6 US Troops charged for maltreating Iraqi jail inmates

[Ramo]

Or we just start running our chosen Iraqi cadres through the School of the Americas

Who would be the chosen? More Arab nationalists? I don't think that they could again maintain control over the Shia or Kurds even with our help.

Not everyone does, not by a long shot. We're still dealing with a tiny percentage of the overall population.

Last poll I've seen, 57% of Iraqis (this number is quite a bit higher if you include only the Arabs) or so want us out immediately. And this poll was taken right before Fallujah exploded and the Shia rebelled (and obviously it preceded this).

Won't happen.

Why not?

I don't believe they have any interest in doing so.

I'd agree if you mean that they don't have any interest in doing what it'd take to destroy the Sadrist movement. I'd disagree if you mean that it isn't in their interest to have the Sadrist movement gone.

The best thing for Sistani to do was what he did - sit back, and if Sadr gets wasted by the Americans, that's plus two for Sistani,

You mean it's a plus for Sistani if the Shia are convinced that the Americans aren't willing to bargain with them or address their grievances, and create trumped up charges (that seems to be the general sentiment about our attack on Sadr since the prison scandal, even among those that bitterly oppose Sadr's ideology) to eliminate troublesome political figures? There'll be pandemonium if we invade, and Sistani has even advocated armed resistance.

if the Americans back down, then Sadr's stuck if he continues the same **** when there's a sovereign Iraqi government, etc. Sadr painted himself into a corner when he decided to get openly uppity, and Sistani's cool as a cucumber letting it play out without taking any decisive action unless and until it's in his interest to do so.

In the mean time, the debate gets radicalized, and the more extremist of the Shia Islamists win out over the moderate ones like Sistani. So, folks like Sadr win over large parts of his religious constitutency, and they wind up with maybe a fifth of the new parliament (assuming all goes well). How is that good?

"Broad support" is a bit different from "having better things to do than really care about what Sadr is doing." The Montreal Expos have some fans too.

Which is why the moderates in Shia street are trying like hell to get Sadr to back down?

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
We don't do that to field grade or general officers.

Oh good - that's me off the hook then

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


The Sadrists?

Yeah, that is funny. So is Sadr; he's like a cartoon villain.

[Fake Boris]

MtG, there is no such thing as a legitimate question to a POW other than: name, rank, number. That's it.

[Alexander's Horse]

and would you like a continental breakfast or just cereal?

[Pax]

I did'nt know we were trying initiate Iraqi's inot the skull and bones. I gues that makes sense. Nothing else does.
Seriously, some of the ideas espoused on this thread strike me as pretty unamerican. We're supposed to be the good guys. No change that. Our weapons are supposed to spit righteous fire.

[Chemical Ollie]

Swedish reporter Urban Hamid reports today that while the jail incidents are discussed a lot on TV in Iraq, people on the street in Bagdhad are not that chocked about it. They are more upset about the recent assault on Falluja, where at least 600 people were killed, so the damage was already done when this affair sailed up.

[Case]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
MtG, there is no such thing as a legitimate question to a POW other than: name, rank, number. That's it.

AFAIK, there's nothing wrong with asking more questions then that. POWs just don't have to answer them.

Non-violent interregation of prisoners is always a key source of information - when most people get captured they tend to go into a state of shock, and a friendly face who speaks their language can get all kinds of useful information out of them before they return to normal and clam up.

[East Street Trader]

My father's aircraft was struck by lightening in WWII and he had to bail out, spending several years subsequently as a PoW.

He has told me of the experience of coming down by parachute and then rather expecting to be shot out of hand by the German troops into whose hands he fell. But in fact they treated him with courtesy. And then he was held for a day or two in a local gaol where he was visited by an SS guy to be interogated. He gave name rank and number expecting ill treatment to persuade him to answer furher questions but again he was treated with complete propriety. There was another person in the cell but my dad thought he did not seem right and did not chat with him. Maybe he was a plant, maybe he was not.

