Rumors of rape fan anti-American flames

The Boston Globe

Paper's claim against troops widely believed
By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, 1/4/2004

ISTANBUL -- The allegations can be heard almost everywhere in Turkey now, from farmers' wives eating in humble kebab shops, in influential journals, and from erudite political leaders: American troops have raped thousands of Iraqi women and young girls since ousting dictator Saddam Hussein.

Articles in Turkey's Islamist press reporting the allegations have fanned opposition here to the US invasion of Iraq to white-hot anger -- and even, apparently, to murder.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/04/rumors_of_rape_fan_anti_american_flames/

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:-(

I agree.

:eyes:

this should be futher examined, because we do not have enough info to determine what we should think about it...

I can tell you that this is total bullshit. If you can believe crap like this, then I really gotta question your sanity. There are no rape cases and there never will be. We're just better than that in that aspect.

Some people here have an agenda that keeps them from even reading the article. It is about a rumor started by a misquote of an author. The author of the original story is even mad.

Americans cheered the troops as they marched to a criminal war in Iraq, as Germans cheered theirs as they marched into Poland.

I refuse to be a good German!

:toast:

Did you actually read the article?
One Islamic newspaper misinterpreted a sex therapist when she used a metaphor, and now you refuse to be a "good german"?

You've taken an unpopular stance but you have a valid point. I witnessed countless people, who were suddenly my brothers and sisters on September 12, 2001, espouse eternal unity out of fear and confusion only to threaten , berate and otherwise intimidate people who questioned what Washington and the OSP bozo's were getting us into. My point: you cannot blindly support any institution. I've gotten off the mark of the central issue of this thread. But one can support our military and be absolutely appalled at the quagmire we're now all in (courtesy W admin), catalyzed by the miscalculations of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle etc.

so....our soldiers are exempt from being accountable and honorable?

Read the article and PERHAPS you can discuss this with some knowledge.

this particular article might be over the top, but the rapes go on, and murders, and gross violations of due process and humanity...hell, I've seen some of the footage

You want to live in denial.

It is a complete fabrication based on a misquote.

:shrug:

Our soldiers are not red-eyed monsters or Nazi stormtroopers. If there are war crimes committed, they will be discovered and punished. To convict and rail against our soldiers because of reports in an Islamic newspaper is stupid.

And who will put them on trial, not the US military that's for sure.

Remember crimes committed during the occupation of a country also fall under international law, but since the administration has decided
not to take part in the ICC, don't count on the US military to investigate any of these allegations.

US soldiers have already violated the Geneva Conventions by taking hostages in northern Iraq, and every one thinks that the commander of
the unit that did this is a hero.

So far only the black Lt Colonel was investigated and relieved of his command and sent back to Ft Hood. He was fined $5000.00 and will be
retiring soon. But the commander who took hostages was patte on the back and will probably get promoted, by the way he was white.

While not red-eyed monsters or Nazi stormtroopers, they lack morals. They have all been told that they are defending the US, and like the robotic mercenaries they have turned out to be they believe it. They also lack ethics, and will look the other way when a crime is committed.

So they may not be red-eyed monsters yet but they are on that path.

me thinks you have this wrong... You actually believe our media...?
Our corporate-controlled media...? :shrug:

There were THOUSANDS of accounts of American soldiers raping Vietnamese women in the years we had troops fighting there. Very few of them were ever discovered and punished. Why would that be any different today? We rarely discover and punish US troops who commit rape of their fellow female soldiers here in the US, so why would they waste their time with Iraqi women?

We have over 100,000 young, stressed, demoralized men over there with few avenues to release this stress. You can not say that there have been no rapes of Iraqi women by American men, because the odds are highly in favor of at least a few of these stories being true. And just a few instances is all it takes to enrage and fire up thousands of Iraqis to fight against the US troops.

Remember all those soldiers were FORCED to sign cards saying they were doing God's work and they sent them back to Charles Stanley and the other TV Preacher goons?

Well, So-Called Rev Stanley now got a MAJOR problem if our Xtian Soldiers ain't following the rulebook!

After all these months of "I support the troops but oppose the war" the real truth finally surfaces. "Anything that helps defeat America's imperial army". I guess that includes calling ALL the soldiers rapists. Oh, I forgot, you most likely will not include the women.

I must assume "anything" includes rooting for their death and defeat. I must assume "anything" includes your actively working and conspiring againt our government and it's troops.

But then, given your love of communism, as you have expressed in the past(http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=296797#296902)I really think you have alterior motives. I find it hard to believe "green" aptly encompasses your real leanings.

absolutely revolting. You should make her swear an oath or something.

