So my partner posted the prison torture photos, with explanation, on

[Occulus]

the mlive.com forums... and they got yanked for being "inappropriate." In the chat room on the same site, everyone there- to a man- was saying it was from "the media" and "must be doctored." NOBODY admitted to actually reading the CBS/60 Minutes II article that went with the photos. Worse, some were saying it was- get this- a Democratic ploy to get * out of office! Don't bother going to look; the thread was pulled. What. A. Shock.

On the gay.com chat rooms, NOBODY wanted to talk about it and everyone there was saying the photos were doctored, also without reading the article. THEN they put me on ignore.

What gives?

This is more than just apathy.

[ugarte]

1. You're right, it's some kind of reality phobia

They all want their war nice and sanitized, no pictures of prisoners or dead people, please.

[alittlelark]

2. I just saw them for the first time on another thread

I must admit - I am also hoping for denial.....unfortuneately I KNOW that the stories and pictures are accurate.

I wish the pictures were doctored - I would sleep better tonight.

It's like the Vietnam guys who say 'nothing bad happened there'. The logic is that if you say it enough times it might become true. The people who are doubting the validity of the pictures and story are doing so out of a sense of psychological self-protection. Cognitive dissonance is a very painful process, which can be alleviated by ignoring facts.:shrug: :(

[Occulus]

6. That's what I was thinking.

" The people who are doubting the validity of the pictures and story are doing so out of a sense of psychological self-protection."

Nail, meet hammer.

[Wonk]

3. I'm coming to think that a large % of Americans suffer from

Stockholm Syndrome. http://www.google.com/search?q=Stockholm+Syndrome

Here are the pics for anyone who hasn't seen them yet. Many of them are photoshopped, technically, since CBS pixelated and blurred the genitals.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=109&topic_id=8317&mesg_id=8317

[Occulus]

7. Interesting take on this.

I wasn't aware of S.S., but it certainly describes what's going on Out There.

[the Kelly Gang]

4. scary stuff..but it's finally dawned on me that these people switch off

completely and close their eyes, ears and minds to anything that could shake their faith in Bush and his war.
It's the worse time in my life for seeing this happen..you would think with the amount of media available they would learn the truth.
It's like mother Bush saying "would should I bother my beautiful mind with that".
It seems no matter how much the truth comes out..they simply just say it's a liberal plot !

[bowler_4_columbine]

5. I haven't seen the photos

but I read the article.

I don't know... Maybe people are really uncomfortable with the thought that the troops "we are supporting" are capable of such things. Whether for the war or against the war I think everyone feels a certain sympathy and connection to the poor shmoes who got caught in this misadventure. Maybe we like too much to imagine that every soldier is just like our neighbors kid, our nephew, Hell...our own kid.

It's just hard to accept the truth sometimes. I try to look at it as there are a LOT of people in the military. Good guys, bad guys, assholes, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, soccer moms, grandpops - a regular cross-section of society at large.

I'm sure it doesn't help matters when you get a bunch of the asshole types together supporting each others assholishness in a foreign land with little leadership and kind of a "free for all" atmosphere and attitude from the commander in chief on down.

[Occulus]

8. See, that's the thing

They WOULD NOT ACCEPT that he was/we were talking about only a few soldiers; they *all* insisted I was denigrating ALL our troops. They just. Didn't. Get it. Period!

AARGHHH! I am SO sick of people like this. They equal one soldier to all, our soldiers to our pResident, and our pResident to God!

How does one combat this? How does one reach people who actively do not want to be reached?

[SlavesandBulldozers]

9. maybe they are being reached

but they don't admit it. Maybe to be reached, and admit it, to them means to be wrong - and to be human instead of Godly like Emperor "let me think about it and I'm sure Ill think of some mistake, Nope." Bush

[bowler_4_columbine]

10. How does one combat this?

How does one combat this? How does one reach people who actively do not want to be reached?

