This will make your skin crawl. Via The Smoking Gun: “In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods… It was there… that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain.” Twelve pages.
In a previous post on Pyongyang Soju being imported to the U.S., I used pics from a bottle I have, which was purchased in South Korea. Jason Perlow of Off the Broiler sampled some Pyongyang Soju at a Korean restaurant in New Jersey and has photos of the updated labels (looks like it was $5.99 a bottle).
- #OFK has a telling post (w/video) on Joe Biden's North Korea policy. It's hard to do much of a related post on Obama since he hasn't even completed one term in the senate and so has a thin record. See all Election 2008 posts.
- #15 August is the 63rd anniversary of Victory over Japan (V-J) Day, or Liberation Day in North and South Korea. It’s hard to imagine how the North Koreans could explain the significance of the day without mentioning the U.S. doing the heavy lifting, but they still manage to do so.
- #North Korean Economy Watch has released version 11 of his layer/bookmarks for North Korea in Google Earth - easily the most authoritative map of North Korea on the web.
- #
May 25th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Al Qaeda are unquestionably barbarians, but what is the point of your title? Are we to be excused because we limit ourselves to simulated homosexual acts, electric shocks, dogs, and Khmer Rouge-esque water-boarding?
As someone far, far to the right of the Jacobinical Bush Administration, I’m disgusted by its moral relativism and that of its apologists.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:07 am
There is a real qualitative difference between what happened at Abu Ghraib and what al Qaeda endorses and does, and I think the former pales in comparison to the latter. I just don’t find gouging out eyes, drilling a hand, and using a blow torch on someone to be in the same league as water-boarding.
To say that in no way excuses those who broke the law at Abu Ghraib. This is saying that one bad thing is worse than another bad thing, such a the distinction between manslaughter and first degree murder. Don’t read things into an aside that aren’t there.
Further, there is no “we” in reference to Abu Ghraib; those soldiers knew what they were doing was wrong and disobeyed general orders. “We” are no more responsible for that than the any other crime or infraction committed by soldiers knowingly breaking the law, individually or as conspirators.
I find the implication that the Bush administration approved of what happened at Abu Ghraib to hold about as much water as a suggestion that the Pope gives tacit approval to priests molesting children (that would be none).
May 25th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I guess we could start by digging into hyperbole like “Khmer Rouge-esque water-boarding” “Jacobinical Bush Administration”
(With items about how the tyrannical US government (including previous presidencies) has used water-boarding on its own people - to prepare them for what they might face in their line of work if they are seized by certain groups or governments where they might be operating)
When people can’t see - or knowingly want to flaunt acknowledgment of - the difference between the methods, extent, and nature of the Khmer Rouge atrocities or the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution - and Bushie Bushie war on terror atrocities
–it is highly necessary to see someone else telling them to [self-censored remainder of sentence]…
…and explaining how equating water boarding or the worst-of-the-worst done at Abu Ghrabi to what it is not remotely
fu–close to — the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and the Reign of Terror— does nothing but poison the world of our democratic societies by polarizing them with clear out-n-out bullshit —
and much worse —- trivializes the Pol Pots of this world.
To do what?
Demonize Bushie?…
Well, what a nice blow to strike for humanity…
I’m sure it will help deal with the Pol Pots of the future….
I’m sure it actually helps us deal with the Kim Jong Ils of today….thanks for being so concerned about civil rights and striking blows against atrocities - no matter how small or large…..
Why, if you look around our contemporary democracies —
—- isn’t it so ever-loving clear that —- hyping Bushie boy’s atrocities to the level of those of Pol Pot and Kim Jong Il
only draws much more attention to the greatly more severe and widespread and long term abuse of men like Kim Jong Il?!?
I mean —— just look how much the massive coverage of the horrific atrocities carried out by the Bushie boy Nazis-like regime has caused such an exponentially higher amount of media coverage of Kim Jong Il’s concentration camp.