That kind of remark is just what we don't need the general voting public to see. If you are a socialist or a communist or whatever, fine. If you hate the war and want our troops back home, fine. But to relish and openly hope for the defeat of our troops is sick. We have an election to win and, as I pointed out in another post, people are watching this sight. Posts are being read on Rush and quoated elsewhere also.

of anyone. So get over your idea of Stalinism/Leninism/Totalitarianism with communism and marxism.

my reply was to the outlandish statements of indianagreen, which have since been deleted. Perhaps you should read my other replies before you get on your high horse.

Reading his posts, I cannot see where he said anything like that. There is a big difference between believing that some US troops have committed rapes against Iraqi women, and saying ALL US troops are rapists. How did you come up with this? Can you honestly say that, out of 100,000+ young stressed-out men over there in uniform, not a SINGLE ONE has raped an Iraqi woman? The odds of this are HIGHLY unlikely. Find a big enough group, and you will always be able to find some bad seeds in it. The US military is no different.

Did you also read the article and discover that the entire rape scenario is the result of a mistaken quote?

kinda takes away that "image" of those "christian" soldiers
doing "god's work" over there in Iraq.
And...for the muslims, the raping of their women is a VERY serious
offense...much more so than in our western cultures believe it or
not.
If these allegations are true, and I wouldn't doubt them for a minute
given that AMERICAN service women ARE being raped by their "brothers"
at arms, this could cause a serious backlash.

Friggin idiots...

Rape absolutely ruins the woman's status in her own family let alone with her fellow civilians. It would appear that this war is making monsters out of what are usually good, decent people - on both sides.

I hope this is just propaganda, but historically this aspect is one of the spoils of war that is afforded to the victor/occupiers...

Hopefully the troops are exercising good judgment.

and I believe that's exactly what it is.

News reports about little incidents like My Lai began as vague rumors as well.

and wouldn't consider this a little one either if it turned out to be true

And the army did all it could do to keep it under wraps even with the freedom of the press in those days as it related to Viet Nam in general. Does anyone here believe that any info regarding atrocities would get out from Iraq and if they did that the commanders wouldn't just say "Self Defense"?

March 16, 1968 Assault on Son My (My Lai) Village

March 29, 1969 Rob Ridenhour's writes letter describing the My Lai incident and its cover-up.

April 23, 1969 Inspector General makes full inquiry.

June 13, 1969 Hugh Thompson identifies William Calley as the officer present at My Lai.

August 4, 1969 General Westmoreland orders the I.G. to turn over the investigation to the Criminal Investigation Division

but I doubt it seriously.

she is actively rooting for this to be true.


As I stated before, God forbid the general public ever finds some of the posts in here. It has been my fear for quite some time and now I hear that Rush routinely reads passages from in here on his show.

Look at our 'friends' who belong to the Reich-wing. When did thye ever root out the truth?

almost daily I find Boston Globe to be biased against Turkey. The Boston Globe takes those weirdos to much serious. These papers the blobe is mentioning have an average circulation of less then 10000 in a country of 65 million. You should take there reporting sometimes with a grain of salt they are always anti american. Many Turks look up the USA contrary to the EU. As a devout muslim I read those pepers sometimes but taking them serious is a different matter.We love the USA!!!


kucinich.us

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
sharpton2004.org

Tom DeLay:"I challenge anyone to live on my salary" <$158,000 a year>

I hope the report is wrong but I fear many rapes have occurred. Rape in wartime occurs all too often. The recent reports of the Army and the Air Force Academy ignoring rapes of fellow servicemembers and punishing the woman for reporting the crime, it sure seems possible that way too many soldiers think they can rape and not be punished.

We are creating too many enemies with this insane war.

I have been living here since 1978. I read those papers online versions on the internet. These papers are always agains USA no mather what happens, to them the USA is the evil of all the root in the world and they are the Turkish versions of the shiite mullahs in Iran. Although hey wont admit but they want to bring down the secular republic. Not even my devout muslim relatives take them serious and pay attention to them.


kucinich.us

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
sharpton2004.org

Tom DeLay:"I challenge anyone to live on my salary" <$158,000 a year>

should we ignore them?

