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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! May 11, 2004 Shooting the Messenger?By GreyhawkAccusations fly that Mudville's ongoing expose of Seymour Hersh's (and 60 Minutes) agenda is a case of "shooting the messenger". Perhaps so, but lets recap just whose messenger boys Seymour and the 60 Minutes crew are. Seymour's old friend from the My Lai case, Gary Myers, is a defense attorney for Ivan Frederick, the highest ranking Soldier currently charged in the case. Perhaps not yet comfortable with his role, Seymour first slipped information about the relationship with his source in his initial New Yorker piece on the story: At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick’s co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. “The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts,” Gary Myers told me. “We ended up with a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine.” After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick. His follow up New Yorker bit is a series of quotes from anonymous sources surrounding another release from the supply of photos he assures us is nowhere near exhausted. The source? Last week, I was given another set of digital photographs, which had been in the possession of a member of the 320th. Seymour's payment in the (possibly) Faustian bargain? From the clues in the story (Clue one: "Chain of Command") it's to do his utmost to ensure the blame is shifted as far as possible up the chain of command, a task made all the more daunting after testimony given today by Maj Gen Taguba, author of the other key document Seymour's hopes are pinned on. Finally, the statement from Ivan Frederick's uncle, William Lawson, as reported in the New York Times "The Army had the opportunity for this not to come out, not to be on 60 Minutes," he said. "But the Army decided to prosecute those six G.I.'s because they thought me and my family were a bunch of poor, dirt people who could not do anything about it. But unfortunately, that was not the case." Shooting the messenger? The aim was at the message, but I suppose collateral damage is often unavoidable. And sometimes desirable. Update: Looks like Seymour's getting results: A video posted Tuesday on an Islamic militant Web site based in Egypt showed a group affiliated with al Qaeda beheading an American contractor in Iraq, saying the death was revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. Update 2: On reflection, I acknowledge that the cause/effect statement above is questionable. The horrific event may or may not have occurred with or without the Abu Ghraib excuse. The reader is certainly capable of drawing their own conclusions. Likewise the reader can determine their own degree of personal revulsion between the two stories. I would note that the butchering of a human being was not enough to push the well-spun headlines regarding Taguba's testimony off the top of the pages shown here. I note the comments of the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma: Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma said he was not the only one who was "more outraged at the outrage" than by the treatment of Iraqi prisoners, some of whom "have American blood probably on their hands." Posted by Greyhawk / May 11, 2004 5:40 PM | Permalink 3 TrackBacksI hate to reference Reuters, but they have this report: As others condemned the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe on Tuesday expressed outrage at the worldwide outrage over the treatment by American soldiers of those he Read More Read this from Blackfive on how our media murders innocent men like Nick Berg. Of course, it may not have been Dan Rather that murdered Nick Berg. Specific blame should probably go to Sy Hersh of the New Yorker and... Read More Some thoughts about Seymour Hersh's latest big story. I have know way to to know if the claims are accurate either in part or in totality or not. And neither does Seymour, or anybody else except those who are allegedly... Read More 16 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Personally I think the leadng lips of the party of the Seditious & Sleazy (a.k.a. Democrats) and their loud mouthed brethern, the league of the leftie/liberal parasites (a.k.a. the sad excuse for what passes as news media today along with their ilk in academia) had a lot to do with the beheading of Nick Berg...
These asshats with their clueless and asinine whining about how the war was wrong, Bush is in a quagmire and so on and so forth ad nauseam gave added impetus to the terrorist towel heads to commit the insane act of hacking away a human head and showing it on the video tape...
These terrorist towel heads know we have some weak, spineless punks supposedly in leadership positions who will cave at the slightest notion that there might have to be some serious investement in the was against terrorist towel heads...
So lemme get this straight - William Lawson is saying that the Army is saying the Army is getting what it deserves because it is prosecuting the perps? That this should have been covered up? That, in effect, the bad publicity is payback by the perps for having been caught and prosecuted rather than patted on the head and send to bed with a cookie?
Greyhawk - Col. Hackworth is reporting on WND.com that he was the conduit that delivered the pictures to the Sixty Minutes II team.
General Myers tried to prevent the murder of this hostage and was accused of suppressing the abuses at Abu Ghraib for his trouble.
It's certainly plausible that the murder wasn't caused directly by the Abu Ghraib story, but the reaction by our politicians certainly had to encourage the terrorists that they'd get maximum press from this horrific "PR stunt." If it's true that defense attorneys released the Abu Gharib photos to the press, they should be prosecuted along with their clients and given much longer sentences.
Our media can't seem to realize that they're playing puppets for the terrorists. Their "ethics" don't say anything about that. If people get killed, well it's just the price of the peoples' right to know. They just have to have those pictures.
In either case, whether Myers or Hackworth were the source, this is the reason they should not have been made public. Because it would simply give the enemy an excuse to do exactly what they just did, for the reasons they just did.
Thanks Seymore, and 60 Minutes, congratulations on getting someone killed. I hope you are pleased with yourself.
