American POWs

The shots definitely look close range, unless you expect me to believe that both of the close-up corpses were shot in the skull by crackerjack snipers. Also (though I’m no coroner), it looks like at least one of the guys was shot in the front of the head, since the bullet impact is relatively small and the exit wound tends to be larger.

One of the guys who is alive was shot in the stomach, and judging by the Al Jazeera report, is not receiving medical attention. All of the people who are alive look absolutely terrified, and for good reason… although they don’t look as if they’ve been physically beaten yet.

For some reason, I’m most horrified about the fate of the woman, considering Iraqi torture scenarios often involve gang rape. I suppose, objectively, there isn’t much difference in terms of monstrous experiences between being tortured over and over again, and being raped over and over again, but the latter just chills my blood.

The likelihood of rape was always a reason why I was a bit uncomfortable of allowing women to go to war. I think women can be just as effective as male soldiers, and I’m proud to see so many of them acting as such efficient soldiers in the US military, but the rape question (and the natural chivalry of other soldiers who might put their squad foolishly in jeapordy to protect a girl, when they might not have done the same thing for a man) is always the one that really starts really tugging at me emotionally and making me think a coed military isn’t such a hot idea. I know, it is chauvinistic, but I think a lot of people can probably see where I’m coming from.

A few days ago, the US military publicly speculated that the Iraqis would try to do this: dress up as American troops and kill their own people in order to blame it on the US. I don’t really think the US killed our own troops on purpose in this case, but I suppose a case could be made that they were the ones who claimed this was an effective military strategy in the first place.

Are you seriously trying to equate America’s speculation, based upon past Iraqi propoganda (re: baby milk factory), that Iraq might try to pull a fast one with Bush actually blowing American soldiers’ brains out and then mailing the tape to CNN? I suppose if Saddam uses biological weapons against US troops, it will also be America’s fault, since we were the ones who first “claimed this was an effective military strategy in the first place”?

Hey, Jumping Jesus… America also suggested that Saddam leave town to avoid invasion, but he didn’t exactly sheepishly mosey along to that suggestion, did he? Which, for me, completely eliminates the possibility of your hypothesis: George Bush is Bela Lugosi from Glen and Glenda, “pulling zee streengs” of all the Iraqi puppets, who, when not being manipulated by the American hegemony, lie around in an inert state of slack-limbed stupor, completely devoid of free will whatsoever.

The women you would apparently like to ban from the military based on these comments are the ones taking the risk of rape, not you. Are you placing yourself in some sort of paternalistic position over these women, as if grown women are really still girls who need to be protected from their own decisions? As with abortion, it’s they’re bodies, their choice. Your “protection” would be an unwanted impingement on their rights.

Of course, I meant “their bodies.” Dumb typo.

[Rape:]As with abortion, it’s they’re bodies, their choice. Your “protection” would be an unwanted impingement on their rights.

Wow, Jumped Up Jesus. I thought that your first comment about America being directly responsible for “inspiring” Saddam to shoot our POWs in the back of their head was hilarious enough. That whizzing sound in the background when you said it was my head spinning around at a hundred rpms, like Linda Blair meets the propeller of a rubber-band airplane.

But this quote, in which you equate a woman’s choice to be a mother with her choice to be violently gang raped, is even better! And then insinuating that I’m the bad guy for wanting to protect someone from that, or, as you say, “impinging on a woman’s right to be raped”?! Pure gold!

And while obviously, I agree with everything you are saying, in the same way that I mutely nod and stroke my chin when retards at the local McDonald’s start gabbing at me with their immensely swollen tongues - I’m not quite sure how you are going to get around the fact that there is, in fact, an inherent contradiction in the phrase “choosing to be raped”. Or are you insinuating that women soldiers just love to be raped, and consider it, like a free college education, just another glorious benefit of being in the corp? If so, why wasn’t this “female soldiers love to be raped” evidence used as a defense in the Travolta military-court vehicle “The General’s Daughter”?

