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A regular reader writes:
Bad shit has happened, seems likely to still be happening, to prisoners under US protection, with little legal oversight (as if legal oversight of some of the bad shit that’s happened world even matter). It is a measure of how bad and how distressingly common said shit is, that the murder line Horton’s peddling is taken seriously by some serious people. And where you’re biting is, jeez, three dudes, this weird way they’re found (hands/feet bound, etc.), all the same — pushes credibility. OK. Now, the investigators put forward an explanation for how that might’ve happened. It’s creaky, and stinks, but it can sorta work. I’d like to hear Carter acknowledge that it’s possible but malodorous.
But what I’ve yet to hear you acknowledge — and this is what sets Shafer’s hackles (I think) and mine (I know) on edge, here, is, your narrative is also creaky. In that, well, what the hell is the motive here? We’ve had horrible shit done to prisoners in the process of interrogation and/or “interrogation” and under theories of what made them compliant. And we’ve seen just plain indiscriminate brutality to the newly captured. And we’ve seen long-term degradation of groups of prisoners in the name of some stupid idea of making them interrogable. That’s what we’ve seen and while I think it is largely deplorable, I get it: I understand it, there is something resembling a rationale there.
The Horton story: not so much. There’s some CIA guys, and they aren’t the regular keepers/interrogators, and there’s a hell of a lot of overlapping jurisdictions all sitting around. So these CIA guys, they got these three guys out, separately but deliberately. They killed one, probably with an injection. So they went and got another, and did the same. So they got another….
I mean, this is where the Horton story, for me, falls flat on its face. The few people banging this drum are telling me, ohmyGawd, it was a murder, the circumstances all show it was a murder. Fine. But — and it might be I’ve missed this writing — I haven’t seen anyone write up what it is they think the CIA/military (two services!) guys were trying to do, exactly. It’s none of those other three things we’ve seen. It doesn’t make sense. They planned the hell out of this thing, so what was it they were doing?
In the absence of that narrative I think the implausibilities Carter confronts are MUCH smaller than yours. Please give me a motive. Not “they wanted to interrogate them and did it too hard.” What exactly do you figure was going on, three separate times, that one night, to only those three? I mean, God knows it’s damning and horrifying enough to say that what we have been doing leaves untried, unconvicted prisoners so despairing and degraded as to plan their own suicides: I don’t need there to’ve been a murder and a huge coverup conspiracy to be outraged here.
Quickly, I’d say that those of us who doubt that these deaths are suicides don’t think that the prisoners were taken one by one from their cells to be deliberately murdered — just that a plausible counter-narrative has them dying at the hands of their captors in some way, perhaps via overzealous interrogation methods intended to keep them alive, but taken too far. What I’ve written is that there is circumstantial evidence that something like this happened, but certainly not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
In prior writings, I should have said that perhaps there is a far less damning explanation: that the folks who accounted for these deaths strayed from an accurate narrative to cover-up misconduct by guards or the existence of a black site at Gitmo, and in doing so wound up looking as though they were covering up far more serious crimes.
Although I’ve got more to read on this subject, however, I remain convinced of three things: a) at best, America’s prison at Gitmo drove an innocent man to commit suicide under the watch of negligent guards, despite his having no ties to terrorists, and no one has been held accountable b) that the official narrative regarding these deaths is implausible on its face; c) due to the suspicious circumstances surrounding these deaths, the importance of treating prisoners, innocent detainees among them, humanely, and the fact that the government has on prior occasions covertly abused men in its custody, continued scrutiny into this story is justified.
The odds of three accidental deaths happening at the same time in the same place in the same way — by professional interrogators! — by the CIA! — is close to nil. You really think CIA pros performed three simultaneous code reds — to post-interest prisoners no less, one of whom was scheduled to be “transferred off the base!” — and the victims all just happened to be Private William Santiagos? We may not be artists at torturing people, but come on.
So toss that narrative right there. In case you’re counting, that leaves you with three alternatives: intentional MurderDeathKill followed by a massive but inadequate interagency cover-up (way unlikely, and doesn’t make any sense at all); a post facto cover-up of mere negligence (most likely if there was a cover-up); or a weird and wild story of prisoner collusion and American innocence that just so happens to be true (stranger things have happened). That’s it. That’s all you got. Stop it with the accidental overdose, or the rag hazing, or the I just wanted to teach him a lesson because he couldn’t hump the hill like the rest of the platoon stories. They don’t make no sense.
Related question: why aren’t we videotaping prisoners around the clock? Or maybe we are but the video is vaulted at justice ala Rules of Engagement?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 09:39 PM · #
I have to say that I’m highly disappointed in your responses, Conor. You seem to be adopting Andrew Sullivan’s “Accuse First, Apologize Later If You Must Approach.” But it doesn’t work that way. You lose credibility every minute you defend this ridiculous conspiracy theory (and that is exactly what this is).
I imagine that you haven’t read the primary documents so it is rather disappointing that you would make such spurious claims about the “narrative.”
a) at best, America’s prison at Gitmo drove an innocent man to commit suicide under the watch of negligent guards, despite his having no ties to terrorists, and no one has been held accountable
First, you have no evidence to support your claim that one of the prisoners (I assume you are talking about Mani Shaman Turki Al-Habardi Al-
Utaybi) was innocent or had not ties to terrorist. You are simply making unsupported conjectures.
Al-Utaybi was not some choir boy that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a young criminal (he had been involved in armed robberies of a private residence and a bank) and was AWOL from the Saudi military. He was traveling to Pakistan with a stolen passport, was wearing women’s clothes to circumvent the Pakistani checkpoints, and was arrested with a known member of Al Qaida.
Also, he wasn’t exactly a model prisoner. He had repeatedly harassed and assaulted guards at Gitmo (spitting, throwing plates, water, rocks, and toilet water; slapping a plate of food; and pulling a guards’ arms through the food slot, etc.).
The fact that he was being transferred to Saudi Arabia—where he was likely to be returned to prison—does not make him “innocent.”
As for the claims of negligence, the reason for the lax treatment was to appease the Red Cross. If guards had been able to treat the prisoners like prisoners they might have been able to prevent the suicides from happening.
**b) that the official narrative regarding these deaths is implausible on its face; **
This is just absurd. I suspect you have merely read the Seton Hall report and accepted everything it claims without question. I can’t imagine any other reason you could make such a completely unsupportable assertion. The official narrative is not only plausible, it is obviously what happened. Before claiming otherwise, you should really do your homework and try to explain how so many people carried out such a complicated plot. And please don’t say that it hasn’t been investigated. It was investigated by NCIS and the Justice Department reviewed the investigation. Before claiming that the investigation is faulty, you need to show actual evidence that it was faulty.
c) due to the suspicious circumstances surrounding these deaths, the importance of treating prisoners, innocent detainees among them, humanely, and the fact that the government has on prior occasions covertly abused men in its custody, continued scrutiny into this story is justified.
