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Subject: How many of the torture pictures are fake?
Blackwood    4/30/2004 9:27:14 PM
There's questions about the alleged torture pictures being passed around on the internet.

The BOTTOM set of photos on the arab site
link
that are not from
link

are obviously from a porn film and not legit
Their uniform is nothing at all like the Iraqi issue.
They're wearing jungle fatigues in a desert.
The tire props are cheap and look like from a Honda, not a Hummer
They have no indentifying insiginia of any army at all.
Some clothing is too large and ill fitting. (One guy's shirt reaches down to his knees in the third from the bottom photo, which was laughed at by a veteran looking over my soldier here.)
Their shoes are cheap and not military issue.
The women gang raped appear to be hispanic and russian, not iraqi.

But the photos on:
link
are harder to dismiss.

The guy in a hospital gown standing on a box does NOT have wires connected to his testicles, despite the earlier verbal reports.

The man "beaten to death" leaves the question, "beaten by whom"? He's certainly not in a US Army body bag, but appears to be wrapped in saran wrap from some arab deli. He may be a shopkeeper beaten to death by a gang. It definately is out of sequence with the rest of the series.

The series with the woman and hooded naked men appears to be legit, the uniform fatigues correct. But is it a training exercise with American GIs playign Iraqis that later fell into goofing off for the camera?

One man has "Rapeist" written across his buttock. He later appears stacked in a naked pyramid with this same word displayed. He may or may not also be the one miming forced oral sex to another man with a bag also still on his head.

While the guy with glasses has rubber gloves for body excavation, the girl who this exercise seems to be about does not. Her role mostly seems to be not laugh outloud at her crew appearing in the buff. The men pose for the camera and strut their stuff while keeping hooded anonymnousness.

Most importantly, all the men are in a jail cell, outnumbering the army staff 8-2, hooded, but with unobstructed hand usage. You can even see one taking off his hood in boredom in the lower right picture, carefully obscurred by a body in the front. Wouldn't prisoners undergoing a body cavity search usually be in handcuffs, at least until any concealled weapons were cleared?

There unfortunately are no tattoos visible in the pictures released. which would be a sure sign of GIs, not Iraqis. There do appear to be bikini tan lines, but that may be a trick of the pixillation. The prisoners do seem to be much more well fed and exercised than you'd expect of someone who's been in prison for a long time. And they're into American frat boy stunts like stacking in a pyramid for the camera. Arab culture also has a severe taboo about exposing the soles of one's feet that seems to be disregarded here.

Currently, I can't conclusively rule out the link photos as a training exercise, but I can say it's possible.
 
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leoinnyc    RE:for leoninnyc, we've done sh*% with the post war...   5/8/2004 2:16:22 PM
I don't even know where to begin... A bunch of PR spin from the director of USAID on the New York Post Op-Ed page...? Sigh... This is exactly what I'm talking about -- this is how we see ourselves, not how many Iraqis see us. "To demonstrate American commitment to shoring up democracy...USAID established countless self-help projects, schools, health clinics, hospitals, highways, hydroelectric facilities, industrial centers and farming cooperatives. The agency also sent thousands of agricultural experts, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, intelligence agents, and civilian advisers. For example, more than 700 American physicians served tours in USAID-built hospitals. During roughly the same period, the agency also ran the extensive Commercial Import Program, worth billions of dollars. USAID supported importers who ordered foreign goods through the CIP...That money then went into a fund at the National Bank...which the government used to finance development projects and cover operating expenses. USAID was also instrumental in helping settle hundreds of thousands of refugees, in promoting land reform and in administering [an] amnesty program." It sounds fanstastic. Except that was Vietnam. I have just done a bunch of research on this point, and while I'm too lazy to post all of the data here myself, you can go to the USAID website, and then go to the Pew Center Global Attitudes Project page. You will find that there is virtually no relationship to where USAID gives money and what those populations think of the US. Have we done good things in Iraq? Absolutely. By any measure. And by any measure the Iraqi people are better off now than they were under Saddam. But you commit a major logical fallacy by equating these facts with an assumption that that means they want us there as occupiers, or that they want the secular, pluralistic democracy that we have envisioned for them. While I can, and probably will make a strong case that our post-war planning and our reconstruction efforts have been terrible, I don't think that it's even the central point here; this isn't about how many schools we build -- it is an issue of the disconnect between what the US needs from Iraq, and what Iraqis want. Maybe in a year the insurgency will be a distant memory and we will be watching the flowering of a pluralistic democracy in Iraq. That would be great and I'll be glad to say so and happy to make a complete mea culpa right here on strategypage as our troops come home, mission accomplished. However, I don't see how you could possibly bet on that. Have you followed the politics on the ground there? We and the IGC put forward a plan for post-June 30, which was rejected by al Sistani and other Shiite clerics because it allowed what amounted to a minority veto over the Shia majority. If the Shiites are committed to majority rule, then what makes you think that in 5-10 years we won't have an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq? And with the UN running the transition to democracy, the chance of a simple 1-man, 1 vote system becomes quite likely -- probably the most likely outcome of Brahimi's work. If this ends up being the case, then what is the US going to do? We can't allow the Iraqis to have that kind of government -- are we going to ignore their election results? Call off the election in the first place and extend the occupation? Remember. the Iranians and some Saudis will pour money and possibly more volatile items into Iraq to make sure that the elections turn out the way they want. Will the CIA do the same to counter them? If so, how's the CIA-backed government going to look to Iraqis? You think these scenarios are unlikely? Ok - you tell me what you see happening in Iraq in the next year or two..
 
