ted rall.......an army of scum

say what you want, but I totally agree with him.

The US army is a bunch of scum...no better than nazis. And thanks for mentioning you are a proud liberal democrat on every TV show you visit. I'm sure this will sway moderates to our side.

</sarcasm off>

Say what you want about his brashness and his lack of tact, he tells the truth better than almost anyone.

any idea what is e-mail address is? I'd like to send him a letter and link. He definitely makes a good point by calling back that psychogical report where they dressed some kids up as prison guards and others as prisoners and put them in a prison for a week. The guards DID become abusive solely because they could.

In the madness of war, such attrocities are sadly not so unusual.

a string of concentration camps, military and INS prisons that span the globe from North Carolina to Iraq to Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay to New York City, has been designed to give torturers the veil of secrecy they require to carry out their hideous acts as well as the tacit understanding that they won't be held accountable. The Red Cross, defense lawyers and relatives of the victims, few of whom are charged with a crime, are denied access to the detainees or even the simple confirmation that they're being held by our government."

What is going on in this gulag differs little from the original.

I wonder what Solshenitsyn would say?

True, most soldiers probably don't condone torture. But all soldiers have been tarnished by it.

And all soldiers have been endangered by it.

To George Bush

Still folks do not condemn MOST troops... but we need to make those
at the top RESPONSIBLE for it... this means the SecDef, this means the President

of the title CinC and said Bush would be the only one in the future to be addressed and referred to as CinC????

I do. If he's the only CinC, then he has to answer for this, and nobody else.

What I wouldn't give to see this misadministration for once stand up and accept some responsibility for its policies! No matter what goes wrong, from torturing detainees to blowing the cover of undercover intelligence operatives to skyrocketing rates of hate crimes against domestic ethnic minorities, it's invariably the fault of "a few bad apples," no reflection on Our Leader. When is somebody going to wake up and notice that there suddenly seems to be an inordinate number of bad apples in the barrel? Gee, I guess that's just a purely random coincidence, having nothing whatsoever to do with the climate of fear, violence, and lawlessness engendered by the administration having degraded the rule of law to the role of toilet paper. :eyes:

With shit like this:

"AN ARMY OF SCUM"

and this:

"Or, We're Looking For a Few Good Homosexual Rapists"

And about half of the rest of the article. Why oh why does the left feel the need to use this kind of hyperbolic language when the facts are damaging enough if they're just laid out in a rational manner?

The "few bad apples" argument no more holds for the US military in Iraq than it might have for Saddam's.

IF the US or the military had any credibility left, it was lost when those pictures were released and it became common knowledge that Bush has known about this since last fall IMHO.

"True, most soldiers probably don't condone torture. But all soldiers have been tarnished by it."

Take it up with him.

Suck it up. It's staring right at you the Ugly fucking truth.

What would you call this Army?

The Army of well intentioned miss guided souls?

THIS IS NOT A FEW BAD APPLES this is Standard Operating Procedure.

So suck it up

This has nothing to do with "the left"

Should be interesting! I still didn't care for his Tillman cartoon but I don't want to open that up again!

...hes' orginally from the right wing valhalla of south suburban Dayton, so I can appreciate his making a career of reaction to neofacist smugness.

Judging the Army by the actions of these soldiers is like judging liberal columnists by the words of Ted Rall. Rall has an anti-military agenda and probably has since his career military daddy abandoned him and his mother. Ted Rall is the Ann Coulter of the left; I find them morally and rhetorically indistinguishable and equally reprehensible.

he is our smarmy little twit. I don't agree with a lot of what he said in the article. An Army full of scum? The only thing that is missing is the gas chambers? This sort of nonsense can and will be used against us.

Just because he's on the same side of the political center as I doesn't mean I have to claim him as one of my own. But I see what you're saying; the fucking freepers can jump up and down and point this idiot out to the swing voters and say "See! See! THEY hate the Army, THEY hate our soldiers and THEY hate America!!!" Normally I don't go into speculation about how someone's statements will play in Peoria but this kinda stuff is just like Coulter saying that we need to conquer the Middle East and convert them all to Christianity.

They spend all their time turning truth to lies anyway.

So why should we give a flying fuck what they say.

is true.

Like the Plaid Adder wrote in today's article, if WWII teaches us anything it's that otherwise good people do horrible things. Right now OUR MILITARY is doing the horrible things.

And according to Amnesty International and the Red Cross we've been doing those horrible things for the past year.

