Stop the Press!

[jarhead]

Bandit60

A serious question for you. Not trying at all to be a smarta$$ here.

Accept this premise as being true for the sake of discussion.

The Internet now literally guarantees everyone on the planet who has access to a PC, to get news, propaganda, photos, porn, spam, and any number of topics. These web pages originate from all over the planet; not just in the U.S.

Barring the disconnecting of electrical current from your home, or government seizure and confiscation of personal computers, just how could the news be managed or censored, to keep Americans and other peoples of the world, from having access to news?

 

[AeroBoy]

You're wrong Aero Boy. The media presentation of these pictures was irresponsible. I'm not going to defend what happened in the prison again - some of it was wrong I'm sure. BUT MOST OF IT WAS NOT!! The American public needs to grow up and realize if we didn't do some of that, we'd eventually be dealing with it here. Then what you you be yelling about? That we didn't "do enough"? Be honest, for once. What the media did was errode our ability to be successful in this entire fight against terrorism.

Happy?

Big "David" Duke Six: This is an absurd way of thinking. The actions of the military, not that of the press, is eroding our "ability to be successful in this entire fight against terrorism." We are the U.S. and we tout that we are supposed to be above these sorts of actions. When we, as a country, act like this, how can we keep and gain allies in this neverending fight against terrorism? In addition, how can we openly criticize countries such as China for human-rights abuses when our military pulls stunts like this? And didn't we go into Iraq to "free" their people, not to continue the civil-rights abuses of Saddam's regime?

The fact is that if we don't have true freedom of the press, then we eventually won't have many freedoms left at all. Our founding fathers were so concerned about this particular freedom that "freedom of speech and the press" was the FIRST amendment to be added to our constitution. Let that soak into your brain for awhile.

 

[ATL2CDG]

Suppress the truth? Hide military and civil government wrongs from the public and international community? Resist change and refuse culpability?

I think I smell 1930s and 1940s Germany...

 

[onthebeach]

For those who are quick to hold our military to the letter of the law, keep this in mind also.

Taking such pictures is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions relative to the treatment of Prisoners of War--of which the United States is signatory. Also prohibited is the publication for viewing of any such pictures. So when you complain--justly--that the actions of the soldiers in question have endangered the war effort by further inflaming Arab public opinion (NOTE: Is that possible?), just remember that the actions of the U. S. press have done the same.

With this in mind, realize that the National Command Authority (read: Commander in Chief) could have *legally* and *legitimately* prohibited any such publication or viewing; but of course the left would have decried that as a cover up. The fact that our government has made no such prohibition...in effect, committing *further* violations of a treaty in order to keep the public informed...should speak volumes to those who are opposed to our way of life. Unfortunately, it will not.

 

[Jedi_Cheese]

Also, in a war between signatory and nonsignatory states the Geneva Conventions only binds a signatory when the nonsignatory state abides by the Conventions. It also doesn't bind signatories if another signatory is failing to abide by the conditions set forth in the Conventions.

 

[jarhead]

It is a little messy in that area. The Geneva Conventions are agreed to by nation states. Al-Queda is not a nation, and its tentacles are all over the planet. Their really is no way, in my mind, that OBL could even "sign up" to be a signatory. He is an international criminal, not a nation.

But, that aside, it is my understanding the the UCMJ governing conduct by U.S. military personel, prohibit abusive treatment of prisoners. I also believe that there are specific statements as to what constitutes abuse. Years ago I had a great book with a synopsis of the articles spelled out in the UCMJ, but it has been misplaced in my various relocations over the years.

 

[Tim47SIP]

Arrow is way out there!

Not so! The beheading was a direct result of our military's actions. Don't try and shift the blame. The press is merely the messenger, and as the saying goes: "Don't kill the messenger."

I guess you are the expert here, listening to CNN et al. Tell us all knowing one, when did the beheading occur. Was it last week? A couple of days after the news broke? When? I'll tell you, one week before any info on the subject was released. The media is more to blame as they fully know that this terrible act happened before the release of info from the military. But this act falls right into their politically motivated agenda; get Bush out of power no mater what it takes. If they have to diminish the U.S.'s ability to defend itself, then so be it.