The kurdish problem in Turkey is very complex. Saying that Turks murder Kurds is not entirely true. A Kurdish movement in Turkey wanting independence from Turkey will not be accepted by all Turks like the Kurdistan Workers party a communist/marxist party. The organization IBDA-C who were responsible for the 2 bombs in Istanbul a fundamentalist group whose members are know to kill PKK members also originates from eastern-Turkey. Some fundamentalist groups in Turkey have made agreement with the PKK for bringing down the Turkish goverment like Iran. In this situation I support the my country I dont want to see a fundamentalist or communist Turkey.

kucinich.us

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
sharpton2004.org

Tom DeLay:"I challenge anyone to live on my salary" <$158,000 a year>

when a government systematically takes out your compatriots, you have to think that they're not interested in any democratic processes

Are Kurds all fundamentalists/communists bent on taking over? Or is that the way to demonize them as you kill more and more of them?

but there no problems with them. Saying that we kill them for no reason is nonsense. The only Kurds that were killed were the pkk members fighting the security troops in the mountains of east Turkey. In the past pkk have attacked villages and killed dozens of villagers, while these people were also kurdish. Theire only fault was not being communists and not agreeing the principles of the pkk. The kurdish problem arose after 1980 before that there was no pkk. Im partially kurdish on my moms side many of my kurdis relatives served in that region.

kucinich.us

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
sharpton2004.org

Tom DeLay:"I challenge anyone to live on my salary" <$158,000 a year>

A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq. We are also aware of the documented involvement by some DynCorp employees or agents in prostitution, human trafficking, and sexual misconduct.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/11/275232.shtml

,...it is vital that "visible" actions toward justice be taken.

<edited, just because>

I'm not surprised. Also, there are usually prostitutes around for soldiers and there probably aren't many in Iraq so they turn to rape. (My father was a soldier who used prostitutes.)

Where did you get that figure?

Sorry, don't have enough time to do a real check on this, but the article says:

Nearly one-third of American women (31%) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. 5

http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/vwm.htm

Glancing through the material available, I saw it written several times that rape is the most underreported crime, and the number 16% appeared several times, representing the number of suspected rapes actually making it to formal reports.

I'm sure your one-third number of American women who have been molested or rape could be accurate. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to have brain engaged long enough to know the stats are simply spiraling out of control: even the former haven of one's home is not safe for many American children with mothers' boyfriends seeing their families as plunderable resorces.

U.S. soldiers kidnapping dozens of young girls at a time and killing the people who protest? The things alleged in that article are so far out of the realm of possiblity as to be ridiculous. It's really depressing that anyone would believe it for even a second.

From "My Lai Revisited" by Joe Allen, April 18, 2003

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Charlie Company began their four-hour assault on My Lai. Not a single shot was fired at U.S. troops, and all that they found were women, children and the elderly. But Charlie Company went on a rape and murder spree.

The worst of killers was Lt. William "Rusty" Calley, who herded some 100 unarmed people into a ditch and had them machine-gunned to death. Calley personally shot and killed a baby that day.
http://www.counterpunch.org/allen04182003.html

Wartime armies rape and murder. American armies no less than any other. It has always been thus.

it would make My Lai seem like a barn dance.

I'm not going to claim that terrbile things aren't being done in Iraq by some of our soldiers. You're right, it has always been thus. But we're talking about systematic rape of at least 4,000 Iraqi women and girls, possibly twice that number. It's simply preposterous that anything near that level could be happening.

Thousands? If that were true, then the chain of command has broken down and anarchy rules the streets. This is a far stretch IMHO. I will, however, believe that rapes have occurred; it happens within the ranks so why not against a defeated nation?

What makes us (Americans) any different from the rest of our species? Most conquering armies throughout history have raped and pillaged their defeated foes. To say that WE wouldn't (because of what exactly?) is being somewhat naive. Still, I have a hard time believing the numbers, but have no doubt that rapes have occurred.

and I am a far left wing lesbian feminist

but I think the Islamists are exaggerating any small fact they can for rhetorical purposes.

Sorry to yell, but this foolishness is dumbfounding.


Block is a California-based sex therapist who has a doctorate in philosophy. She says Yeni Safak apparently drew erroneously on an article she published on the Internet titled "Rape of Iraq."

"I am a sex therapist and I use sexual terminology for political commentary," Block said. "I did not say American troops are literally raping Iraqi women. . . . I don't know if Americans are raping Iraqi women. I do know they are killing them. I don't know if that's much better." She said it is clear that she was using "rape" as a metaphor for "invasion."

"I am appalled to be misquoted and even more appalled that the story inspired someone to such violence," she said. A statement from Block calling the attribution in Yeni Safak "absolutely false" was posted on the website of the US Embassy in Ankara on Dec. 23.

:eyes:

Unfortunately, some people will blindly believe anything that fits into and supports their worldview, regardless of truthfulness.

,...due to highly sensitized times, I guess. It would be a good time to breath deeply; then, throw some ice water on our faces, huh :D

You don't think with as many troops as we have over there, it isn't the slightest bit possible there there's a few bad apples in the bunch? Most of these men are honest, hard-working people in a damned Hell of a situation, but there's going to be a few who might not be so good. They need to be held accountable for their actions, especially in a situation like this because any rape right now fuels a very dangerous fire.