Seriously, Conor, you really need to do your homework before making such claims. This is embarrassing. You can’t get off with saying “Well, I was just asking questions.” You are making claims about the integrity of people you don’t know based on information that you haven’t bothered to check. I am truly and honestly shocked by this. I have always known you to be careful and prudent in the claims you make. It is highly disappointing to see you damaging your own credibility by following the lead of people like Sullivan and Horton who aren’t as committed to seeking the truth. You should talk to someone like Graeme Wood. I suspect he has a more sober take on this than someone like Sullivan.
— Joe Carter · Feb 2, 09:42 PM · #
Slogan fah Connah: misfeasance, not malfeasance.
(Concision!….no, no, not the Chomsky kind….concision qua brevity….smartypants.)
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 09:57 PM · #
Anyway, what’s so implausible about Muslim true believers conspiring to stage a joint, propaganda-laden suicide? I seem to remember seeing one or two of those before. You know, like way back.
It may look odd, but isn’t it far more likely than a deeply CYA-oriented Gitmo staff — bullied into enacting all sorts of ridiculous Red Cross Regs, each guard and interrogator risk averse, made paranoid by high-level talks of low-level prosecution — taking three ho-hum prisoners and killing them in such a stylized fashion? And then convincing other people who had nothing to do with it to put their careers — their freedom — on the line by being accessories-after-the-fact to an interagency cover-up of 50 odd people?
We’re talking people here, Connah. Career-oriented, well-informed, self-interested people who know that, with Gitmo, all eyes on us. C
Nope, can’t see it m’self. Really, really can’t.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 10:44 PM · #
One more thing. Can’t we all agree, as a starting point, as a way to collectively calibrate our conceptions of behavioral plausibility, that since 9/11 Muslim true believers have firmly placed themselves inside the Tyson zone? Yes? No?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 2, 10:54 PM · #
Joe,
I have read the documents, you have no evidence for your spurious assertion that Andrew Sullivan and Scott Horton aren’t concerned with getting at the truth of what happened, and the United States government was set to release one of the detainees after it’s own investigation concluded that there was never any evidence tying him to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. I have yet to read your annotated version of the report. I will do so soon. Meanwhile please stop insinuating that I must have or must not have read something — you are letting your undue certainty on this matter color your perceptions of your interlocutors’ motivations and intellectual honesty. Why I would continue airing the opinions of those who disagree with me if I weren’t making every effort to get at the truth of what happened I have no idea.
— Conor friedersdorf · Feb 2, 11:48 PM · #
What was the rationale for the dissections and not returning the neck parts, or is that not true?
— steve · Feb 3, 12:12 AM · #
“Why I would continue airing the opinions of those who disagree with me if I weren’t making every effort to get at the truth of what happened I have no idea.”
That’s just lame, Conor. Sully was quite happy to air ‘dissents’ to provide cover while he ranted about Trig Palin. If you think that absolves him of journalistic malpractice in that affair, then I don’t know what to tell you. You haven’t done your homework on this story; haven’t even attempted to respond to Joe’s arguments point-for-point; and now you’re falling back on the AS-patented ‘dissent of the day’ and calls for ‘further inquiry’. Either stop writing about it or address Joe’s arguments in substance rather than at a high level of generality wrapped in cliches and hedges.
— jlr · Feb 3, 12:54 AM · #
JLR,
I have said that I will respond when I have time. Meanwhile I’ve linked Joe and Jack Shafer, and published a reader email and the limited thoughts I can offer. I have never argued that airing dissent absolved journalists of all sins, only that it is indicative of a genuine desire to arrive at the truth.
— Conor friedersdorf · Feb 3, 12:59 AM · #
But the odds of three simultaneous suicides are better, somehow, among three people completely unable to communicate with each other?
— Chet · Feb 3, 12:59 AM · #
What “50-odd people”, KVS? Where you simply not paying any attention last thread when that claim was completely demolished?
Carter’s slinging a lot of bullshit in these threads and on his blog about this, but there’s a pretty easy way to cut through it – read the NCIS investigation for yourself, and observe how nothing Joe Carter says about it is actually true.
— Chet · Feb 3, 01:05 AM · #
You’ve obviously never seen a POW movie. The cells we’re talking about are open air, Chet, and metallic. And our dear departed prisoners spoke funny languages with funny dialects with funny idioms. And they were allowed — had a right — to speak out loud, really loud, five times a day, using words and phrases that, dollars to donuts, our poor American-educated guards couldn’t hope to distinguish or recognize.
I could coordinate a five-act rendition of Hamlet in that setting. Planning a joint suicide would be pancakes.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 01:24 AM · #
The conspiracy theory aspect is simply too far-fetched.
— mike farmer · Feb 3, 01:37 AM · #
But, of course you’re right: it’s terribly unlikely for Muslim radicals to propagandize with carefully planned joint suicides. I mean, that would be some African-American Swan level bullshit. Ha!
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 01:43 AM · #
I have read the documents, you have no evidence for your spurious assertion that Andrew Sullivan and Scott Horton aren’t concerned with getting at the truth of what happened,
Sullivan has never struck me as a guy who cares much for truth. That is not because he is dishonest, though, but merely because he lives in his own fantasy world where the truth is whatever he wants to believe.
Sullivan is claiming that Obama is part of the biggest cover-up since Watergate and that he is the an excellent president that deserves our patience and support. Do you not find that contradictory? I know you have a personal relationship with him and I respect your loyalty to him. But the guy simply has no credibility left.
As for Horton, he does strike me as being essentially dishonest. On the Keith Olbermann show he claims that he was not implying that the detainees were murdered. His editor also made the same claim to Jack Shafer. (Shafer naturally called it BS.) I don’t think Horton is a stupid man so he obviously knows what he is implying. For him to claim otherwise shows a lack of integrity.
and the United States government was set to release one of the detainees after it’s own investigation concluded that there was never any evidence tying him to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
Where in the world did you get that from? I haven’t seen anything by the governement that says they were wrong about their initial assessment of him. If I’m wrong on that point I really like to see the documentation.
I have yet to read your annotated version of the report. I will do so soon. Meanwhile please stop insinuating that I must have or must not have read something — you are letting your undue certainty on this matter color your perceptions of your interlocutors’ motivations and intellectual honesty.
But, Conor, you just admitted that you haven’t even read my posts. Also, I just can’t imagine that you could read the NCIS report and come away thinking that all of those witnesses are lying. It’s not that I’m questioning your intellectual honesty, its that I’m questioning your judgment as a journalist. Every respectable journalist that I’ve seen look into these claims have come away realizing that the “murder” meme is nonsense. There is simply no evidence to warrant making such a claim.