Frankly, the parallels between ourselves and nondemocratic, authoritarian regimes are rapidly growing. No, we're not at the death camp stage yet, nor do I imagine that we're likely to get there anytime soon, but the steps we've taken thus far are definitely in that general direction. All of the official secrecy, the lack of accountability, the consolidation of power in the hands of the executive, the propagandistic tampering with the media, the willful disregard for the rule of law, the elevation of praetorian military elites, the suppression of dissent, promotion of the president as a charismatic father figure and beloved protector of the fatherland, these are all textbook trappings of totalitarian states. Don't get me wrong, I know the Nazi analogy is a powerful one and reasonable people can differ on the propriety of its use in this context, but let me ask: do you really want to wait until we reach the death camp stage before we start expressing concern over our gravitation towards that nightmare?

Comparing him to Ann Coulter is like comparing Nation Magazine to Soldier of Fortune Magazine.

"Judging the Army by the actions of these soldiers is like judging liberal columnists by the words of Ted Rall"

WTF


Tell me do you think the Germans defended the SS.

What does the American Army in Iraq have to do to incur your Ire.

Pray tell. What depths do they have to sink to.

How many must be involved? What's the magic number?
How high does it have to go.
How many NGO's have to speak out.
What will it take for you.... Child rape & torture picks.
At what point do you say enough. I will not support an Army that engages in these activities.
How do you think the Arab world now views the American military? As a few bad apples. No they see the ugly truth. The fish rots from the head down and this motherfucker stinks.

"Rall has an anti-military agenda and probably has since his career military daddy abandoned him and his mother"

Rall is relating what has already been uncovered.
You can shoot the messenger all you want it will not change the facts.

Next time you post you may want to try addressing them.

better than I did.

That is the funniest post in this thread. Thanks for posting it.

:bounce:

A dozen rogue soldiers does not an army make. I have just read his last piece of trash.

this was only a dozen rogue soldiers. But every indication is that this was systematic, encouraged, and ongoing throughout the prison. And Amnesty International is saying that this is going on throughout Iraq.

So how can you blow this off as a dozen rogue soldiers?

What in this article, exactly, is trash?

Ever notice how the trolls never put up a personal profile on DU?

Only thing I find disappointing about that is it's hard to tell when they've been tombstoned.

It's just hard to let nonsense go unchallenged. It gives the nonsense the smell of approval.

I asked the mods about that, and that's what they said.

Hey lets try this IT IS NOT "A dozen rogue soldiers "

If there is some part of this you need help with let us know.

Can this "us" show proof that more than a dozen are involved?

Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. “Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation,” he wrote. “In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment.” The report continued, “Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder’s report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations.” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”

Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements to Army C.I.D. investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused M.P.s, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis. She stated, “MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner and Frederick’s job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to talk.”

Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, “I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules.” Taguba wrote, “Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’‘Make sure he has a bad night.’‘Make sure he gets the treatment.’” Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. “The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments . . . statements like, ‘Good job, they’re breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They’re giving out good information.’”

more...a lot more

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

Go here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=109x8618

click on link in post 2 U need Quick Time to view it.

How is life in fantasyland?

because I can't see any other reason for him to make these unbelievably stupid points over and over again.

The worst part of what he's doing is that he's putting John Kerry in a very bad place. If he condemns Ted Rall as the idiot Rall happens to be, then the far left of the country will bitch and moan that Kerry is betraying his base. If he doesn't condemn the stupidity Rall has put forth on a non-stop basis, then the right will say "see John Kerry loathes the military and thinks they're Nazis."

Ted Rall, what a great fighter for liberalism :eyes:

Now if Howard Dean or John Edwards said something like this, Kerry might have to respond, but respond to Ted Rall? He has no need to.
Your point is silly.

this. What fantasy world do you live in? The media is going to torture Kerry with this like they have all the other nonsensical bullshit they have brought up to destroy his campaign.

but not the one most DUer's live in.

I still say all Kerry would have to say is that he has no need to respond to Rall, that Rall has the right to say whatever he wants.

what's with the "Bitchslap the COnservatives" as your sig? Don't you think that's a little over the top? Don't you think that will give the conservatives more ammo against us liberals?

I'm just fucking with you, I agree with your sig and I agree with Ted Rall as well..

Kerry can just say, "Hey, it's a free country, why does FOX say that Bush can walk on water?"

etc..

have a look at some of my flash movies, you 'll see I been funnin' you.. :)

If asked about the column, he can simply say he hasn't read it.

It's Yahoo news, not exactly Time magazine or 60 Minutes.

Because this stuff is happening, because it's not just a couple of bad apples. And because it really is a systemic issue in any occupying force.

:)

:)

I read your post and I can't find either.

is progressive? Explain to me how supporting a writer who said to do away with the primary process and simply nominate Howard Dean a month before the first caucus is progressive? Is calling someone who died for their country because they believed what they were doing is "right" an idiot progressive?

I call bullshit when I see it, and Ted Rall has been full of it for some time now, and it's about time the ass has been called on it.

he's exactly the kind of wacko the conservatives say most liberals are. Why doesn't he convert to Islam and fight for Al Qaeda while he's at it?

