Man... What an image. I am so distressed and most mothers would be.

[sproutster]

When you breastfeed your child there is just this connection. And to be torn away from your defenseless baby... It is so atrocious it brings me to tears. I want to see this in mainstream. Hardly any of us have been tortured, but a good many of us have breastfed our children. It is hard not to think about what that would do to a mother. An innocent wife. FUCK THE ADMINISTRATION -- THEY ARE BRUTAL TORTURERS AND COMMITTING WARCRIMES IN OUR NAME.

[mandyky]

1. What are you talking about?

Got a link or a run down of the story that brought this on...??

[sproutster]

2. Yeppers

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_leveraging_wives

It's been brewing at the back of my mind since I read it.

[koopie57]

3. I remeber when I first heard about this

and I dismissed it cuz it hurt so bad to think of this happening to a mother. But, it must have been horrid to have that happen. My heart goes out to this mother. There is something very wrong in a world that would allow this.

[izzie]

4. Could it be we have ended up with a service that likes to be bad?

I have thought for a long time that I had made an error in thinking the draft had to go. I think we need a citizen army and more control by the voters over them. I am really thinking an army of pros has not turned out well for us and Iraq. I believe our founders did not like a standing army and I am starting to understand why. Oh I spent most of my married life with in that back ground of US service life. I do not hate it but am some what worried about its power.

[applegrove]

5. I think if your husband is suicide bombing all day long - you likely have

the stomach to get over it. And the company you keep will probably have the cunning find some milk for the baby.

My problem is - that when I go to war using suicide bombers - I never know what to wear? How to accessorize:sarcasm:

Seriously? If the woman is worried about her family she would have left the monster and become a refugee. Has she not noticed houses being bombed? That her husband is out making war? If she cares about that child she would not put it in the bull's eye of an air-strike. At the very least she is involved in clannish warfare and knows full well her husband has enemies and kills people.

[LisaL]

6. Maybe we should start doing the same here?

You know, husband is a serial killer, lets get his wife instead?
:eyes:

[applegrove]

15. If she knows about his crimes.. she does go to jail.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

159. If she floats she's a witch and is burned. If she drowns-not a witch!

[applegrove]

161. How did you get here from there? ????????????

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

165. You are saying it's fine to arrest anyone around, because if they are

"innocent" that will be discovered and they will be set free, and "learn something" all at the same time.

Gee why don't we use the same standard for arresting people here in the U.S.? After all we are at WAR!

[applegrove]

172. Like I said - maybe to someone else - mother and babies are separated

in the penal system all the time in the USA. And no - in a time of war - to end a war sooner - you might detain a wife of a leader. I'm glad it is being talked about. It does beg questions. But the community in which this man is fighting a war - it suffers too and in the case of Iraq the civilians are not the ones who have anything to gain - they just end up slaughtered. So - this woman's husband is really hurting a few lives. Every day. Civilians mostly. How he choose to fight. And that makes my sympathy for her - much less. I think really she has more to worry about. Like being married to a potential war criminal. Her kids being killed. Why on earth did she have a baby? During a war?

[sproutster]

170. Because Torture worked so well against the witches.

Here is there. Gosh, we won that war too.

[applegrove]

184. I'm against torture. Who here is for it?

[High Plains]

262. Opposing a foreign occupation is not a "crime"

except in the eyes of the occupiers.

[applegrove]

266. The vast majority of the Iraqis are not in the insurgency and do not want

it. They don't. Insurgents are war mongers the same as Bush & Cheney.

[Uncle Joe]

277. I believe if the husband is innocent,

the vast majority not in the insurgency, will shrink dramatically.

[me b zola]

324. No where is probable cause mentioned in these women's detention

The documents suggest that the women are/were being held as hostages (negotiation tools/bait), not as people who had knowledge of a crime. I have read of no suspicion of wrong doing by these women other than being married to someone that the miltary suspects of a crime.

[zanne]

7. Oh, of course. It would be HER fault!

How far did you have to reach for that one? That was despicable.

[applegrove]

16. You don't think that loosing the opportunity to breast feed her baby

is the worst thing going on in her life? Her husband is involved in a clannish war. How many people does he kill in a day?