AST is spot on! Berg's murder was an entirely predictable response to the display of the "abuse" photos. The safety of prisoners in terrorist hands should have been the first consideration, but of course, the American media recognizes no such constraint on "the public's right to know." Every American should communicate his/her outrage to Hackworth (a piece of s**t), Hersh (ditto), and CBS (multiple dittos).
Follow-on thought: Any bets on who connected Gary Myers to Frederick? Uh, Seymour Hersh??
At least Greyhawk makes sense here when talking about how Sy Hersh may be presenting the defense case, an advocacy position that is inherently biased. Still, it was CBS's 60 Minutes that first broke the story.
Still, I'm disgusted by the comments of russ and others here.
All this whining and hand wringing over the media is ridiculous. Terrorists killed Nick Berg plain and simple, not the media. Censorship is unrealistic given modern technology. Quit bitching and learn how to deal with the modern media environment. Turn a weakness in to a strength.
Excellent comments natz.
One point that can be made regarding ant-war postions and the horrible Nick Berg execution. It was a brutal, horrendously awful piece of work by murders. We and other countries together lost some 3000 murdered people 9/11 by premeditated murder.
Since Bush's war was started in Iraq, maybe 10,000 Iraq civilians have been killed and given a normal injuried to kill ratio many times more Iraqi injured. As civilians they are innocents to various degrees, but young children and babies are pure. How many innocents have been killed so far by the coalition military in the conduct of Bush's war?
My queston for thought, is what difference does it make to the person or his/her family how they died, gruesomely like Nick Berg or gruesomely like Iraqi innocents bombed, shot or blasted to death while being bloodily mutilated with arms, legs, feet and hands blown or shot off and thrown into the dust and rubble, heads decapitated from mortar blasts and shrapnel and other ordinance, and bloody bodies ripped open and guts or brain spilled out? They are all dead, Nick Berg, 3000 9/11 souls and many thousand Iraqi civilians.
If it is not legal, at the very least Bush's war is very unwise and a black mark on America that won't go away soon, Too many people have died as a consequence with no proper and moral justification for the Bush war.
I think that Bush and the other cowards (who could have chosen to fight for America in VN, but chose not to) and warmongers were caught flatfooted after being warned of the danger from OBL and doing nothing substantial about it. They were not paying attention to the business at hand, i.e., the reality of OBL's threat. When caught with thier collective "pants down," they reacted in a panic with fury and terrible, faulty judgment to get back at OBL and the Arabs. Panic because if Bush did't do some thing dramatic he would lose his presidency. Hence war. It was ill advised in the first place, but also it was rushed and ill prepared as we are now seeing.
Why should Bush have more and more people killed to help him try to win the election? Why should our soldiers be put in harm's way for a partisan political purpose? Fortunately I am too old to be taken into the military and my two children are too old to be drafted, but if it were otherwise I believe I would be asking Bush, why I and mine would have to fight for his benefit if I would not even vote for him.
"Terrorists killed Nick Berg plain and simple, not the media."
But Nick's dad said is was George Bush's sins!
pete - "maybe 10,000 Iraq civilians have been killed"
I have two problems with this. First, how should we compare the systematic killing of Iraqis under the more orderly dictatorial regime of Saddam with the less stable rebuilding of Iraq? If Saddam would have murdered more Iraqis in the past year, does it make it ok? If remnants of Saddam's regime and foreign Islamists are responsible for the deaths of the majority of those 10,000 is it ok? Is this the "At least Hitler made the trains run on time." critique?
How many died in the Kurdish and Shia uprisings after the first Gulf War fighting for the opportunity they have today? How should we compare that number with your 10,000?
If I'm currently serving in the active duty military and support this war and Bush's re-election, does it then make your criticism of "cowards" moot? If I would support what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, under the same conditions, even if Gore was President or if Kerry becomes the next President does it make your opinion moot, or expose it as blatantly hot air partisanship?
Maybe for some of us, it's not about Bush. Maybe for you it's all about Bush?
Tim:
Have a meaningful dialogue with you here would be interesting.
As to your first problem, my comments were not addressed toward Saddam's conduct. Are we Americans, who had a choice to start a preemptive war or not, are able to see the horror of war for all civilians whether Americans or Iraqis. I am not addressing "what if" as if we did not invade Iqari. What evidence do you have that foreign Islamist or leftovers from Saddam's regime would have been responsible for the deaths of a majority of Iraqi civilians deaths since the start of the Bush war? Even if they were, there must have been thousands of other civilian Iraqis killed by the coalition. Certainly those dead people count for something, as much as Nick Berg in terms of human life. War kills. While the situation was gruesome and unforgivable in Berg's situation and his is connected to US by nationality is his beheading any more gruesome and noteworthy than watching a Iraqi child's head being splattered all over the place by a coalition troop bullet or a piece of shrapnel? My comment was not about "trains running on time" or Saddam.
The Kurd and Shia uprisings has everything and nothing to do with my previous post. Yes, people get killed in war. But the killings in those uprisings only reflect that some leaders/dictators will kill when angry and vengeful and scared of losing their hold on power.
