Quote:
Originally posted by Paq
i'm mainly just subscribing to this thread, but i have to ask.
Do you think things like this could be caused by just a general lack of discipline from using too many reservists/not full time military personell? Do you think it's mainly confined to the army branch of the military? and finally...Who in their right mind would take pictures of that..
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Well, that's exactly the point. If you read the current news on the story, the soldiers who were guarding the prisoners received *no* training. Not only were they not taught the rules of the Geneva convention, they weren't taught how to handle prisoners period. Also, they were extremely short-staffed at first.
Now, that said, there is no excuse for the treatment of the prisoners pictured above. You don't need training to understand that abuse and torture are wrong.
So far, I think the USA response has been ok. The president has strongly condemned the actions and appears to be putting fixes in place. Now I'd like to see some followup directly from the president on how the situation will be prevented in the future with structural and policy changes to the armed forces, and I want to see the people involved who are guilty severely punished.
Unfortunately, the damage is done to our national image. We went into Iraq because of Saddam's abuse of Iraqis, I'm sure to many Iraqis we look like hypocrites now.
I'm not directly blaming Rumsfeld, but I do think Rumsfeld's strategy of waging smaller, cheaper wars with less troops is partly to blame here.