Friday, January 14, 2005

Torture, Sophistry and Right Girls

I have been concerned about the Abu-Ghraib thing for some time because I can't find any proof of actual torture. Of course, I have seen the same pictures everyone else has, but they do not prove torture. I've mentioned it before, but let me direct you here: Girl on the Right: Stop! You're Torturing me, here!
Torture, as I define it, is physically painful, and psychologically damaging. Cutting a prisoner's fingers or toes off would be torture. Starvation would be torture. Threatening to rape his wife - torture. But making fun of him, and humiliating him? That's just highschool ...
I am not so sure that a threat should be considered torture, but, basically, she has it just right.

Why are we so willing to accept the claims that American soldiers committed atrocities? Everything that I have seen/heard about serious torture at Abu-Ghriab is all second hand or implied.

Think of it this way. If you wanted to scare a prisoner into talking would you not want him to think that you were going to torture him? How would you lead him to believe that you were going to torture him? Would you not show him proof that you have already tortured his comrades? Wouldn't you let him hear that very torture? Of course, this proof would be very easy to fake. You just take before and after photos doctored to produce this effect. I argue that these pictures are what we have.

Here is a collection of some of the photographs.

Now, let me ask this. If you were going to photograph real torture, would you not be careful to actually photograph it. I mean, you would time your pictures not as before/after, but during shots. If someone has had their gentiles electrocuted, why are there no pictures of the electrocution taking place? Also, why would you have pictures of soldiers stitching a wound instead of the prisoner getting wounded. Speaking of the wounded, there was alot of fighting going on there. Of course, there would be wounded soldiers at Abu-Ghraib. The proof we need is that we did the wounding.

Here is a caption under the second picture from the site:
An Iraqi detainee appears to be restrained after havign [sic] suffered injuries to both legs at Abu Ghraib. It is unclear whether his injuries were from dog bites.
This is best/worst picture at the site and it fails to convince me. Why do we think that the injuries were suffered at Abu-Ghraib? (Oh, and no way were those the wounds of a dog bite.) Yes, he is being roughed up, but not much more than a cop might do here. Also, note that this soldier is not dressed like the others. His pants are dark green, not tan, and he is wearing a full helmet with some gear attached, perhaps night vision goggles. Is it not possible that this is a freshly arrested detainee? If so, was he resisting?

Graner was convicted of assault (down from "use of force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm) which was described this way here:
He also allegedly punched one man in the head hard enough to knock him out and struck an injured prisoner with a collapsible metal stick.
Gee, that does sound horrid. If this is the worst actual physical torture that occurred, this thing is way out of proportion.

Perhaps we as a nation do not want to do any of the things which obviously did happen. Maybe we do not even want to be the kind of people who fake abuse or use sleep deprivation and so on. That is a debate worth having. The problem is we are not having that debate; I'm not sure we can have that debate as long as we are so obtuse about the issue. Some people are taking testimony from completely worthless witnesses. See Wizbang.

The Left and the Liberals know they cannot win open and honest debates with us, so they resort to guerilla tacticts and sophistry (the whole issue is a sort of double cum hoc, ergo propter hoc). While we are busy dealing with the grown up world, they act like children complaining about everything and fighting us on every issue. Since we have to deal with serious threats, we end up letting them "win" on this or that issue. I think she put it just right when RightGirl said
It is also my contention that the U.S. is paying lip service to these trials, because frankly, they have better things to do right now. Such as feed a bunch of ungrateful people overseas, and bring a democratic election to a country that Amnesty International must have thought was doing just fine on its own.
Man, do I love smart conservative blogging babes. Lucky for me, I'm already married to one.

1 comment:

Endymion said...

Right Girl Said:

Thanks for the trackback. It led me to your blog, which is entertaining and insightful. I have blogrolled it, and will check back to see what else you have to say.
Too bad Graner was sentenced to 10 years for such nonsense. What a waste.

RG
RightGirl | Homepage: http://www.girlontheright.com/ | 01.16.05 - 9:30 pm |