Truckfuls of Bodies

[Freeper]

davidswanson  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Journal  Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Wed Aug-19-09 03:00 PM
Original message
Truckfuls of Bodies   Updated at 9:26 PM
   
Michael Vick, the football player who's all over the news, should have tortured humans instead of dogs. Then we would have been told to overlook it for the sake of moving forward. Better yet, he should have killed humans rather than only torturing them. Then we would have been told next to nothing about it at all. It might have been reported, but it wouldn't have become a hot topic, an echo-chambered story to be dismissed only after a great deal of hand-wringing. It certainly would not have interfered with watching football games.

No, I don't support harming dogs. No, I don't really want people tortured. (Yes, I've had to explain that to the severely satire-impaired after making the above statements.) And, no, I don't really think murder is better than torture. Nor do I think murder by bomb or gun or suffocation is necessarily any worse than murder by health insurance company. But I am concerned that we arrest and prosecute people in this country for individual small-time acts of torture and murder, whether of people or dogs, but never for the large-scale authorization of torture or murder. We do, however, publicly worry about our souls because of mass-torture, whereas mass-murder doesn't seem to gain the same coverage in our corporatized communications system. Of course I want torture prosecuted, but torture is a symptom.

The illness is aggressive war, a violation of the U.N. Charter and therefore of Article VI of the US Constitution. War crimes are unavoidable symptoms of aggressive war. And, even for those who support wars, there are war crimes that surpass the evil of torture. Who remembers the truckfuls of bodies, live bodies but only barely, dehydrated people licking and chewing the sweaty bodies beside them, screaming in agony, piled by the hundreds inside airless metal containers on flatbed trucks in desert heat, holes sometimes shot into the trucks with bullets for air -- but not into the roof, rather into the people already crammed inside -- remember that? Who remembers the truckfuls of bodies dumped out and buried by the thousands in mass graves by Afghan troops under U.S. command with U.S. forces present and aware, the same U.S. forces engaged in torturing prisoners who made it to the prison alive?

If you've forgotten, you may want to watch this excellent film and read this website created by Physicians for Human Rights: http://afghanmassgrave.org . Here's a diary with recent updates and an NPR interview. And here's a recent New York Times report on the failure of the Bush White House to investigate. Democracy Now covered the story again on Tuesday because a former CIA asset, the U.S.-purchased war lord who carried out the 2002 massacre, is actively campaigning for the reelection of Afghanistan's president, U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai. Check out, as well, the website of Dave Dienstag who spoke up passionately on this topic at the recent national convention of Veterans for Peace.

Now, it wasn't exactly news when the New York Times reported that Bush had failed to investigate or prosecute this crime. But when asked about it, President Obama replied that he would look into the matter, having just been made aware that a proper investigation had not been done. What, one might ask, would constitute a proper investigation of mass-murder, a proper investigation not resulting in criminal prosecutions or anything else that might become publicly known? And is that the sort of proper investigation that Obama intends to conduct now? Why is Eric Holder not conducting the investigation?

Imagine the outcry for the use of nuclear weapons if even a single truckload of Americans was murdered by a foreign nation. Imagine the great moral outrage. Imagine the difficulty one would have conducting a conversation about it without the name Adolf Hitler coming up. Then imagine what the people of Afghanistan must think of the foreign armies occupying their land. Imagine the treatment American prisoners are likely to receive by people whose countrymen have been stuffed like trash into a truck, driven and parked in the sun until the stench overwhelmed those around it and blood dripped out the doors.

Robert Jackson said at Nuremberg: "he ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law. And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment."

Yet the law has never condemned us. And we have so violated it that we are losing the ability even to sit in hypocritical judgment. If this is not changed and justice not upheld, we will eventually become indistinguishable from dogs, and torture will become ordinary and accepted.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6346889

Good grief same old talking points about how the Iraq war violated the UN charter. President Bush went to the UN before a single shot was fired you dumbass. Now that Obama is continuing this war shouldn't he be included in your fantasy of prosecution for war crimes?

[Carl]

davidswanson....if your opinion was to ever matter and that is doubtful,posting at a place universally known as a cesspool of lunatics isn`t a good idea.

Just trying to give you advice.

