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February 1, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. In front of a camera, an American journalist named Daniel Pearl was beheaded by terrorists. The video was widely circulated. It can be found on the internet doing a casual Google search.
February 18, 2003: Approximately 100,000 U.S. troops are assembled in Kuwait in preparation for the invasion of Iraq, an action based on lies propagated by the Bush administration. Since that date, video and still photos of dead Iraqi citizens, many of them children, have appeared on new reports and in magazines and newspapers across the globe. Violent, bloody images of dead Muslim children, killed by an illegal war brought to their country by our own.
In Kentucky, an American soldier named Steven Dale Green was found guilty yesterday of raping and killing a 14 year old girl named Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, and then murdering her younger sister and her parents. This happened while Green was on duty in Iraq. This news has also been widely disseminated.
Now, Obama is reconsidering the release of other photographs from Abu Ghraib because some generals have advised him that this will jeopardize our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly make them victims of torture and murder??
I’ve got news for the president and these generals: THE TERRORISTS ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH REASONS TO HATE US AND TARGET OUR SOLDIERS, YOU STUPID IDIOTS!
16 Comments
Exactly right.
Goddamned stupid fucking idiots.
In what country am I living?
It’s called Amerika.
There is no doubt in my mind that the collection of posters here at FDL (I’ll exclude myself) could and would run this country much better than the current crop of bought-and-sold clowns.
The “terrorists” are not the audience that “they” fear.
They fear that graphic imagery might be the thing that makes US, the American public, have enough reasons to hate a criminal coterie that remains lodged within our military, our intelligence services and, evidently, important parts of our justice system. Bans on evidence of the obvious are always aimed at domestic audiences, at an electorate that could not see the facts first hand but might, if only theoretically, be in a position to someday stop the abuses and insure punishment for the perpetrators.
I had the idea that the reason they don’t want the pictures released is because they fear an American uprising as a result. But, perhaps that is wishful thinking. I doubt people in this country can tear themselves away from American Idol long enough to give a shit. Present company excluded, of course.
Obama and his advisers don’t know what to expect of the American people.
We are are as strange to him as Afghans.
Obama thinks he needs to bullshit us.
He thinks he can do that as effectively as he did the leaders in Europe.
We are strangers to him. Enemies of a sort. People to be deceived and misled.
He learned this at Harvard and in the streets of Chicago.
Remember the expression about a brave man dying but once?
The actual likelihood of an uprising is, I fear, neither high nor particularly relevant. But it is possible, and, to a guilty conscience, even remote possibilities are threatening.
The perpetrators cannot believe that they will get a way with what they have done, so every detail seems–to them if not to us–like the straw that will break the proverbial camel’s back.
Great post, great comments. Thanks to all.
“THE TERRORISTS ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH REASONS TO HATE US AND TARGET OUR SOLDIERS, YOU STUPID IDIOTS!”
They sureGod do, Jean, but it aint just the terrrists; it’s ALL the families and relatives and 3rd cousins twice-removed of the hundreds of thousands of Iraq’s (ahem; conservatively) who’ve died there,and just about anyone else in Iraq (if they’ve survived) who’s watched for the past 6 years, as Operation Enduring Clusterfuck has turned their country into a bloody madhouse.
And I submit, there is NO end in sight. Nada. Zippo. And that brings us right to the deadly question of; what is Obama going to? Beginning with the U.S. promise to leave the cites by the end of June and go into hunker-down mode in the various fortress americas/contractor cash cows scattered around the country, he’s got some weighing to do. I mean, if the Iraqi Government can’t meet outside of the green zone NOW, with all of the troops we have out and about in Baghdad to help protect them, what will happen if they go back to Camp $21-billion-
for-Halliburton?
Coincidentally, along about then the Brits will be pulling nearly all of their remaining 3,000 out of their Basra Airport base, and heading home. It’s fair to ask if the Iraqi Government “Security forces” (how not to use quotes on that?)
can hold their mud against the various militias, common criminals, and Basra seceders down there. And if they can’t, will Obama send in our troops for another round of target practice from pissed off Iraqis in Basra?
Is he going to pull our troops out of Mosul, which is the latest and most pernicious mole to raise it’s factional head?
With no americans to back up the security forces if the Sadrists resume firing exercises on the green zone, AKA, the world’s largest and most expensive mortar training range, moving around again could become like 81mm roulette.