My “undue certainty” is because I have read all of the relevant documents, weighed the evidence, and recognize that there is no way such an elaborate and complex conspiracy could be carried out by people who have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
Why I would continue airing the opinions of those who disagree with me if I weren’t making every effort to get at the truth of what happened I have no idea.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure why you are weighing in on this. You’ve admitted that you haven’t had the time to investigate the claims for yourself. So why say anything? Even Sullivan (or his ghostblogger) has realized that maybe he shouldn’t attempt to talk about things that he knows nothing about, and stopped talking about the subject.
— Joe Carter · Feb 3, 03:29 AM · #
I love how the people dismissing the idea of a cover-up as a “conspiracy theory” are ignoring the fact that their preferred coordinated-suicide scenario is also a conspiracy theory.
If you dismiss all conspiracy theories in this case a priori, basically all you are left with is Martians experimenting on the prisoners.
Either there was a conspiracy by the prisoners to commit simultaneous suicide (with ill-defined and illogical motives behind their actions), or there was a conspiracy by Gitmo authorities to cover up three accidental deaths (which, sadly, has all-too understandable motives).
The conspiracy to commit three premeditated murders straw man, as brought up in the reader email, doesn’t even deserve comment, really.
— Erik Siegrist · Feb 3, 05:32 PM · #
their preferred coordinated-suicide scenario is also a conspiracy theory.
No it’s not — “conspiracy theory” in this context means more than just “two or more people conspiring”. Look it up on Wikipedia if you need to, although I suspect you realize on some level that you’re just playing word games.
— kenB · Feb 3, 05:55 PM · #
The most digestible motive is the conspiracy to cover up administrative negligence in the face of three really bizarre suicides.
By “accidental deaths” I assume you mean “accidental deaths during interrogation.” So your theory is three simultaneous homicides perpetrated by the CIA and covered up by two separate agencies. Three simultaneous accidents, since you admit that premeditation is a straw man. Done to prisoners who were post-interest, one of whose release had already been adjudicated. CIA dudes, sitting around, wanting to practice this new choke the ragheads with a rag technique invented by Cheney, said, hey, let’s get that guy that knows so much that that he’s scheduled to be released, and torture the piss out of him. And get two others as well. Then…ooops…hey, dude, call those guys you know in Cell Block D and see if they’re down for some highstakes shenanigans; see if they’ll risk their careers and their freedom by helping us make this clusterfuck look like a really bizarre, nonsensical joint suicide. No, no, keep them tied up, and leave the rag in…‘cause it’s funny, that’s why.
That makes sense to you? Doesn’t it make more sense that three joint suicides made the Gitmo staff really nervous, what with the entire world breathing down their necks and all, and so they decided to cut corners on the report to make themselves look less negligent and less incompetent? Those are motives I can grok absolutely.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 3, 06:02 PM · #
Of course the amazing thing about torture as a means of interrogation is that it is self-reinforcing. The more you torture your subject, the more you become convinced he’s holding out. The more he denies having anything more to tell you, the more you become convinced that he is. The more you put the screws in, the more his brain deactivates the areas associated with truthful recollection and the more it activates those associated with fabrication and imagination.
And once you’ve tortured him to the point where all he can do is lie to make the pain stop, why, then you get everything you need to convince yourself that you were right all along, and now you’ve really gotten the truth, and bring in the next guy so we can use what we just learned from this one. Verify the information? That’s somebody else’s job.
Sure, they knew these guys were getting released, soon. Doubtless they had convinced themselves that the detainees knew way more than they had gotten out of them and had successfully gamed the system. Doubtless the interrogators saw their opportunity to “get the truth” rapidly slipping through their fingers, and decided to really get medieval. Hence the bruises, the broken bones, the rags stuffed down throats and held in place with surgical masks. Hence three people dead in one night. I don’t see anything unreasonable about the idea that a program of military torture that we (thanks to the Justice Department) know killed over a hundred people accidentally killed three more.
— Chet · Feb 3, 07:20 PM · #
“I don’t see anything unreasonable about the idea that a program of military torture that we (thanks to the Justice Department) know killed over a hundred people accidentally killed three more.”
At the same time? On the same night? In the same way? With random suicide notes in Arabic and fifty witnesses collaborating their false narrative of what happened? And reviews by two Administrations not catching on? Well, as they say, Chet’s made up his mind, don’t bother him with the facts.
— jlr · Feb 3, 07:36 PM · #
Sure. All at once, maybe, in some kind of sick interrogator “chicken”. “First one to tell me about a terrorist plot gets the rag out of his throat.” The interrogators were panicking, having brutally tortured these men with nothing to show for it, and at least one or two of them were about to be released and tell everybody about their treatment. The runaround game they were playing on the detainees’ lawyers was about to end. Why is it so unreasonable to suggest that interrogators accidentally overreached, just like they’d done more than a hundred times previously?
And we don’t even know it was the same way. The cause of death could not be determined by independent investigators, since the throats, hearts, and kidneys of these men are missing. That would make a forensic pathologist unable to detect ligature marks, heart failure, or perform a toxicological screen.
3 suicide notes that just happened to have all been written in the same handwriting, by the same person, in pretty crappy Arabic – which these men spoke and wrote as native speakers? Which weren’t found in their cells, but on their bodies?
There aren’t “fifty witnesses.” There aren’t any more than about 5 or 6 witnesses that can corroborate any disputed portion of the official narrative, and those witnesses were all suspected by the NCIS of giving false statements. They were informed of such during their depositions, and the official notification of that is in the NCIS file. Just keep pretending like your best witnesses weren’t suspected of being liars by the NCIS, though.
— Chet · Feb 3, 08:26 PM · #
As I said above….Tyson zone.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Feb 4, 05:45 PM · #
Gee…since Conor isn’t going to print MY email, here is your plausible scenario KVS.
No interrogator PLANS to kill his subject…..no one deliberately tortures their sources to death….the Bush admin policies were all designed to keep detainees alive while being tortured.
The plausible scenario is that the CIA/mil were going for a last waterboarding on a detainee sceduled for release. They were torturing all three together either for added terror value, or in hopes that they would impeach each others testimony…..or it was just scheduled for the other 2 to be at Camp No. They accidentally killed one detainee and had to whack the other two as witnesses, and staged a panicked coverup.
Everyone in the building had clearances except the detainees…they CANT talk without breaking their oath to protect classified data……so all they had to do was snuff the other two detainees and stage the suicides in the cell block for the uncleared to witness.
Which outcome would you prefer Conor?
That America has a mil/CIA branch that went rogue and staged a coverup on their own?
Or that the trail leads right to the Bushcheney torture administration?
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 02:37 AM · #
And here you go Mr. Carter.