[Chris_]

daviddipshit wrote:

The illness is aggressive war, a violation of the U.N. Charter and therefore of Article VI of the US Constitution. War crimes are unavoidable symptoms of aggressive war. And, even for those who support wars, there are war crimes that surpass the evil of torture. Who remembers the truckfuls of bodies, live bodies but only barely, dehydrated people licking and chewing the sweaty bodies beside them, screaming in agony, piled by the hundreds inside airless metal containers on flatbed trucks in desert heat, holes sometimes shot into the trucks with bullets for air -- but not into the roof, rather into the people already crammed inside -- remember that? Who remembers the truckfuls of bodies dumped out and buried by the thousands in mass graves by Afghan troops under U.S. command with U.S. forces present and aware, the same U.S. forces engaged in torturing prisoners who made it to the prison alive?

  JHC...Teh Stupid is getting stronger with him, much stronger.

[vesta111]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6346889

Good grief same old talking points about how the Iraq war violated the UN charter. President Bush went to the UN before a single shot was fired you dumbass. Now that Obama is continuing this war shouldn't he be included in your fantasy of prosecution for war crimes?

Freeper, I still don't understand what a WAR CRIME is or who should pass judgement on the perpetrators

Out of curiosity who and when did the winners in a war begin to judge the conduct of civilians or military of the opponent in any time of war.?  OR the actions taken in self defence on the winners side.?  OR the treatment the loosing side gave to their own people.?

  I can see trying people that become traitors to ones country in war or any other time.  However how can we give a Man/woman a weapon, point out a target give them orders to kill everyone, then court  marshal the soldier for living a few alive'

Sounds like how Saul got into trouble with God way back then.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Freeps, I thought this was going to be a thread where you were going to need that Jeb's Ice Truck picture.

[Freeper]

Freeper, I still don't understand what a WAR CRIME is or who should pass judgement on the perpetrators

Out of curiosity who and when did the winners in a war begin to judge the conduct of civilians or military of the opponent in any time of war.?  OR the actions taken in self defence on the winners side.?  OR the treatment the loosing side gave to their own people.?

  I can see trying people that become traitors to ones country in war or any other time.  However how can we give a Man/woman a weapon, point out a target give them orders to kill everyone, then court  marshal the soldier for living a few alive'

Sounds like how Saul got into trouble with God way back then.

For 6 years (since we went to war in Iraq) the DUmmies have been accusing Bush, Cheney, Rove etc of war crimes. So when Obama is fighting the same wars that Bush was they should be considered war crimes by the DUmmies as well. But, since they are not that shows they didn't oppose the war they opposed Bush.

I think you are confused and thinking I am suggesting that what Obama is doing is war crimes I am not. I am pointing out how they changed their tune at DUmmyland.

And its court martial not marshal.

[Freeper]

Freeps, I thought this was going to be a thread where you were going to need that Jeb's Ice Truck picture.

hee hee I thought that as well when I saw the thread title at the DUmp.
Iffin you have it you can post it for the newbs that are scratching their heads now. 

[miskie]

daviddipshit wrote:

  JHC...Teh Stupid is getting stronger with him, much stronger.

I think its the denial - It was so much easier for them to be angry at 'the knuckle-draggin' retuglikkkans' then it is for them to be cross with 'The One'. -- Many of them have gone back to what they do best - protest against President G.W. Bush.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

QUERY: If this crime were policy would we not have found on-going examples of it rather than a single episode in 2001?

According to the referenced website the remains of the SpecOps A-team did not interfere. What exactly are the responsibilities of fewer than 12 men with regards to dealing with thousands of tribesmen detaining hundreds of prisoners in the midst of a hot shooting war with no friendly forces on the ground?

[Ralph Wiggum]

hee hee I thought that as well when I saw the thread title at the DUmp.
Iffin you have it you can post it for the newbs that are scratching their heads now. 

Took me a while to get my password for photobucket.



In 2004 or 2005, the DUmmies were claiming that Governor Jeb Bush of Florida was hiding bodies in ice trucks to understate the loss of lives in hurricanes.  The above picture was just a little fun parody.

[Freeper]

Took me a while to get my password for photobucket.



In 2004 or 2005, the DUmmies were claiming that Governor Jeb Bush of Florida was hiding bodies in ice trucks to understate the loss of lives in hurricanes.  The above picture was just a little fun parody.

Thanks Ralphie boy,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2228746