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leoinnyc    RE:newguy, on watch   5/8/2004 2:54:42 PM
A few quick retorts: I didn't address the consequences of occupying "the bulk of Iraq" after GW1 because i didn't advocate occupying the bulk of Iraq. I said we could establish portected areas of Iraq using air power and the threat of further retaliation. We did exacly this with the Northern and Southern No-Fly Zones and it worked fine, didn't result in a single US casualty and did exactly what it set out to do -- protect the Kurds from Saddam and deny Saddam control over part of his territory. Looting. Ok, I'm going to provide just a few quick resources: link link link link link
 
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leoinnyc    RE:postwar planning   5/8/2004 6:47:06 PM
ok, you want to talk about post-war planning? I could talk about the fact that the Pentagon was only given responsibility for and only began planning for the most complex post-war operations since World War Two a few weeks before the war started (despite the fact that they had been meticulously planning the war itself for over a year). I could talk about the fact that even though the State Department had been doing post-war planning for months (years, really, if you include more speculative studies) the Pentagon arrogantly refused to work with them, or even look at their planning. (Which, by the way, predicted the looting, the wrecked infrastructure and the possibility of insurgency, all of which caught the Pentagon by surprise by their own admission.) And when Jay Garner, the Pentagon's man in Iraq, asked to have the head of State's Iraq project work for him Don Rumsfeld personally intervened and refused the appointment. I could talk about the looting, and Rumsfeld's "Stuff happens" response, I could supply all sorts of quotes from Army commanders describing how they had no guidance or orders for what to do after the war. But instead I'll talk about just two things -- not enough troops and Abu Ghraib. <<>> If the planning for the post-war was so good, why was an overwhelmed, under-trained reserve unit doing this? We were planning this war for over a year before it happened, but we couldn't provide some extra training in areas that we know we're lacking in? And once it became apparent that they needed help, why not just send some more troops, huh? After all, I'm sure the geniuses who designed this mess planned for enough troops to handle post-war contingencies. And why was the prison being shelled every night -- after all, since they did such a great job of post-war planning, I'm sure that we have enough troops to stop a few guys lobbing mortar rounds into a prison. Wait, what's that you say? There's a major insurgency going on? There are whole cities and towns we don't control? But how can that be -- a major insurgency can't take shape in a country with hundreds of thousands of soldiers patrolling, and manning checkpoints. How do you move huge caches of ammunition and RPG rounds and mortar rounds without being noticed? Where do you practice and test your IEDs? Oh, wait a minute -- there aren't troops manning checkpoints all over the place? What do you mean there were only Iraqi police... and you say we only gave the police a few weeks of training and expected them fight off guerillas?! Why were we in such a rush -- after all, we must have had plenty of troops in the meantime. And our troops are highly trained and specialized... wait -- what do you mean, we have artillerymen and supply clerks doing convoy escort? Why? Well at least our troops have all the body armor and armored vehicles they need to get the job done... what!? What do you mean we are 2000 armored vehicles short of what we need? And, hey, why are there all these people running around who know how to use mortars to shell prison, anyway? Oh, that's right, we disbanded their army but let them keep their weapons. Well. at least our toops will be out of there soon enough -- why, the DoD said that we'd be down to 30,000 troops by now and... What do you mean, 'no end in sight.' But, since we planned this all so well, we're turning over power to the Iraqis on June 30th, right? Oh.. we don't know who we're turning power over to? And the UN envoy -- who we had to beg to handle the transition process because we screwed it up so badly -- he's talking about a 5-year period before the transition? Five years? And why did we have to beg the UN? Oh yeah, that's right, because their last envoy and his staff and their building were car bombed.... How did that happen -- I mean, how did a car bomb get that close to the UN building anyway? After all, I'm sure we had enough troops to provide security for such an important building.... What with the planning being so good and all..
 