Perhaps the reason the Obama administration can’t get any traction on the investigation is that ALL THE BUSH ADMIN PEOPLE ARE STILL THERE, and they are still re-investigating themselves.
“In the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, Republicans are still slow-walking two critical intelligence nominees:
* Philip Goldberg, nominee to lead the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research * Caryn Wagner, nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis”
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 02:31 PM · #
I thought you said you weren’t goint to comment here any more, matoko. It was the best piece of news I’d read on-line in a while. Please tell me you haven’t decided to start again. Please.
— jlr · Feb 5, 05:12 PM · #
Do you think I want to?
Quit your goddamn Potemkin Village lying and propagandizing and chaff throwing and I won’t have to.
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 05:51 PM · #
Go ahead and comment as you please Matoko. Do what Steve Sailer does. Just say what you want to say and ignore the squawking. That’s one thing Steve Sailer does right.
— cw · Feb 5, 06:20 PM · #
Just for clarification, let’s be aware that matoko_chan’s position on the mutilation, humiliation and torture of untried prisoners has been made very unambiguously clear and you’re only looking at opposition to abuse of these particular prisoners at Guantanamo: matoko_chan does not oppose those things in general and in fact seems gung-ho about them beyond Dick Cheney’s wildest dreams, as well-deserved punishments for being a baddie without an interest in gaining information. Surely one should consider that position in evaluating makoto_chan, Balloon Juice, cw, anyone else supporting makoto_chan’s voice, perhaps even in evaluating TAS for letting it air.
— Against ALL Prisoner Abuse · Feb 5, 07:12 PM · #
“continued scrutiny into this story is justified”
If that means that searching for additional evidence is justified, then that’s what should be done, not continuing to treat Horton’s evidence that doesn’t show anything as though maybe it does if only we look at it from the right angle. When you’ve spoken to one of the witnesses that swore he saw the bodies hanging in their cells who retracts his testimony, or found a witness who saw the men being tortured or their bodies being delivered from outside the camp directly to the clinic, or something that actually shows something, then you’ll have a justification to keep treating this as a legitimate story. Or have you still not figured out why professional journalists in the mainstream press aren’t touching this?
Horton plainly doesn’t have any additional evidence. He’s trying to keep the story alive by publishing dribbles of additional non-evidence. It’s irresponsible to treat his theory as more than what it is, a half-baked story published by a desperate magazine that should have required real evidence instead of rushing ahead with a sensational but unsubstantial cover story.
— Sanpete · Feb 5, 07:35 PM · #
“I haven’t seen anything by the governement that says they were wrong about their initial assessment of him.”
From the Washington Post:
“The military’s Criminal Investigation Task Force had decided years earlier that Sullami, who was arrested near his college in Pakistan in March 2002 and was turned over to U.S. authorities on May 2, 2002, in Afghanistan, was not someone they could prosecute.
“Although many of the individuals apprehended during the raid have strong connections to al Qaeda, there is no credible information to suggest Ahmed received terrorist related training or is a member of the al Qaeda network,” investigators wrote in a previously “secret” document.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082203083_pf.html
— Sanpete · Feb 5, 07:38 PM · #
AAPA wtf?
I was speculating that in light of the Blackwater/XE conractor scandals involving sex slave trafficking and the DOCUMENTED ACTIONS of the Iraqi Rape Squad that perhaps the original Blackwater mercs that were burned abd hung from a bridge JUST MIGHT have done something to piss the villagers off.
There were NO PRISONERS INVOLVED.
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 08:11 PM · #
Sanpete, more investigation is going to happen….you can make book on that.
Heres a link to the editor at Harpers giving Schafer a smackdown.
Heres a link to pathologist data.
Harpers goes print on Feb 15th….this isnt over, as much as you and Joe would like it to be.
I object to Schafer and Carter saying that 3 investigations have returned the same findings so everyone should just stfu and accept their results…..what do you expect when the same personel are just reinvestigating themselves?
Let’s face it….TAS really is a Potemkin Village.
You just ignore anything that doesnt fit the narrative.
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 08:23 PM · #
Let me make this clear for Potemkin Villager AAPA……the Blackwater contractors were never actually prisoners….they were pulled from their vehicles and immediately executed……just like Menchaca and Tucker were executed, either before or after starring in a tribal ritual multilation video as murderer/rapists of a 14 year old child.
Aren’t you even curious about why?
Guess not. The same way you aren’t curious about this.
Isn’t it a Very Bad Thing for our country if we have possible rogue mil/CIA coverups that CANNOT be investigated?
Doesn’t that reek of police state?
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 08:33 PM · #
And there you have the confirmation from makoto_chan: because SOMEBODY ELSE VERY DEFINITELY DID SOMETHING BAD, it is OK when you get these people who have something to do with them in your power, to torture, humilate, brutalize. I believe there were even some comments in there about how they “deserved” it. And, no, “immediately” in not how they were executed, as far as we can tell.
Awesome horse to back, cw.
— AAPA · Feb 5, 08:37 PM · #
AAPA, the Blackwater contractors were pulled from their vehicles and immediately killed by a flash mob of Iraqi civilians.
Menchaca and Tucker were taken by the local branch of islamic vigilantes after the the village elders begged them for justice……
Since the local US authority refused to investigate.
Mobs and vigilantes don’t take “prisoners.” They are not obedient to the rule of law.
This has nothing to do with Gitmo Torturegate.
Quit throwing chaff.
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 08:53 PM · #
Presumeably…..the US military and CIA ARE obedient to the rule of law?
I mean, in the TAS Potemkin Village…. its my country right-or-wrong 24/7?
When you’ve spoken to one of the witnesses that swore he saw the bodies hanging in their cells who retracts his testimony, or found a witness who saw the men being tortured or their bodies being delivered from outside the camp directly to the clinic
Sanpete, don’t you like my show scenario?
Think about it…..the cleared saw the torture at Camp No, but they can’t talk, and the uncleared only saw the staged suicides back in the cell block.
I think it works.
:)
— matoko_chan · Feb 5, 09:37 PM · #
And that, folks, is known as protesting too much. That’s a pretty full throated endorsement of abusing your captives horrifically back there. Hm.
— AAPA · Feb 6, 02:30 AM · #
And note the sheer foulness as makoto talks about Menchaca and Tucker. Those men did nothing wrong. They did not commit the rapes makoto is so cleverly putting guilt on them for: the villagers demanded justice, did they? Who thinks that that was justice — anyone? cw? But you see if SOMEBODY ELSE ENTIRELY does something horrible without your knowledge or participation, but you are similar in ethnicity and share some piece of their outlook: you get grotesquely tortured with no trial and it gets filmed and, sez makoto repeatedly, it’s “deserved.”
Make no mistake: the worst guard ever to roam Gitmo’s halls, is very much makoto’s moral superior. And I would like to see if anyone would say otherwise.
