lost a good chunk of his base by apologozing to Arab countries and to the vermin we held at the prison and apparently mistreated. Without his base, he cannot possibly win in November.

Reg Cæsar writes:

“When Mik refers to “the rules that DO NOT even apply to those bastards”, which rules are those? Both the U.S. and Iraq are signatories to the Geneva Convention, so unless one side, or both, abrogated the terms of that pact, those should still be in force.

On the other hand, the rules of just war were meant for Christians fighting Christians, so those would not apply here.”

Yes and Saddam had elections from time to time. Usually he won them with 99.9% or 100% of the votes cast. This fact is as impressive as Iraq’s signature on Geneva Convention.

But seriosly. The Geneva Convention applies to lawful combatants. The scam in that prison most definitely are not lawful combatants. Geneva requires 4 conditions to be met before one gets to be a POW and gets a Geneva treatment:

1. The detainees in question must have been “commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates”

2. They must have worn “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance”

3. They must have carried their arms “openly”

4. They must have conducted their operations “in accordance with the laws and customs of war”

The bastards satisfy rule #1 only. For legalistically minded see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=438123.

Having said that, what do we owe to the worst of the worst in that jail? And they were the worst, see account of the person who has been there http://mullings.com.

It is clear to me that the grunts were asked by the higher-ups to soften jihadis before interrogation. The grunts were not trained for the task. What do you expect from a 19 year old kid when you ask him/her to do something, he doesn’t know how? He will get creative.

Some people may have a sadistic streak in them. Some can take more than others. There is a reason some pretty good people work as prison guards and some, not necessarily better people, wring their hands about horrors of all of that.

Jihadis in general do not fear death. They fear dishonor and humiliation. Humilation by a woman probably is the worst horror for 10th century mind of a jihadi. Sounds like a good softening strategy to me, better than inflicting a tremendous pain on a prisoner.

Would the people who were horrified by the pictures prefered a physical torture? The supposedly working alternatives to torture does not ring true to me. If alternatives work so well, why most (I suspect all) professional services use torture? French definitely do it, Russians do, China, Pakis, Arabs, Latin Americans. Israel’s Mossad is one of the best (some say the best) intel services in the world. Until Israel top court stopped them, they were using torture if and when it was needed. And Mossad is full of bleeding heart liberals to the left of Ralph Nader.

In this case, what untrained guardsmen could do to soften the bastards? Three choices:

1. Nothing
2. Physical Torture
3. Humilation (psycological torture), giving an Arab mind set, humilation by women with sexual themes.

Option 1 was not an option at all, it was October and November of 2003 and boys were being killed in large numbers.

Between 2 and 3 I would guess jihadis would chose 2, so 3 looks like a best of poor choices to get a job done. The problem, entirely understandable in view of generally poorly run occupation, was untrained kids in that MP unit.

I have failed to understand that business about Christians fighting Christians in just war. What it has to do with anything?

Michael Jose writes:

“It may be true that you can see similar photos at newstands in the Castro district of San Francisco. However, they usually involve onsenting adults. It is far worse to have people doing this against their will.”

No Mr. Jose, Jihadis in pictures are not consenting adults. It hurts them to do it against their will. Hopefully they will be motivated to release information to save a young US Marine or two.

To work with those Jihadis is an unpleasant business but somebody had to do it. The only problem was the Army put untrained guardsmen to do it.

Mistakes were made and being used by the media to get Bush. There are many reasons to get Bush, there is even 1 reason to get Rummy (failing occupation). The jail fuss is not the reason.

Mr. Auster writes:

“To paraphrase Mik, to deny the horror of these photos is not worthy of a thinking rational individual.”

I, probably mistakenly, think of myself as a rational person with some coqnitive capacity. I don’t like to look at those pictures, but in context they are not horrific.

A few times I was present during slaughter of farm animals. I didn’t enjoy looking at it and would try to avoid being there if possible. But in no way the event was horrific. Unpleasant, but somebody has to do it.

Can Mr. Auster or any the VFR Messengers please tell me if this is true? I heard on some talk show yesterday that “The Geneva Convention only applies to men in uniform (belonging to a country, I assume) and that “Because these insurgents are dressed in filthy nightshirts and not uniforms, our military prison guards do not have to follow The Geneva Convention and thus are not guilty of torture, etc.” Thank you.

Is this a joke, or is this a fact?

Mr. Auster’s 11th 12:37 am post says it perfectly! I too was horrified to see those pictures and know now that those sorts of things are being done by our military and the CIA and perhaps even mercenaries. I completely agree with Mr. Auster that sometimes, when lives of our troops are at stake, extraordinary measures must be taken to access the truth from these skanks.

So, it is most definitely ambivelance that I am experiencing with this issue. Like Mr. Auster, I need to know more before I can say that “so and so is guilty of mistreatment”, and it looks as though the Pentagon will not allow us to see the other photos and videos. Part of me wants these soldiers, their commanders and CIA folk who were there during these interrogations/humiliations prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The other part of me cautiously wants to slap them on the wrist and let them go.

I heard Rush Limbaugh pontificating at lunch time yesterday about the prisoner abuse. He seems to have the same problem that a lot of people have when discussing this issue, namely thinking that there are only two possible reactions:

1) Who cares, this is war.
2) I am ashamed to be an American, this is the most horrible thing ever, etc.