I think she has other things to worry about. Like getting her kids out of the way of an airstrick. If I was in your situation - I wouldn't be feeding my baby. Someone across the country would be. YOu don't bring a baby into war.

[zanne]

24. Blame the victim mentality.....nt

[applegrove]

27. No. I'm worried about her kids. I don't think the baby having breast

- feeding cut short is the most serious issue facing the baby, or any of its siblings. There are any number of groups that would likely retaliate against her husband by bombing her home. I'd be more concened with that part of her life.

So she got taken into custody. And was denied all the things that go with freedom like being a mother. How many associates of this suicide bomber are in jail. Some of them perhaps totally innocent as some assume this woman is.

The husband isn't. The number of people who die according to his needs must be dozens a week. Mostly innocent civilians. You sure it is not worth questioning the wife? I doubt her chidren will be alive in the war goes on for another 10 years. Don't ya think there is risk that the homes of the leaders of the clannish war will be attacked by each other.

That's my point.

Great to have empathy - but be discerning. I don't think loosing the ability to breastfeed is the worst of the issues she is facing.

[Sapphire Blue]

63. Reading through the thread, I don't see anyone claiming that...

... " the baby having breastfeeding cut short is the most serious issue facing the baby, or any of its siblings." To make such a comment would seem to trivialize the OPers (as well as other posters & my) empathy for this Iraqi mother, separated from her child.

"So she got taken into custody. And was denied all the things that go with freedom..." This could also be said about those disappeared to Gitmo & elsewhere.

"The husband isn't (innocent)." Has he been been tried & convicted?

Perhaps "the most serious issue facing the baby, or any of its siblings" is that the bush administration invaded Iraq based on deception, lies & fear, and set all of this horror in motion.

[applegrove]

69. Well I agree with your last point. The woman has more serious issues

than having one part of her relationship with her baby cut short. Her husband is at war. And that puts the whole family in danger of things like "getting arrested". But the kids dying in this war is my greatest worry.

Bomb on the house would be the biggest issue for me. Or perhaps bomb on their neighbour's house. don't care who does it. But I think this lady has more serious issues to deal with like the life of her children.

[Sapphire Blue]

114. My last point - the bush administration invaded Iraq based on deception...

... lies & fear, and set all of this horror in motion being perhaps "the most serious issue facing the baby, or any of its siblings"... are you saying that you agree w/this? (Just want clarification, as your supporting comment didn't seem to substantiate your statement of agreement.)

You really haven't addressed my other comments in my previous post. Perhaps you might do so?

You've also suggested in other posts that this mother could have left her husband to go somewhere (presumably) safe, or could have chosen to send her baby away to somewhere (presumably) safe. Just where in Iraq would that be? Is there a spa or retreat that we haven't heard about? :sarcasm:

What would have stopped her arrest/kidnapping if she had left him? Would those that arrested/kidnapped her be any less likely to believe that she had knowledge/information regarding her husband if she had left him?

What exactly would you do if the US was invaded by some fanatic regime from another country? Welcome them w/open arms & a smile?

Remember this?



Why, there shouldn't be any worries now about kids dying in this war or houses being bombed anymore now, should there? :sarcasm:

[applegrove]

119. Read assassin's gate and then we can talk. Mother has found or put

herself at the centre of a war. And there are lots of safe neighbourhoods in Iraq. Lot's of dangerous ones. But if she didn't put all her kids somewhere safe - while she is married to the leader of a faction in a clannish war of bombings - I have not sympathy for her. I'm worried about her kids. Unless she didn't know. And she would have to be one dumb bunny to not know her husband is the leader of an insurrection that kills mostly civilians.

[Sapphire Blue]

138. Breastfeed & get separated from your baby, get arrested/kidnapped...

... while attempting to survive an invasion by a fanatic regime... then we can talk.

You have made it extremely clear that you have no sympathy for this woman. I am thankful that I do not share your outlook.

[applegrove]

155. I'm sorry Sapphire. I'm argueing with 5 other people. Just me alone.

Look down the page. Don't feel sorry for me. I knew what I was getting into when I voluntarily put my two cents in - so I'll not complain and just keep trying to answer you all.

Why I think the war is bad. Why I think the wife of an insurgent doesn't need sympathy while her husband continues war. If she is innocent then she has better information and can now start to take steps to protect all her kids.

