We need a "War Criminal of the Year" award.

[Cyrano]

Time's "Person of the Year" award is total bullshit. If they were really choosing it based on "The person who had the most impact on the year, for better or for worse," it should have gone to Karl Rove, (or possibly even Tony Blair for helping to give Bush a fig leaf to cover up his lack of ... ummm, intelligence).

How about if DU, or some other website, started to select a "War Criminal of the Year" award?

This year's nominees could have been Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or perhaps some other maniac in Dafur in the Sudan. Or maybe some sadist who we don't even know about yet in Guantanamo or some other location in our American gulag.

Any candidates?

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Heh... good idea. nt

[NV Whino]

2. I like it...

but where to start? Multiple awards?

[ET Awful]

3. Lynndie Englund. . . simply for the photographic evidence

Can we award one male and one female?

[jellybelly]

4. Lyndie?

I thought she was a man.

[Cyrano]

5. Lynndie Englund is not a war criminal.

She is just a poor, ignorant grunt who got caught up in an insane policy directed from the pentagon and the White House.

"I was only following orders" is no excuse and she is paying for it. But in the meantime, the criminals who initiated these crimes are walking around free, and getting or giving Presidential Medal's of Freedom.

The stench of hypocrisy is so overwhelming that at some point, even those who voted for Bush will get a whiff of the smell of shit in the wind.

Don't lay the blame for Abu Ghraib on Englund and the others who took the rap. Put the blame where it belongs. Right in the laps of the war criminals who are currently running the most powerful arsenal in the history of the world. -- (Now isn't that a terrifying thought?)

[ET Awful]

7. I see, so using your logic, an SS soldier who beat a Jewish man

with say . . . a shovel, wouldn't be a war criminal, he was just following orders? Bullshit, it didn't fly at Nuremberg, and it won't fly now.

[Cyrano]

8. Are you intentionally misreading what I said?

She's an ignorant grunt who probably couldn't define a war crime on an open-book test. Yes, she's guilty of despicable acts. And as I stated, she's paying for them, and will for the rest of her life.

However, the point I was trying to make is that there's a difference between an uneducated girl from moronville, and those who produced the conditions and set the stage for what she did.

The real war criminals are still in power, and they will be until we get an honest election in this country. In the meantime, the poor, the under-educated, and those who have fallen for the super patriotic, nationalistic crap being peddled by BushCo, will be out there killing and maiming people in the name of "freedom and democracy." And unfortunately, too many of them will be killed and maimed for ... what?

[ET Awful]

9. Uneducated or not, people know right from wrong. n/t

[Cyrano]

11. ET Awful: I understand what you're saying and I'm not defending her.

Right and wrong are all relative in a circumstance where peer pressure (not to mention insanity) rules.

None of us can really say what we'd do in a totally irrational environment, where insensitivity, cruelty, humiliation and even torture had become the norm.

Try to imagine yourself thousands of miles from home, living amid daily mortar attacks, being told to "break down prisoner's will" and having no anchor to anything that could be considered sanity or morality.

The only thing you would have to hold onto, would be whatever strength you could find in your own convictions and then having the will to turn to them and not waver regardless of the consequences. Try living through that for a while and then tell me what you would do.

We'd all like to believe we'd "do the right thing." But it's far easier said than done.

[ET Awful]

12. She wasn't in combat. She wasn't under constant attack. She was an MP.

That is not a combat role. It is, in this case, a prison guard role. The training given to US troops teaches, or at least did for the entire time I was in the service, that it is legal to refuse an unlawful order.

She made the wrong choice, and is a criminal.

[Cyrano]

13. All right, ET Awful. I'll give it one more try and then quit.

In posting #5 I stated, "I was only following orders" is no excuse and she's paying for it.

Abu Ghraib, at the time, was under daily mortar attacks and it's important to realize there's no "safe" place in Iraq. The entire country is a combat zone. Further, she's National Guard, not regular army, and they had no training at all for the job they were given.

And as far as "unlawful orders," how many Vietnam vets (not to mention those in Iraq today) have followed the letter of the "rules of war" which Bush and Rumsfeld have now proclaimed do not apply?

I am in no way trying to excuse her actions. I am only trying to put them into the context of the larger crimes being committed by our so-called leaders.

[ET Awful]

14. Guess what . . . I was in the National Guard for several years as well

I know what I was taught and how I was trained.

As to how many have followed the letter of the "rules of war" as you put it, the vast majority have. Through several wars, the vast majority have followed the Geneva Convention and their prohibitions against mistreatment of prisoners.

[0007]

6. The five monkeys

1. junior
2. dick cheney
3. paul wolfowitz
4. richard perle
5. donald rumsfeld

These guys all tie for "Criminal Of The Year Award" Please open up the doors at the Hague for these worthless bastards.

[orpupilofnature57]

10. Whens inauguration day? As far as i can see *s got it hands down.