Borrow from “Friends”: “Typical frat initiation behavior, IN PRISON.”

Waterboarding isn’t torture.

Head banging isn’t torture.

Raping women isn’t torture.

Raping men isn’t torture.

Hey, this isn’t working. WTF did we put the “War is Peace” and “Freedom is Slavery” signs?

After Mancow’s brave attempt at refuting waterboarding as anything more than a wet facial without the cucumber slices, I’m waiting to see which wingnut will now volunteer to a quick round of prison rape to prove that it’s not a war crime at all, just “strapping patriotic lads letting off some steam while spreading the seeds of freedom” or whatever euphemism Humbugh & Co. come up with. K-Lo? Michelle? Coulter?

PS I miss those horseshit stories from the 90s about “Because of the POTUS, I had to explain what a blowjob is to my eleven year old!!!!!”
How come there’s no stories about explaining waterboarding or anal rape to eleven year olds now? Curious. Are republiKKKan children born knowing these things?

Let’s see. Today’s Thursday, will the apologists have their explanations and justifications ready by Sunday morning? I eagerly await Mr. Cheney’s sneer on Meet the Press saying the photos have been photoshopped. We can also look forward to Billy the K proclaiming that America was kept safe because a few terrorists were raped.

I’m pretty sure these are the photos Sy Hersh described a couple of years ago. I vividly remember his discussing the rape of a boy.

Yep. Those bad apples named, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Gonsalez, Rice, etc.

Where are the memos by John Yoo that cover the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of raping a detainee’s loved one to get information? Or did the administration just borrow some from Saddam’s files?

Who could have imagined that an official policy of requiring the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners would have led to rape? Certainly no human being.

Yep. Those bad apples monsters named, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Gonsalez, Rice, etc.

edited for snark removal

Since it’s the Telegraph — and the British press’s Washington “scoop” reporting can be iffy — I’d take it with a grain of salt, and see the transcript of that interview with Taguba. The Pentagon’s issued a denial, in any case.

Saddam’s rape rooms and torture chambers and children’s prisons are closed forever.

George W. Bush, October 18, 2003.

Well, he was right, I guess. Saddam’s rape rooms just came under new management.

Oh great, now all can terrorists can train to resist our Gay Aversion Therapy. By the way libtards, Nancy Pelosi signed off on G.A.T.s before Bush!

There was a post last week at TPM cafe on the subject. It went so far to say that there was child rape/sodomy in front of parents as a routine “technique”. I went back to bookmark the disturbing story and could not find it. No wonder they want it buried. And what is the “spin” phrasing for child rape as interrogation, Mr Luntz??

I had that conversation with my seven year old last month as we were watching the news over dinner: “Daddy, what’s waterboarding?”

I do NOT want to have a conversation with him about rape for a while yet.

Given his track record, serial marry-er Limpy Limbaugh should be quite enamored with anything called “Enhanced Hooking Up Techniques” or “Exxxtreme Dating”.

Maybe this has something to do with all those army suicides coming about. When the US military’s terrorizing comes home isn’t it time to stop what the military is doing?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/…..index.html

So the outrage over Obama’s suppression of the photos must be tempered by these revelations: humiliating the victims a second time by showing the photos of their torment does not strike me as a wonderful thing to do.

The real horror is the technical sadism of our-then leaders (anything goes, destruction is great –see Condi Rice, the Southeast Asian tsunami was an ‘opportunity’ –) that is now mirrored in these soldiers’ and translators’ brutality.

The Pentagon begs to differ.

Where does the quote from Kasim Mehaddi Hilas come from, which released documents? Does anybody know?
The reason for asking is this: Why would a female take pictures of the rape of a male child? This sounds like a photograph which has a purpose in interrogation of a relative of the child. The reason it sounds like that, is that we have frequent statements from prisoners that they were told something would happen to relatives, threatening rape of female relatives. And we have an allegation of an event that the military and CIA still say did not happen, namely, showing a female high-value detainee a picture of her child lying in a pool of his own blood, as part of a torture regimen. We also have allegations of torture of children as part of the interrogation of another, male, high-value detainee.
This particular act — a female member of an interrogation team taking pictures of rape — does not sound like something that would exist without orders and a reason. It really, really doesn’t sound like out of control low level soldiers making stuff up. Especially if it happens at a military detention facility and there are allegations of the use of such a photograph at a totally separate black site.

Several thoughts:

1) First of all, considering how rape victims are stigmatized the world over, as the experience of Kosovar women reminded me, it would be a good idea to edit out from the photos anything that would identify the victims so that they aren’t attacked by their own families.

2) The Torygraph is one of the papers the US conservatives usually love lots. Which makes the Cons’ silence on this story doubly telling.

3) The juxtaposition of this with the sanctimoniousness of Bible verses being used to frame daily communiques by top military brass is just mind-boggling.

