It's important to me that there not be a tape of American soldiers raping Iraqi kids. This needs to be a hoax or something. I really need for this to be a hoax. What a fucking mess. What a goddamn mess.
UPDATE: Sorry for anyone who doesn't read comments. I was undone by some carelessness here. This link is four years old. Yolk on the face.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
If it's true, it's important to the people who did it that there not be a tape of it, too. I hate thinking about this stuff, but our (citizens) wanting it to just go away helps the perpetrators cover it up. We already know that unspeakable things have been done, whether Hersh is right about this particular or not. And we have to know what they are. We have to know what our government is doing. Any other option and democracy is a joke.
while i understand this sentiment...in a peculiar way i actually want a tape to be accessable...if this is true, i want the fuck who did it in jail on rape charges...don't fuck this up...
unfortunately obama prizes security over civil liberties. that will never happen. as much as i like the guy personally, he's just Bush 2.0, a younger, smarter, more attractive, more charming version of the old Bush with 3 years of community organizing on hand to back up his credentials as the so called "man of the people". why did he give up so early, while others are still in the trenches? because it was a political stepping stone. and his religiosity seems to coincide with the beginning of his political career hmmm... should i be so cynical? if the last 8 years taught us anything it's to stop giving our politicians the benefit of the doubt. we're doing what bush did with Putin, look into his eyes and think he's on our side. Everyday that goes by, we see it's not the case.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/
ok...i overreacted..badly...can't say that you're making much sence though...sounds like the standard attackline...community organizing, attacking his religion, comparision to bush...are we on repeat today?
no, im not attacking his religion or community organizing. i wish he stayed longer in community organizing, as my friends are still toiling in the trenches doing what he only did for 3 years. i dont begrudge him of having political ambitions, which is why i made the point about community organizing and becoming religious (which i secretly think and hope he's not).
the thing is obama's actions on civil liberties have gone beyond what Bush has done, especially with regard to state secrets. And his decisions to withhold the photos from the public record is a 180 degree turn from what the 2nd circuit ordered and might i say against his own FOIA guidelines. Now he's weighing "indefinite detention" for the detainees under military commissions which he once ruled out. And what about the HIV needle policy? He's ignoring it. He's ignoring a lot of AIDS issues. He scrubbed his promise to repeal DOMA from his website yesterday. He's revised his promise on DADT and other gay issues on his website in the last month. Now he's changed his mind on abstinence funding and is now providing it when it's clear it does not work. He's slowly being coopted by the neocons in the Afghan war when even Petraeus says Al-Qaida is in pakistan, not Afghanistan. And he hires an egregious torture apologist and pat-tillman cover-up guy to replace McKiernen.
you make interesting points...however...the obama administration has only yet begun...it's fickin' may...bush had 8 years...give him atleast a year...
wait, give him a year to change his positions back to the ones he campaigned on instead of the ones he followed bush on and some even more so? wut?
I'm not giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, either, but I don't think it's useful to call him Bush 2.0. He's failing to uphold the constitution, he's appeasing people in power, and I think we should holler as loud as we want when he does wrong- but there are a lot of ways to run the country wrong. Bush was just one of them. I think thinking of him as "on our side" or "not on our side" is just not useful. We can't know his heart. All we can see are his actions. Are they smart, right, good policy? Are they craven, illegal, timid? We don't have to have an "Obama: Good or Bad?" question. It's not useful.
I must not have been very clear- I want the tape out there, too. I'm opposed to secrecy.
I have seen Hersh make this claim. I don't consider myself naive. I am not particularly someone who believes our troops can do no wrong and I don't consider Hersh to be a deliberate liar but I simply don't believe what he is saying. I am not sure how to reconcile that but it just doesn't seem remotely credible to me that troops were raping children, especially on camera. The idea that
1. this happened
2. it was filmed
3. the video evidence was kept intact
4. the evidence was revealed to a reporter
just seems literally incredible to me. I will be very unhappy if I am wrong of course, but I am willing to bet heavily on the fact that I am not. Not much surprises me about the capacity of people to do evil. This absolutely would.