That is all I can say.

[Sapphire Blue]

181. Feel sorry for you? I feel sorry that you lack empathy for this woman.

I feel sorry for your judgment of this woman's husband as guilty. I feel sorry that you seem to support the arrests/kidnappings/detentions committed by the bush regime. I feel sorry that you don't seem to honor the Geneva Conventions. I feel sorry that you seem to have bought into some of the BS of this administration.

So, yes, I do feel sorry for you.

[applegrove]

183. I am against this type of invasion. I am for the geneva convention. I am

against torture. I just hold someone aggressively destroying his neighbourhood in Iraq and the lives of many civilians - I hold him to the same account I hold Rumsfield. And I think if the wife got detained - that is the least of her problems. She's likely married to a war criminal. Her kids are in danger.

I have lots of empathy. I also read alot and don't dole it out when I've read what those insurgent groups do the the neighbourhoods they build up in. Murders every night by gunfire - lawlelssness, then during the day with the suicide bombs.

They are all assholes

[Sapphire Blue]

207. You hold him to the same account as Rumsfeld???

Good God, did this man facilitate the invasion of a foreign country, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, much of the country destroyed?

If the wife got detained? Is that in question? And that (her detention) is the least of her problems? Might you say the same thing if you were disappeared to Gitmo?

Now you are saying "She's likely married to a war criminal." Perhaps you are now conceding that he may not be guilty?

You say that you are for the Geneva Conventions, that you are against torture... your comments in this thread would seem to suggest otherwise. (BTW, bush says the same thing... about being for the Geneva Conventions & against torture. He even says the US doesn't torture.)

Thanks for letting me know that you have lots of empathy! Might feel good to experience it sometime.

[applegrove]

209. By perhaps married to a war criminal - I mean both that he could

be using terroism and murdering civilians today or he could have been doing it under Saddam (lots of the early insurgents were former baathists).

[Sapphire Blue]

220. So, according to you, he IS guilty, thus detaining his wife was justified.

My goodness, you should apply for a position in the bush administration... you could, at the very least qualify for Kool-Aid server.

[applegrove]

230. You think he is innocent? I think tha on aveage he may kill 5 people

a day if he is a leader. Didn't you know 30 people a night are being murdered in Baghdad?

Please. Get some facts. Those neighbourhoods with the happy little insurgents are scary, scary deadly places with no police. And no USA army. Nobody to protect you. They are part of the 100,000 + civilians who have died.

How did you think those 100,000 + civilians died? The insurgency.

[Sapphire Blue]

242. Please provide links to your "facts" regarding this man's guilt.

Or has your 'thinking' been established as fact? If so, please provide documentation of this.

Unlike you, I don't know whether he is guilty or innocent. I thought that's what a trial was for. Silly me.

[applegrove]

246. Assasin's Gate goes into how as soon as insurgency started - 30

murders a night were showing up at the morgues in Baghdad. At that was only in Baghdad. The american invasion didn't kill nearly as many a day.

That 100+ dead because of the American invasion - those are mostly civilians killed by rival or insurgent groups.

[Sapphire Blue]

256. On what page of "Assassin's Gate" is THIS man discussed? On what page...

... are his alleged crimes documented?

This book ("Assassin's Gate") that you keep referencing for validation of your opinions... is it the written & infallable word of God or something? You said earlier that you read a lot. I really wish you would reference something other than this single book... and provide documentation of the opinions that you are presenting as facts throughout this thread.

[applegrove]

268. It talks about the insurgency and the icrease - 30 fold - in murders.

Once the insurgency started. Some of the murders they thought were victims of sunnis kiling the sunni baathists who hurt them. Some was just lawlessness cause Bremmer fired the army and the police in some weird act of neocon hubris. The insurgency is the fault of the neocons. But that does not make the insurgents all great people or fighting for their freedom.

[Sapphire Blue]

272. Again - On what page of "Assassin's Gate" is THIS man discussed?

On what page are his alleged crimes documented?

And what else have you read?

[applegrove]

284. The insurgency is disgussed in the second half.

[Sapphire Blue]

297. On what page is THIS WOMAN'S HUSBAND discussed???

On what page(s) are this woman's husband's alleged crimes documented???