Congrats to Conor and Balloon Juice for giving this animal a voice.
— AAPA · Feb 6, 04:22 AM · #
and do you know what else? Menchaca/Tucker was part of the process that eventually turned me liberal.
Allahpundit and I once were friends….I saw the video at Jawa Report and began to wonder why Islamic terrorists would make a video featuring traditional ritual tribal multilation rape-punishment….I’m a cognitive anthropology fan.
Usually the videos are straightforward execution-style beheading videos.
Well now we know why that one was different.
Allahpundit also said i was a monster that was sliming out troops.
Well I am a monster that believes in the rule of law.
tant pis
— matoko_chan · Feb 6, 04:28 PM · #
And you don’t know that Menchaca and Tucker were innocent. What we do know is the mutilation video forced the other members of the Iraqi Rape Squad to confess out of fear of vigilante justice. And that the offical American story of “sectarian violence” causing the rape/murder of a 14 year old child, so alienated the locals that they facilitated the kidnapping/execution of not just Menchaca/Tucker, but later of other truly innocent American soldiers in the same area….who were not recovered alive….see how that works?
Now Carter and Schafer are braying that Gitmo Torturegate is just “conspiracy theory” and it is somehow slimy and dishonorable to question the actions of the CIA/mil personnel. They say we should accept the results of 3 investigations by the same people investigating themselves as conclusive, just like the local American authority told the Iraqi villagers to accept the sectarian violence cover story.
I think if mil/CIA personnel tortured detainees to death at Gitmo and covered it up, we had better find out.
There are enough inconsistancies that there should be an investigation. I offered a plausible scenario. Is that what happened? Dunno….but we better find out.
Because this is America, and torturing detainees to death and then COVERING IT UP is illegal under the Rule of Law.
And the Rule of Law still counts, even when the victims are brown …..14 year old Iraqi children or 22 year old gitmo detainees.
And even though the Rule of Law doesn’t seem to count for much in TAS Potemkin Village.
— matoko_chan · Feb 6, 05:08 PM · #
Still waiting for anyone to step up an say matoko is not morally deficient even against the worst guard at Gitmo. Waiting…
— AAPA · Feb 6, 06:23 PM · #
and I’m morally deficient …….because?
Because I dont think America soljahs get to rape 14 year old Iraqi children and slaughter their families and burn the bodies and get away with it?
Because I think there is enough data to warrant an investigation into whether American military/CIA personnel tortured a detainee to death and then covered it up?
And why are you saying the guards at Gitmo are morally depraved? Is it just the fact they are at Gitmo? Are you sayin the guards torture detainees? But torture/waterboarding is legal in the Bushcheney admin legacy.
John Yoo says George Washington would have done it.
It just isnt legal to kill a detainee while doin it and then try to cover it up.
Are you sayin it is more “moral” to torture a detainee to death and and then cover it up than to condemn American soldiers raping a 14 year old child, slaughtering her family, and then burning the bodies to cover it up?
wow.
— matoko_chan · Feb 6, 06:44 PM · #
Waiting, waiting…..
Poor stupid matoko. Doesn’t realize that nobody buys that Menchaca or Tucker raped anyone. Doesn’t realize nobody is fooled about whether a trial took place.
A double tragedy: young men driven to hang themselves at Gitmo by a revolting departure from fair process. And that thing matoko, too self-unaware not to hang itself.
— AAPA · Feb 6, 06:58 PM · #
“nobody buys that Menchaca or Tucker raped anyone. “
oh, i’d say the Iraqi vigilantes “bought it”….and the Iraqi Rape Squad got the point and turned themselves in in terror that they would be next.
Menchaca and Tucker couldn’t be posthumeously charged is all. Nine man company, either charged or dead.
“Barker and three other members of Company B of the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, were charged with raping the girl and killing her, her parents and her 7-year-old sister in the family’s home in Mahmudiya, southwest of Baghdad. It is a volatile area known to American soldiers as the “Triangle of Death.”
Private First Class Jesse Spielman, Private First Class Bryan Howard and Sergeant Paul Cortez also are charged with rape, premeditated murder and arson. Military prosecutors have accused the men of burning the girl’s body, using kerosene, in an effort to conceal evidence. A fifth soldier, Sergeant Anthony Yribe, is charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report the crimes.”
AAPA is emblematic of the whole TAS Potemkin Village ‘tude.
America can do no wrong.
lawl
Like I said, there is going to be more.
And accusing me of moral depravity for wanting to know the truth isnt going to stop calls for an investigation.
It just reveals the moral poverty of the whole conservative Potemkin Village.
— matoko_chan · Feb 6, 08:12 PM · #
If we can consider my beloved Jefferson’s natural aristoi in the context of the current state of the GOP….there are still elites….intellectuals of great talent, like Reihan and Dr. Manzi.
But there are no moral elites….no intellectuals or leaders of virtue, except for Conor and Sully….perhaps.
If Reihan truly supported working families, he would support all families, not just white christian nuclear families, and he would support HCR for them even if the democrats will benefit from passing it.
And if Dr.Manzi was virtuously honest he would acknowledge that supply-side ecomonics and deregulation are the paradigms that have landed us in the current reccession, and not a means of “keeping America’s edge”.
The “conservative” Potemkin Village has wholly abandoned their virtue in service of partisanship and demogoguery….i guess as a means of retaining power.
It seems a very high price to me.
— matoko_chan · Feb 6, 08:52 PM · #
matoko_chan,
supply-side ecomonics and deregulation are the paradigms that have landed us in the current reccession
Fans of Gordon Gecko will be delighted to hear that he is about to leave prison and return to our screens.
— Keid A · Feb 7, 12:50 AM · #
Oh, charming! Now matoko, in full lordly offense, sticks the untried dead with child rape without evidence. Lovelier and lovelier!
Ah, you repulsive, shiteating worm, matoko. The only view I’ve expressed is that the abuse of prisoners even for information is beyond the pale — whereas you, you shitbag, happily tell us which ones “deserve” public mutilation and prolonged execution. If indeed my position is the conservative one, then fie on liberals. But it’s not right versus left, here, it’s human versus thing.
So you try blowing your fucking dogwhistle to make it about Bush and Cheney or about rape or about Salam and Manzi, and it doesn’t work. You try blowing a race whistle and making this about who’s white or who’s Christian, but nobody comes running. Because even the stupid party-line guys, left or right — the anklebiters from jd to Chet — won’t lift a finger to defend you here. Not just because they can see you clearly laying out an insane rationale by which the worst scenario anyone has posited for what happened at Gitmo is, if anything, too nice to the prisoners. But rather because the dimmest of actual humans recognizes that you aren’t one of us. So I can heap abuse on you and nobody will protest. Everyone knows that there’s hyperbole in Internet dialogue; Godwin’s law always applies. But fucks like you remind us that there are, in fact, monsters. Why should any of us give a fuck what you think, exactly?
