The Beginning Of The End?

Bush could have stopped all this torture in five minutes, if he wanted it done.

1) Order dishonorable discharges to those involved, and their superiors all the way up to and including the SecDef. Anyone raising any objection of any sort, verbally, in writing, or even via a sigh or gesture- would be immediately seized and held incommunicado as an Enemy Combatant.

2) Have all that were directly involved, and their immediate superiors, taken to a military brig and held incommuncado, as Enemy Combatants, until such time as a cessation of hostilities is officially declared by the US Congress.

That would have put a stop to it. Instead, hundreds of thousands of person-hours have been expended by military personnel on this issue.

But Bush, quite frankly, gets a kick out of having the power to destroy cities, kill bystanders, and torture and kill anyone he wants to hurt, along with anyone else who gets in the way. Like serial killers, he's had a taste of blood, and he likes it, and nothing short of a jail cell or execution (assuming he's legally convicted of a capital offense, something we certainly cannot rule out) will stop him from continuing to preside over torture and murder.

Oh, and now he's quite literally selling off America, including our most strategic ports.

So, readers, which side are you on? The side of American patriots and revolution? Or do you support the party of liars, murderers, thieves, and traitors: the Republican Party? Do you think there's any room for what's in between?

 

There's already a thread on this (http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148948). First of all, he's not "quite literally" selling anything, it is a contract to manage, not ownership of the port. Secondly, the last contractor was a British company, not an American one.

 

I was referring to video technology of cell phones. To some of the oldtimers running things at the Pentagon, that is new. Someone didn't consider it being used to leak out images at Abu Ghraib. It's another example of an ill-planned mission.

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The PDF is on the web. It was part of the investigation of the Italian journalist who was accidentally killed by U.S. troops. Whoever in the govt released it didn't realize people could un-hide the hidden text. It gave out frequencies and types of our radio links between troops in Iraq. I downloaded the PDF myself and read it. I will try to dig it up for you if you want.

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It's not just incompetence in the Pentagon. Dan Rather tried to pull a stunt by showing a typewritten paper that was supposedly written by the National Guard that made Bush look bad. Internet gurus on the web and ordinary people studied the fonts and realized it was a fake. Rather apologized later.

It's nothing more than technical incompetence by these old school figures in the government and the media. Don't blame me or accuse me of giving out false information. I didn't put out that material or exaggerate it.

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Some of these blunders by the govt and media are so stupid that they really do seem like tabloid material that was made up, but they're not. If average people would call bullcrap on these people instead of defending them at least there would be some accountability.

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Here's a link regarding the hidden text leak. UPI and AP covered it also. Doesn't give people much faith that the Pentagon is competent in these types of matters. The shooting itself was an even bigger blunder.

We should send the old school people at the Pentagon to computer school. Better yet, forget about Rummy. Those people are back in the Vietnam era anyway. Bring in some younger talent, people who are savvy with the latest technology in word processing, cell phones, and the like.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/nicola_calipari

"The US report was unclassified but was still censored in some parts hiding some data and the names of the soldiers involved. The earliest version of the report came online as a PDF (PDF: portable document format (pdf) is a file format developed by adobe systems file) but the way the names and data had been hidden wasn't very secure and with a simple drag and drop operation the censored parts became visible. The full report was then leaked to the major Italian newspaper and by the night of May 2 the Italian Secret Services published a rebuttal of all the instances of the report."

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Denied to ridiculous levels by our UK Bush-admin apologist, matthew, more rightly.

Absolutely incapable of applying any consistency of principle when it comes to your preferred nations, eh matt? Of course I understand how deeply internalised all the myths of "brand America's" championing of human rights must be, but do try to apply to all the same condemnation you so readily spout against nasty arabs who torture.

Moral relativism is a sign of mental sloth.

 

What I predicted in the opening post of this thread moved closer to becoming a reality yesterday when a Shiite mosque in a predominately Sunni area was blown up.
It's not "just another mosque". It contains the tombs of some of Islams founders.
Already reprisals have taken place with the burning of Sunni shrines.

tick...tick...tick...

All thanks to bushco.

 

For the third time now, which part of this did you not understand?

For someone who instinctively blames torture by muslim terrorists on Mossad, you're hardly in a position to talk about moral relativism.

 

Reading your posts i appreciate where you are comeing from now.. thankyou .. I was a little 'hostile' i apologise. I appreciate you can 'back your shit up' .. but sometimes it's a little out of context.. well for me anyway.

So you are saying that those images are from cell phones ?.. Please explain the logic ??? They were sent to the pentagon by whom ?.. then sent from the Pentagon to whom ?... and i assume you mean this abuse was a 'mission'.. ?.

