Asdf, would you say #5 is a faulty conclusion?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
asdf
No, I am not so naive as to think that abuses and excesses will not happen during wartime, that soldiers' anger and hatred of the enemy will get the better of them from time to time. I'm also not so nihilistic as to think that it doesn't matter - that since such abuses are inevitable, they should be accepted and embraced.
In any case, abuse by soldiers on the battlefield, or in the immediate aftermath thereof, is not what I'm talking about here. Care should be taken to differentiate between random excesses or abuses by "a few bad apples", as happens in every war, and a bureaucratized, official top-down policy, implemented across all theaters of war.
We're talking about the latter here, not the former.
Would you care to say that point five in your OP is a faulty conclusion? My points above ties in directly to the safety of the soldier aspect, since you referenced Abu Graib, it was soldiers that did the humiliation acts against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and it was the videos that were uploaded that were used in continuing efforts of recruitment in Iraq and abroad. Since much of the the interrogation methods was a need to know basis, and even Nancy Pelosi was sitting in on the briefing (even though she calles the CIA liars) what was not leaked could not be used by Terrorists. If anything, the recruitment process in the terrorist network preys on the disadvantaged Muslim. Most of the detainees I encountered had a low level of Arabic instruction and so relied on the terrorist network and sympathizer's interpretations because they could not read the Koran for themselves. As a soldier that had the opportunity to conduct detainee operations, actually seeing the schools and Sunni professors from Baghdad come and teach in the compounds, there is a great number of detainees that are socially and economically disadvantaged. The war itself as it started caused political chaos, and it was this that increased the recruitment, not Bush or Cheney's approval of advanced interigation methods. We have made substantial successes in Iraq because the Shieks in the Sunni towns have had their children killed, not by American soldiers, but by the Muslim extremists. That is why we are winning in Iraq on a progressive basis. If you recall General Petraius handing over Fallujah back to the locals, you would have seen by the words of the local Sunni leadership the cause of their successes. Terrorists if capturing American soldiers or our allies, have no concern whatsoever of your point number 5. I would like for you to admit that number 5 is a faulty conclusion.