Why don't they just convert to Fascism and fight for Bush.

No more patience to read Rall.

He points out that just about anyone who do the same thing in the same position... then calls them inbred psychos.

The people who did these horrible things are not psychopaths or sociopaths. They are normal people, put into a bad environment. Calling them "inbred psychos" implies that the individuals are the source of the problem, not the structure.

As with the cartoon, I am not impressed.

:hi:

Okay so you'll let them babysit your kids or take care of your aging parents.

Come on put up would you let them take care of your children.

Go ahead lie and answer yes

"They are normal people"

Maybe your kind of normal but they sure as fuck ain't mine.

Hey I'll tell you who the normal people are the person who turned this group of amoral fuckwads in.

You'll see that yes, when you put normal people into an insane institution, they will do immoral/insane things.

Not some fucking esoteric Stanford Prison Experiment.

If one more poster mentions this fucking experiment I may have to resort to torture....Sarcasm

Just to clarify WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT SOME FUCKING EXPERIMENT.

Yes I know you can take " normal people" and given the right set of circumstances and the right kind of pressure they will do things they would otherwise never do.

This is not and can not ever be allowed to stand as a defense for Torturing someone if it is then humanity is lost in a sea of shit.

They had the Nuremberg trials for a very good reason. That reason has not gone away. Crimes against humanity can not stand on this assertion that I was in a given circumstance under the right pressure and I did what normally I would never do.

I guess, since it's involving "real life," we should just toss out rationality, eh?

If one more poster mentions this fucking experiment I may have to resort to torture....Sarcasm

Maybe everyone's mentioning it because it's relevant?

They had the Nuremberg trials for a very good reason. That reason has not gone away. Crimes against humanity can not stand on this assertion that I was in a given circumstance under the right pressure and I did what normally I would never do.

Both of the above experiments demonstrate that the principle behind Nuremberg is wrongheaded. You cannot create a hellish institution, and expect that average people will somehow not go along with it.

What you are enstially calling for is for the individuals in question to be punished, despite the fact that their actions were almost inevitable.

So, I have a question for you:
Would you rather do something to change the military institution to prevent this from happening again,
OR
Would you prefer to shout "Personal Responsibility", condemn the individuals in question, and do nothing to fix the institution that caused it?

"What you are enstially calling for is for the individuals in question to be punished"

Wow yes that just reeks of "anti-intellectualism"

Taking resposibility for your actions and being held to account
such bizzare notions.

Hey could you say that again I'm not retarded yet.

""What you are enstially calling for is for the individuals in question to be punished"

DUH

"the principle behind Nuremberg is wrongheaded"

A little louder please the Jewish people can't hear you.

The experiments show that you can get people to abuse each other.
Wow simply amazing little cindy loo who has turned into a sadistic Torturer because she was given the right input.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You are not Pavlov's dog.

Interesting, how you have to edit out important dependent clauses out of my sentences, so that you can "rebut" them.

Taking resposibility for your actions and being held to account
such bizzare notions.

If, in fact, the studies I brought up are scientifically valid (and there's been no indication that I am aware of that they are not) - in such a situation, most people would do the same thing.

By chanting "YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!," you ignore the source of the problem and instead focus on a symptom. You're cutting weeds, but letting the roots continue to grow and thrive.

I also wonder... are the extra exclamation points intended to be substantiating arguments for your assertion, or are they just there for style?

"the principle behind Nuremberg is wrongheaded"

A little louder please the Jewish people can't hear you.

Care to actually engage in any sort of logical argument, or are appeals to emotion all you can muster?

The idea behind Nuremberg is that we could avoid holding the German institutions as the problem - we could simply say "personal responsibility," and try those individuals who committed the atrocities of the Holocaust. Fortunately, in that case, we did rebuild the institutions so that it wouldn't happen again.

Here's a question for you: Is it just to take an average person, put them in a situation where just about any person would commit a crime, and then accuse them of being responsible for it?

Research shows that the environment is responsible for these types of crimes, not the individuals. So, if you are actually concerned about torture, why not do something about it rather than giving in to your desire for vengeance?

my mentor was stripped by the airport security treated like a terrorist had her things ripped apart in her luggage was ridiculed and was felt up simply because she is arab. she said she was too old for that kind of humiliating and degrading treatment (she is 60-something) the environment in abu gharib simply let the sick fucks' racism and psychoticness blossom

I'm seeing a lot of people here insulting Ted Rall who don't seem to have even read the article?

I thought this was one of the better, and less controvercial articles.

People are accusing Ted Rall of handing this election to Bush. Why? Because he's speaking the truth?

What kind of wishy-washy sanitized and flag-waving story do people want to be seeing while this sh*t is happening? If we can't expect the US to act responsibly and to take responsibility for our own military's actions how can we have the gall to judge any other nation?