The Pentagon has some of the most sophisticated technology in the world.. Your saying that the Pentagon got caught 'red handed'.. i think this is another fantasy concocted by yourself ... but please i appreciate if you explain ...

I remember the shooting..and the Italian reporter who well had imho questionable opinions..but thats been done in other threads.. so i won't go into it now.

Please do ..as this seems the only valid 'incompetence' [that matters] i can see at the moment..

 

The Pentagon refers to the images as 'computer media'. That can be any digital media: cell phone images and video, pocket digital cameras, homemade video tapes, stills and video from security cameras, etc.

The bigger picture in all of this is that we are living in a digital age with instant communications and it's getting tougher to keep things secret. A generation ago film would have to be developed and prints mailed. Anything covert the Pentagon now does has to at least take this into account. My point is that there are some old school people in the media and government that still haven't caught on to all of this.

Take a look at the Wiki article on Abu Ghraib and other sites. The magnitude of what happened over there is greater than what you might think. Literally thousands of images and many videos. Either way you look at this, the higher ups come out of this looking bad. If they didn't know any of this was going on, they are incredibly incompetent. If they did know, then they are guilty of orchestrating it or not doing anything to stop it.
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The link I posted earlier has the PDF file but it's a DOC file. The release of the PDF with hidden text was a blunder, no doubt (again, lack of computer savvy by government officials). Worse than that, though, is the shooting of the Italian woman and the killing of her associate.

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Just to give you an example, I have a Motorola E815. I tinkered with the firmware and so that it could record more the 15 seconds of video at a time. It is essentially a micro camcorder. I also use this phone as a wireless modem and can transmit its video over the internet to any place in the world instantly.

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If we consider that the pics and video at Abu Ghraib came from security cameras at the prison itself (and much of it probably did), doesn't it seem a little unusual that no one else monitored what was happening on this security video? No higher ups saw it or said anything about it? No one higher up in the Pentagon monitored it at least once in a while?

And if we try to apologize for the people who should have monitored it, literally thousands of pics were taken and many hours of video, and yet this was behavior wasn't stopped in a reasonable amount of time?

One of the 19 year old guards at Abu said he was working at Kentucky Fried Chicken before that and had no training in being an interrogator. Someone from KFC could hardly be considered as competent as an interrogator (with the exception of asking questions such as 'Do you want fries with that?')

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Currently In Bagdad there is an unprecedented daytime curfew, and the city itself is in total lock-down--no one in or out.
This must be the freedom that jr is always bleating about.

 

Good news. The majority of my countries populace now opposes the hypocritical "war on terror". Now if our friends down south could gather their voices against Bush's war in large numbers, we'd be set.

 

Those doing the monitoring having the same mentality as those abusing detainees.. i can see how it could have been over looked.. i agree it should have been flaged a lot sooner.. that is reasonable to assume.. We don't have all the info so can only speculate based on our biases in this [as ususal]..

Most if not all clearly failed to stick within the given roles assigned to them.. many given orders had inadequate brains to realise that to interprete any given order .. should be interpreted as to do the things they did and assume they were ''doing the right thing'' need there haeds looking at. Those type of people should be removed from the military.. and thankfully a lot have been.

One of Iraq's main Shia militias has met Sunni clerics for talks after days of bloodshed following the destruction of the Shia shrine at Samarra.
Moqtada al-Sadr's militia and the Sunni Association of Muslim scholars vowed to help each other defend holy places.


Nobody will profit from civil war... we have to work together


Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi

Political and militia leaders in Iraq say they have made progress in talks aimed at curbing sectarian violence.

At least 165 people have been killed since Wednesday in unrest sparked by the bombing of a major Shia shrine.

Sunni clerics and one of the main Shia militias have agreed to work together to prevent further sectarian bloodshed. And a senior Sunni politician told the BBC that a new security plan had been worked out by Sunni and Shia leaders which could help relieve tensions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4752024.stm

Shiites, Sunnis pray for peace as Iraq extends curfew
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2006/02/25/2003294526

It is those apposed to peace [on both sides] that perpetuate such activities... so unfortunaly a curfew is needed... you can thank all those that i assume you think wish for peace in the country [involving blowing themselves up or planting some nice road side bombs..] have such a good ideology ?..and no attempt and preventing such acts of violence should be attempted..?.

 

I have.. but it is from hindsight.. those articles are made by people like ourselves.. You clearly made reference to 'higher ups' being involved.. seemingly based on they should have been aware ??? when those same 'higher ups try and bring people to justice .. thats not good enough [it would seem] ?.. It could have been all swept under the carpet.. then you could state a 'whitwash' occured mmmm what would make you happy ?.