Since this book is the sole source you have presented for any facts, and I don't have a copy of the book, nor have I read it, does the discussion of the insurgency in this book provide evidence that each & every accused 'insurgent' is guilty??? (Page numbers, please.) Has it been absolutely established that every word in this book is factual & correct... is this book & the author infallible? No opinion injected into the writing? Does this book justify the US's detaining/arresting & torturing all accused Iraqis & family members, friends, and acquaintances? This seems to be the opinion that you hold... and present as fact, w/repeated reference to this book.

[Sapphire Blue]

147. PS - Why do you avoid answering my questions?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

153. Because they have no FACTS or CITATIONS to back up their

assertions on this thread. I haven't seen the first one yet.

[applegrove]

156. Someone said the woman being separated from her baby was the

worst thing going on in her life - I disagree. I think the fact she is married to a potential war criminal and her kids are in danger is far worse.

[sproutster]

163. I said THE KIDNAPPING AND TORTURE was the worst thing going on in her life

But you think her being pampered in her mansion while her hubby goes out and suicide bombs himself many times a day while getting home by 5 for dinner was.

Or was it 6?

[applegrove]

173. That's not what I said at all. It just isn't. n/t

[High Plains]

264. Nice apology for recognized war crimes, Applegrove

[applegrove]

271. I think the perpetuators of the wars are the war criminals. Not the ones

trying to stop it. The soldiers are not war criminals. Rummy is. So is the leader of an insurgency. Those places in Iraq where the insurgents are - are terrible. Random murders at night, suicide bombs during the day. Mostly civilians killed?

[davekriss]

104. Well said!!

"Perhaps "the most serious issue facing the baby, or any of its siblings" is that the bush administration invaded Iraq based on deception, lies & fear, and set all of this horror in motion."

Touche!!

[applegrove]

109. I would add that she has a suicide monster husband who kills civilians

and Rummmy couldn't be bothered to carry out the US invasion with any hope of success or speed. That failing but hanging around seems to be on the neocon menu more often than not.

That neocons may have wanting to bomb & scare the shit out of Iraqis for all time - and this is how they are doing it - by hanging back and sending in too few troops.

That is one possibility.

[davekriss]

127. Got a link for that?

Where in the Yahoo article does it say that the husband is a "suicide monster"?

But, let me grant you this for a moment. Let's say the husband is indeed a leader in a faction of the insurgency; let's say he is indeed battling for the freedom of his faction from US occupation forces and from other factions; let's say he leads a group planting improvised explosive devices blowing up our troops and he's able to convince various desparate people to strapping explosives around their waist and blowing themselves up in markets and mosques -- settled, the man is everything you say, though you provide no evidence for it.

Is it right, then, to kidnap his wife, imprison her against her will without charges of any kind, even wrest from her arms her nursing baby, in order to surface her husband (either for arrest or elimination)? I ask you again, would you have supported the arrest and detainment of Giotti's wife in order to surface John Giotti?

This is an instance of the ends justifying the means, and I think we need to uphold our values in our means at all times or we become what we fight.

[applegrove]

142. This war and Rummy going in not to win it is awful. I think all people

around the husband have been detained. The wife is an adult (is she - you never know). She can be detained too. Just like all his posse.

They might have learnt something. They could have done something better with the baby. But her problems go far deeper than the baby and missing it and having to stop breastfeed.

Why is her husband and insurgent? Was he a Saddam boy? Did he kill people under Saddam? Did he torutre? Is he going to have to stand trial for that as soon as there is peace? Is he just a sunni who knows he'll never see the weatlh he had under saddam and is willing to keep war going for that?

Will her chldren live. Will all the people in her neighbourhood suffer while her husbands factions of the war goes on. And does she give a shit or is she really interested in power?

[davekriss]

152. "Why is her husband an insurgent?"

Could it be, like the French in WWII, he just feels compelled to fight the immoral occupying force that seeks to impose its will on his land?

Again, you seem to know a lot more about the "husband" than has been conveyed in the Yahoo article. Do you have other sources? I'd be interested in seeing them.

[applegrove]

158. French in WWII didn't have the option of elections. And childrens were

constantly being shipped away to be killed. Nobody is hunting down and gathering up Sunni kids. The only people systematically killing civilians - are people like her husband.

