US treatment of prisoners (actual video footage)

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by promethius9594: shamrock, i think you misunderstand... what i was saying is that the geneva convention violation is debateable, but i still advocate the courtsmarshal for the offenders. i dont think what they did was right, but when compared to the torture that other countries employ, its not going to be labelled a violation of the geneva convention.

Ah, I apologise my friend, was reading between the lines and got it wrong.

And that's terrible news Dreamer, one of them said "We are not helping ourselves out there. We are never going to get them on our side. We are fighting a losing war." It doesn't bode well for the future.

Me and a German friend were discussing this, and he had to do National Service of course and reckons that behaviour like this is inevitable given the training that occurs in the army.

[promethius9594]

heh, it appears the brittish 'policy' isnt so much better than the american 'policy'.

well, at least americans soldiers by and large support the war. if the media can hunt around until they find one willing schmuck to support their agenda, then thats fine with me, but i feel bad for the decieved american public.

somedays i wish the media was controlled by some outside source... but who would do it without SOME agenda?

[Donut]

Originally posted by promethius9594: heh, it appears the brittish 'policy' isnt so much better than the american 'policy'. well, at least americans soldiers by and large support the war. if the media can hunt around until they find one willing schmuck to support their agenda, then thats fine with me, but i feel bad for the decieved american public. somedays i wish the media was controlled by some outside source... but who would do it without SOME agenda?

I think we should hold fire on the British photos. There are some inconsistencies in them.

[Donut]

I bet the family of this woman are real proud of her

However, let's keep this in perspective.

[promethius9594]

Originally posted by Donut: I think we should hold fire on the British photos. There are some inconsistencies in them.

heh, there are inconsistancies in the american photos too, but that didnt matter so long as it wasnt the brittish was it?

what a double standard. both groups, the brittish and the americans should be put to the appropriate trials and be sentenced for them through their own nations military justice.

i still dont get how if someone says american soldiers everyone jumps on the bandwagon, and when they say british soldiers everyone feels sorry or doesnt beleive it. flipping double standards...

[shamrock_uk]

Originally posted by promethius9594: quote: Originally posted by Donut: I think we should hold fire on the British photos. There are some inconsistencies in them.

heh, there are inconsistancies in the american photos too, but that didnt matter so long as it wasnt the brittish was it?

what a double standard. both groups, the brittish and the americans should be put to the appropriate trials and be sentenced for them through their own nations military justice.

i still dont get how if someone says american soldiers everyone jumps on the bandwagon, and when they say british soldiers everyone feels sorry or doesnt beleive it. flipping double standards... [/QUOTE]What are the inconsistencies in the American ones? According to Amnesty International they had already informed the military this was going on.

As for the British ones, they are rather large inconsistencies: the rifles shown weren't issued to Iraqi troops, the hats weren't worn; only beret's or helmets in Iraq, the truck shown also wasn't sent to Iraq. The prisoner doesn't have any bruises/mud/blood on him which you would expect after an extended beating.

As for double standards, this is surely only natural? As an american you will always be rooting for american troops, whilst as a brit i will always be hoping that our guys shine out there.

It is present within the armies as well - the British think that the US army is too unsubtle and brutal with not enough experience in this kind of operation, whilst the US thinks that the British aren't firm enough eg their willingness to deal with former army officers (although a practice that the US has now adopted).

I think this is inevitable when you have two countries that both have a different way of doing things working side by side...it's not something that anyone should get too hung up over as the important thing is that we're both working towards the same goal. The US and Britain are two very different countries so it's only natural that there will be disagreements.

As for the media double-standards this is again understandable. If you read arabic media then you will see stories of American brutality towards Iraqi's almost on a daily basis whereas British troops never seem to feature as much. I'm sure that the different political climate in southern Iraq has allowed the Brits to be less heavy handed (rather than the 'softly-softly' approach making things calmer by itself) but I would imagine that is the reason for the different media stances.

Originally posted by promethius 9584] somedays i wish the media was controlled by some outside source... but who would do it without SOME agenda?

I'm right with you there, but only in an ideal world i guess . I suppose the best we can do is combine lots of sources and hope to arrive at a representative view.

Myself, i use www.cnn.com and www.abcnews.com for the American view,
http://news.bbc.co.uk and www.telegraph.co.uk for the British view and http://english.aljazeera.net for the Arabic view.

[ 05-02-2004, 12:36 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Faceman]

Originally posted by promethius9594: quote: Originally posted by Donut: I think we should hold fire on the British photos. There are some inconsistencies in them.

heh, there are inconsistancies in the american photos too, but that didnt matter so long as it wasnt the brittish was it?

what a double standard. both groups, the brittish and the americans should be put to the appropriate trials and be sentenced for them through their own nations military justice.

i still dont get how if someone says american soldiers everyone jumps on the bandwagon, and when they say british soldiers everyone feels sorry or doesnt beleive it. flipping double standards... [/QUOTE]Regardless of the authenticity of the British pictures I really liked their reaction to it. Instead of debating around and telling people not to jump to conclusions their first reaction was to send a deeply shocked officer who just stated that the perpetrators "are not fit to wear the queens uniform" Period.
Maybe I'm just biased, but that's exactly the way I want things like this handled.

[Timber Loftis]

President Bush and Generals have condemned the acts. I agree -- who couldn't? And, yes, Donut, if she were a part of my family, she'd be an instant black sheep in my eyes.

One of the problems the commanders who were "in the crosshairs" identified was the lack of rules or oversight policies to guide them. While I think some of this is obviously OTT, even for a Jarhead, I still think this is a good point. Our Army/Marine/Military shoud have a general 1-2 page "cheat sheet" of the Geneva and other rules that it hands out to guid commanders.

Oh, I do want to note that in our criminal trials in the US, cases where the police hooked a defendant up to a collander (turned upside down) wired to a Xerox copier and told "if you lie, we will know" ( the phrase "he is lying" was printed on the copier when needed), the confessions resulting from those acts were upheld. In my mind, there is nothing wrong with the police lying to defendants to extract a confession -- it is done all the time (e.g. "your buddy who we arrested said X,Y, and Z").

[ 05-03-2004, 01:47 AM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Donut]

Originally posted by promethius9594: quote: Originally posted by Donut: I think we should hold fire on the British photos. There are some inconsistencies in them.

heh, there are inconsistancies in the american photos too, but that didnt matter so long as it wasnt the brittish was it?

what a double standard. both groups, the brittish and the americans should be put to the appropriate trials and be sentenced for them through their own nations military justice.

i still dont get how if someone says american soldiers everyone jumps on the bandwagon, and when they say british soldiers everyone feels sorry or doesnt beleive it. flipping double standards... [/QUOTE]Silly comments promethius. The American soldiers have admitted to it and their faces are shown in the pictures. The BriTish photos show no faces. I'm not saying it doesn't happen with the BriTish army, only that these particular photos are dodgy.

Some serious paranoia showing here.

Link

[Rokenn]

Ahhh it is so good to see that we have shut down the torture and rape rooms in Iraq. Score one for the good guys!