I lamented up there that you’re too dumb to be revolted by your own continued existence. If I’d done that to any actual person, the condemnation would’ve been fast and sharp from people of every political stripe. But to say it about you, is a gimme. Everyone grasps that matoko is just a thing, an embarrassment to our species. So you know what you can do, matoko? Set up a noose, tie your feet and hands, eat a rag, and make some kind of fucking point, eh? It’s no loss and probably a benison to those who put up with you. It would be nice to see a hanging we can all appreciate: it’s only sad when people off themselves.
There’s a real burden on TAS here that they’re dodging cravenly. Yes, it’s nice to have free and open discourse. But you don’t want to be the billboard on which Goebbels smears its shit either. This shitbird is exulting in the most grotesque of things, and that kind of speech has consequences. I accept that there are arguments for letting all speech pass sometimes but they have not been made, and anyways its known that TAS does on (rare) occasion stifle some stuff. Why then is matoko allowed here? If it had anything interesting or new to say there might — might — be a rationale, but, Jesus, matoko has been pushing the same I-was-right-but-now-left-evil-Reihan-misled-me-evo/devo-memes-the-young-the-future-white-Christian crap for years. You could write a computer program to do it. It’d have more soul. I guess Friedersdorf can decide what kudos for murder he wants under his byline, but personally I think, shame on TAS.
As for you, fuckface: c’mon, dig your ass deeper. You’re too much a thing to know you’re doing it. I believe this is where your repellent, deformed ass, thinking itself smart, says “/spit.”
— AAPA · Feb 7, 01:45 AM · #
AAPA
Take some deep breaths, buddy. You’re going to give yourself and anurism.
ps. WHatother names have you used here on TAS?
— cw · Feb 7, 02:49 AM · #
lawl
looks like i treaded on someone’s last nerve….I’m guessing my plausible scenario might be very, very close to the truth.
could rogue mil/CIA personnel have staged a panicked cover-up?
the mills of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding small.
i think we will find out.
:)
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 03:56 AM · #
Just to speak for myself, AAPA, please don’t presume what I am or am not prepared to defend. In regards to whatever gotcha you think you’ve caught her in – look, she’s barely readable under the best of circumstances. I flipped over to the thread you linked to, and I have no idea what you think we were supposed to all read. The reason we’re staying out of this is what we have literally no idea what the fuck you’re on about.
— Chet · Feb 7, 03:58 AM · #
cw, I can think of nothing more worth getting exercised over. If matoko’s position is not evil, then nothing is.
Chet, if it’s not clear from what it posted before, it is surely clear from what it has posted above. matoko, though pretending to condemn prisoner abuse for its convenience in this thread, applauded unambiguously — and continues to applaud — the videos where two captured Army prisoners — Menchaca and Tucker — were mutilated and tortured to death for a crowd. Entertaining videos for those who’ve seen them. Its rationale is that some other dudes raped a child. It justifies this in lovely ways above and pins rape on the dead soldiers with no evidence.
THis is beyond even the Cheney position. Far beyond it. That thing has no basis on which to discuss prisoner abuse.
— AAPA · Feb 7, 04:23 AM · #
I like the part where the hall monitor videos from the cell block have conveniently disappeared….or did they perhaps magically become classified?
Would they have shown the Camp No crew hanging bodies up and stuffing notes written in bad arabic into the pockets of corpses?
Did the panicked Camp No clean-up crewe forget to take the rags out of the detainees throats, thus allowing the autopsy attendents to notice them?
I like this better and better.
:)
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 04:38 AM · #
Caution is required, by the by, because matoko lies excessively to bolster its case (even though its support of what happened would be just plain evil, even if all of its claims were true). The Iraqis did not believe Menchaca and Tucker had committed the rape: in fact their statement with the tapes explicitly said other people had done it. matoko is smearing the dead with child rape when the evidence runs against it.
matoko says the family begged the Army for help, didn’t get it, turned to militants. Not so. The family by their own claim decided to handle it through their community without ever going to Army.
matoko also justifies the barbarism by saying it spurred the government into response (apparently in its world, torture pour encourager les autres is fine). Not so. The Army investigation the killings started before the torture videos were released, and it’s public record. Green didn’t break down confessing in terror of the videos: they nailed him with testimony from another soldier secured in a plea bargain.
Lie, lie, lie. Foul, foul thing.
— AAPA · Feb 7, 04:52 AM · #
Nothing Matoko says is fucking clear, and I still don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s called “blockquote”. Maybe you could use it? Right now I’m taking her more seriously than I take you, and that’s because she’s having a calm (if somewhat charmingly loony) conversation and you’re screaming obscenities at the top of your lungs.
— Chet · Feb 7, 06:01 AM · #
Take some deep breaths, buddy. You’re going to give yourself and anurism.
cw,
LOL The last time I got so intense about a woman was when she left me for another guy.
And that was thirty years ago. I doubt I could get so passionate today.
— Keid A · Feb 7, 07:27 AM · #
lawl….that is the beauty of compartment codeword classification….all the witnesses that actually know anything, can’t testify because that would break their oath to protect classified data….the uncleared are only witnesses to the result of the cover-up…not the mechanics.
The mechanics of the coverup became classified…..so anything relevant to the mechanics of the coverup was redacted from the NCIS report….while witness testimony relevent to the results of the coverup was left in.
No wonder the document made little sense to the Seton Hall law students.
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 09:42 AM · #
That is why the throat organs and kidneys were removed yet there is no logical reason for these organs to be refused to the secondary pathologists!
Parts of the autopsy itself, indeed the actual throats and kidneys…….. became classified!
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 03:46 PM · #
How inconvenient….throats and kidneys just don’t fit in a paper shredder.
lawl.
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 03:48 PM · #
curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.
On Thursday, Raw Story reported that “the family of a former Gitmo detainee are still waiting years later for answers regarding the events leading up to their son’s death.” As Harpers contributor Scott Horton revealed in a shocking feature a few weeks back, this man, Ahmed Ali Al-Salami, one of three Guantanamo prisoners who supposedly committed suicide in 2006 — “an act of asymmetrical warfare” according to Rear Adm. Harry Harris — was very possibly murdered while in U.S. custody, his death then made to look like a suicide.
Horton’s report caused a stir and the Pentagon has vehemently denied its veracity, calling it, among other things, “”a complete fabrication.”
Now, attempts to re-investigate the deaths are being blocked. “Rather than supplying the deceased’s missing throat and other necessary items, the Pentagon is attempting to cast aspersions on Horton’s report,” reports Raw Story.