Given those two choices, Ruch had to push #1. I wished I had a direct line to his show so that I could inform him of another possibility:

3) We have a military code of conduct for our soldiers. If any violations occurred, it will be investigated and those responsible punished. I don’t condone violations of our military code, nor do I think that a handful of soldiers violating that code (if that is what happened, according to the ongoing investigation) is the most horrific crisis ever to beset our military and our nation. I am not ashamed, just like I am not ashamed to be an American when I read in the papers that a policeman committed a crime, or an Enron executive, or any random citizen. I have a view of human nature that accepts that wrongful acts will be committed fairly often in a nation of 280 million people, and that is why we have legal systems to punish wrongdoers.

In reply to Mr. Coleman,

Yes, why do people, especially conservatives, create these false dichotomies? It’s because they don’t want to think, they want to feel. So it’s either “Rah rah America, screw the bastards,” or “This is the most horrible thing ever and I’m ashamed of America.”

Mr.Auster and others express horror over photos of grinning women soldiers at their sordid work. It seems your horror is a thing of the past, one with the concept of gentleman, honnete gens, with well- developed standards of behavior, a time of class distinctions. And these grew out of an earlier sense of “degree” that Shakespeare used to establish differences of taste, language and how men behaved. The Geneva Convention’s standards of conduct as stated supra was a compact of the Christian West and as such one among the expiring noble acts of a passing civilization. What we are left with are their fossil imprints. When you express yourselves as horrified, you are displaying a museum piece for yourselves alone. The prison guards, men and women alike, are our present day churls and villeins who have been poorly supervised. But then — who is there to give them rules? All we are left with are the old nominals: gentlemen, ladies. Now emptied of most meaning. I sympathize with your feelings over torture but fail to understand why you go on about something long lost. And you will not have created an ounce of moral weight to this war because it is war to the knife, chosen by our enemies, and we will fight it their way no matter how many calls for fine feelings or a display of honor.

Well, I feel Mr. Rosenzweig is setting up his own fusty categories with his choice between outdated gentlemanly honor on one side and unrestrained savagery on the other. Read what I said. I said that _if it were warranted_, I would go along with various horrible torture techniques against our enemies. But what Mr. Rosenzweig wants, along with a couple of other participants in this thread, is an attitude of: “This is war, everything is permitted, period.” This is, excuse me, a mindless embrace of darkness, removing any rational element from the calculation of what is permissible and impermissible in specific situations. Shall we also unleash our soldiers to rape and mutilate women and mass murder civilians, since, as Mr. Rosenzweig says, this is a “war to the knife”? This kind of thinking even fails to consider whether the brutal techniques advocated would serve any practical purpose in a given situation.

Mr.Auster, I sympathize with your feelings, I am one with you. I even agree that these brutal tactics would serve very little real purpose, if any. But here comes the “but” — soldiers and socialists are a lot alike, they are the great simplifiers of the world. Here we are, good men on the sidelines, yelling about what is permissible and impermissible. I do it for the safety of my soul, as you probably must, but as I said, no moral weight is added to the conflict of people who simplify everything in order to prevail. Come with me a little way more in this argument — our protests are for the campfire during the lulls of battle. We are hopefully preparing for after the war when we can peacefully impose good behavior because we will hold power. The best we can do in the heat of the fight, right now, is see to it that the men are fed and warm, not lashed by their leaders.

“Ticking bomb cases”, where you know for a fact the prisoner has the information you need and you know exactly how much time you have to get it out of him, are rare. What’s more common is interrogating prisoners to find out *if* they know anything. Prisoners brought into Abu Ghraib from neighborhood sweeps or on tips from informers would fall into that category.

Also, the left tends to think of moral questions like this as absolutes, rather than contracts. In other words, we don’t do the right thing, if and when and as long as the worst barbarians in the world do the right thing. We do the right thing because *we* do the right thing. The reductio ad absurdum of Mr. Rosenzweig’s logic is that the police should act like criminals as long as criminals act like criminals.

On the other hand, Fourth Geneva is more than just a fossil imprint. Since it’s one of the few treaties ratified by Congress, it’s a binding contract. So is the International Convention Against Torture. Think of them as pacts between members of the civilized world that we intend to stay civilized.

It’s no accident that the guards at Abu Ghraib never saw a copy of Fourth Geneva. Fourth Geneva explicitly extends POW status beyond the regular forces of member states to any irregular non-state forces who bear arms openly and are under responsible command. It also prohibits, not just torture, but interrogation and “requiring information” in any form. Remember “Name, rank and serial number” from the old WWII movies?

Can Mr. Hechtman clarify something? My impression had been that the U.S. government had said that it was not subject to the Geneva Convention in the case of these Iraqi prisoners case because it didn’t regard them as coming under it. But you’re saying that these prisoners do come under it. So what was our basis for saying we wouldn’t be bound by the Geneva Convention in this case?

There is a lot of insight in this thread, and a fair amount of incoherence. A few thoughts prompted by both:

Arab atrocities do not excuse American misconduct, period. Even when American misconduct is not as bloody and brutal as Arab atrocities. The Uniform Code of Military Justice provides a way to deal with the soldier/jailers’ transgressions. We should let it work.

Bush and Rumsfeld are mistaken to offer grovelling apologies to the Moslem world, which are only perceived by Moslems as hypocritical signs of weakness. They should say that the offending soldiers have violated the laws that govern their conduct, they will be punished as those laws prescribe and the command will be tightened to ensure there are no more such incidents.