......we are all over the board. i don't love or hate rall, i think he writes great, and draws fair to midlin'.

i thought this article was dead on.

ted rall rocks always!!!!

i just can't believe that WE have become what we so hated during ww2.

i just can't believe it, honestly, i musn't believe that

to catch your attention then he spouts off something totally correct.

Not always, but usually spot on, and the truth hurts. Especially those who see the US of A through rose colored lenses.

is what the problem is.
I welcome him exposing the atrocities of war, torture. It's his blaming soldiers - dead or alive for it that I find unacceptable.
I don't even like when people want Rummy to resign - since this moderate places the blame squarely on W. For all of it.

:eyes:

The military are from the lower classes mostly so it is fucking stupid for liberals to generalize. The tortures should be criticized and the war is dead wrong, but we can't generalize that all are torturers.

but so is Torturing Civilians in a Country that was invaded without provocation.

So if the shoe fits.

Why are so many so black and white in their thinking is it some sort of mental problem. You can have the best Military in the world but if factions of that force engage in crimes against humanity you have one major problem on your hands. If these crimes are condoned by the superiors in charge of the the force then what kind of force do you actually have.

I don't for a second think we can win votes by appealing to rich folks that vote for the damned war, but don't send their sons, like Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich. Do you?

Have any of you EVER seen hoods and oven mitts being used on people before in such numbers? and I'm talking since right after 911 when Afghanistan started..

all of a sudden we're seeing all these photos of guys in hoods..

know what?

THEY WERE BEING TORTURED AT THAT MOMENT.

It's called Sensory Deprivation and it plays hell with the mind -- this has been right out in the open, the CIA used to hide when they controlled things, NOW they just come out and brag about how they pushed a button and big tall guy (Honest, we thought it was Osama, he was freaking 7 feet tall!) blows up out in the middle of the desert..

WE HAVE BEEN TORTURING THEM ALL ALONG.

Breaking down doors, searching and tying up children's hands, all torture.

I for one and ASHAMED to be put in the same basket with Bush -- maybe it's time for us to call ourselves something new, like REAL AMERICANS, as opposed to the fake ones running it all right now..

maybe NON - CORPORATE AMericans.

the other thing my wife brought up this morning is that the picture of the person on the box with the pointy hood looks a LOT like a black (even more evil) version of the KKK..

I thought something about that image bothered me a lot but I couldn't put my finger on it..

it smells like KKK all over again.. brown people getting it once MORE by the rich white guys.

this is scary shit and I want no part of it.

RESIGN - IMPEACH - INVESTIGATE - IMPRISON.

referring to the 'only 6' torturers. he's right y' know this is NOT his america, and he's getting ready to find that out the hard way.

plus, when he said "We don't do that in America.." the first thing that popped into my mind was - "Nope, you have Rummy and whoever OUTSOURCE your torture to Jordan, Egypt, Cuba, etc.. but not here, you might actually be accused of a CRIME.."

he's the CIC, and he is where the Buck stops..

notice how McClellan is saying that Bush had "heard of allegations" back in Jan but hadn't "seen the pictures" until recently..

THIS is them perfecting his father's "out of the loop" excuse for the Iran/Contra goings on..

he's always dead center on target.

A little controversy is good for sales?

to borrow a phrase from Robert Fisk

"Now it's official: American troops occupying Iraq have become virtually indistinguishable from the SS."

followed by:

"True, most soldiers probably don't condone torture."

'kay.

I normally enjoy Ted's stuff, but I think he's gone off the deep end with this.

"The U.S. military is short just one item to achieve moral parity with the Nazis: gas chambers."

Whoa, there...

I recall having seen two or three articles over the past few months about how the shrub was seeking to install either electric chairs or gas chambers, I forget which, first at Gitmo and, more recently, at the detention camps in Iraq. So, actually, Ted's a little behind the news: we already are trying to set up the instruments for killing people who are not being granted due process protections. Admitted, we aren't talking about millions of people going into ovens, but in essence, is the extrajudicial murder of a few that different from the extrajudicial murder of millions? It seems to me that the difference at that point lies only in the degree, not in the substance.

the fact that americans committed these atrocities, or that they were dumb enough to document them.

Truth hurts.

Sorry, but the soldiers involved need to be locked up.
Rummy needs to be locked up.
Bush Needs to be locked up.

and most of all, the system needs to change.

Sidenote: No one can cite an experiment to justify the actions of a bunch of inbred psychos. Talk about whack-job liberalism... THAT sort of talk is what Conservanazis cite all the time as representative for an imagined liberal distaste for personal responsibility. Sorry, but I look at it this way, if that were my brother, friend, father, in the prison cell photo, I'd take that little bitch (whatever the hell her name is) by the throat and strangle the life out of her. Same goes for all the others involved. Fuck them.