I'm posting this entry in the fervent hope that I will be able to delete it when it's been shown to be false. But I have a horrible, nauseating feeling that I won't.
Seymour Hesh spoke at the University of Chicago a little while ago. I haven't seen a transcript, but according to various reports (including here, citing Rick Pearlstein), "[Hersh] said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, 'You haven't begun to see evil...' then trailed off. He said, 'horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.' He looked frightened."
Posted by geoff2 at June 11, 2004 09:55 PMI truly believe that people are generally good. That being said nothing would surprise me regarding the Abu Ghraib pictures.
The US and to some extent our allies have set up a system of looking at "the enemy" as something less than human and that the actions of the military do not have to conform to any standard in the treatment of prisoners, such as the geneva convention. Military personal only have to look at Gitmo to see that that they can pretty much flaunt the Geneva convention and international law and get away with it. Our invading a sovereign nation based of mythical weapons of mass destruction is another.
To some extent it began in the first gulf war with heads of state referring to the head of Iraq as Saddam rather than his full proper name and title. In that alone, they were treating him and the Iraqi people as inferior, or like you would a child. There is still protocol regarding heads of state even if they are totalitarian military dictatorships.
The US has a president who believes he is directed by God, to avenge the actions of others also believing they were directed by God. Somehow the administration and the military have equated 911 with Iraq.
I suspect it is anger stemming from their impotence in finding Osama Bin Laden as they vowed they would, that is being unleashed on whatever victims are available. I also suspect that what has happened really doesn't bother the administration much beyond the bad publicity it has generated.
As an American citizen, I am shocked that our administration is not bending over backwards to change things and to assure the American people and the world that this type of behavior is not all right with them.
Posted by: Susan in St. Paul at June 11, 2004 10:46 PMWhile not doubting the veracity of the pictures taken,
I will take Seymour's posting with a grain of salt (probably
just what you are trying to say).
This website- http://joatmoaf.typepad.com/i_love_jet_noise/2004/05/seymour_hersch_.html - may help bring
some (different) perspective.
As usual, the truth is somewhere in
the middle - http://valhalla.guhsd.net/library/webquest_somewhereinmid.html.
The first of these seems to offer little of immediate relevance; innuendo about Hersh's work many years ago doesn't actually contribute to a discussion of what he did or didn't say at Chicago. And the second link (after editing the URL to remove the extraneous period) is just an introduction to critical thinking in collaborative settings: mildly interesting, but irrelevant to the subject at hand. Oh well....
Posted by: Geoff at June 13, 2004 11:04 AM