People, Big Duke is correct. For many of you have never been subjected to war, our liberal ways of doing things here in the U.S. do not work over there. In case you lib’s don’t understand, when our foot patrols go out into the streets, they are not greeted with handshakes and beer. They are shot at, watch their brethren killed in front of their eyes, and try to round up the perpetrators. Now, in your liberal minds, we should get these guys on the street that just happened to be innocently in the area with a weapon and a head cover, ask them if they are guilty and if they say no, let them go. We don't want to take any innocent victims, that would not look good to the Int Red Cross.

Now, since we cant really tell who the enemy is and who is not, anyone in the area is considered a combatant. We round them up, take them to the prison, and try to get info from them to save the lives of the peacekeepers. Well, I guess we should just listen to our liberal press and uneducated naysayer’s and do what is best. Just ask the prisoner if he is guilty, and of course he will let us know right there, simple. These prisoners must be treated with the same rights as our U.S. civilians, that is the American way? They kill our soldiers, we reward them with our politically correct feel good treatment. Good for them, not to good for us.

What I am getting at here is that the KGB, Spain, France, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Libya, China, N Korea, etc., use tactics to break prisoners that make ours look like a field trip to the park. Maybe the method used was improper, but a method must be used to get information out of these terrorists. Now, the liberals and the media have made it almost impossible to accomplish this task. They have given the Iraqi insurgents and Al Quaida more political power that these organizations hoped for. Additionally, our soldier’s hands will be tied for some time to come and won’t be able to interrogate without the IRC or some liberal watch dog standing over them.

OK, flame away. You will tell me to get my head out, Bush and Rumsfield are to blame, the IRC is credible and knows who is innocent and who is not, we deserved what we got, bla, bla, bla. But I can tell you that not one of you will use factual data to support any of your so called claims. Pathetic.

 

[surplus1]

As I read these threads and comments from those of you on the so-called right, it becomes more clear with each post why the abuse (or whatever you chose to call it) took place.

The prevailing attitude that I see is simple ... the end justifies the means. That is the message sent by the President, the VIce President, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Deputy Secretaries of Defense, most of you writing here and millions more of "our people". That some of our young people picked up on this attitude and carried it out is no accident and should not be a surprise.

What seems to escape you is that the attitude of our adversaries is exactly the same. They too believe that ... the end justifies the means.

This attitude permits the fanatics on their side to engage in the murder and mayhem that they do, to teach their children to follow in their footsteps, to train their youth to "kill for the cause" without thought or reason, and to invoke the name of Allah in support of their effort.

In turn, this attitude permits the fanatics on our side to righteously proclaim "my country, right or wrong". It allows us to wage war against the innocent as well as the guilty, to advocate the acceptance of what is clearly abnormal behavior, to trample on the civil rights of others and even on those of our own citizens, to advocate censorship in an effort to hide our transgressions from ourselves, and to have our own President claim that he has been called by God to free the world from evil.

They do it in the name of Islam and we do it in the name of Freedom, Christianity or Western values (whichever is more convenient at the time).

We do not hesitate to remind ourselves of the greatness of our "founding fathers" and to praise the noble words that they wrote. Yet we fail to remember that while they wrote those wonderful words and advocated those brilliant ideas upon which our Republic is founded, the very same men were insurgents against their government, subjected their fellow men to the abuse and ignomy of slavery, murdered hundreds of thousands of the indigenous population and confined the remainder on "reservations" ... for the purpose of appropriating (stealing) their lands and washed their own hands of it all.

It took us well over 100 years, after our bloody Civil War, before we could bring ourselves to legally abolish discrimination and apartheid towards millions of our own citizens, and we continue today to harbor (in secret) the same feelings towards our "minorities" throughout the majority of our country.

There is no doubt that the ideas advanced by the founding fathers were and remain noble. The "problem" is that we have never followed them completely ourselves, yet we presume to demand that others who have never been exposed to those ideals should do so. We still can't come to grips with the true meaning of "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL". We preach it, but alas we do NOT practice it.