To excuse Western brutality by saying that the Arabs started the war (in any case, while Arabs provoked our war against terrorism with the September 11th attacks, Arabs did not begin the Iraq invasion and occupation) and so they have selected the level of brutality to which we must stoop completely contradicts the current justification for our occupation, which is that we are there to bring the long-suffering Iraqis a more benevolent government. War is brutal, but that is why civilized armies have laws of warfare that they obey.

I do not remember ever being taught, when I was a Marine officer, that one could take any liberty with un-uniformed combatants simply because they did not identify themselves as the enemy. Also, while I am no expert on the topic, it seems to me that if Just War doctrine sets guidelines for how and when Christians fight, and does so for moral and religious reasons, that doctrine would govern Christian soldiers no matter who the enemy is. Unfortunately the U.S. Army, chaplains notwithstanding, is not a Christian army.

As for Iraq, we should acknowledge that we cannot westernize the place and leave. As long as Arab regimes do not actually threaten the United States, we should be indifferent about which despot rules what Arab country. Rather than invade and attempt to govern Arab countries, we should deter whatever threat they pose to us by using our armed forces to defend America. We could begin by deploying Army divisions to the Mexican border. The Posse Comitatus Act is no bar to using the Army to patrol our borders, rather than Korea’s or Iraq’s, and Americans would be far better served. Any pretense on the federal government’s part about defending the United States is illusory as long as the government refuses to reform and enforce immigration law, however. Those suggestions may be politically impractical, but if we will not say what we want we may be sure we will never get it. HRS

Mr Auster asked: “What was our basis for saying we wouldn’t be bound by the Geneva Convention in this case?”

All four points in the definition are continuums rather than binary metrics, thus open to debate and interpretation. In particular, points 2 (fixed visible sign) and 4 (following the laws and customs of war) were the ones that were challenged.

But Third Geneva (My mistake earlier. Fourth Geneva’s the treaty I’m used to quoting in Palestine debates.) also says that the division of prisoners into lawful and unlawful combatants is supposed to be judicial and case-by-case, not administrative and across-the-board.

Mr. Hechtman has knowledge of this subject that would be useful to the rest of us. But he’s speaking in a shorthand that makes it difficult to understand him.

Backlash is begining:

www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5106409

Mr. Hechtman writes:

“But Third Geneva (My mistake earlier. Fourth Geneva’s the treaty I’m used to quoting in Palestine debates.) also says that the division of prisoners into lawful and unlawful combatants is supposed to be judicial and case-by-case, not administrative and across-the-board.”

Does a prisoner have a lawyer present? What “judicial” means? Is military judge present? Does Army has to have a prosecutor? Do witnesses have to be called from a battlefield to testify? How many lawyers per grunt the Army has to field in Iraq?
On what planet all this supposed to happen?
Isn’t all this is created to tie USA in knots, like Kyoto was designed to damage US economically?

Is it Mr. Hetchman’s position that it is illegal or immoral to even ask illegal/irregular combatants for information beyond name, rank, and serial number? (I don’t think that Al Qaidaites or Mahdi Army militiamen have either rank or serial number.) If that is the case, then obviously prosecuting the War on Terror and governing any foreign land are impracticable. If we cannot fight, the only remaining method by which we can defend and advance our interests is to support pro-American regimes or factions like the Northern Alliance in Afganistan which will fight for us. These powers surely will be more brutal than we would be. Or, if we cannot associate for political or moral reasons with unsavory regimes, then perhaps we should attempt to appease our enemies by giving them what they want.

I am in complete agreement with Howard Sutherland, except on the point of giving up in Iraq immediately — and given the limitations of our “leaders” he may even be right about that. But he is overwhelmingly right on the crucial point that the evil nature of our enemies does not release us from our moral obligations. I would like to add that NONE of our enemies in recent wars has abided by the Geneva Convention, and we should long since have given up expecting any reciprocal behavior in this matter. Contrary to what is generally supposed, the Germans in World War II did not obey the Geneva Convention fully even in dealing with Western Allied prisoners. As for Mr. Rosenzweig’s ridicule of Mr. Auster’s allegedly outdated gentlemanly ideals — most people on both sides, yes, even those from the lower classes, found no difficulty in living up to the rules in treating prisoners in World War I, and men in the Western armed forces almost always did so in World War II.

I would like to add that those “outdated ideals” had some very practical reasons, not just morality, to commend them. People who know that they will be mistreated or tortured, much less killed, are much less likely to surrender when defeat is inevitable. This may not matter much when you are dealing with a few disgusting fanatics like Al Qaeda members, but in fighting a mass armed force, it means something. The idiotic and disgusting behavior of those holding the prisoners will likely cost AMERICAN lives.

Of course Mr. Levine is correct, and most people would agree with him. There are some Americans, however, who reflect the same “Pulp Fiction” ethos that was reflected by the guards at Abu Ghraib, which is discussed today at NRO:

http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200405110847.asp

Alan Levine’s “… Mr.Rosenzweig’s ridicule of Mr. Auster’s allegedly outdated gentlemanly ideals…”
Mr. Levine misreads a description for a judgement,mixes in a teaspoon of righteous indigantion and decants “ridicule”. Heavenly days, Mr. Levine, I admire Mr. Auster”s
principles. I simply mourn their passing. This post modern world came into power in the Sixties. You invoke WW I and WW II. Well,goodbye to all that.

