US Soldiers Torture Iraqi POW's

[Mercury]

What makes you think everyone is talking to you?

Just like you, we are just giving our thoughts as well.

Every time you post saying you don't care, someone might just want to post to say that they do care.

 

[goodbutnotgreat]

Cyclops, I get the feeling you're trying much harder just to refute my statements than to think about what I'm asking you, but I hardly have time or inclination to open up a debate on the topic or lecture on critical thinking skills. In the vein of 'na na' behavior, however, I would point out that Pope John Paul II released a statement proclaiming prisoner abuse to be "offensive to God." I know you may not be Catholic, but either way, I might suggest that JP and the Vatican hold a somewhat more scholarly pedigree when it comes to interpreting the bible, and as I recall Catholicism depicts God as a bit more surly than most protestant flavors of Christianity.

 

[Mercury]

It reminds me of that experiment they did at Stanford University in America during the seventies.

They set up a fake prison environment where some students were prisoners, and some others were prison guards.
The results had disasterous consequences.
It all went a bit "Lord of the Flies".
In a matter of time the "guard" students started abusing the "prisoner" students.
Many students needed therapy after the experiment and were seriously affected.
Many of the students were friends of each other before the experiment started.

So what did it prove?
That ANYONE is capable of just degenerating and committing terrible acts on people in the right situation.
That should have been thought of in the planning before the war.
It's a bit arrogant to expect that we are better people than another set of people, and that we can just do a job like that which requires proper training.

And as soon as we start throwing words around like "Evil" to demonize the enemy, that's where the problems start.

The prison should have been run by people who were trained for the specific job in hand.

Assuming we had the moral high ground was a massive mistake.
Everyone is capable of acts of atrocity...The enemy, the Americans, the Brits.
Assuming that we are GOOD, simply because we deemed the enemy to be EVIL, was a recipe for disaster.

People are people. There's capactity for hate in people, and most people have traits of "goodness" such as love for friends and family.

It seems that somehow the image that was portrayed of Saddam Hussein was transferred onto Iraqis as a people.
Soldiers, like us too would have had opinions formed through what they had seen in the media.
All this coupled with people asked to do a job they were poorly trained for was probably bound to end in tears at some point.

Got to admit that I was surprised by the images though. They just seemed to display a particular type of cruelty and sadism that was in the mindset of the soldiers.
I don't know how practical this is, but maybe they shouldn't have had soldiers doing a job that they weren't trained for.