Officer gets off for torturing Iraqi general to death

The least of the military’s incentive issues is its approach to disobeying unlawful orders. I mean, forest > trees.

What really bothers me, of course, is that a) he got off and b) that’ll be the end of it. It’ll be papered over like all the other appalling shit we’re doing over there. And as a society, apparently we’re just fine with that.

The pseudocollective guilt thing is a nice touch.

Well, what other conclusion is there from “polls show everyone evenly divided on whether torture is ok” and “polls show no political consequences for torturing people?” Like those polls showing people opposed to interracial marriage, I can’t come up with a good explanation for the wrong side.

I’l give you two of them, both of which you already know. A lot of people simply prefer not to think too hard about these things, and when in doubt will default to an option that isn’t phrased in a manner that appears to condemn America generally (mind you, there’s always the opposite breed as well). Two, a surprising number of people are openly comfortable (barring being directly recorded or something)about atrocities committed by people on their team. You may find those wrong, but hardly mysterious. Not everything needs to be discussed as an existentialist crisis, unless you find human nature at its most obvious all that cosmic.

McCullough- Oh, come on. Remember your “Russians got what was coming to them b/c of meanness to Chechnya.” stance wrt Breslan?

Everybody, and I mean everybody, overlooks or rationalizes the bad things their side does. Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge is an pretty stellar example here. Nobody complains about human rights abuses more than Chomsky and he sidled up to freaking Pol Pot.

I can’t come up with a good explanation for the wrong side

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11009379/

Here here! Well said LK. I wish more soldiers had this attitude.

Didn’t say that, it was an inexcusable atriocity. I did say that Russia can’t claim “my god we were so nice and followed the laws of war and are decent people and these asshole terrorists popped up out of nowhere and did appalling things in retaliation for nothing” with a straight face. It’s like a murderer playing a sob story when a relative of the dead victim cripples him in retaliation - it’s sad and wrong, but don’t play innocent.

Excuse me for expecting better of the american people. I agree with your reasoning as to why it’s no big deal here, but that doesn’t make it less depressing. I also don’t see how it lets the people off for making morally appalling judgements, or lets off the people trying to convince them its ok.

For what it’s worth we’re basically in agreement on who should be punishedd here.

In other news, the military has apparently taken hostages in the past.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that U.S. anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects’ houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.

Iraq’s deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and “we are not Saddam.” A U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an “imperative threat” are held in long-term U.S.-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far as short-term detentions by local U.S. units. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under U.S. court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices.

Officer captures Iraqi general’s kids, tortures them to get the dad to turn himself in, tortures the dad, smothers him in a sleeping bag.

Shit, sign me up!

See also here