You failed to read my posts fully or carefully, missing the words “sympathize with” which is why you take me for the standard issue barbarian. The news just now reports a prisoner’s head cut off by his Moslem captors. You will hear less of this, I assure, you than media chatter about humiliation and reparations (Rumsfeld is running scared or paying a little lip service to nonsense to divert his detractor).

Mr. Sutherland says it better than I ever could and he brings up the Southern Border issue again, which, from what I have learned here at VFR, separates traditional conservatives and paleons from most neocons and just about everyone else. But the larger issue—of protecting our Southern Border which has been and continues to be overrun by illegals from Mexico—is our security. Though Bush has put more resources there recently, it isn’t getting the job done. We don’t need tanks and artillery at the Mexican border, but we do need National Guard troops.

Mr. Sutherland has caught some flack herefor being on the side of leaving Iraq now. Half of me is with him, and the other is not. I don’t know what is “right” and what would be “wrong” to do in that regard. My gut feeling is, we did what we originally intended to do (take out Saddam and get rid of his Army). We are now in a nation-building excercise with a toll in lives lost and money spent—and attention spent solely on the insurgents/Al Qaida-whileNorth Korea is multiplying their nukes and Iran is close to having theirs. I believe that these are the countries—along with Afghanistan and Iraq—where action needs to be taken. How we accomplish that is well beyond my imagination.

But I believe that these other enemies are important to take on, and we would have a hard time doing so with our Army and Air Force stretched so thinly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Hechtman would I’m sure be able to shed some invaluable light on our ability to handle another one or two theatres of war, if necessary.

Mr Auster wrote: “Mr. Hechtman has knowledge of this subject that would be useful to the rest of us. But he’s speaking in a shorthand that makes it difficult to understand him.”

I guess I should have made it clear I was referring to Mik’s post above which lists the four criteria that qualify irregulars as lawful combatants. Of the four, having a chain of command and bearing arms openly are the least ambiguous. In answer to Joshua’s question, Al Qaeda and other mujahideen groups do have rank. They only have one title of rank, “amir” or “commander” which does make things confusing. When I was interviewing them in 2001, I’d ask how many men they had under them and then translate that to the equivalent Western rank.

As well, the convention specifies they must wear a fixed, distinctive sign visible at a distance. The Sunni green scarves, Shia black and communist red should qualify, as would the fedayeen’s black uniforms. The point of this one is that lawful combatants can’t impersonate civilians. Impersonating civilians is called “perfidy” and is considered a war crime. This one obviously wasn’t written with urban guerilla warfare in mind, where a resistance fighter is a soldier some of the time and a civilian some of the time.

The last point, that they must follow the laws and customs of war, is so vague as to be nearly meaningless.

As far as my own position on all this, I don’t expect anyone else to share any or all of it, but here goes:

1. There should not be a black hole in between civilian criminal law and military law into which thousands of people can disappear. All prisoners should fall into one or the other. No exceptions. So nothing stops you from interrogating a terrorist like Omar Sheikh (killer of Daniel Pearl). But when you do, Miranda rights, habeus corpus, speedy trial, and all those other pesky civil rights kick in.

2. Most of the left thinks the civilian criminal model should apply. I suspect this is because the lead organizations on the issue are the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights and they (and most of the left, for that matter) know criminal law better than military.

3. I think the Geneva Convention should be applied as broadly as possible for a few reasons. First, it establishes that simply participating in a war, even one against the United States, is not in and of itself a crime. Also, which model to apply by default has a lot to do with who’s doing the applying. Police have their codes and procedures, soldiers have theirs and it’s just easier to have them do the thing they’re trained to do.

4. It’s a trade-off. Police can’t shoot on sight. Soldiers can’t interrogate. Defendants get a fair trial with counsel of choice. On the other hand, they can be executed by the book or imprisoned for life. POWs have no right to trial but they get to go home when the war is over.

As far as appeasing our enemies, the domestic Iraqi resistance would be appeased by us leaving. Since we have our own interest in doing that and we don’t expect the Sadrists and Baathists to follow us across the ocean if we do, I don’t see a problem. It would not appease Al Qaeda but at this point nothing else would either.

I’m sorry for continuing to probe Mr. Hechtman on the basics instead of researching it myself, but I still don’t get the lay of the land here. I gather that the Geneva Convention(s), to which the U.S. is a signatory, includes irregular soldiers, as described by Mr. Hechtman, among regular soldiers, meaning that nothing can be demanded of them but their identity and rank. But I also gather that the U.S. said it would not be bound by the Geneva Convention in its dealings with insurgent prisoners in Iraq. So a salient question is, what was America’s basis for taking this position?

Evidently Mr. Hechtman opposes this U.S. position and believes that all prisoners taken in war must be treated in one of two ways: as soldiers, in which case they can’t be interogated; or as civilians, in which case they can be interogated, but under the rules protecting ordinary criminal suspects under domestic U.S. law. Obviously this would leave the U.S. with no ability to get information from captured insurgents. Is this indeed Mr. Hechtman’s position?

I also want to say, based on my reading of today’s news, that I don’t think this abuse scandal is going to continue to be the huge thing it appeared to be. Yes, it reflects a general sickness and perversity in our culture, a perversity that is never challenged by the leading lights of our culture. But the actual number of people who engaged in this repellant behavior did it outside ordinary authorization. The scandal is not indicative of anything larger in the U.S. military or government, apart from the issues of lack of organization, lack of discipline, and so on.