[davekriss]

171. Those elections...

...might be just a tad freerer than our own farce, imposed (again) by an occupying force that controls the agenda and probably outcome.

It is far from a perfect analogy (the French Resistance). For one, the French were not simultaneously engaged in civil war, which is the case in Iraq (it's the splintered factional fighting well understood by GHWB, Brent Scowcraft, and others, and what prevented them from marching into Baghdad in 1991).

Iran is so pleased that we are winning their decade-long war for them. Osama Bin Forgotten, too, is grinning from ear to ear. Haliburton's shareholders are delighted. It's only the parents, spouses, and children of our dead servicemen that cry to exhaustion with grief; only the parents, spouses, and children of dead Iraqi shopkeepers, teachers, and laborers that fall to the ground, broken, with (in a few cases) only the prospect of becoming a suicide bomb left to them to state their outrage.

The world has always been f*cked up; it is amazing how George Bush and his Regime can make it so very much more so in so short a time.

[applegrove]

174. The french were not in a civil war. The french were either going to

be enslaved by nazis and their jewish, gypsy & gay people continually murdered for all eternity - or they were going to fight.

Not the same thing. US wants to leave Iraq. A civil war may be because Sunnis do not want to loose wealth and power to shiites.

Very different. I don't even think you can compare.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

175. The reasoning here seems to be "there were elections, so if people

choose to continue to fight and oppose the occupation, the gloves are off, there are no limits to what we may do to oppose them, no morals are involved".

[applegrove]

188. I think when you use terrorism and killing civilians - I think your morals

are pretty much gone. If you do that day in day out - when nobody is planning on touching your family if there were peace - yeah - there is something wrong.

Lots of the insurgents are former baathists. With lots to hide. Maybe a war crime or two in their futures.

Some are just clannish. But they are killing police recruits, all sorts of things that really are not humane.

Keeping a war going is also up there with aggressive war. That kills hundreds of people in those parts of Iraq that have insurgents. Those communities are suffering alot. The communities where there are no insurgents are not suffering like that.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

191. You do not answer my question. If the opponent uses "immoral" methods,

are you saying WE have no moral constraints on us?

[applegrove]

195. Torture is bad. I'm not sure that trying to round up insurgents to stop

a war cause by one small group in a small town - by putting the wife in jail on suspicion of something - I don't know if that is not under the geneva convention.

These little parts of cities where there are insurgencies. At night their is gunfire and murders & roving bands of clanish warmongers. During the day - suicide bombs and police recruits from that very neighbourhood killed. And people join up with the closest clan leader because they need security. And it goes on.

And there is no hope that leader is every going to live like a king in that neighbourhood? Or that they will find oil under that neighbourhood. And they bomb mosques.

The guy's wife. Her worst problem isn't that she was detained on suspicion for two days. Will her kids live? Is her husband some baathis narcissist who want to live only long enough to go down in flames and take many with him - cause he knows otherwise their is a war crimes trial in front of him.

Is the husband gettng paid - by zarkowi or Iranians to start the war in his little neighbourhood?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

200. She was NOT SUSPECTED OF ANYTHING. The news article,

shows she was detained IN ORDER TO GET THE HUSBAND.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060127/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_leveraging_wives

Documents Show Army Seized Wives As Tactic

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special CorrespondentFri Jan 27, 6:53 PM ET

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

...

"During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

...
The first message, from a military police colonel, advised staff officers of the U.S. northern command that the Iraqi police would not take control of the jailed women without charges being brought against them.

So what was she being "suspected of"? CAN YOU PROVIDE CITATION? Or are you just pulling that out of your posterior like everything else you're saying on this thread?

[applegrove]

203. LIke you said. Arresting people innocent happens all the time in Iraq.

I dont' know why the wife of an insurgent leader would garner so much sympathy when poor people who do nothing get arrested all the time and maybe it means their kids go hungry (like really) - because if you are poor and living in an insurgency run place - there isn't that much of anything. And no social services can get in. You know.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

204. "Happens all the time" = makes it right to do? ????? ????

[applegrove]

210. I don't know why the wife of someone who is likely turning his neck

of the woods into a hellhole - should get so much sympathy. I think she is probably pretty pragmatic about things at this point. She's had to look around and see all her neighbour's suffering and must have said something to herself to get through the day.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

215. You did NOT answer the question of whether "it happens all the time"

means "it's the right thing to do."

