David, my friend: One quibble with your post here, I'd be careful about arbitrating who is a REAL soldier vs. who isn't, based on how closely their views line up with yours.

Some of us old soldiers are a might testy about that kind of thing :-)

Regards, Bro,

- D

Good post, David. I've moved to Blogger http://pushingrope.blogspot.com

Know any good websit designers?

Sorry Don, that was not my intention. By Real Soldier, I meant someone who had actually been in the Military, not one of the 101st Keyboard Battallion, right or left.

Ah-Hah. My apologies, then.

See? I told you, testy. :-)

Rogue of Rogue Angel Fame. She did my site.
And I already added you to the Blog Roll Michael.

You should have known better, you and Brother Boyd are two of my main men, and neither of you can agree with me on anything except we like beautiful women, and both of you served.
Like my Boy Bushie says, "I honor your service," or as one of my old hommies from the "hood" would say, "better you than me!" Hehe...
Love ya Bro!

Oh, I think we have a few other points of agreement, bro - in terms of social policies, I'm practically a hippie. Hell, if it were'nt for foreign policy and taxes, I'll bet we'd score awfully close in a standardized politics test. I'm even coming around to nationalized healthcare, Kevin Drum makes it sound awfully reasonable.

You're right, though, I should have known better.

And thanks for the Shakira pic :-)

Don I swear, you have GOT to see the video! I wish I had a way to upload it, but it is like 58MB.

You do realize that 25 people have been prosecuted and 2 more are in the pipe for this already don't you. Not that anyone in the media has really emphasized that. But hey- some 2-3 year old rehash can't be any worse than a few cartoons.

By the way- did you see the pictures Rusty posted of those prisoners in Iraq tortured and some even murdered by soldiers? You might want to jump over to his site. Some are very recent and haven't even made it to the media yet.

I think they have been held back so as not to cause more bad public reaction.

How many Generals and Colonels Marty?

BTW- I am fully with you in that I believe what happened in Abu Ghraib by a few is a discrace to the other 180,000 marines and soldiers who have served in Iraq honorably.

Oh and I am glad you can blow it off so easilly. Typical response, who gives a shit about a bunch of Rag heads being burned with Cigarettes and beaten senseless, right?

Oops I jumped the gun. Sorry marty, I thought you were making light of the situation. My Appologies.

IF there are Generals and Colonels that were involved and orderd such treatment then they too should be proscecuted. They too would be a disgrace to their uniform.

I agree, and there had to be with such widespread abuse as that, and so much evidence, someone high up had to know.

Widespread? According to who? You're seeing the exact same people (Prison Guards) in these new photos as we saw in the first series. You make it sound like a whole battalion was involved.

IF it were widespread, we'd be hearing about abuses from many of the dozens of prisons we've been running over there, but for two an a half years all we've heard about is the drumbeat of Abu Ghraib- a prison from which we have arrested and proscecuted- rightfully so- the culprits.

A little bit different message we send to our own than is sent to those who behead their prisoners. I don't hear the U.N. calling for the "insurgents" to stop their torture and killing of contractors and journalists.

And WHO is killing more Iraqis now- us or them?

When I say widespread, I dont mean all over the place, I mean the sheer volume of incidents and the documentation of them. That could not have escaped the brass. And soldiers dont take those kind of chances and that number of them without approval or a wink from someone.

Does it matter? Dead is dead, and a good argument could be made that there were no foriegn terrorist inside of Iraq before we came.

And they were under investigation and being arrested long before we ever heard about it. You also have to remember that they were documenting it themselves. (Thankfully they weren't too bright either.)

But the sheer volume of incidents? You're seeing the same people in the photos over and over. Different angles. They took the equivalent of five to six rolls of film didn't they? These assholes thought they were funny.

Just in the interests of accuracy:

1 (one) Brigadier General: Janis Karpinski, Commander, Abu Ghraib Prison - Demoted to COL (0-6), and cashiered from the service.

She was the commander of three large US- and British-led prisons in Iraq in 2003, eight battalions, and 3400 Army reservists.

Where I come from, COMMANDER = RESPONSIBILITY.

The Commander of Abu Ghraib prison was demoted from Brigadier General to Colonel, and cashiered from the service.

Graner & Co. were under the command of Karpinski.

What more do you guys want - more than that, explain to me by Army Regulation (AR) and/or Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) what more you deserve?

Give me something more than this to vote for, or you are just fuckin' toast in November. Sorry, but that's just how I see it.

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