I honestly don't know. The last three years under Bush has had a profound and I'm sure lasting effect on my own attitude. I'm not young, but before now I would have never been able to conceive that so many Americans could be as determined to be stupid as they apparently are.

I used to have a few Republican/Conservative friends and associates. While I disagreed with them on some issues it was always civil and I honestly believed that they were good people who just saw a different path to the same desired result - a better life and a better way.

Now everyone who doesn't see that Bush is a dangerous asshole goes right into the dangerous asshole column with him in my book. Fuck no they can't borrow a cup of sugar or bum a ride to work. And that hostility and disgust is going to last me way past when Bush has left the white house.

[Occulus]

12. What I'm afraid of...

...is he won't leave. If there's another major terrorist attack, we'll be under martial law. Hell, he could decide to suspend the elections "for reasons of national security"- and half the country would go right along with it.

I hate to say it, but I'm having premonitions of civil war.

[bowler_4_columbine]

13. Me too

having premonitions of a civil war.

The sad thing is that I used to not be able to imagine how a civil war could occur. What could possibly pit neighbor against neighbor? That people could turn violently and with such hatred on people they knew.

Now that I understand it I feel like something innocent in me was lost.

[Occulus]

21. When learning of the civil war as I grew up,

I though to myself, "that's not possible now. Everything's too good for thatt." This, growing up in the eighties. I was indeed a child.

Now, I feel differently. The climate is... cold. We are being pressured, cajoled, and manipulated into going this way, rather than that.

I don't like it. This nation is sorely divided. Nature, in all its forms, dictates that pressure is always relieved, and in nature, extreme pressure is often relieved violently.

I fear it will be a long, hot summer.

[alittlelark]

16. My fundie mom is part of the 'Army of the Lord'

She gave my nephews plastic armor and swords 4-5 years ago - the designs were straight out of the crusades, and had biblical text on the helmets. I will not allow her time alone with my children. Her house is filled with creepy religious art. Her bookshelves are a hall of horrors. I was raised Catholic - she converted to fundie-nut when she wanted a divorce from my father (Catholic=no divorce). The world she is living in has nothing to do with the religion I was raised in.

The indoctrination of the 'Army of the Lord' - give it the name you will, has been ongoing for at least 10 years.

They are frightening.

[Occulus]

22. And they are gaining control.

[JaySherman]

19. I hate to say this, but...

I'm almost beginning to feel America will be getting what it deserves if that happens. I'm so sick of the apathy, I really am. Those who would continue to deny the atrocities being committed after being shown the truth of the evil are complicit in it. Fuck them. I hate them with every bone and fiber in my body for aiding in the ruin of our country as it hurtles down the dark path of totalitarianism and perpetual war. Let them and their children be forced to experience the true horror of war if they continue to be party to it. Will they continue to live in denial when the actors in photos like these are their own conscripted sons and daughters?

The worst part is the tide of evil is going to carry a lot of good decent people down the River of Death along with it. America is going to drown in it's own indifference and apathy.

[Occulus]

23. We will emerge better because of it.

Strife, in this nation, has always embodied positive change in the end. If there is to be civil strife here, now or in the future, in this country, I wish to stand behind the Constitution and the Republic for which it stands.

That means fundies trying to take over might end up having a personal education on the meaning of the second amendment.

I'd like to point out the words in the Declaration of Independence which immediately follow "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." You know, the sentence public schoolkids are almost never taught.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. You cannot reach those who wish not to be reached

that is what is so insane

Tehre are people out there that still deny May Lai happened,

They are also the ones who Jay Lifton identify as the easiest ones to beocome the killers if the circumstances are correct.

This is what is so sad about this. The kids who did this, were not trained, and were victims of the common syndrome that usually occurs when you give absolute power over the lives of others.

We can become Nazis, any of us CAN... if the situation is correct

[bowler_4_columbine]

15. You're right

I agree what you've said. How else could anyone explain thousands of years of "mans inhumanity to man"?

It's terribly sad....