You merely reply with "I don't know why this wife of a suspected terrorist gets so much sympathy".

[applegrove]

219. I think ended the war fast is the right thing to do. Seems like this insur

gent is in mind for a big scolding and a few months in prison if he turns himself into the USA forces. He's really not ever gonna suffer as much as the people in his neighbourhood have already.

I hope the war ends. I don't have sympathy for a woman who hangs around while hubby is out causing war. And doesn't think she'll do some time or go on a little excursion vs. being killed or bombed. Jail should be the least of her worries.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

221. If they were willing to kidnap his wife, for no other reason than she was

married to him, you are so confident that all that will happen to him is that he gets a "big scolding and a few months in prison"?

When other prisoners have been beaten and suffocated to death?

[applegrove]

233. If the insurgents make peace - they tend to go free. I think the 100

dead were from Guantanamo & all the freaky jails - not Iraq alone?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

234. Why do you provide no citations for anything you say?

[applegrove]

240. The sitations for my take on what it is like on the ground - come from

a book I've mentioned three times. From all I've read at the DU. And life. So they are my opinions. I did cite a biography of Ghandi. And you could probably find that type of thing in any library.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

243. You did not name the book or author of Gandhi biography, that says that

he was a pedophile.

[applegrove]

248. I never said he was a pedophile or a molestor. I never said he assualted

anyone. I said at the end of his life he got a little weird. Kinda a pervert. That is what the author said. I suggest you google it WHOOOPSS DON'T DO THAT - NOT THIS WEEK - YOU'll have to look up biographies of ghandi or go to your library and find out for yourself. Perhaps my author is the only one who wrote it. I don't have the book anymore. Don't know the author. Was a really thin read. Like 200 pages at the most.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

250. What did making a comment that Gandhi was a pervert have to do with

the topic of this thread, kidnapping the relatives of suspected insurgents by the U.S. military?

And also, if you are going to make an inflammatory statement about, say, Gandhi, it is not for ME to look up where such an accusation might have come from it is up to YOU to provide it, and you haven't put up ONE link.

[applegrove]

267. You put in a few quotes. One was from ghandi and it reminded me. Sorry

I should have been prepared to argue that if I pointed out a very disappointing moment in his biography.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

274. By the way there are no Gandhi quotes in any of my posts here.

[davekriss]

290. I quoted Ghandi, not Mayberry

I just happen to highly respect much of what he has to say, though I acknowledge he was not a saint. I also greatly honor and respect Dr. Martin Luther King, Diane Nash, Cesar Chavez, and all practitioners of non-violent civil disobedience as a means to marshal humane force against the powers of greed, hatred, and violence.

[H2O Man]

304. Gandhi.

The "h" is after the "d." I normally would not correct a spelling error, but his name is important.

[davekriss]

306. Thank you

I stand corrected. But, note, if you're going to start correcting my spelling, you have about 900_ more posts to review (Gandi, Gandhi, Ghandi -- oops, I make my share of errors! -- that error is embedded in my quote file and thus often repeated!). :)

[H2O Man]

307. I've started.

Because your message is on target, I wanted to start with you. Others, especially those who take an interest in Gandhi similiar to J. Edgar Hoover's interest in King, are less important.

Keep up your good work.

[applegrove]

310. I wondered when I said the slur - who wrote the book and why the worst

of a human being was included in the story of a movement. I'm sorry. I was out of sorts when I included it. I should have done my own research.

[applegrove]

309. I concur.

[sproutster]

202. It's not being done to gangbanger relatives for a reason

IT IS WRONG.

I don't care how you color it, it is wrong wrong wrong.

You can blame it on the mother till you are blue in the face. SHE WAS NOT A SUSPECT -- SHE WAS BAIT. HER CHILDS WELFARE IS NOT EVEN ADDRESSED. We call it here in the US Mental cruelty, which is by definition TORTURE.

This is BS and you are condoning warcrimes. For these crimes someday in our lifetime we may even see an invasion here. We are a bankrupt nation - both morally and financially. What happens when they pull in their markers?

The CEO's head off to some tax exempt nest in another country and we will pay the price.

