Hypocrisy

[Pervert]

I'm as guilty as anyone else, so no fingers being pointed, but isn't it a bit rich the outrage at the treatment, alleged and proven, of Iraqi prisoners by allied troops. The look of disbelief being worn by Bliar is almost worthy of an Oscar winner, except:

That kind of behaviour was (and perhaps still is) a common welcome to new recruits. The bullying regime allowed in HM Forces for so long, where physical abuse is allowed to go on, doesn't make it a surprise that some troops will do the same, if not worse, to the enemy; after all, they can do it to their friends.

Our troops sign up as impressionable, malleable, young people who are thereafter cushioned from life in the real world. Run into a squaddie on leave and all he'll talk about is the army. Not his fault, since it's all he knows. But it does cut him off from his contemporaries are doing, talking about and thinking. Us and them tends to equate to the military and civilian worlds.

Peer pressure in life is difficult to cope with---ask any teenager. In an insular world like the army, it must be nigh on impossible to resist.

The way the army is run is to ensure that soldiers obey whenever an order is given, and questioning an order is discouraged. If we want all our troops to behave in a civilised manner (as, admittedly, many do), the way they are trained and dealt with needs looking at.

Just my opinion, and I'm prepared to be shot down or proven wrong.

[jj]

There's an inherent contradiction- an army needs to be brutalised to the extent that they will shoot at people (strangely, not a natural instinct except amongst some football fans), and obey orders unquestioningly, but it needs to adopt a compassionate and responsible attitude in the aftermath- armies traditonally (and unsurprisingly) have gone on 'sprees' during and after engagements, whch tends to make settlement rather problematic.
I happen to think the British Army is much better in this respect than the American, which is partly why things went better in Basra than elsewhere early on. There's too much patriotic machismo, wildly inaccurate overestimation of their real capability and not enough self-discipline in the US training, and I believe their selection procedure is less adept at weeding out the obviously unsuitable candidates, which is why we ended up with crass errors like the raising of the US flag instead of the Iraqi one- but then, look at the shipboard example set by their C-I-C............which also points up the lack of education given about the culture into which they being placed- a lack which even now the US forces are only just beginning to address.
Probably the best army ever was Cromwell's New Model Army which, as Anthony Burgess pointed out, was the only army in history that actually knew what it was fighting FOR, a tactic that we tried to reintroduce from late WWII with Q&A sessions where policy could be disputed by the rank and file, without prejudice, in the hopes that doubts could be resolved and resolve stiffened before reaching the battlefield.
It has largely failed, but that of course is more due to the cause being so often unjustifiable. It is a great tribute to our forces that despite such doubts so many of our servicemen still go and do their jobs.

[mart]

I read by a piece by Robert Fisk in the Independent in which he pointed out that there is racism in Britain and we shouldn't be "shock/horror" surprised if it manifested itself in this way. I don't know that the military have any way of screening recruits for undesirable attitudes.

Mart

[jj]

Given the inculcated 'camaraderie' and canteen-culture jingoism of the Army, and its major recruitment sources, I'd guess that it has its work cut out in eradicating bullying, racism and sexism.
There is a case to be made for (as with the Gurkhas) having separate units for ethnic groups, and women (a women-only battalion would sure as Hell terrify ME.....), in terms of corps spirit and motivation, although I'm less sure of its potential efficacy in combat situations.

[Lizard]

Is that the same 'ghurka' they put on big macs?

[jj]

Why are you banging on about raincoats, of whatever size?
Is there a hidden message here?

And is there honey still for tea?

[Deuce Bigolo]

Theres no doubt in my mind that the guilty soldiers were acting under orders
to soften the prisoners up before the interrogation

Wether taking photos was an order is debatable

Given that a large proportion of the US Army are made of people who have no other careeer options(coming from dieing small towns) other than the Army & low education levels to boot it shouldn't surprise anyone that they are being used as such and being made the scapegoat
but on the other hand I find it hard to imagine a person with no other prospects than the Army risking their future for a prank of this nature

Question is...Why the pictures?

If the responsibility stops with Rumsfeld as he says imself then he should resign ASAP.You can't have it both ways

You either FULL responsibility and resign or you deny it and stay on

cheers
B....OZ Sittin on the Fence...Its bloody painful

[jj]

The Al-Ghraib thing is basically a product of the US policy of private penal services. There seems to have been a communication gap between the military and the private-sector prison people who were 'exported' to Iraq to aid an already overstretched force.
There's something funny about those pics, too, at least the Brit ones- several commentators have remarked how 'professional' they look, not at all like poorly-framed, badly-lit home snaps.
The saddest aspect for me was them going straight for charging Lindy Whatever, the 'little guy', while Rumsfeld was weaseling out of actually doing anything concrete like resigning, albeit while 'taking responsibility'. How does that work, then? What words in the phrase 'the buck stops here' does he not understand? And ought not he to resign at least out of loyalty to his Chief, lest the latter take the tumble instead?
Meanwhile, poor, ill-educated Lindy's family were cast into the glare of publicity to loyally and desperately try to defend her. Alas, the best they could come up with was the 'obeying orders' defence, a defence which, if true, demonstrates that the much-vaunted US system has signally failed to provide its citizens with even the barest moral compass. If she didn't know that brutally humiliating prisoners is simply wrong (and to judge by her grin in the photos, she thought it was ever so jolly a jape), then the US is in even deeper trouble than I thought.

[Pervert]

It's the nature of the abused to hit out at those weaker than they are, hence Lindy makes up for the years of being cruelly picked on for her poor background, lack of education etc by being foolish enough to have her photo taken ridiculing bound, naked Iraqi prisoners. If she is the only one forced to face charges, it'll be ridiculous. What she did wasn't right, and it certainly wasn't clever---but I'm sure it wasn't just her.

[jj]

No, those who should (but probably won't) take the can are in corporate boardrooms and the Pentagon. This was obviously a deliberate policy-decision at some level (or merely the continuation of existing policy, more likely), the only question being whether it was sanctioned by a private or public body. What amazes me is how stupid anyone could be to imagine either that it was a good idea, or that it could be kept sub rosa indefinitely..........
........Iraq is crawling with journos, unlike Guantanamo, where access is strictly limited- which, taken with the apparent quality of the snaps, leads me to theorise High Official A may have disagreed with High official B about the policy, and HO A leaked to the press in order to end it.
It's my understanding that Rumsfeld was fully aware of the policy, but was too overconfident, or downright arrogantly lazy, to suppress news of it before it got out of hand, so his committee protestations ring pretty hollow.