I feel terribly sad.


kgfnally - I'm glad you started this thread and that we got to have this "conversation". Sometimes it feels like the world has gone mad. Being able to say so helps somehow.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. In a previous life I was a Red Cross Medic

I know the Geneva Convention, but I have seen things that to be brutally honest, have left me unable to be shocked any more...even by these photos. They are missing something that you cannot capture in a still and truly you cannot portray in a photo.

Truth be told the good thing is they shocked you.

Now it is my turn to send those things to my congress critters... and see if I can get them to react. Hopefully they will remember that the prisoners, (just as the soldiers) are human beings... this is the key point, remembering that people are human beings.

One more thing, I have transported those who are evil incarnate to a hospital, and seen into their eyes. Those six kids will pay for what they did, if the court does not have their asses... in ways that you or I cannot imagine yet, and they may even make US pay as well. Those kids have been changed since they have been able to act up every sad and sick fantasy that they had, or even if they did not imagine.

Now the contractors, one of them raped a kid, he is a civie, hence the military cannot touch him... a lovely reason to get rid of all mercs in coutry and to further despise Mercs.

And I fear sleep will be hard to come by tonight...

I also remember a course in college, how the kids were arguing that they would never do this.... EVER, aka run concentration camps... well this was after a bad weekend were I volunteered and I got to see this inhumanity close up...

Now it is tiime to force those that matter to bear witness

[Occulus]

25. The madness is within.

I'm fairly sure of that now.

We, all of us, have the innate capacity for both good and evil. It is in our day to day choices, both to ourselves and to others, that our own actions judge us.

Some of these choices are good, some of the bad; all help define who we are. It is in that, our selves (some may say, our souls), that we can be defined as 'good' or 'evil'.

I have a problem with that argument, however. The one defines the other. What would 'good' be, if 'evil' did not exist?

I think, perhaps, balance is the key. Our nation, and to a large degree, individually, ourselves, are divided. Clearly, * is the antithesis of balance.

Does this make * evil, or is there another reason?

And, out of curiousity, is * so unbalanced toward evil that he cannot be redeemed?

[shraby]

14. Guantanamo

This is a perfect example of why the framers of our constitution guaranteed us the right to a fair and speedy trial. They knew about indefinite imprisonment up front and personal. That's why those prisoners at Guantanamo (sp?) should be given lawyers and open trials. To put them in an isolated setting with guards and practically no oversight is plain flat out wrong.
After seeing the photos I am ashamed to be an American..I've had something taken away from me that I held dear...that we were good people and the concentration camps would never happen under our watch. I've been sick to my stomach since.
No one should HAVE to be told there is a Geneva Convention to adhere to. Common decency should have dictated how prisoners are treated.

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Read Lifton

and read the Prisoner Experiment at Stanford. You are in for an eye opening experience, the kind that makes your stomach retch.

The only thing that stops us, is not being Americans (the Germans were the most literate culture of Europe, right? RIGHT)

What stops us is when we police each other, Time to send emails to the Reps in Cngress, or better yet CALL Them, it is time to make LOTS of noise. We can run a good prison camp, this is not it... but for that we need troops with clear procedure and NO MERCENARIES... and we need to get out, and we need to sooner or later come face to face with this. By seeing those pictures you are bearing witness, now go to the next step

[NYC]

20. Call Congress toll free.

At least one of these numbers will work:

1-877-242-0100

1-888-280-6279

1-800-648-3516

[alittlelark]

24. I read that years ago.......

....I am assuming it was the study where the two groups were divided into 'prisoners' and 'guards'.

Deeply disturbing, and should be required reading for all 9th +/- graders.

It makes you think - I believe the process of contemplating what can happen can mitigate the effect the situation can have on you.

[Occulus]

26. Could you expound on the experiment

for the benefit of those lazy and/or apathetic DUers who won't bother to Google it? :D

I'd never heard of this before now. Of course, now I am much more aware than I once was. Thanks for the info.