[applegrove]

212. War is a crime. I'm against that. And anyone who runs a sloppy one

is a criminal. And anyone who keeps one going is a criminal. The only wars should be humanitarian ones. And then you go in and do the job with enough troops.

[High Plains]

269. Why is her husband an insurgent?

Maybe because his country was invaded?

You are blaming this woman for being an Iraqi in 2006. Absolutely disgusting.

[applegrove]

273. I think what I heard was that it was the wives of the leadership of

insurgencies. You know them - cause they've been around for three years and haven't blown up themselves. But co-opted the mentally ill or the young to do so.

Don't know about this man. But 100,000 + civilians have died in Iraq since the invastion - and most of those at the hands of insurgents. Rummy's fault. Then Bush's fault. Actually all Cheney's fault & Leo Strauss. The insurgency - letting it get to that.

But that is alot of dead people. Most of them would be from her neighbourhood. Why her husband believes in war when nobody is going to do anything but give him one vote - I dont' know.

I hate people who start wars. Takes two sides.

[davekriss]

291. No

applegrove: "But 100,000 + civilians have died in Iraq since the invastion - and most of those at the hands of insurgents."

That is a staggering misstatement of fact! Just unbelievably staggering!

[applegrove]

293. Why. How do you think all those people died? Murders went up to

30 a night in Baghdad as the insurgency really got rolling. That is 10,000 a year in Baghdad. For three years that is 30,000 in Baghdad. You don't think insurgency in the rest of the country is responsible for the other 70,000 or 150,000?

Only a few thousand people were killed during the invasion. US has not shot that many families at checkpoints. And as Rummy keeps complaining... the Sunnis will never form battalions so they can be mowed down in great numbers.

Yes it is caused by the US invasion. The tool being used is the insurgents.

[davekriss]

298. American bombs and bullets...

...are responsible for approximately 100,000 deaths. If the insurgency is responsible for another 100,000 more, than all the more tragic this unnecessary war brought to you by George Walker Bush and the Republican congress.

[applegrove]

300. Well. USA was not out at night on the nights that 30 murder a night

started arrived at the Baghdad morgue.

[okasha]

316. Uhmm, the wife of a "suicide monster/bomber"

is a widow.

[applegrove]

317. There you go. I said she had more serious issue to deal with

than being locked up for two days. She is in a war. So are her kids. And her whole neighbourhood. I'm sorry she is a widow. Sorrier still many people in her town are.

I simply feel the insurgents are being used as a tool by the neocons. To keep the war going. I want it to end.

[davekriss]

102. How do you know the husband is a "suicide bomber"?

You draw that conclusion from the Yahoo article? Do you have insider knowledge that the rest of us don't? Or are you simply exhibiting blind faith that US forces would never arrest the nursing wife of an innocent man?

You say there is value in questioning the wife. That is what they are doing? No. According to the Yahoo link they are kidnapping these wives in order to surface their husbands. That is not "questioning". And just what kind of questioning do you have in mind? Tie the wife in stress positions for a day or two? Waterboarding? What?

You do know that many of the tortured at Abu Ghraib were simply young men rounded up in sweeps meant to terrorize the local population into surrendering "insurgents" to the occupation forces? That's part of the Salvadorean solution brought to Iraq by the good and decent John Negroponte, which in addition to Death Squads means to terrorize a population into passive, broken acceptance of the occupying power.

So I wouldn't jump to a conclusion that these women were guilty by association or complicity as you seem to do here. Meanwhile, I would question the morality of our actions. I do not think, even in a war, that we can commit atrocities against another population, and those that commit and permit atrocities should be tried for crimes against humanity, just as they were in Nurembergh. Does kidnapping the spouse of a suspected insurgent rise to the level of a crime against humanity? Maybe. I am concerned. You should be too.

(What the military seems to be doing is the equivalent of seizing John Giotti's wife, imprisoning her without charge, in order to get at Giotti. Do you condone that?)

[applegrove]

106. He is a leader of the insurgency. The insurgents are not attacking

US army barracks with an army. They are attacking and bombing civilians. Sometimes with guns in the night - to get at enemies, other factions or people they do no like, sometimes suicide bombs. Very little soldier to insurgent combat.

Very sad.