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sentinel28a    RE:postwar planning   5/8/2004 8:05:08 PM
I don't think the UN had guards on their building, and had in fact refused to have American MPs on duty because it tarnished their image. I can't back that up with a link, but it does spring to mind. Leo, I tend to agree with you on the lack of postwar planning, but I think your "State vs. Pentagon in Vietnam" thing in an earlier post is off. The Pentagon proposed a quick, Linebacker II-style strike against North Vietnam to cripple its industry, seal off the ports through which it supplied its forces (and by extent the VC), and wipe out its air defenses before they got built. Members of LBJ's administration balked, because of possible civilian casualties. The Pentagon responded by saying there would be less in a short war than by spinning it out. LBJ and McNamara vetoed the Pentagon plan and did their own thing with Rolling Thunder, the gradual plan that assumed Ho Chi Minh was a Christian-thinking man (LBJ's words, not mine), would see the light, and negotiate an end to the war. The result: 35,000 dead North Vietnamese civilians, 2000 dead American airmen, and no end in sight. In 1972, Nixon adopted the Pentagon plan for Linebacker and especially, Linebacker II. The result: less than 1500 civilian deaths, less than 200 American aircrew killed, and a negotiated end to the war. Too late, and not enough to save South Vietnam, mind. It does make you wonder what would have happened had LBJ *not* listened to State in 1965, but the Pentagon instead. Especially when the North Vietnamese themselves admit that it probably would have worked. When it comes to the "strong condemnation" of the Kurds being gassed in 1988, what more was the US supposed to do? Sanctions? Already there. Quit assisting the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq War? The war was practically over. Invade? Remember the Cold War was still on, and the Soviet Union was Iraq's benefactor, with France and China just behind--though I believe France cut off military funding after the gassings. Mitterand was made of stener stuff than Chirac.
 
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sentinel28a    Oops, missed something   5/8/2004 8:08:24 PM
I wasn't real clear about something--Dean Rusk was SecState in '65, and was opposed to the Pentagon plan. He was in turn one of the "lunch bunch" that picked targets during Rolling Thunder, without looking at whether or not targets were military viable, worthwhile, or heavily defended. Most American pilot vets regard LBJ, McNamara, and Rusk as cupable for aircrew deaths as Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese.
 
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leoinnyc    RE:Sentinel   5/8/2004 9:21:55 PM
Yeah -- I agree that there wasn't much else that we could have done besides condemning the gassing, and frankly, supporting the Iraqis during Iran-Iraq was the right thing to do. But I still think it would have been possible to fashion a response more commensurate with just how bad Saddam's actions were. Just from a political standpoint, no one ever got burned criticizing chemical weapons. As for the Vietnam comparison, I guess what I meant by that wasn't so much what went on at the very top as the "low-intensity conflict" a few rungs down the ladder. You had a whole cadre of mid-to-senior level people at state who had recognized as far back as Kennedy that this was going to be a political problem, not a military problem (some of these were the "survivors" of the Far East desk at state). And you had a lot of their counterparts in the senior civillian and uniformed military leadership (think Walt Rostow, Mac Bundy, Gen. Wheeler) who were conviced that they could roll over the Vietcong. The bombing that you're talking about was the terrible attempt to create a "compromise;" but of course the military knew that once we started bombing ground combat troops would follow, and all of Johnson's restrictions would dissolve. It is amazing how much the military has changed over the course of the century. I mean, I know that everyone who posts to this board knows that. I just still get amazed when I'm reminded of it. Think about LeMay versus Powell!!
 
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Blackwood    Boston Globe publishes the fake rape pictures --oops!   5/14/2004 1:10:39 PM
Boston residents got more than they bargained for this morning when their copy of the Globe came complete with graphic photographic images depicting U.S. troops gang-raping Iraqi women. Problem is the photos are fake. They were taken from pornographic websites and disseminated by anti-American propagandists, as first reported by WND a week ago. Albasrah.net and a Tunisian website produced in France by Committee for the Defense of Saddam Hussein [Comité de Défonce de Saddam Hussein En Tunisie], posted not only the recently broadcast photos of U.S. troops abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners but additional ones of alleged group rape of women by American soldiers, some who are depicted holding rifles against their victims' heads. The Tunisian site described the photos as the "unedited" versions of actual events and Albasrah ran the photos under the heading "The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos," indicating they had received the photos via e-mail. A WND investigation has revealed that most of the photos are taken from the American pornographic website "Iraq Babes," and the Hungarian site, "Sex in War," which is linked to by the American site. Both websites are linked to by violent pornography sites and both describe Iraqi women -- played by "actresses" -- in vulgar terms. link link
 
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Condor Legion    uh...   5/14/2004 9:04:17 PM
How come very few of Blackwoods posts are readable? CLASSFIED?, CL.
 