There was a period while my dad was a PoW when their wrists were tied up with string throughout daylight hours. Because that had been done to German prisoners on the Dieppe raid and Hitler was cross about it. Food was scarse - but it was scarse for people other than PoWs as well.

He saw a little brutality but not a great deal.

And he was treated honourably himself despite escaping (and being recaptured) three times.

So I do not buy any crap about troops in WWII routinely behaving badly to PoWs.

It is notorious that there was a lot of savagery on the eastern front. Which I expect is true. The figting there was particularly intense and that has unlocked inhuman behaviour in combatants all down the years. Even there, however, I have read a number of first hand accounts which describe the behaviour of particular Russian or German troops as a good deal more kindly.

Add to which virtually everybody signs up to the ideas in the Geneva Convention.

The simple fact is that as a species we have been steadily moving away from savagery and towards civilized notions which help us all get on with each other better.

In the present situation the Iraqis deserve more consideration not less. Insisting that they are an enemy is daft. That they are cross about having to put up with the troops of a foreign invader is natural. It is equally natural, and proper, for the US and UK to deter those who think to attack their soldiers or to commit sabotage. That must be done by arrest and prompt trial. In the meantime prisoners must be treated humanely.

Seeking to extract information from prisoners is lame at the best of times, in the present situation it is idiotic.

[Ramo]

Incidentally:

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

The envoy, legislator Ann Clwyd, said she had investigated the claims of the woman in her 70s and believed they were true."

[...]

"She was held for about six weeks without charge," the envoy told Wednesday's Evening Standard newspaper. "During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey. A harness was put on her, and an American rode on her back."

Clwyd said the woman has recovered physically but remains traumatized.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&u=/ap/20040505/ap_on_re_eu/britain_iraq_us_prisoner_abuse&printer=1

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Case


Non-violent interregation of prisoners is always a key source of information - when most people get captured they tend to go into a state of shock, and a friendly face who speaks their language can get all kinds of useful information out of them before they return to normal and clam up.

I never thought of that -- the effect of shock giving interrogators an advantage.

[Chemical Ollie]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3689835.stm

Rumsfeld's job 'on the line'


By Jonathan Marcus
BBC defence correspondent


Donald Rumsfeld is one of this administration's great survivors. But now, in the wake of the evidence of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, his job could be on the line.

Reports indicate he has already been privately admonished by President George Bush.


Is Mr Rumsfeld a plus or a liability to the Bush administration?

His apparent failure to relay the gravity of the charges of abuse together with the Pentagon's failure to get a grip on the detention system once such mistreatment was made clear has caused President Bush fundamental embarrassment.

It has only aggravated the mistrust with which the US Army is viewed in Iraq and heightened suspicion about the values that America is claiming to be bringing to the country.

It worsens Washington's wider standing in the Arab world. And it probably does little to recommend the US project in Iraq to America's friends and allies around the world. ---

Scapegoat to save Bush?

[GePap]

Originally posted by East Street Trader


So I do not buy any crap about troops in WWII routinely behaving badly to PoWs.

It is notorious that there was a lot of savagery on the eastern front. Which I expect is true. The figting there was particularly intense and that has unlocked inhuman behaviour in combatants all down the years. Even there, however, I have read a number of first hand accounts which describe the behaviour of particular Russian or German troops as a good deal more kindly.

Add to which virtually everybody signs up to the ideas in the Geneva Convention.

I would agree with you than in general treatment towards POW's in the western front was decent, unless you were a jew caught by the Germans.

In the east though, treatment was subhuman. Well over 2 million Soviet POW's died in german hands. Of the 98,000 German captured by by the Soviets at Stalingrad, I think 5000 eventually made it home by around 1952. In the east getting captured was only marginally better to getting killed outright.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
Scapegoat to save Bush?

I don't care if they fire Rumsfeld, I'd be more interested to hear what they are doing to prevent that similar things happen in the future.

[Drake Tungsten]

in a local gaol

A what?