As I suspected when I first heard about the Red Cross complaining of maltreatment of prisoners and getting no response, what the Red Cross found were things like prisoners being kept naked in unlit cells, prisoners being made to stand naked against a wall with their arms over their head or with women’s underwear over their head. I believe things like this _were_ authorized and that’s why the authorities ignored the Red Cross’s complaints. But the Marquis de Sade type photos that comprise this scandal were clearly of a different order and were not authorized. That’s my impression of where this scandal is going to end up, in which case it won’t be such a big deal.

The big deal remains the heck of a mess we’ve got ourselves into in Iraq. Our attention will soon be turning back to that problem, and the shock of those perverted things being done by a handful of U.S. soldiers will be placed in perspective and no longer seem so important.

Mr Levin asked: “Mr. Hechtman would I’m sure be able to shed some invaluable light on our ability to handle another one or two theatres of war, if necessary.”

Clinton got rid of the Army’s ability to fight two major wars at once. He replaced it with the “Win-Hold-Win” doctrine, meaning beat the first enemy decisively while pinning down the second, then transferring forces to beat the second. The Republicans called it “Win-Lose-Lose” at the time but they never changed it afterwards.

Remember that just to maintain 135,000 troops in Iraq the Army has had to change the rules on when soldiers get to go home four times so far. When 8 soldiers from the 1st Armored were killed by a car bomb in April, every news story included the talking point that all of them were supposed to have gone home two weeks earlier. That involuntary extension bought 3 months to figure out what to do next. There are 6 weeks of it left.

AP did a breakdown of the Army’s active-duty divisions. Nine out of 10 are either in Iraq and Afghanistan, just returned from there or about to go. The tenth is in Korea.

http://veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=1712

Iran is three times the size of Iraq and has not been crippled by twelve years of sanctions. To occupy Iran as successfully as we’re occupying Iraq, you’d need half a million combat troops. We don’t have them.

North Korea? A land war in Asia against 17 million fanatic communists? Been there and done that.

Mr. Hechtman tries to answer Joshua question but I’m still in darkness. Mr. Auster, it appears, also is not clear about the answer(s).

If US soldiers are abroad and being shot at by part-time irregulars. When captured, how can our soldiers extract any intel?

If they treated as POWs, they don’t have to release anything besides nebulous rank and serial number, meaning of that information is totally unclear.

If they are treated under civilian criminal law - of what country? We all know that unless that law is a US law or British or Dutch or a few other civilized countries, we will be accused by ACLU, RedCross, UN, Kennedy, HRW, Harkin and NYT in inhumane treatment of poor downtrodden folks.

I would be very interested in Mr. Hechtman views on how US might conduct a war on a foreign territory with simple poor misguided folks of AlQuada.

The publication of the photos was reckless and treasonous. The only people that will benefit will be our enemies, who will be motivated to kill more of us. Most of the world behaves evilly and will dislike us no matter what we do. In addition, the publication will not insure a few bullies will never humiliate a few, despicable lot of prisoners with American blood on their terrorist hands. Moreover, the acts depicted were not even close to horrific. The photos I have read about and briefly glanced at are not horrific. The word horror and other extreme words do not belong in a discussion of these photos. Horror includes, for example, institutionalized beatings, hanging from meat hooks, ripping out teeth and fingernails, and raping,

There was an appropriate way to expose the abuse. Reporters could have reported they viewed photographs showing this or that. If that isn’t enough to stop the abuse in a time of war, it is not enough.

The media is not exercised about true horrors, such as occur in our prisons and on our streets daily; it therefore appears that it has other motives. We can only speculate on a few purposes: to get Bush, to get America, to make money, or to follow mindlessly the stupid idea that speech is free. Speech is not free, and our soldiers, not the media’s executives, are going to find this out.

When the abusers’ secret trials end, the public trial of the reporters and media executives should begin. They gave aid to our enemies in a time of war.

Mr. Auster wrote: “But I also gather that the U.S. said it would not be bound by the Geneva Convention in its dealings with insurgent prisoners in Iraq. So a salient question is, what was America’s basis for taking this position?”

Here’s a Donald Rumsfeld speech on the subject. He’s talking about Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners taken in Afghanistan, but the logic is the same.

http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2004/sp20040213-secdef0883.html

The relevant line is this: “So there’s an important reason for insisting that lawful combatants must wear uniforms. When they fail to do so as they do in Afghanistan, or when as they do sneak as terrorists into the United States or into Germany or Turkey or Indonesia, they deliberately obliterate the distinction between civilians and combatants and as a result they endanger civilian lives.”

Every talking point I’ve been able to find is a variation on “they don’t wear uniforms”.

If the insurgents are recognized as soldiers, then no, it is not legal to interrogate them, no more than it was legal for Germans and Americans to interrogate each other in WWII. Key to this, though, is that the insurgents admit to being insurgents. Anybody who tries to pass himself off as a civilian is automatically disqualified for POW status.

Mr. Hechtman hit it right on the head in his above 01:20 AM post—“Anybody who tries to pass himself off as a civilian is automatically disqualified for POW status, WHICH I ASSUME means that the Geneva Convention(s) do not apply…?