If fits Bush pretty well.
There is no comparison of the uprising with the Bush war as to the reasons for having occurred.
I don't think there is any circumstance that my comments would become moot, certainly not under you described conditions. I am anti-Iraq war and anti-Bush.
It is about Bush for me,he is a bad President, leader and Commander-in-Chief. It is not just about the war, but also about the taxes, the debt we are incurring, the costs of this wrongful war, the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft and the slippery slope he wants to lead America down to restrict and remove the civil rights we now enjoy, the environment, a type of government new to America, one that uses the big lie technique and "the black is white" means of deceiving the public, the overall administrations deceptions, lies and double talk and Bush's at the top of the pyramid incompetence and deceptions.
pete:
I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss this with you. I'll try to answer each point.
If I understand your first point, we should judge the impact of our action in Iraq seperate from the context of what happened there before 19 March 2003. I'm not sure you can intellectually argue from that position unless you take a purely isolationist or pacifist stance. If you are an isolationist or pacifist, then there is no way you would find this war justifiable.
I did not, and still do not, see this war as preemptive. It has been my opinion that Iraq has been in serious violation of our cease fire agreements for a decade. I was a supporter of regime change in 1991 during the uprising by the Shia and Kurds which clearly violated the cease fire. I was a supporter of regime change after the 1993 assassination attempt. I wanted regime change after 1995, when Kamel defected providing proof of Iraq's deception and continued efforts in it's WMD programs. I was supporter of regime change in 1998 when the Clinton administration was debating a response to Iraqi hostility and violations. So, I was pretty much in the frame of mind that we had the option of calling the cease fire a joke and cutting our losses on the whole containment/sanctions/oil-for-food fiasco with any of those provocations. If North Korea starts taking frequent shots at us across the DMZ, I think we should pop their cork as well.
I also think preemptive is misused in this case. This was not a pre-emptive war in the sense of foiling an imminent attack. It was never a case of intercepting the Japanese navy in the Pacific on 6 Dec 1941. Bush did quote Kennedy from October 1962, describing the threat that the USSR posed during the Cuban missile crisis. You can certainly debate whether Iraq, the combination of Iraq and terrorists, or the geo-strategic position of Iraq is analogous to nuclear-capable ballistic missiles (and warheads as we learned later) in Cuba.
I also think a serious consideration of the war on Iraq depends on whether you took a maximalist, minimalist, legalistic or masochistic point of view after 9/11. Fallows describe the maximalist and minimalist views in The Atlantic Monthly, which I've described here">http://www.freerepublic.com/~optimisticallyconser/#attack">here. A legalist reflects the tit-for-tat point of view that is comfortable with the regime change and killing in Afghanistan but not with Iraq. The masochists were trying to figure out how to please the sadists that committed 9/11.
I was definitely a maximalist. Taking down Afghanistan was a good start, but a war on terror eminating from the Middle East was meaningless if we stopped there IMO. Iraq was on the top of my list from a legal, military and geo-strategic point of view.
Most of our wars/conflicts have been fought by choice - including the European campaign of WWII. I've described above the reasons for this having occurred.
Next I'll discuss casualties.
Saddam is estimated to have been killing between 47 and 548 Iraqis per day. In addition, according to the Iraqi Body Count database, a majority of the 10,000 civilians killed were victims of Iraqi crime and anti-coalition attacks against civilian, NGO and other non-military non-coalition targets.
It's a hypothetical and moral question. If someone had killed 5,000 Hutus in the beginning of the Rwanda massacre, but ended it before 800,000 had been killed (not knowing that 800,000 would have been killed) would that have been a good thing?
If thousands of civilians have been killed by direct coalition action, or even indirect action, but by ending sanctions, improving hospitals and medical care, ending Saddam's mass murdering "justice" system, etc., the death rate drops from 6.02/1000 in 2002 to 5.84/1000 in 2003, is that a good thing?
I've been asked about the difference between "collateral" deaths, sometimes in comparison to people who target and kill civilians.
There is no comparison. A coalition soldier that aims at and kills a non-combatant (your child) is no better than the terrorist that kills civilians. One of the reasons that I do not favor giving insurgents/terrorists that use the civilian population and buildings for cover Geneva Convention/Protocols protection is because those treaties were specifically drawn up to protect those combatants that protect civilians and to leave combatants that endanger civilians unprotected.
I've learned the world is unkind and unfair in the ways lives are taken. From people taking machetes to each other, to murdering women and children for honor, to just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. We should never ask our military to fight with the intent of killing unarmed civilians. We should never fool ourselves into believing we should never fight because unarmed civilians may die as a direct or indirect consequence of killing those that would try to kill them.
So far, this war has not escalated in brutality that all other wars have.
I have no problem with you voting against Bush for whatever reasons - real or imagined.
Forgive me if I don't buy into the imagined ones or leave them unchallenged.
Let the light shine in!
pete -
The (Im)morality of war: http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/000386.html