Robert Fisk: The shaming of America

[cal04]

Our writer delivers a searing dispatch after the WikiLeaks revelations that expose in detail the brutality of the war in Iraq - and the astonishing, disgraceful deceit of the US
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-shaming-of-america-2115111.html

As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims.

Only we could pretend we did not know. Only we in the West could counter every claim, every allegation against the Americans or British with some worthy general – the ghastly US military spokesman Mark Kimmitt and the awful chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, come to mind – to ring-fence us with lies. Find a man who'd been tortured and you'd be told it was terrorist propaganda; discover a house full of children killed by an American air strike and that, too, would be terrorist propaganda, or "collateral damage", or a simple phrase: "We have nothing on that."

Of course, we all knew they always did have something. And yesterday's ocean of military memos proves it yet again. Al-Jazeera has gone to extraordinary lengths to track down the actual Iraqi families whose men and women are recorded as being wasted at US checkpoints – I've identified one because I reported it in 2004, the bullet-smashed car, the two dead journalists, even the name of the local US captain – and it was The Independent on Sunday that first alerted the world to the hordes of indisciplined gunmen being flown to Baghdad to protect diplomats and generals. These mercenaries, who murdered their way around the cities of Iraq, abused me when I told them I was writing about them way back in 2003.
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(snip)
The truth, of course, is that if this vast treasury of secret reports had proved that the body count was much lower than trumpeted by the press, that US soldiers never tolerated Iraqi police torture, rarely shot civilians at checkpoints and always brought killer mercenaries to account, US generals would be handing these files out to journalists free of charge on the steps of the Pentagon. They are furious not because secrecy has been breached, or because blood may be spilt, but because they have been caught out telling the lies we always knew they told.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. What were Bush and Cheney doing about this?

[IndianaJoe]

2. Sad but true. But who should be surprised? I'm not. n/t

[Doctor_J]

3. I am to the point of hoping that we get involved in a war on our soil

There is nothing we can do to extricate ourselves from the evil that now rules the US. The only way we're ever going to get out is for some foreign country to purge all of this filth.

[truth2power]

5. You will probably be castigated for this, but you are correct in one sense...

I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't consider that the only way to cure America of it's imperial hubris is for us to experience the reality of war, right here, on our own soil.

Americans are spoiled and clueless and have no idea what it's like to live under the occupation of a foreign army. I've heard people say, time and again, that "we should just turn that place <insert here the country of our enemy du jour > into glass" with no thought of what that horrific statement actually implies.

How would we feel if we had to pick up the PIECES of our children after they'd been bombed to smithereens? What would it be like to have your entire family murdered in their sleep by a drone attack?

Americans need to think about that. I mean really THINK. ABOUT. IT.

I can't say I wish for it, but I'm convinced beyond all doubt that the only way Americans will get the point is to experience a war. Right here.

I wonder if any gods that may be will have mercy on us for our mortal sins. :cry:

[Doctor_J]

7. It would be so nice for us to take care of this ourselves

but the denial paralized us until it was too late. If Limpballs, Rove, Gingrinch has been dispatched 20 years ago, that might have cured the cancer. If the Supreme Court building had been stormed and the 5 criminals taken to the proverbial guillotine in December 2000, the dialog would certainly have shifted. If Fox News had gone up in smoke after a particularly egregious hate fest, we would begin to get someone's attention again. Every time one group of criminals is not punished, the next is emboldened. And when bombs are landing inside the Koch brothers gated community, and they're pissing in their $5000 suits, we'll start to take the country back from them

[madrchsod]

4. all one had to do is follow the iraqi bloggers through out the war.

they were telling the world the truth about the war.

it`s really fucking disgusting that anyone is shocked about what happened and what is happening now.

[truth2power]

6. From the article...

"Peter Pace, the uninspiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is briefing journalists on how soldiers should react to the cruel treatment of prisoners, pointing out proudly that an American soldier's duty is to intervene if he sees evidence of torture. Then the camera moves to the far more sinister figure of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who suddenly interrupts – almost in a mutter, and to Pace's consternation – "I don't think you mean they (American soldiers) have an obligation to physically stop it. It's to report it."

The significance of this remark – cryptically sadistic in its way – was lost on the journos, of course." <emphasis added>

I've always said that Rumsfeld is sicker than most people imagine. Paraphilias comes to mind.

[sabrina 1]

10. In the Al Jazeera video posted by Turborama at a round 7.23

into the video, you can see Rumsfeld correct Pace about the troops being told to stop the abuse of detainees. He made it clear that they were ONLY to report it, NOT stop it. And as is now clear after they did that, nothing was done about it.

I remember rightwingers castigating those of us who opposed the war, saying to me and others, 'so you don't want to shut down Saddam's Torture chambers'?

That was one of the things they used to emotionally blackmail people with. Before Abu Ghraib.

Rumsfeld is one sick and twisted man. I have read in the past that he sat and watched at least one 'interrogation' session at Guantanamo Bay. And airc, he had been to Abu Ghraib and most likely knew what was going on there.

Sick, evil, cruel people. All of them. And to think we thought we could ever dissuade them from starting that war. There was never a chance of that.

[Turborama]

8. K&R Excellent article, well worth reading in full

Thanks for posting.

The Al Jazeera English special he mentions is here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x518301

[Turborama]

9. K&R Excellent article, well worth reading in full

Thanks for posting.

The Al Jazeera English special he mentions is here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x518301