Mr. Hechtman’s 12:18 AM post wrongly assumed—because I neglected to pose a plausible scenario, my error—that I meant the U.S., in another theatre of war, would send in the cavalry to N. Korea. That was not what I was considering. It was more in line with a sustantive air attack, possibly with nukes, that would destroy their cave-based nukes in the mountains. I have heard that the N. Koreans have more than one of these that are supposedly impenetrable. I had of course not thought out to a conclusion what role U.S. troops would have after such an attack or attacks.

The Iran model would seem to be an easier one, as we have friends in Iran and it is not as isolated geo-graphically and because China would not necessarily be an issue there. Russia used to be, as I recall, but would they intervene on Iran’s behalf given their own bloody and long problem in Chechnya?

Sorry to get so far off the track.

Mik wrote: “If US soldiers are abroad and being shot at by part-time irregulars. When captured, how can our soldiers extract any intel? If they are treated under civilian criminal law - of what country?”

The basis of the Geneva Convention is that the guys on the other side aren’t criminals or monsters. They’re just soldiers on the other side. That’s why the Convention goes into incredibly nit-picky detail listing all the conditions of imprisonment that need to be exactly the same as the living conditions of the detaining power’s soldiers, right down to the thickness of mattresses. It reinforces the message over and over again — these men are soldiers exactly like your own.

So if we’re going to teach our soldiers that they have the right and the obligation not to provide military information to our enemies, then we have to recognize the parallel right.

If you need to try specific people for specific war crimes, Geneva always lets you do that. We’re doing it to Milosevic and company right now. What it doesn’t let you do is declare an entire military force to be an outlaw organization. Remember that most of Al Qaeda, the ones who fought in Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia and twenty other brushfire wars before Sept. 11, are conventional light infantry. Again, if the Green Berets sometimes operate in civilian clothes, or the Air Force bombs Iraqi water treatment plants, we still demand that Private John Doe of the Iowa National Guard get all his Geneva rights, and rightly so. Moral equivalence is a big thing with us lefties…

American law has extra-territorial clauses that claim jurisdiction over terrorist attacks on Americans anywhere in the world. It also says that once a defendant is in an American court, the court does not care how he got there. We’re covered on that score.

Mr. Hechtman writes:

—-
1. There should not be a black hole in between civilian criminal law and
military law into which thousands of people can disappear. All prisoners
should fall into one or the other. No exceptions. So nothing stops you
from interrogating a terrorist like Omar Sheikh (killer of Daniel Pearl).
But when you do, Miranda rights, habeus corpus, speedy trial, and all
those other pesky civil rights kick in.
——

Why interrogation of a foreigner on a foreign territory should be conducted under
US law? What if a US law and a local one contradict each other?

——
2. Most of the left thinks the civilian criminal model should apply.
I suspect this is because the lead organizations on the issue are the
American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights
and they (and most of the left, for that matter) know criminal law better
than military.
——

I don’t think that is the reason. But if it is, it is a foolish one. Just because one only has a hammer, it still doesn’t make sense to treat every problem as a nail. If I know only divorce law, should I treat Omar Sheikh case as a divorce?

——
3. I think the Geneva Convention should be applied as broadly as possible
for a few reasons. First, it establishes that simply participating in a war,
even one against the United States, is not in and of itself a crime.
——

You have it backwards. It is not a crime if one follows 4 easy steps as I mentioned above. If one doesn’t, one will not get a cookie.

——
Also, which model to apply by default has a lot to do with who’s doing the applying.
Police have their codes and procedures, soldiers have theirs and it’s
just easier to have them do the thing they’re trained to do.
——

Why a high ranking commander in the field cannot have advice of 2 lawyers as to how treat misguided irregular folks? Why it has to be predermined by people who want USA to loose?

——
4. It’s a trade-off. Police can’t shoot on sight.
——

How practical it is in a nice, calm, Religion of Peace place like, say, NorthWest Pakistan?

——
Soldiers can’t interrogate.
——

Means no intel. No intel, lots of boys get killed. Lots of boys killed, no wars. Or a new, nice and glassy field suddenly appears where
300,000 simple practictioners of RoP used to habitate.

Which approach Mr.Hechtman would you like? Notice that no-war approach is not selectable due to the public plans announced by the RoP practictioners.

No matter what we do, short of converting into RoP or destroying jihadis, one day we will lose a few thousand or tens of thousand of our people. Then should it be a war with intel or a glassy field situation?

——
Defendants get a fair trial with counsel of choice. On the other hand, they
can be executed by the book or imprisoned for life. POWs have no right
to trial but they get to go home when the war is over.
——

Fair trial under which country law? What if a country in question has no concept of a fair trial, as all but 2 RoP countries?

——
As far as appeasing our enemies, the domestic Iraqi resistance would
be appeased by us leaving. Since we have our own interest in doing
that and we don’t expect the Sadrists and Baathists to follow us across
the ocean if we do, I don’t see a problem.
——

US leaving without installing a friendly goverment/strong man will be celebrated as a historic victory over the Great Satan. Why would
not they follow us a small part of the way, say to Kuwait and SaudiArabia? How is your retirement portfolio going to do when gas hits $15/gallon?

It is an appeasement of a most irresponsible kind.

——
It would not appease Al Qaeda
but at this point nothing else would either.
——

But you want to hand them a tremendous victory. You think it will advance your vision of a just and peaceful world?