4) Speaking of top brass, the main danger here from release of the photos would not be to soldiers in the field, but the Pentagon brass who authorized the horrors depicted in them. It may well be that a non-trivial number of top field commanders are destined for Leavenworth.

What a relief it is to know that everything George Bush did is Nancy Pelosi’s fault.

God, how sickeningly bizarre…a male translator can rape a male detainee, but a gay translator would be immediately discharged. We’re ok with rapists, but teh gay is simply unacceptable.

If you look at the accounts of people shipped off to Guantanamo, a common theme is that their captors seemed to enjoy sticking objects in their anuses and doing cavity searches.

The already released photos had at least 2 photos of Sexual Abuse, so while maybe straining the point, Pres. Obama may have be correct when saying we had already seen like photos.

The photos can be viewed, Graphic Warning, http://www.atlargely.com/atlar…..-rape.html

If these photos include rape and sexual abuse, then Obama’s reluctance to release them makes much more sense, at least from a “respecting the privacy of the victims” point of view.

.

pseudonymousinnc @ 23:

If you look at the accounts of people shipped off to Guantanamo, a common theme is that their captors seemed to enjoy sticking objects in their anuses …

All while screaming, “It’s Giuliani Time!” Or am I the only one who remembers the right turning that into a call of action, rather than the symbol of shame that it is?

The Taguba report came out in 2004, the interpreter rape thing seems pretty well documented (BTW:moondancer@13 The Sy Hersh article link was the basis for that TPM diary you are talking about). 90% of what the Telegraph said wasn’t actually new. They kind of blended incidents from the report with the genuinely new statement that there were specifically photos showing rape and other horrendous acts (a congresswoman also mentioned this back when they were shown the all the materials at the onset of the scandal).

I think Taguba is talking about the entire “Iraq torture collection” which consists of some 2000 photos and videos and such. There is clearly some bad stuff in there. Obama and the pentagon are talking about a set of photos involved in the ACLU lawsuit (I think it’s 2 batches of 20-odd photos each). Within that specific subset, there is nothing more upsetting than Abu Ghraib and everyone involved has been punished. There is no reason Taguba would know exactly which 50 are involved in the lawsuit. You just gotta speak “Washington” in order to see how both statements can be true.

I don’t know the details of the ACLU case, but I’m guessing they knew to ask for the specific photos for some reason (mentioned in a hearing/trial?). The whole thing is a red herring – there is nothing immediately involved that could possibly endanger our troops. I can’t shake the feeling this is to cover for McChrystal, who seems to have overseen much (if not most) of the abuse in Iraq. He had a whole different line of authority and set of brutal authorizations than Gitmo (although they were also clearly based in Yoo’s malpractice).

One thing is for certain, a full accounting is the only thing that will answer the rumors once and for all. At this point, Al Queada can pretty much say we did ANYTHING and are just covering it up with the abusers walking free. Everyone will believe them no questions asked – hell even our allies. IMO, this issue will put our troops at greater risk and undermine Obama’s administration until it is resolved.

Obama looks like Bush the third.

I have lived a Soldier’s life these twenty-one years.
I have never done, nor allowed anything like a war crime.
My first Platoon Sergeant told me in Panama that I needed to stay alive, watch out for my buddies, and never do anything that my mother would be ashamed of discussing at church.
I love the Army and I love my soldiers.
I don’t feel that my own personal honor has been compromised by Abu Ghraib or the lies that led us into this disaster, but I know that some people question my honor because of the actions of some of my brethren.
I do personally know the dark places that one’s soul can go without discipline and the support of strong leaders. I’ve never done anything that I would be ashamed of, or anything that is a crime, but that is as much because I had somebody sit me down and make me think about things as it is any part of my character.
The people who committed these heinous crimes and the people who suborned them should spend the rest of their lives in prison. I’m not one of those people. Neither are any of my soldiers, nor anyone that I know.
Get and be as angry about this as you need to. Write letters, march the streets, and whatever else you feel compelled to do, and more power to you.
Please remember in your anger, righteous as it is, that the vast majority of us are absolutely innocent men and women who have tried to do a very difficult job under dangerous circumstances because that’s what our elected leaders demanded of us.

It also makes even huger amounts of sense from a geopolitics point of view of not having 250 million Arabs and up to a billion other Muslims even more mad at us, or at least dis-inclined to favor us, than before.

As a veteran (1964-67), I think I can say that most young soldiers are rubes who wanna be thugs. Service training obliges them. These thugs, however, DON’T usually do thuggish things unless authority either explicitly orders it or turns a blind eye. England and Graner do time, and Bush and Cheney remain unhanged. Where’s the justice?

Faces (and other identifying characteristics) of victims can be obscured before release. The perps’ faces, OTOH, should be as clearly visible as possible, the better to prosecute.

Today’s Thursday,how do we know tomorrow ? well done in today is the most importance. business, if you have time, visit this.