You are a master mixologist of inadvertently hilarious platitudes, Jay Jay.

What hypocrisy. What the hell are they doing in Guantanamo Bay??

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81919,00.html

I didn’t say that, Doc. I said that someone who wanted to believe in a conspiracy theory could use the Pentagon’s comments on that subject as a nugget to build upon. I don’t think we killed the POWs, and I don’t think we “inspired” anyone to do it, beyond instigating the war. I think Saddam is a bastard enough without having to take “inspiration” from us.

While I could see how my first comment quoted above could be misinterpreted, as I wasn’t clear enough in what I wrote, in this latter case it seems fairly obvious that you are purposely warping what I wrote for cheap rhetorical effect. I wrote that it is a woman’s choice whether or not to join the military, not yours. Joining the military obviously puts women in harms way; they join the military knowing that. Your rape fantasies are pretty funny, actually. More women (38 to be precise) have been raped by noble American airmen at the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy than got raped by the delicate-white-woman-craving Iraqis of your imagination in the Gulf War.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030311/ap_on_re_us/air_force_academy_investigation_7

Your fairly sick fantasy rhetoric equating “choosing to joing the military” with “choosing to be raped” does nothing to hide the fact that you believe that adult women need to be “protected” from having the choice over whether or not to join in the military, a dangerous profession by its very definition, by paternalistic males. That’s a pretty sad attitude to take. I’d bet a sizable number of women in our military could kick your ass all over the room.

Presumably not lining up prisoners and shooting them in the head at point-blank range.

Is the guy who was just expounding on how chauvinistic it was to infringe upon a woman’s god-given right to be gang raped now trying to accuse me of having “rape fantasies”? Because the comment that I initially made, to which you responded with your “Women can be raped if they want to be!” comment (which, I guess, was meant to be some sort of uplifting women’s lib motto on your part), was about as totally anti-rape as you can get:

Funny how you are now hyperventilating that I “misread” you, when your entire holier-than-thou response about women’s rights in regard to rape was a complete and total misreading of my initial comment about women in the military. For people who aren’t lunatics, I basically said: “I am emotionally (though not ideologically) uncomfortable with (though not against) women in the military, because of the rape issue.” I then went on to talk about how proud I was to have women in the military, and alluded to my realization that the rape question was simply a chauvinistic gut reaction playing upon an inherent sense of chivalry, and therefore, no more or less of a danger than torture.

How did you interpret these comments? “DrCrypt wants to ban women from the military!” Which is way more of an egregious misreading of my initial comment than my subsequent “misreading” of your pro-choice-rape agenda, because I never said “women shouldn’t be in the military”, where as you definitely said: “As with abortion, it’s they’re bodies, their choice.”

I’m also confused by your citation of rape statistics within the military. Is this more evidence of your thesis that military women are chosing to be raped? Or are you just trying to further confuse the issue by arguing some point that I’ve never denied, and which has nothing to do with anything I’ve said at all?

“Presumably not lining up prisoners and shooting them in the head at point-blank range.”

That’s quicker than being bludgeoned to death.

You didn’t write that Dr. Revisionist Historian, you wrote:

The likelihood of rape was always a reason why I was a bit uncomfortable of allowing women to go to war. […] the rape question […] is always the one that really starts really tugging at me emotionally and making me think a coed military isn’t such a hot idea.

You stated you are “uncomfortable allowing women to join the military” and “don’t think a coed military is such a hot idea.” HOW DARE I misinterpret that as meaning you don’t want women in the military! Where on god’s earth did you get the idea that it was your place to “allow” adult women to do anything that isn’t against the law? Too bad you’re not in the military; some of those sex-mad Iraqis might be able to use their threating man-poles to dislodge the brain-shaped object stuck up your ass.[/quote]

What the fuck is going on in here?

Probably enjoying the balmy weather.