Ken Hechtman wrote:

“the left tends to think of moral questions like this as absolutes, rather than contracts. In other words, we don’t do the right thing, if and when and as long as the worst barbarians in the world do the right thing. We do the right thing because *we* do the right thing.”

and

“Fourth Geneva is more than just a fossil imprint. Since it’s one of the few treaties ratified by Congress, it’s a binding contract”

What left “tends to think” might be of some interest to a liberal pundit or two, but is irrelevant to a majority of Americans.

Mr.Hechtman probably feels also that the left “tendency to think” is of zero import, otherwise why he claims that the 4th Geneva is a “contract”?

Contract requires at least 2 parties. Who is another party in Iraq occupation? Saddam? AlQuida? Taliban? Sadr?

I posted 4 criteria one must meet to get POW status.

Mr.Hechtman refers to those points in couple of postings:

“All four points in the definition are continuums rather than binary metrics, thus open to debate and interpretation. In particular, points 2 (fixed visible sign) and 4 (following the laws and customs of war) were the ones that were challenged.”

Open to debate and interpretation by whom? Is debate between Sanchez and Kimmet sufficient? Or Geneva says that interpretation is done by UN or Chomsky? Points 2 and 4 were challenged by whom and where? Does anyone sane believes that jihadis follow laws and customs of war?

“Of the four, having a chain of command and bearing arms openly are the least ambiguous.
As well, the convention specifies they must wear a fixed, distinctive sign visible at a distance. The Sunni green scarves, Shia black and communist red should qualify, as would the fedayeen’s black uniforms.”

Green scarves, Shia black and communist red (what the hell is this? Shia underwear?) should qualify - sez who? By all accounts jihadis in Iraq (Sadr crazies exception) wear nothing to separate them from civilians.

“The point of this one is that lawful combatants can’t impersonate civilians. Impersonating civilians is called “perfidy” and is considered a war crime.”

So it is. All Iraqis jihadis except Sadr’s boys, are war criminals by this definition alone.

“This one obviously wasn’t written with urban guerilla warfare in mind, where a resistance fighter is a soldier some of the time and a civilian some of the time.”

So insensitive on Geneva part. I say it is a violation of civil rights of the deserving downtrodden part-time civilians, part-time resistance fighters. A complaint to EEOC or maybe even a suit are totally justified.

Mr. Levin wrote: “Mr. Hechtman hit it right on the head in his above 01:20 AM post — Anybody who tries to pass himself off as a civilian is automatically disqualified for POW status, WHICH I ASSUME means that the Geneva Convention(s) do not apply?”

Our local Camp X-Ray Defense Committee (it has a longer name, but that’s essentially what it is…) is one of the few groups that pushes for POW status in general. On the other hand, the case they have the most hands-on involvement with is the one of the 12 Kuwaitis who say they’re charity workers. This presents exactly the problem you describe. The minute they said they’re weren’t soldiers, Geneva went out the window. If they lose in the Supreme Court (and my guess is they’ll win the right to be heard and lose on the merits) they cannot then fall back on Geneva.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/013102/news2.html
http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/112102/news3.html

Scenario 1: Abu el-Abd is wearing his colors, carrying his weapon and holding his position on a Fallujah street corner as ordered by his commander. He’s shot, wounded and taken prisoner. He can’t talk his way out of it so he doesn’t try. Geneva applies.

Scenario 2: Abu el-Abd is arrested in his home at 3 AM on an informer’s tip. He says, “I’m just a poor taxi driver. I don’t know nothing about no resistance.” Geneva does not apply.

I’m not going to respond to most of Mik’s post directly. I don’t think he’ll convince me or I’ll convince him. On all his points but one, I’m willing to let him have the last word.

I actually have been on trial for a war crime (espionage) in an Islamic court and so I am going to tell the story. Not by way of saying that my experience gives me the One True Perspective, but because it illustrates some of the abstract principles we’ve been talking about.

Here’s the longwinded version:

http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2001/120601/news8.html

To summarize: I had a trial in which I got the chance to explain myself and have other people vouch for me. I was in front of a judge before the end of the day and on my way home by the end of the week despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence. The interrogation, while unpleasant, didn’t do any permanent damage and stopped the instant the judge was satisfied I wasn’t a bad guy.

One thing I concluded about torture is that it becomes the gold standard for information. Anything developed any other way is suspect. I never changed my story but the judge didn’t believe me until I told it under stress.

They were also guided by a code of morality-as-they-understood-it which had nothing to do with how we treated them. They knew, and wanted to know if I knew, about all the American extrajudicial arrests of Sept 2001. A couple of the local authorities, Maulvi Aminullah, in particular, took significant personal risks to get me released.

Yvonne Ridley, the British reporter held in the Kabul jail tells her story the same way. She says, “There were eight British citizens arrested in Afghanistan. I was the lucky one because I was arrested by the Afghans.”

If these are the worst barbarians that exist, then at a minimum, the civilized world has got to be able to match this standard.

Ken Hechtman writes:

“Yvonne Ridley, the British reporter held in the Kabul jail tells her story the same way. She says, “There were eight British citizens arrested in Afghanistan. I was the lucky one because I was arrested by the Afghans.”

Mr. Hechtman you were doing so well with your own story. But then this from a nutcase with Stockholm syndrom.

Ms. Ridley also drops this pearl of wisdom:
“I learned that the Taleban are very honourable people - they kept their word.”

Indeed. Every time they announced a fun-filled warm-up before a soccer game, they would definitely keep their word and publicly behead one or couple of people.

