Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former US army general

[TCO]

Sub force is all male.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I wonder how many of the detainees you're crying about actually met the requirements to be called a prisoner of war...

a) A lot of them happened to be unlucky *******s in the wrong place at the wrong time.

b) If there's a question about their status and coverage under the convention, there's a specified procedure for handling that, which was ignored.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Drake, is it okay to abuse people whether the Geneva Convention says so or not?

Depends on whether you're talking about real abuse or just making people stand and listen to loud music...

Extremely loud music can diminish or even destroy a person's hearing.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why is this woman considered a reliable source of info anyway?

Brigadier general, assigned to brigade command, in the chain of command to see orders wrt handling of prisoners, etc.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

You can go ahead and argue, trivialize what torture is.

People who call things like prolonged standing, sleep deprivation and exposure to loud music "torture" are the ones who are trivializing the concept...

To the rest of us, we know what it is.

I don't think you do.

Try it for a while. Especially if you're in the hands of foreigners, who are using a facility notorious for its past tortures and executions of political enemies.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Brigadier general, assigned to brigade command, in the chain of command to see orders wrt handling of prisoners, etc.

I think you will have to get down to DD's level, and use baby talk so that he can understand why this person would be a reliable source.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Brigadier general, assigned to brigade command, in the chain of command to see orders wrt handling of prisoners, etc.

Who happens to have a vested interest in passing off her incompetence on someone else.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
People who call things like prolonged standing, sleep deprivation and exposure to loud music "torture" are the ones who are trivializing the concept...

I suspect you've never really been subject to any of these. We had to do a stress position as a for of "exercise: in jr high that involved us holding our arms outstretched for a few minutes. It was agonizing. That was just a few minutes. Stress position torture involves hours and days.

Really loud music isn't just really loud, it is so loud that it is painful, that your ears are in physical pain . . . until you blow your ear drums.

And I'm sure you could begin to understand sleep deprivation if anyone's ever woken you up in the middle of the night. Imagine every time you feel asleep, for days on end, someone woke you.

The difference between what you think this is and what it really is is like the difference between being slapped and having the **** beat out of you.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Who happens to have a vested interest in passing off her incompetence on someone else.

We already know such memos existed, however.

[Provost Harrison]

Besides, any of the 'real torture', so to speak, is outsourced to some of our less savoury 'allies'.

Isn't it nice to see how much better things have got for the people of Iraq now that Saddam is out of power

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Who happens to have a vested interest in passing off her incompetence on someone else.

Not really. Her career is done. Besides, you don't get to be a BG (meaning not only have you navigated in-service politics, but your promotion has twice been approved by Congress) without understanding what actions and decisions are within your pay grade and what needs to come from a higher pay grade. Even Sanchez, who was an O9, isn't going to run off and do an Abu Ghraib without directives from higher authority.

In Schwarzkopf's bio, he has an interesting anecdote about the selection process. As an O6 BG-candidate, he and about three dozen other O6s were brought in as part of briefing on command responsibilities and such for general officers. At the start of it, Schwarzkopf was thinking that they'd be congratulated or something of the sort, and instead, they were told something like this: "If the plane that brought all of you here had crashed and all of you were killed, we could dip into the ranks of colonels and find officers equally qualified to replace you."

Point being that there are always far more fully qualified officers in a given grade than there are promotions to the next grade. You don't get to the next level by taking the initiative to collosally **** up. Karpinski knew this, and so did Pappas, Sanchez, et al.

[Ramo]

Who happens to have a vested interest in passing off her incompetence on someone else.

Lawrence Wilkerson (Powell's ex-CoS) has been saying much the same thing - there's a paper trail coming directly from Cheney and Rumsfeld legitimizing detainee abuse.

[GePap]

Obviously Drake would have fitted right in with this administration's policy on detainees.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

but it's still torture

No, it isn't. I don't accept the ridiculous notion that any coercion whatsoever should be considered torture. I frankly don't see anything wrong with the traditional definition of what torture entails...

the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/torture

You'd have been an excellent political enforcer in the post-Stalin USSR

[Darius871]

dp