Too bad you’re not in the military; some of those sex-mad Iraqis might be able to use their threating man-poles to dislodge the brain-shaped object stuck up your ass.

There you go with all your “rape fantasies” again, but unlike the women soldiers you are needlessly pontificating for, I never chose to be raped.

Nice use of liberal editing, and, my favorite lazyman’s argument device, the ellipsis, to try to string together a no-less-incoherent argument, though. Here’s the original quote for people who can’t be bothered to scroll up. I’ve emphasized the important bits.

The likelihood of rape was always a reason why I was a bit uncomfortable of allowing women to go to war. I think women can be just as effective as male soldiers, and I’m proud to see so many of them acting as such efficient soldiers in the US military, but the rape question (and the natural chivalry of other soldiers who might put their squad foolishly in jeapordy to protect a girl, when they might not have done the same thing for a man) is always the one that really starts really tugging at me emotionally and making me think a coed military isn’t such a hot idea. I know, it is chauvinistic, but I think a lot of people can probably see where I’m coming from.

For those of us who don’t need a complete mindmap of someone else’s quite understandable distaste for the gang rape of our soldiers, my position was pretty clear and totally in keeping with my summary: “I am emotionally (though not ideologically) uncomfortable (though not against) women in the military, because of the rape issue.”

But I guess that was all incomprehensible to someone who, by his own admission, considers every rape at the hands of an Iraqi soldier a monumental victory for women’s rights. But please keep on sputtering on about how my comments about being proud of women soldiers and thinking they are just as effective as men is really an insidious denunciation of women’s rights.

God’s Right Hand Man is handing the Crypt Keeper his ass, it appears from where i am sitting.

:wink:

Then you’re sitting in the cheap seats. I’d have to give the edge to the Doctor, at this point.

here are some links to partials of the video (featuring some of the interviews of the POWs):

http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~spiritu/pow2.rm

mirrored:
http://turtopia.org/pow2.ram

mirrored:
http://www.twentybelow.com/media/pow2.rm

Wow. Here he states it outright: if a woman chooses to join the military, she’s choosing to be raped. Pretty sick logic.

Interesting how you didn’t place this part in bold text:

You stated that you don’t think having a coed military is a good idea when “your emotions” are being tugged at. If this isn’t what you meant, you need to own up to misstating your position. Your statement was bollocks; I can see you having protective feelings about a wife, mother, or daughter, but it’s not your place to play Mr. Patriarch and try to protect adult women you don’t even know from their own choice to join the military.

You made no such clear distinction between “emotion” and “ideology” in your original post. If someone “thinks that a coed military isn’t such a hot idea,” they are thinking garbage and need to be called on it, however “emotional” and “concerned” they are. You aren’t in the military and can do literally nothing about their safety. Your sentimentality is trite, bogus, patronizing.

I guess I’m torn. Trying to decide whether you’re having a brain aneurism, have a basic problem with reading comprehension, or simply enjoy spouting nonsense. If you’re in control of your faculties, let me know whether or not we need to call paramedics.

I don’t quite know what to say to such unabashed vitriol.

When I wrote that, it wasn’t clear why they thought our soldiers had been executed. I felt shock and disbelief and was hoping it wasn’t true. I guess I was trying to articulate an alternative. I was prepared for casualties but not executions.

To sum up:

If we read someone stating

I think blacks can be just as effective as white soldiers, and I’m proud to see so many of them acting as such efficient soldiers in the US military, but the hate crime question (and the natural chivalry of white soldiers who might put their squad foolishly in jeapordy to protect a black man, when they might not have done the same thing for a white) is always the one that really starts really tugging at me emotionally and making me think a race-blind military isn’t such a hot idea. I know, it is racist, but I think a lot of people can probably see where I’m coming from.

I think it would be obvious that the “emotion” versus “ideology” argument does not pardon ignorance. A claim that “I just feel this way, even though I know I shouldn’t” doesn’t cut it.