Image control...
 

I'm reading about US military prison abuses in Iraq. 60 minutes ran a story and images, after pressure to withold the story. But they ran it as the images started to hit the net. I couldnt find these images at the CBS site. I'm curious. Anyone know a link?

The Toronto Star gives graphic descriptions, but I have not seen anything.

Uniondales a nice little town...

I don't know but this is hmmm intereting: http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle5365.htm

War is ugly. I know that. When the last rickety rationalization for invading Iraq is humanitarian liberation...well, these incidents are important to note and to see. The images provide some needed contrast to not only Saddams mass graves but to young Jessica Lynch. But we cant see them.

Three pictures on the TV news this morning.

1- Naked, hooded man with wires attached to each arm, standing on a bucket, with arms out stretched. Told if he steps down he'd be electricuted.

2- Six naked, hooded men forming a human pyramid.

3- Naked, hooded man, bound and standing, while an American female in fatigues, smiles and points at his penis.

What's deeply saddening about this is that the abuses took place ( I think these are the same ones I heard about anyway) In Abu Ghraib, which was one of Saddam's torture/execution prisons

Yeah, but a big difference in the outcome. No prisoners were injured in the production of this thread,

Just saw the pictures on F*x News BTW...

The turds responsible for this need to be punished... hard, and have examples made of them. And then their boss turds need the same thing. It's worse, y'know, because of the honor/shame society stuff. We need to set the example of how to treat prisoners...

This really pisses me off.

Guantanomo and all the prisoners being kept there in secrecy is another situation that needs to see the light of day. It is an example of how this government has disreguarded the Geneva Convention because it is inconvienient. Its shameful. The blame is not limited to low ranking people in the military, it clearly goes all the way up to Bush. He is allowing that situation to remain, and probably ordered it to be that way in the first place.

Indeed. The descriptions of Guantanamo bay that the lads from Manchester and Tipton in the UK have given us made me quite angry.
Jamal Udeen still walks with a stoop because the chains are kept too short for them to straighten up. In the interview I heard he could have been one of my family. His accent sounded as Manchester as theirs. He was nothing to do with the Taliban. He was held and tortured for two years.

I know...he wasnt the only one....but you cannot imagine how much it grieved me to know a fellow Manc was in that hellhole being held by our allies for no good reason. It also pissed me off to hear about the lads from Tipton. fucking Tipton... If anybody in here had any idea what a pitiful little place Tipton is you'd know just how tragic that sounds. Birmingham accents in Guantanamo Bay.

Jamal's story

As a side note. One of the things that moved me when I heard his interview on the radio was that he sounded so ordinary. He sounded tired, but he seemed to have kept his sense of humour even if it had become a little dark. He wasnt spitting anger or anything like that He just seemed to want to tell his story and did so in a fairly gentle and good natured way.

It's these kind of connections that make this whole mess real to us. Apparently these guys are from Uniondale, a pretty little town in one of the most beautiful areas in the States. It is on Cayuga lake in the wine growing region of New York State. It's a place I love to cycle through. War makes it possible for people from ANYWHERE to behave like animals. The costs of war can't be measured.

Eh, Griff, are there two Uniondales in NY State? The only Uniondale with which I am familiar is on Long Island.

Crap. Union Springs not Uniondale. On the upside, I don't have to get creeped out next time we ride through there.

Fucking drunk. :)

What amazes me was the one soldier who said he had never read the Geneva Convention until he was charged. Of course, he did not have to read it to know that stacking guys in naked human pyramids was probably wrong.

I wonder how long the military would have waited to take action if the story hadn't leaked, and how long CBS would have waited to report it.