Don't let a tiny minority color your perception.

Post #207,485 by Another Scott 5/15/05 10:20:16 AM Reply	Don't let a tiny minority color your perception. 1) The US condemns it, but the investigation of whether it happened has only begun. 2) Only "hundreds" of people are involved in the latest demonstrations. [link\|http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4547413.stm\|BBC]: In Baghlan, officials said hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets. They said five people had been arrested and that explosive materials were also seized. Realizing that numbers can be shaded either way, it does not seem to be a major showing of discontent at this point. Don't give up on millions of people due to the actions of a tiny minority. Yes, the US should get to the bottom of what happened there ASAP, and if it happened, then those who did it should receive training on what is and is not permitted in interrogations and why. If they broke the rules they should be reprimanded or worse and transferred. If they didn't break the rules, then the rules should be changed. Crap like this will always inflame people who hear about it, to varying degrees. Unless the US plans on holding everyone there forever and never allowing communication from Guantanamo or inspection of the facility, then they need to end practices like this. If it occurred. Leaving Afghanistan to the militants isn't an option. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #207,517 by Simon_Jester 5/15/05 6:04:41 PM Reply	Call me a cynic, but... Yes, the US should get to the bottom of what happened there ASAP, and if it happened, then those who did it should receive training on what is and is not permitted in interrogations and why. If they broke the rules they should be reprimanded or worse and transferred. If they didn't break the rules, then the rules should be changed. They won't get to the bottom of it, the cover-up is in full swing. To have this much going on and enough people relaxed enough to take pictures, means that the activity was widespread. Given that it was widespread, and that it took pictures to get an investigation opened up, means it was done with superior's knowledge.
Post #207,522 by Another Scott 5/15/05 6:34:24 PM Reply	A good point but people take pictures of ... lots of stupid stuff. Remember the [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=204840\|happy slapping] thread? Do you think the "amateur" pr0n "models" think about what they're doing for more than a few minutes? That photographs on the internet are never really gone and you can't know who will look at them? How about people who [link\|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/04/AR2005050401914.html\|attack an 83 year old woman] at loading dock with video cameras present? There are a lot of naive and even stupid people out there who don't seem to realize that photographic evidence can be pretty damning. It might be widespread. I have no way of knowing; but I don't take the existence of photographs as being indicative of it being condoned or being known about by superiors. It's more likely to be correlated with stupidity, IMO. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #207,557 by Simon_Jester 5/16/05 12:58:29 AM Reply	I'd like to believe that... but..the situations are a bit different. This is a controlled environment. No one gets on-or-off without permission and the responsibility of the actions of the employees are held by higher-ups. Happy slapping? No control/responsibility for actions and not a controlled environment. And in this case, Police were already investigating....they had taken actions to try and stop the problem. 83 year old? Again, no one was in control/responsibility for the actions of the individual in question (except the individual themself). And in that case, it's doubtful even the individual knew that they were being photographed. The problem isn't that the actions were photographed. The problem is that I have to believe that their higher-ups were shown/knew about the photographs. (The is the outside chance that they didn't know about photographs being taken at the base - but given that it's a controlled environment, that indicates a far worse problem, imo).

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