Yes, missing throat. Apparently, that was one of the requests from the family of Ahmed Ali Al-Salami, who hopes that it will provide new evidence on how he died. But “hope that a second autopsy would provide those answers has been at a standstill as the doctor who performed the autopsy waits for U.S. officials to respond to a request for the return of the deceased’s missing throat, a request the Pentagon now appears to be denying was ever made.”
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 03:54 PM · #
I have to say matoko_chan, that I don’t find the army’s story that implausible. Whereas your version is at best conjecture.
Also, I’d take you a lot more seriously as a human rights campaigner, if I saw you defending persecuted Buddhists in Burma, say, from time to time, with the same passion you spend on muslims.
Until then, to me, you are a one-sided partisan hack, no better than any of the people you criticise.
And I don’t think of you as an evil thing like AAPA says. But I’m afraid I have come to think of you as a cult zombie. That’s something I’ve become more and more convinced of, over the many years I’ve known you.
My culture, right or wrong, 24/7.
— Keid A · Feb 7, 07:11 PM · #
OK, I find matoko’s statements crystal clear. But in case there’s confusion I’ll explicate.
Let us be clear: what I find objectionable is that matoko supports the public mutilation and execution by torture of untried captives who “deserve” it. I think that that in itself is as monstrous, morally, as position on anything as I have heard ever — Addington and Yoo don’t go there — and if you hold that position you are beyond worth inclusion in discourse. If you find matoko amusing or want her to post more, when it holds that position, then, you’re a mess. If you hold that position and comment from on high on a prisoner abuse scandal, that’s outrageous. cw seems to think outrage is unwarranted here: but matoko’s position is so monstrous I can’t understand being outraged over anything else, but not this. That the prisioners in question were American is irrelevant.
Sauce on this position: “deserve” to matoko means, apparently, that people you have some affiliation with did something terrible without your knowledge or participation. And matoko goes further and blithely libels two dead men as pederasts and murderers, which is also pretty foul.
Background: PFCs Menchaca and Tucker were seized by Iraqi insurgents while on patrol. Two videos were later released, one of teir dead bodies being taunted and mutilated, one of the live soldiers being dragged through a crowd, beaten, taunted, maimed. The bodies were booby-trapped.
The insurgents who claimed responsibility — later prosecuted and punished under Iraqi law with the help of testimony from the locals — said that the killing was retribution for a ghastly murder/rape that had been committed by other men from the same unit. Of course the PFCs were hardly the first soldiers taken prisoner, tortured and executed, and insurgents continued to use that rationale long after, including for bomb attacks that killed mostly Iraqis: one generally suspects that the rape was a convenient rationale, of the types all sides use in war at all times. The rape was in the news at the time because before the video was released the perpetrators had been arrested and charged; their leader had been discharged for being a nutcase and was safely stateside.
OK: quotes from matoko. Comments bracketed.
“Mechaca/Tucker deserved the mutilation video.” [said twice. Chet finds this obscure and unclear. I think it’s unambiguous and therefore suspect they share a position on torture.]
On the villagers killing the PFCs:
“By thir standards they acted appropriately” [No, they prosectued those guys under Iraqi law, the villagers testified.]
“What…OUR SOLDIERS did was completely immoral” [Not the ones who died, no.]
[Repeated assertions that the killed soldiers were rapists, numerous.]
[In response to assertion that nobody thinks PFCs were guilty] “I’d say the Iraqi villagers ‘bought it.’” [contradicts their own statements.]
[Libeling the PFCs:] “Menchaca and Tucker couldn’t be posthumeously charged is all.” [Lie.] “Nine man company, either charged or dead.” [Lie, from someone so uninterested in facts as to believe a combat arms company has so few men.]
“Menchaca and Tucker were taken by the local branch of islamic vigilantes after the the village elders begged them for justice……
Since the local US authority refused to investigate.” [Lie, and the odd belief that they’d ask the US Army to investigate a rape tells you something about matoko’s repeated claim to have any insight into the villagers’ culture.]
“Are you sayin it is more “moral” to torture a detainee to death and and then cover it up than to condemn American soldiers raping a 14 year old child, slaughtering her family, and then burning the bodies to cover it up?” [Again, libel. The soldiers who “deserved” torture did no such thing.]
[Justifying torture:] “And you don’t know that Menchaca and Tucker were innocent. What we do know is the mutilation video forced the other members of the Iraqi Rape Squad to confess out of fear of vigilante justice.” [Lie. They were arrested before the video. And pled not guilty!]
matoko has no interest in prosecuting prisoner abuse, and very very unambiguously supports it.
— AAPA · Feb 7, 08:54 PM · #
I like my toy scenario..it answers both Conor’s reader’s questions and KVS and Carter/Schafer objections too.
I think you have to give a link, AAPA, not just interpret what u think I said.
AAPA’s attack on me is isomorphic with Carter’s on Sullivan….its just chaff….my arguments are invalid because I think rape/murder of 14 year olds is a heinous and inhuman offense, and that the US local authority DECLINED to investigate the al-Jabani murders and blamed them innstead on insurgents?
lawl.
also, too.
The story came out because that June, two 101st Airborne soldiers (possibly innocent of the al-Jabani crimes, but known to the local Iraqis to be in the same nine-man squad with Green who had been discharged by then) were kidnapped, tortured and beheaded. In the belief that their treatment was revenge for the murders, a soldier who had heard Green talk blurted out the story to an Army counselor. The Army Criminal Investigations Division arrested those perpetrators still in the military and contacted the FBI, which took Green into custody in North Carolina.
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 09:13 PM · #
oh sry…my bad.
nine-man SQUAD, lol.
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 09:25 PM · #
I hearby challenge Sanpete, Carter and Schafer to come up with a BELIEVABLE scenario for removing the throats and kidneys and refusing to provide them for the second autopsy pathologist.
Chet, cw, Conor, et al…….I also think AAPA is sortof nutso, or I’d ax him too.
:)
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 10:16 PM · #
well!
Now that we have solved AAPA’s little reading comprehension problem, allow me to restate my thought experiment and anyone that likes can take pot shots at it.
No interrogator PLANS to kill his subject…..no one deliberately tortures their sources to death….the Bush admin policies were all designed to keep detainees alive while being tortured.
The plausible scenario is that the CIA/mil were going for a last waterboarding on a detainee sceduled for release. They were torturing all three together either for added terror value, or in hopes that they would impeach each others testimony…..or it was just scheduled for the other 2 to be at Camp No. They accidentally killed one detainee and had to whack the other two as witnesses, and staged a panicked coverup.
Everyone in the building had clearances except the detainees…they CANT talk without breaking their oath to protect classified data……so all they had to do was snuff the other two detainees and stage the suicides back in the cell block for the uncleared to witness.
I like the part where the hall monitor videos from the cell block have conveniently disappeared….or did they perhaps magically become classified?
Would they have shown the Camp No crew hanging bodies up and stuffing notes written in bad arabic into the pockets of corpses?
