The article "Saving Private Bergdahl" at
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/341
addresses the terrible quandary big bro 43 has placed us in. Why wouldn't the Taliban do the same things to our dear soldier that we did to Abu Zubaida?
The article suggests a trade of Islamic extremists for our boy as it states
"Such a swap might put the US back on the road of civilized behavior, and might save Pvt. Bergdahl.
The one thing we all have to hope is that the Taliban treat him better than our own country has been treating its captives."
We've lost the moral high ground. How did that happen?
From big bro 43's regime we were sold a pack of lies about the savagery of "those who were against us"-whoever they were. I say that because immediately after 9/11 we attacked Afghanistan--and had bin laden, with his al queda and Afghani Taliban supporters cornered. Then we veered off to Iraq--to initially fight Iraqi Shiite and Sunnis, because that was where the new front allegedly was identified. No one in the world could understand why we went into Iraq. We were told blatant, unsustainable lies that Hussein was an ally of bin laden and that Iraq was an imminent threat to the US.
With big bro 43's crew it was all propaganda and that was aimed at US citizens as well as the enemy.
Don't believe that? The July 13, 2007 article "Pentagon kills Rumsfeld 'propaganda' unit" at
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Pentagon_kills_Rumsfeld_propaganda_unit_0713.html
states "Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates has scrapped an institution established by his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld to rapidly counter messages in the press that the Pentagon considered negative, according to a report in Friday's Washington Times."
Was it aimed at the US? The article continues "The U.S. government will have to develop an institutional capability to anticipate and act within the same news cycle," he said in the address. "That will require instituting 24-hour press operation centers, elevating Internet operations and other channels of communication to the equal status with the traditional 20th Century press relations. It will result in much less reliance on the traditional print press, just as the publics of the U.S. and the world are relying less on newspapers as their principal source of information."
Why wouldn't Taliban in Afghanistan reciprocate with torture for the detainees they capture?
The article continues "The ex-Defense Secretary tried to use torture and inhumane treatment by the US military to prove the imbalance in the press against the United States.
"Consider for a moment the vast quantity of column inches and hours of television devoted to the allegations of unauthorized detainee mistreatment," he said. "But weigh the numbers of column inches and hours of television involving that event, for example, against the discovery of Saddam Hussein's mass graves, which were filled with literally hundreds of thousands of human beings, innocent Iraqis who were killed."
Rumsfeld was evil and prescient. His "slog" memo foretold that the US was creating more terrorists than they could ever kill by being the infidel occupier in Iraq. His above remark had many interpretations. If Rumsfeld's "Ministry of Truth" group-the U.S. Special Operations Command, had a chance with those remarks what would they spin it into? It was Rumsfeld's attempt to combat coverage of his policy of torturing detainees by saying that not enough time was spent attacking Hussein's atrocities, but obliquely addressed here is the idea that our enemies, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, aren't above torturing their own citizens. What will they do to US military combatants, such as Bowe R. Bergdahl?
Under Rumsfeld's direction U.S. aircraft, in an attempt to sway Islamic populations, dropped over 10 million leaflets produced by the 4th Psychological Operations Group of Fort Bragg, N.C.
With this background, that the US now is proclaiming that the Taliban should not use this capture of our citizen for propaganda purposes is hypocritical.
The article "U.S. condemns video of captured soldier as violation of international law." at
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/19/captured-soldier-video/
has Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl stating "To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it's like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home," he said. "Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home. It is America and American people who have that power."
Since big bro 43 removed the Geneva Convention's protections from the detainees and he vilified "those who are against us" that the article continues with "A U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, said the Taliban was using their captive for propaganda. "They are exploiting the soldier in violation of international law," she said. U.S. military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian added, "We condemn the use of this video and the public humiliation of prisoners. It is against international law." rings hollow.
In the Nuremberg trial a war criminal couldn't use the excuse that he was just following orders, but US personnel were firmly against big bro 43's use of torturing detainees.
The article "Report: CIA operatives threatened to quit over waterboarding" at
http://www.prisonplanet.com/report-cia-operatives-threatened-to-quit-over-waterboarding.html
states "Two of the key designers of the Bush administration's torture program ended up in a "tug of war" with their superiors about how far to go when coercing information out of suspects, says a new article in the Washington Post.
The article, published Sunday, provides graphic descriptions of some of the
techniques contemplated when the torture program was just beginning, in the
months after 9/11. Faced with the interrogation of Abu Zubaida, the Al Qaeda
operative who had become the CIA's first "star witness" in the "war on terror,"
the CIA contemplated some disturbing options."
The US personnel wanted desperately to treat their captives humanely as the article continues " Speaking to MSNBC's Chris Jansen on Sunday, article co-author Joby Warrick said that some interrogators eventually threatened to quit over some of the harsh methods used in interrogations.
Warrick said: "There was some push and pull that came from surprising places
within the CIA as the interrogation program was going forward, including from
some of the interrogators themselves whose resistance to things like sleep
deprivation and nudity in the beginning - and when waterboarding started some
interrogators revolted and said, after four, five days, they refused to do this,
some threatened to quit."
The article "Fox News Guest Ralph Peters Suggests Taliban Should Kill U.S. Soldier If He Deserted" at
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/20/ralph-peters-kill-soldier/
explains that one of the more vicious former members of the US military-- Fox News guest Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lt. Col, label Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl a deserter and therefore he should be executed.
The article regarding Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl states "He is an apparent deserter," "he is collaborating with the enemy," and "we know that this private is a liar." Peters then suggested that if Bergdahl is a deserter, the Taliban should kill him:
I want to be clear. If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some
convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I'm with
him. But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime, I don't
care how hard it sounds, as far as I'm concerned, the Taliban can save us a
lot of legal hassles and legal bills."
Bin laden should be ecstatic that Obama continually delays Gitmo and interrogation reports as the article "Two key Gitmo reports delayed an additional six months" at
states "A task force appointed by President Barack Obama to craft detention policy in the wake of his decision to close GuantanamoBay will take another six months to release their recommendations...
At the same time, the administration official and the Justice Department said
another detainee task force, this one charged with examining interrogation
policy, would receive a two-month extension for its report.
The delays were defended by the administration, which pointed to the complexity
of the issues and the need to "get this right."
Bin laden can simply tell prospective recruits that the US infidels are torturing their brothers and sticking them in dark holes such as Gitmo.
The article "Worst Case Scenario" at
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22939
states "Three weeks ago, however, the whole nature of the torture debate changed irrevocably when an American soldier from Idaho named Bowe Bergdahl somehow fell into the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
They have him now, and God help him, because it was the United States government under the administration of George W. Bush that set the terms for how anyone captured can and should be treated...
The US government reacted swiftly to the video of Bergdahl. "We condemn the use of this video and the public humiliation of prisoners," said US military spokesman Col. Greg Julian. "It is against international law. We are doing everything we can to return this soldier to safety."
How hard it must have been for the US military to release a statement like that without feeling sick at heart and scared to death. The terrible irony and hypocrisy of the statement they released about the Bergdahl video must have been searing; we have set the table in such a way that torture is a positive action that saves lives, but videotapes are right out? No, that doesn't scan, and we know it, and the Taliban know it, and dollars to donuts Bergdahl knows it, too."
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