Have any quotes from Nahum Chumpsky to drop?

Mik wrote: “Mr. Hechtman you were doing so well with your own story. But then this from a nutcase with Stockholm syndrom.”

I’m not inclined to engage in a generalized left vs. right flame war. I don’t think this is the forum for it.

I have met Yvonne Ridley in person. She didn’t strike me as a nutcase. Before she went to Afghanistan, she was either married to or living with a Palestinian, with all the political baggage that you’d associate with it. I suspect that, more than Stockholm Syndrome, accounts for some of the stands she took afterward.

She’s not wrong about the Taliban. Their tribal code of honor (Pushtunwali) is incredibly important to them. But in no way is it honor as we understand it. It explains why they were willing to see their country invaded and themselves driven from power rather than surrender a protected guest. It explains why they were insulted at the very suggestion of a ransom and why Maulvi Aminullah made the dangerous drive from Spin Boldak to Kandahar and back to plead my case. It also explains (but does not excuse) the infamous “honor killings” of female relatives.

For the record, I have no use for Noam Chomsky and won’t be quoting him here or anyplace else.
Just as an example of how his conspiracy theory has poisoned the minds of a generation of impressionable young leftists, consider P Murgos’ assertion above that the press is giving aid to the enemy in time of war.

The extent to which the Washington Post and Newsweek have been working not just to undermine the national war effort but to actively support the enemy is unprecedented in American history. None of the mainstream press’s Vietnam coverage even comes close — and if there was a precedent for something like this I would know it. What’s also unprecedented is the fact that they’re getting away with it. In 1944 they would have been padlocked for less. In 1918 they would have been jailed. In 1864 they would have been shot.

You can be for or against what the Post is doing, but you have to recognize that it’s huge. The Chomskyheads haven’t noticed because they already know the revealed truth of Manufacturing Consent. They don’t need to pick up a newspaper once in a while.

I found John Derbyshire’s thoughts on the Abu Ghraib scandal sensible and somewhat amusing. Mr. Derbyshire possess common sense in an unusually large degree.
His weblog entry on NRO’s The Corner is quoted below:

_____________________________

My mental state these past few days:

1. The Abu Ghraib “scandal”: Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let’s have a couple of courts martial for appearance’s sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB.

2. The US press blowing up the Abu Ghraib business: Fury at these lefty jounalists doing down America. They just want to re-live the glory days of Vietnam, when they brought down a president they hated. (PS: They hated him because he was an anticommunist, while they themselves tought communism was just fine.)

3. GWB apologizing to some barbarian chieftain for Abu Ghraib: Disgust. Correct approach: “Mind if we film some footage in YOUR jails?”

4. Revelations about sexual hanky panky in US armed forces: Outrage. I want to see someone cashiered — a general, at least. This is no way for soldiers to behave when on active service. Gross, unpardonable violation of military ethics. Whose damn fool idea was it to mix men and women in the same units?

On today’s NRO’s The Corner, Jonah Goldberg is making sense, in his own somewhat superficial way, regarding the use of coersion in interrogating Al Qaidaites and Iraqi insurgents. Mr. Goldberg, responding to a NY Times article complaining over the treatment of top Al Qaeda prisoners, writes thus:

” Good. I would be far more upset to learn the CIA was being prevented from using coercive techniques against these people. Now, I don’t want permanent, cruel physical torture to be used — unless truly absolutely necessary (ticking bombs and all that) — but if Khalid Shaikh Mohammed finds his stay with the CIA to be the worst thing that ever happened to him, I say ‘Wahoo! look at my tax dollars at work!’

And, “[T]his is no scandal, this… [is what] …most Americans assumed was going on already and I bet you the store they’d be more upset if it stopped.”

The New York Times article is here:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13DETA.html?hp

After all our debate above, Rumsfeld is now telling Congress that all prisoners in Iraq are covered by the Geneva Convention. He also claimed to have a lawyer’s opinion that at least one method of deliberately inflicting pain was legal, so I’m not sure he’s talking about the same Geneva Convention that we are.

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/12/rumsfeld_interrogation/index.html

In a previous post, I vaguely referred to “ticking bombs” being rare and prisoners who might or might not know something being common because I didn’t have statistics to quote. I do now. The Red Cross says Military Intelligence says that between 70 and 90 percent are in jail “by mistake”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/opinion/12WED1.html

The attribution to Military Intelligence is in the original Financial Times story which is down today but the Wall Street Journal has the full Red Cross report in the pay-section.

http://online.wsj.com/documents/wsj-ICRC_report050904.pdf?mod=home_journal_links

Mr. Hechtman writes:

“The extent to which the Washington Post and Newsweek have been working not just to undermine the national war effort but to actively support the enemy is unprecedented in American history. None of the mainstream press’s Vietnam coverage even comes close — and if there was a precedent for something like this I would know it. What’s also unprecedented is the fact that they’re getting away with it. In 1944 they would have been padlocked for less. In 1918 they would have been jailed. In 1864 they would have been shot.”

I have only a superficial knowledge of the US Media history but Mr. Hechtman timeline looks right to this casual observer. What is interesting is that Mr. Hechtman is self-described leftie.

I would never have thought that a self-described leftie could hold such (truthful) view of the US Media. Perhaps my stereotype of an American leftie needs some revisions. Mr.Hechtman has expanded my understanding, for that I’m thankful.