We annoint ourselves as the founders of democracy, forgetting that the concept originates in ancient Greece and, perhaps more importantly, we ignore the fact that when some among us seek to practice true democracy we call them "un-American" and less than patriotic. Isn't that much the same as what the Greeks did when one of history's greatest minds questioned their behavior? Didn't they force Socrates to drink hemlock and poison himself?

I don't ask or expect us to be perfect but I do hope that we can at least mature enough to admit to ourselves that we are not. I do not ask that we turn the other cheek or love our enemies for that is left to the Christ, but I do expect that we realize that in pursuit of our own objectives, we are in fact capable of just as much evil as anyone else, and often perpetrate it. We simply choose different methods by which to carry it out and are more sophisticated in covering it up, which is what many of you are advocating in the current scandal. You don't want the pictures released and regret that some have been, because you don't want our bad side to be exposed. Isn't that hypocrisy?

We decry the evil Palestinians for their suicide bombings and the resultant terror invoked against the Israelies, yet we have no problem with imposing upon them millions of people that we did not want in our own lands of Europe who take their land by force and rain terror on them, not with suicide bombers, but with fighter jets, tanks, armored bulldozers, missiles from attack helicopters, and the full support of our government. The Palestinians are terrorists for trying to defend their land and the Zionists are patriots and democrats for taking it from them by military force.

After 20 years of battling the French to free their country from colonial occupation, we found it necessary to cut VietNam (their country) in two, call one-half of it South Viet Nam, kill hundreds of thousands of them and 60,000 of our own finest young people, that we might somehow establish a colonial regime of our own within their borders. When some of us protested, the rest of us call them treasonous and are still doing so today.

We should not surrender our "values" but we might all do well to take an honest look at what those "values" really are. Forget for a moment what we say and try to take an honest look at what we do, both at home and especially abroad.

If we ourselves cannot practice what we preach, the only success that we will achieve is proving beyond any doubt that WE are in fact little different from those we so willingly despise. We're just richer and we have bigger and better weapons of mass destruction (which are not "lost" in the desert).

 

[jarhead]

TIM47SIP

Wow. That's quite a rant. I really don't quite know where to begin. One observation I have from your post, is the repeated intentionally pejorative use of the word 'liberal' in a defamatory and derogatory divisive manner. I think that slinging around of a really quite noble word, is becoming a little old school of late. It has become a buzz word for hate and intolerance. That is not what it means or stands for. It was 'liberal' actions that ended segregated schools. It was liberal politics that ended segregated seating in buses and restaurants in the south. Yet the word now is used as a catch all label to try to slander anyone who is in disagreement with a 'conservative' bent. That is unfortunate. It speaks to a certain poverty of thought. Labels have a way of fostering that type of intolerance to different views from people in a cross section of America. I would never dream of calling a 'conservative' (whatever that is) as a promoter of the Ku Klux Klan, yet those who followed that hooded societal aberration, claimed to be conservative protestants, who only wanted to preserve the white race, and keep Jews and blacks from mingling with white America.

I will not label my self as a conservative or a liberal. I have views on many things that are of a conservative nature, and on other topics they are of a more liberal nature. Neither word should be used in a derisive fashion to stoke up fires of hatred or misunderstanding. That’s what freedom and democracy are supposed to represent.

Then you close your post with an indictment of anyone who might respond to your post, before any response has been made. You call the yet un-posted responses as “Pathetic” That seems to me to be a sign of a very closed mind, and one with very little tolerance with views other than your own. You seem to want to suspend the constitution, and also to promote more abuse which has already hurt our country very badly, even in the face of the Republican administration wanting to fully prosecute the criminals; both Islamic criminals and American criminals.

 

[Tim47SIP]

Great posts

Surplus : Skarry needs a running mate. I think you would be an excellent articulate, professional and admirable Democratic Vice President. Keep up the good work.

jarhead : Um OK, I guess I will just have to stay narrow minded. Thanks for the heads up!