there are good people and bad people over there.

The problem is not "The Soldier".

The problem is that there are elements in your country that have the morals of a reptile, and they seem to have managed to accrue a lot of power and are using it. One of the things they are using it for is to put inconvenient people on ice, and a whole lot of them. In fact, this is more *your* responsibility than it is the soldier's responsibility, in that I have to ask why there is not a huge outcry over the fact that the US government and military has admitted to just putting people away and throwing away the key, and making sure that nobody is ever going to be able to find out just who and how many people have had this done to them.

In the meantime, your attempt to lampoon the people who don't agree with your position only makes you look like a buffoon. "Baby killers". Jesus Arkadiy, listen to yourself as you try to defend the indefensible... and the indefensible is not that guy whose page you linked and the others (thousands upon thousands of them) who are just like them. The indefensible is the policy, formulated by the upper echelons of the military and their civilian masters, that says it's OK to put people on ice indefinitely. The fact that people are saying "here are some very bad things that the US and its armies are doing", backed by evidence does not mean they are besmirching you and your adopted country. No, the people who are doing that are your fellow citizens who are encouraging, condoning, formulating, and performing those practices.

If I were a US military person, I'd be extremely pissed with your leadership. They have brought shame and dishonour on your armed services in a way that not even Vietnam could do. Those are the people you should be angry at.

Finally, collectively, the US military ARE baby killers. Any army that bombs people is, because bombs are imprecise, and yes, they kill babies. In this particular war, probably quite a few of them. Certainly in the last war with that country. And in other wars between and before too. That's the nature of military power today, and it's been that way since the middle of the nineteenth century and the invention of effective artillery. Get used to it. This is the reason why wars are the LAST option to be considered, at least by any sane leadership. THIS bunch seems to be doing their best to encourage bad practices, unfortunately. That one doctor compared the injuries inflicted by one of your example's colleagues to being run over by a bus... and acknowledged that the use of force like that in that place was so commonplace that it was probably that they never would know exactly why that force was applied, but let me remind you of what it was that the person did: he struck someone on the knee app. 30 time with a truncheon while that person was chained suspended from a ceiling, resulting in such massive tissue damage that they later suffered an embolism that killed them. In short, the person later died as a result of injuries received during torture. His crime? Shaking his head when the soldier tried to put a hood on him (and I should point out that hooding is against the terms of the Geneva Conventions... nation of laws, eh?).

The point where anyone could legimately say "bad apples" when discussing this is long past. Either US culture is so inculcated with violence that this just seems normal, or people are being conditioned by their institution to see the locals as subhuman.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------

Yep, they are baby killers, just like my countries armed forces have been in the past. Some of my countrymen

WRT the shaking head constituting defiance: so, for that, he gets tortured to death? Nice to know what passes for norms of justice down there. Let's look at that again... he was chained up to hang by his arms from the ceiling, and then the soldier in question started pounding on his knee with a baton, and did so around thirty times. Just trying to hood him is against the law... and if there is any international law that can hold that name, it's the geneva conventions. Hanging him up from the ceiling goes past abuse and into torture territory all by itself, again according to the geneva conventions. Finally, bashing him repeatedly in the knee with what basically amounts to a baseball bat is torture by anybody's account. But since he was defiant, it's all OK... esp. since it wasn't being inflicted solely to cause pain, but more to correct his behaviour, a la your new Attorney General's paper about what does and doesn't constitute legal justifications for force that he wrote a couple of years back. According to the norms of justice espoused in that little exercise in post facto rationalisation, what this guy did isn't a crime at all.

The truly whacked out thing about this is that most Americans seem to be completely unaware of how badly these guys are dragging your country's name through the mud.

I hate to break the news to you Arkadiy, but the US military IS being used in JUST such a way, and has been for about three years. I might as well add that some elements of my country's armed forces are ALSO being used in JUST such a way, and in the same place, and for about the same amount of time... but at least that was pointed out then (front page coverage on the Globe and Mail, actually) and is revisited from time to time... but it still doesn't prevent the odium from attaching itself to my country's leaders as well. In fact, in some ways they're worse; they're not leading, they're just following along doing what they're told in this matter.

And you know what? I was here for Reagan, and Reagan was bad; just ask a Nicaraguan or a Guatemalan about Reagan, and take a look at how his administration stepped around your constitution's provisions limiting executive power. Reagan's administration created a lot of suffering, both in America (read about the CIA using the crack cocaine market in LA to fund their operations in Central America sometime) and abroad, but Bush is a LOT worse than Reagan ever was, not least because the legislative branch has completely abdicated their responsibilities in the interests of accruing ever greater rewards.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------

If someone here had gone to the trouble to set it up the way this soldier did, he'd've been charged with first degree murder, with the hanging up of the victim used as evidence of forethought and planning. Furthermore, other witnesses have pointed out that knee strikes are a common form of punishment for the defiant in this place; the only difference here is one of degree, not kind.

Got it?

Look, I don't think you're a bad person Arkadiy. I do think you've got a blind spot. You know, when I read that Vice Adm. Church had published a number of documented detainees (60,000) and acknowledged a number of undocumented detainees (the current thinking in mainstream US print media seems to be estimating their numbers at around 10,000), I couldn't believe it. I mean, it really shook me. Have any of these people been charged with anything? Have any of these people encountered any practical limit to the power of the people who have taken them? I very much doubt it. That said, while I'm sure there are people cursing his name, I think Church in his way is trying to save the military, by pointing out the crimes that are being committed in the people's name. One of the very things that got the American Revolution going was the fact that the British were doing the EXACT SAME THING to the people in the colonies. I think Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, et al are spinning in their graves at ~400 RPM.

--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------