Keep in mind that a jury just convicted a US Soldier of engineering the gang rape of a 13-year-old and then shooting her in the face. Numbers 1 and 2 seem really plausible. Number 4 gives me a little faith in humanity, honestly. 3's the only one that's giving me pause.
This is the digital age a military bureaucracy. If it was filmed, I find it exceedingly likely that it currently exists in any number of hard drives.
I think the specific claim that was made is that Iraqi troops were doing this and it was videotaped by one or more US troops. Still shocking but less incredible.
This is true, but the direct perpetrator is irrelevant, since all the enablers present are also - by accessory, and rightly so - guilty of rape.
I assume that if you find yourself in wartorn Iraq and you happen upon Iraqi troops raping prisoners, the question isn't whether you should ask the teacher to make the bad kids stop misbehaving. I'm not saying anyone is getting a good conduct medal out of the situation, but I think we would need to have some more facts -- any facts -- before declaring that someone on the scene other than the perpetrators is the functional equivalent of a rapist.
Do note that the link is from almost 5 years ago. I would suspect that, if that video existed, it was among the many destroyed by the CIA.
Meh, I was got. Reader shipped it my way, and I went batshit. Still. It makes you wonder. Whatever happened to that alleged tape...
When will Obama be as bold as his speeches? Has "pragmatism" become a substitute for cowardice? has "the long view" become a substitute for dragging his feet on politically charged issues? When i ask you? WHEN??
Just saying: I enjoy Obama's speeches, but they're not really that bold.
that says even more about his "pragmatism"
Hersh has been interviewed since that and broke the "Cheney assasination squad" bit of lovliness but hasn't mentioned the tape since. Doesn't seem like a guy who gets scared to easily. I still think he knows things that would keep most of us awake at night.
Maybe he hasn't mentioned it since because he founded out that it never existed. Not every horrible story you hear about U.S. troops ends up being true.
A good rule of thumb is that if the right-wing zombies say it, the opposite is likely to be true.
War.
I certainly hope it isn't true.
We, many of us, would like to think of how we or any other numbers of us, regardless of the circumstances, would act. However, what I've seen (I'm a psychotherapist this past 28 years) is that the human entity, under the proverbial "right" circumstances, is pretty capable of being VERY inhuman and inhumane.
I, still now, see Vietnam Vets with PTSD. What they saw......What they did.....
These are circumstances of war. But, pedophiles in America do thereabouts daily. For all the wonder and beauty of this world, there is, also, very UGLY/HEINOUS.
I wrote yesterday re: TNC's quoting Morehouse's president and his bold commentary to the "straight" men of Morehouse and their needed behavior change toward their gay bretheren. Pointed out that this, actually, was a first for the president of the institution. And, even at that, this president has been in that position for two years.
Mary, hearing what you are saying, but the "long view" is just that. Long. There are any number of things that he hasn't done or have been set into motion that, as time passes, we will see how it turns out.
But, at least to me, to determine in less, now, than 150 days that this guy is Bush 2.0 whom we saw for eight years and, amongst other things, to allege cowardice is, perhaps, a bit much.
Again, that's me, though.
im not talking about things that havent been done. im talking about things he's compromised, sacrificed, or completely reversed himself on.
If this particular instance is true, I surely wouldn't be surprised.
Considering the atrocities committed against civilians and prisoners in every war since the beginning of humanity, I'm sure things worse than this have gone on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I wonder if the types of soldiers who do these things are preconditioned to this type behaviour or if it is learned or a reaction to war/occupation?
That would be an interesting study.
if this specific case happened or not, war is the best we've got for hell on earth
i'm reading Bernd Greiner "War Without Fronts : The U.S. in Vietnam" right now and he went and dug up witness testimonies made to the armys own Criminal investigation Division about what happened in the villages Xom Lang, Binh Tay and My Lai on the 16th of march 1968, and i can assure there was plenty of rape, murder and shooting 2 year old kids in the head who are trying to crawl out of a ditch full of their dead relatives
war is hell