I mean, wow, pumping out all that stuff on the Hitler-of-our-day Bush has so clearly woken up groups and the media around the world to what is going on elsewhere in NK and elsewhere.
Calling loudly and repeatedly (one might say ad nausuemly) to war crimes trials for Bushie boy — has led us so much closer in our calls (what calls?) for them to be held for Kim Jong Il’s
remarkably similar atrocities in nature and scopeJust look how much more world pressure on the likes of Pyongyang has been inspired by our effort to tell the world the truth about the atrocities of George W. Bush and his satanic puppet master Dick Cheney…
I mean……look how the massive coverage of Abu Gharib has caused so much world attention heaped — in direct proportion — on Pyongyang’s atrocities….
Just look at Amnesty International’s websites!! Look how much its coverage of Bushie boy atrocities has inspired its chapters and websites set up by college groups all over the world —-
——-to pump out even more masses of coverage and information on NK’s Gulags!!!
The benefits of making sure everybody knows Bushie bushie boy is just right there along side Pol Pot in human rights violations is so clear and unarguable….
It just helps us understand how precious human life and civil liberties are when we go
absolutely fucking hogwild with our view of Bushie boy.It helps us get a true perspective on the atrocites of yesterday, tomorrow, and those of today….
May 25th, 2007 at 10:11 am
On the topic of the manual, a reader sends via email;
May 28th, 2007 at 5:46 am
Scroll down to the watar-boarding picture from Tuol Sleng prision in Phnoem Penh:
http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/09/this_is_what_wa.php
May 28th, 2007 at 7:38 am
I bet the Khmer Rouge moved their mouthes up and down when they chewed their food as well.
For fuck’s sake,I don’t know why intelligent people get so twisted by native pseudo-politics to make themselves look bad…I am speaking in utter disgust because of far more than this thread or blogging. Blogging lends itself to exaggeration — but all across the US (and Western world) —— masses of smart people - who get something out of bushie bushie boy bashing ——-
—– are really do harm to our society - by making their bushie bushie boy desire reak havoc with so much that is important —-
—–and understanding the difference between Kim Jong Il and even the satan of our day “G-W-yah-B” ——— is kind a [expletive self-deleted] important…
Let me point out my point in a quick manner that should help:
Was it water-boarding that caused the masses of dead to pile up in the killing fields?
Are all those skulls stacked up on display at museums in Cambodia today the result of water-boarding deaths?
How many mass killings can we lay at the feet of the US military in Iraq that resulted from water-boarding?
So, perhaps trying to make a reader equate the contemporary White House with the Khmer Rouge by connecting its activities with US use of water-boarding is a bit of [remainder of sentence self-censored]….
As noted earlier, some of our people are water-boarded by our own government - as part of their training. I believe US pilots still go through training designed to give them at least a taste of what they could face if shot down over enemy territory and captured.
If you want to call water-boarding torture and illegal and even rant about it. —–feel more than free to do so. You have solid grounds on which to make that case.
But please, don’t help others —- making equally gross distortions — damage the progress of our societies - in the name of being progressive.
When too many people are going around trying to rip down a contemporary leader in a Western democracy by saying the wrongs he might have done are the same (in scope and manner) as those done by Kim Jong Il (or Pol Pot or Hitler or Stalin) — it really does end up
fucking us allmaking it harder to deal with the likes of Kim Jong Il.To quote one of my favorite moments of wisdom from higher education (in the US), “Who are WE to say Juche doesn’t work!?!”
Yes. Who are “we” to say Pol Pot was bad?….
May 28th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Hey Western Confucian….
There is a place for relativism. There is a moral continuum, and there is enough distance and difference between what US soldiers illegally did (and were prosecuted and convicted for) and what islamic extremists engage in as what would be considered their policy and standard practice. That distinction on the moral continuum is far enough apart to where there are not shades of gray. It is clear enough.
Your comments amount to a mere opportunistic cheap shot in yanking out a mistake or failure and parading it with your hyperbole as the true representation of what is going on.
The US and the Bush administration is far from perfect, but also even more so, far from sinister.