Did the panicked Camp No clean-up crewe forget to take the rags out of the detainees throats, thus allowing the autopsy attendents to notice them?
lawl….that is the beauty of compartment codeword classification….all the witnesses that actually know anything, can’t testify because that would break their oath to protect classified data….the uncleared are only witnesses to the result of the cover-up…not the mechanics.
The mechanics of the coverup became classified…..so anything relevant to the mechanics of the coverup was redacted from the NCIS report….while witness testimony relevent to the results of the coverup was left in.
No wonder the document made little sense to the Seton Hall law students.
— matoko_chan · Feb 7, 10:40 PM · #
I can’t find where Matoko said that in this thread or the other. A word search in this thread for this phrase returns 2 results – your post, and the one I’m writing, now. In the other thread there are zero hits for this phrase.
Oh, well, if you say so. Look, you’re not making a very overwhelming case for your credibility. I won’t go so far as to affirm that Menchaca and Tucker were guilty of anything, but reading about the Mahmudiyah killings it’s not hard to understand the impulse by some men in an Islamic, martial, honor-based culture in essentially a lawless combat zone taking vengeance into their own hands. Especially after they watched the US sweep it under the rug.
The way they treated those men was a crime, and they were caught and punished. The reason for the crime, though, isn’t hard to understand at all. That’s all I read Matoko as saying. Your continual reference to her as a “thing” is, frankly, by far the most abhorrent and disturbing thing anything has said in this thread or any other.
— Chet · Feb 8, 03:31 AM · #
I hearby challenge Sanpete, Carter and Schafer to come up with a BELIEVABLE scenario for removing the throats and kidneys and refusing to provide them for the second autopsy pathologist
The army says they received no such request. I find that believable. Otherwise maybe it got lost somewhere in the bureaucracy. I find that believable too (very).
It probably just needs more persistence.
No interrogator PLANS to kill his subject…..no one deliberately tortures their sources to death….the Bush admin policies were all designed to keep detainees alive while being tortured
In a real police state there is no need whatsoever to keep torture victims alive. They are tortured until they spill what they know and then killed to cover up any audit trail or future prosecution.
In Argentina, during the dirty war, the the regime’s enemies were flown out over the Atlantic in planes and pushed out of the cargo bay, far from land.
Uganda’s Idi Amin used to feed his victims to the crocodiles on Lake Victoria. The ones he didn’t keep in his fridge at home.
The main idea is that the bodies are never found, just “disappeared”. The mystery adds to the terror. Once you’ve got the information, why keep them alive to testify against you in a future trial, or nurse grudges? In a real police state, torture and killing are routine.
— Keid A · Feb 8, 08:32 AM · #
Crap — it doesn’t come up on Google because matoko misspelled it “multilation.”
Which is besides the point, since it’s in the first link I put there, which has one sentence in it, and you claim to’ve looked at those links.
— AAPA · Feb 8, 02:32 PM · #
“and they were caught and punished.”
No, Chet, the vigilantes were NEVER caught…because the locals never turned them in.
And the same group that made the video took credit one year later in 2007 for the kidnapping of three American soldiers with the apparent complicity of locals we know about.
The Bush admin suppressed and downplayed a lot of Iraq data.
That is a realized truth.
Anzack was found dead…I don’t think think the other two were ever found.
The US made a bad mistake in trying to “sweep” the Mahmudiyah rape/murders under the carpet.
That was because “our guys don’t do that, we are the good guys.”
Well, Green et al did do that. Of the nine man squad, Babinneau, Menchaca and Tucker died, and the others were prosecuted.
In my thought experiment on Gitmo, the Camp No clean-up crew could have easily made a single panicky mistake…failing to remove the rags from the throats of the detainees. That simple oversight could have created the neccessity of removing and retaining the organs.
The secondary pathologist requested the throat in 2006 and got stonewalled….but there is a different adminstration now.
That is why Hickman came forward…..because Obama was elected.
— matoko_chan · Feb 8, 03:29 PM · #
Heres a small bit of advice for my one-time ideological comrades….. there is more coming.
IMHO the TAS Potemkin Village should join Chet, Conor and Mrs. Suderman in calling for more investigation, not less.
Jus’ sayin’.
— matoko_chan · Feb 8, 03:53 PM · #
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more coming. But you are way wrong if you think the problem is just Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. Just wait till the Obama war in Afghanistan/Pakistan scandals start to come out in a few years.
I have never known a clean war. War releases all kinds of evils, no matter how noble the original intent.
Noble wars are what you get when poets and mythmakers rewrite history in order to conceal the truth and honor the winning side.
— Keid A · Feb 8, 04:18 PM · #
What “Obama war in Afghanistan?”
— Chet · Feb 8, 05:52 PM · #
The war he’s expanding.
— Keid A · Feb 8, 06:20 PM · #
RESPONSE TO CONORS EMAILER__
“I mean, this is where the Horton story, for me, falls flat on its face. The few people banging this drum are telling me, ohmyGawd, it was a murder, the circumstances all show it was a murder. Fine. But — and it might be I’ve missed this writing — I haven’t seen anyone write up what it is they think the CIA/military (two services!) guys were trying to do, exactly.”
I…did….just…..that….
May I have a response please?
Or don’t you have the guts?
I’ll take an admission that I might be right.
lawl, you TAS ppl are whiney cowards….afraid of a scaborous, contemptous, high-function autistic GRRL?
— matoko_chan · Feb 9, 05:12 PM · #
And I’m sooooooo sowwy to spoil Reihan’s bloggy fun……not!
I guess I’m just a Mean Girl at heart.
lawl.
I know it may look like I was being like a bitch, but that’s only because I was acting like a bitch.
— matoko_chan · Feb 9, 06:01 PM · #
Oh, you mean Bush’s war, the one he started and couldn’t finish.
— Chet · Feb 9, 06:33 PM · #
Like Time says, it’s Obama’s war now. He’s enlarging it. He has adopted it and made it his own cause.
— Keid A · Feb 9, 08:53 PM · #
Matoko, I found a poem for you.
Evolution by Langdon Smith.
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.
The whole poem is here.
And this is a facsimile of the book it came from,
Evolution, A Fantasy
Enjoy.
— Keid A · Feb 10, 02:54 PM · #
Oh, my bad. I didn’t know Time was the arbiter of who “owns” wars.
— Chet · Feb 10, 04:46 PM · #
The perpetrator of the war – in this case the US government – owns it.
The war has now been authorised and funded by successive administrations and congresses. Even if they don’t technically “declare” war.
Not every war is started and finished by only one administration you know. The Cold War lasted over forty years. Eight administrations presided over different parts of it, from presidents Truman through Reagan. Would you call the Cold War, Truman’s War?
— Keid A · Feb 10, 05:26 PM · #