Ohmygawd, not even the Freepers ever got THIS stupid!

[Archae]

Or have they?


Curiouser and Curiouser
Sent in email, confirmed in google...

The man, who along with CBS 60 Minutes, broke the story of the torture incidents in
Abu Ghraib is Seymour Hersch.
This is the same Seymour Hersch who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting
of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Now that could be chalked up to coincidence.
But the thing that sets off my Rat Detector, as outlined by Larry Abraham's Insider Report:

1. Both make the military look bad in the face of a difficult task
2. Both create a climate for building opposition to the war.
3. Both help the enemy to demoralize the troops on the ground
4. Both play to the politics of regime change within the U.S.


Now is it just me, or does it seem just a tad suspicious that this story was uncovered, at the most politically advantageous time possible for the antiwar party's agenda, by no less than the very same writer who aided them last time in creating the "tipping point" in the Vietnam War?

Other passing thoughts... just odd things of note.
Why the HELL would anyone be dumb enough to let someone PHOTOGRAPH them doing this?? Anyone on the STREET could look at the situation and go "Lemme get this straight, you want to photograph me dragging a prisoner of war around naked on a doggie leash. Apparently you think I have 'stupid' tattooed on my forehead." .... Yet a bunch of trained soldiers (who are not ignorant of the Geneva Convention by any STRETCH of the imagination) will stand there and let someone take DOZENS and even reportedly HUNDREDS of photos of them doing this?
That these people and their immediate commanding officer would let these photos and negatives OUT of their personal control, even for an instant?
And here's a real puzzler: The prisoners are hooded and masked--- but the guards doing the abuse are not? I mean dang, even the KLAN gets that one right.

Something's seriously fishy about this whole mess.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/rhjunior/

[nickgutierrez]

1. The same line of thinking

that the news stations use when they say "pictures of alleged prisoner abuses in Iraq."

Stupid. And disgusting.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

2. the Klan reference

is a dead giveaway.

[PinkTiger]

3. The whole situation confuses me.

I don't understand how the administration can now say they broke the story, when it was broken by Hersch. And I don't understand why the administration sat on it so long when they knew about this in January. Also, I don't understand why the pictures and videos were made; but then, the people over there doing this, some of them, are gung ho people who aren't trying to be very decent.

[aquart]

7. Paying attention might help.

We've been told why the tapes and photographs were made.

[argyl]

10. These photos were taken to use as blackmail against these men.

They were degraded in the worst way possible by their standards.
The extortion: Relay information to us or your family and friends will see these.

[Old and In the Way]

4. An intelligent person puts 2+2 together and comes up with 4.

These people come up with 0.

[Pachamama]

5. Maybe whoever leaked it to Hersch sought him out intentionally....

...because of his past role and success of exposing attrocities by military personnel....

What I'm getting at is that there isn't any "conspiracy" involving the fact that it was Hersch in the New Yorker Magazine who broke the story. His "Deep Throat" is obviously someone in the Pentagon and I know that if I was in the Pentagon, had damaging information and wanted to guarantee that it gets written up and given lots of visibility by a credible person, I would have sought out someone like Seymour Hersch (or Bill Moyers etc.).

[MnFats]

9. Hersh is the best damn reporter working today...

Thank God he's still around.
He clearly has multiple sources deep within many elements of government and military.

If I were him I would take steps to ensure my security and well-being, however.
Remember, at the height of Watergate "Deep Throat" told Woodward, and thus also Berstein and Ben Bradley, that their lives were in danger......

[izzie]

6. Please you are being to sane about this, Go back and look at......

The civil right film. Faces right in front of you doing insane things to children. Germany and Japan filmed what they did. The govt and the army people. This goes on all the time. In the Middle Ages it was put on canvas so to speak. In Rome it was a day out.We burned people in public and also hung heads on London Bridge. Things do not change for the people who are RIGHT and have power. If you recall this new govt of the US was going to try some thing different. Maybe it has not worked?

[aquart]

8. You needn't fear a photo if your superiors condone it.

Now, wasn't that simple?

BushCo favors torture. Pictures of torture are therefore not a problem for BushCo. In fact, they're still a little confused by the fuss. "Outraged by the outrage" is how one of them put it.

[lapfog_1]

11. Let's see...

1. Whoever leaked this to the press (and my fave is Taguba himself),
first tried to leak this to 60 Minutes, probably because they had
a reputation for "muckraking" and "going against the establishment".
When that failed because the Pentagon got to CBS and had them "hold"
it for a two weeks (or more, we'll never know)... then it was leaker
to Mr. Hersch, who had done the reporting of My Lai. What a surprise.

As for the photos, they were posing... so they could show the
newcomers to the jail what would happen if they don't cooperate...
and possibly to threaten to show to family members or neighbors or
such.