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wingedhorses    making a case for the looting   5/16/2004 7:55:23 PM
There are so many ways we disagree, leoninnyc, that i'll just try to deal small point by small point. you're general thesis is something on the order of "the us is evil, thus not much different than sadaam." With the laundry list of stuff done by the US AID guy, I was just trying to make the simple point that we are, by and large, a well-intentioned country; we may screw things up sometimes, or a lot (i'm not going to debate how often right now) but I do not see how you can argue that we do not try to help people. And it is very different to be occupied by someone who's trying to hand over the damn country and get the H out then to be occupied by someone like Sadaam who's planning to pass the thugacracy on to his psychopathic sons after he dies. Even the looting--which the liberals have seized on: Try to see that moment in history through the eyes of a military commander on the ground: The US military has just moved into Baghdad; the last thing our commander wants is a lot of TV photos of US Marines chasing ordinary Iraqi civilians (who seemed to make up the bulk of the looters). Film like that would definitely send the wrong message. Also, one could argue--and I think our commanders did--that the contents of the palaces were in some sense the property of the Iraqi masses. In other words, who were we to start saying "no you can't have it." In other words, it's possible even to see how we handled the looting through the prism of "good intentions", of fundamentally decent people trying to make the best choices they could. Why are you so emotionally invested in tearing down our country? Do you really think it's worse than Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria et al? Your overall view o
 
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leoatwork    RE:making a case for the looting - wingedhorse   5/20/2004 12:04:21 PM
I have no idea what you're talking about. "you're general thesis is something on the order of "the us is evil, thus not much different than sadaam."" Where did you get that idea? I just posted the following to another thread, but it applied equally well here: A mistake made by both sides in this debate is the conflation of various distinct issues -- sometimes semi-intentionally and sometimes just due to misunderstanding. This blurs important subtleties and distinctions and tends to escatelate the frustration and alienation of one side from another. For example, just because I have a problem with the way that Bush is fighting the war on terror doesn't meant that I am against the war on terror, or against using American miitary force -- even using it unilaterally. The fact is people on this board just don't know enough about my opinions to know how I feel about these issues or to make the statements that you've been making; you're filling in the blanks between my actual, posted statements with assumptions based on doctrinaire liberal rhetoric, and conservative opinions thereof. I may make the same mistake from time to time and you're free to call me on it if I do. Maybe you're getting my opinions confused with someone else's... I don't know. But if your arguement is that anyone who has any complaint or critisism of Our Glorious Leader or the conduct of the war is A) a knee-jerk liberal and/or an America Hater is stupid, wrong, and totally indicative of the myopic, black and white paranoid fantasies that conservatives in this country have often embraced. If I say JSF instead of F-22 am I a commie? I have made stream of specific critisisms of policies and decisions that I think this administration is wrong about; If you want a country with one party, one point of view, one "right" opinion; if you want a country with no dissent then I think you may have a lot more in common with Saddam than you'd like to admit..
 
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leoatwork    RE:making a case for the looting   5/20/2004 12:14:32 PM
As for the looting, I certainly considered the issue of Marines with orders to shoot on sight and how that would go over on Al Jazeera. You're right, this would have been a legitimate concern. Except for a couple of things -- all of the evidence shows that neither this or anything else was a concern folloing the fall of Baghdad. If Don Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks carefully considered whether or not to stop looting once they overthrew Saddam and decided that this was the best course then fine, intelligent people can disagree. But that's not what happened and you know it; they didn't have a plan, they were cought completely by surprise by the looting and by the time they did consider all of these issues it was too late. If they were going to intentionally allow people to loot, as Rumsfeld himself suggested was the case, (to "blow off steam") then you'd think they would have been ready with replacement medical supplies, equipment for government offices, etc. Which they weren't. And was allowing Iraqis to loot nuclear waste part of the plan? I know that if the looters glow in the dark they're easier to find, but come on... Also, we were obligated to stop the looting under the Geneva Convention. And lastly, if we had enough troops, we wouldn't have had to shoot people -- the definition of looting is that it happend when there is no security presence. No one loots a building guarded by American soldiers with rifles..
 
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