I’m with you on releasing the photos. We need all the reminders of what has gone on with this Boschian nightmare than we can get. It might help generate a bit more sentiment toward “What the fuck else SHOULD we do, but leave?” on the part of the american people.
” Gunmen attempted to kill a spokesman for influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in central Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi police and an official from Sadr’s movement said.
Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia was once one of the most fierce armed groups in Iraq, has faded from the political spotlight in the past year.
He is believed to be in Iran pursuing religious studies, but he made a rare public visit to Turkey earlier this month for talks with Turkish officials and fellow Shi’ite politicians.
The attack “could be a political reaction to the successes we have achieved, especially during the conference in Turkey,” Hassan said.
The meeting is believed to have been aimed at recalibrating Sadr’s political strategy in a year in which Iraqis are due to go to polls for national elections. “
http://www.alertnet.org/thenew…..924795.htm
Mr. Obama’s position demonstrates fear of the outcry in the US that would result from publication of those pictures. His advisers already know that those in the Middle East have few illusions about the beneficence of American power.
Given his position on the damage flowing from pictures and memorabilia of the tortured, I expect Mr. Obama will shortly demand the closure of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Every good propagandist knows it’s the pictures that threaten polite society, not the acts they document. If today’s politicians alone are left to decide it, “Never Forget” will be emblazoned on the stones of an emptied vault of remembrance.
Is this the real Mr. Obama, or is he acquiescing to too many trustedish advisers, who are protecting themselves rather than Mr. Obama or the people of the United States and those they send to war in their name?
Haven’t we had eight years of that already? Isn’t rejecting that way of thinking and those who profit by it why citizens voted for Mr. Obama? Or has Mr. Obama adopted another working strategy from his esteemed predecessor: that the people’s say is a ticket valid only once every four years (and when Republicans control the ticket takers, not even then)?
“Is this the real Mr. Obama, or is he acquiescing to too many trustedish advisers”
Unfortunately, any man that passively acquiesces to advisors–especially in a matter that shocks the consience–is always the “real” man. Or as close to a real man as he’ll ever get. You are what you do.
I agree with you that this is about managing US public opinion. The international community already has photos and videos.
It’s about managing the military too. Perhaps there would be mutiny and that is the fear? That they were promised immunity from prosecution by the Bush Team but here we are now. And by the way Cheney is talking, they all thought they would be ruling the world forever with no change in any status quo.
” “It’s perfectly Orwelllian,” law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “It’s an incredibly dark moment for civil libertarians. It’s just more evidence that this administration is becoming the greatest bait-and-switch in history. He’s morphing into his predecessor.”
Turley pointed out that Obama is doing exactly what he previously said he would not do. “We have once again the Obama administration — Obama himself — making statements and then doing the diametrically opposite thing in policy,” he noted. “In January, he said we will not allow material to be withheld just because it would be embarrassing to the country. And yet he just did that today.”
“If he succeeds,” Turley told Maddow, “instead of having a transparent government, he would create this opaque government where you could virtually see nothing. … It’s a perfectly horrible argument to make in court.” “”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..n-history/
” More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.
The NBC analysis also showed—and agency and commission staffers concur—there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, specifically conducted to answer new questions from the 9/11 Commission after its lawyers had been left unsatisfied by the agency’s internal interrogation reports.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official told me the Commission never expressed any concerns about techniques and even pushed for a second round of interrogations in early 2004, as the Commission was finishing up its work. The second round of interrogations sought by the Commission involved more than 30 separate interrogation sessions.
“Remember,” the intelligence official said, “the Commission had access to the intelligence reports that came out of the interrogation. This didn’t satisfy them. They demanded direct personal access to the detainees and the administration told them to go pound sand.”
“As a compromise, they were allowed to let us know what questions they would have liked to ask the detainees. At appropriate times in the interrogation cycle, agency questioners would go back and re-interview the detainees. Many of [those] questions were variants or follow-ups to stuff previously asked.” “
http://www.thedailybeast.com/b…..pens/full/
May 1/09.
*****
” Britain’s six-year military adventure in Iraq came to a formal close yesterday as commanders handed over control of their last base to U.S. forces.
The remaining 4,100 UK personnel of 20 Brigade will spend the next few weeks packing away equipment and most will be home by August – leaving only a 400-strong training contingent.
Speaking in London, Gordon Brown claimed Britain could be proud of its legacy in Iraq, while hinting that our forces will continue to play a long-term role in protecting oil supplies. “
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..orces.html