[okasha]

315. Where is your information about the husband coming from?

Because it sure as hell isn't in the news story. As far as I can tell, the husband who kills "dozens" of people a week exists nowhere except in your imagination.

[Rose Siding]

90. It sounds like you are certain that her husband is a murderer

90% of the detainees at Abu Ghraib were guilty of no crime, according to the military itself.

We shouldn't be so quick to buy what's being sold by those who have such a record of error.

I agree when you write: "YOu don't bring a baby into war." But remember, she didn't bring her baby into a war. We did.

[applegrove]

97. I think the intel on who the "leaders" are of any insurection is usually

really good. Better certainly that the people they scooped up at the start of the war and then tortured at Abu Graib.

[davekriss]

107. And you base this on?

You might be right, and I'd be glad to hear it, but I ask what you base this assertion on?

[applegrove]

111. The leaders of a movement need followers. The followers need a leader.

It usually forms into a hierachical format. With many, many people at the bottom and all the way up the tree - and a few at the top.

That means more people. That means more chance for intel.

When has anyone been wrong - in any battle or war - about the who the leaders are? Three years into the insurgency - they probably know.

[Rose Siding]

164. How do you know this guy was a leader?

In reporting about this 04 event (2 yrs into the war), the article described this woman's husband as "suspect", and "primary target", not as a leader of the insurgency.

[applegrove]

176. DId I say their only weapons are turning people into bombs and

this guy is still not a bomb after 3 years? Yup - he's a leader. An officer at least.

[Rose Siding]

154. I don't share your faith

Just this month-

US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1682207,00.html

And in the broader WOT-

U.S. posts wrong photo of ‘al-Qaida operative’
After year and a half, wrong man's photo removed from wanted page
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11042211/

Upthread you implied a justification, in that she knew about her husband's alleged activities. However, that's not the militiary's stated reason. She was held as "leverage". As I understand it, that would make her a hostage.

snip>
In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

"During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/27/AR2006012700921.html

[applegrove]

160. Then our assumptions & faith is different. So be it.

[FlaGranny]

8. Having engorged breasts

is PHYSICAL torture, aside from the mental anguish of having your baby taken away. If you know how painful THAT is and still feel like that, well then, is torture really okay with you?

[Ilsa]

9. And you know they did nothing to help her with that. No

privacy for manual expression, no manual pumps. I?f anything happened to her baby, she might have become depressed enough to turn into a suicide bomber herself.

[sproutster]

12. Right on it took 9 posts before thought crimes was brought up.

[Canuckistanian]

10. I'm sorry, this is bothering me

Is this whole post supposed to be satirical?

It's early for me, maybe my brain isn't working.

[applegrove]

18. Part of it is satirical. I cannot believe the worst thing going on in this

woman's life is that she had to stop breast-feeding her baby. Her husband lures children and depressed men into blowing themselves up all day long. And he kills civilians all day long. I think she has the stomach for quite a lot. I think they'll be able to get some formula to her. It really will not crowd out the budget for TNT.

[Canuckistanian]

23. I think you're taking a huge leap in logic here

Do you know for a fact that the husband is actually guilty as charged? In absence of evidence (sorry, military reports are not reliable evidence) , you're believing the worst about him.

They've got it wrong before. Usually about 85% of the time.

[applegrove]

26. Well the original poster was assuming the woman knew nothing

of her husband's murderous activities or the danger to her family - and that being separated from her baby would be the only trauma or potential trauma in her life. She is also assuming that it is the only danger in her babies life - that it doesn't get to breast feed.

Breast feeding is good and life saving in the first few days and beyong for the baby. It is terribly important. The bond between mother and child - irriplaceable. But I assume cutting short the time the woman gets to breast feed - is not the most serious thing happening in this woman's life.

I just assume the wife has a few more dangerous things going on in her life and in the lives of her kids - and she should get on that shit right away.

[Canuckistanian]

30. Again, I ask you. How are you so sure the husband is guilty?

applegrove, you've been around DU for longer than I have. You should know instinctively not to trust these kind of reports. I could cite numerous examples of false imprisonments and false accusations against innocent Iraqis.

I simply cannot believe that you're spouting the Bill O'Reilly line that all detainees are automatically guilty.

The only thing I can come up with is that you're not really applegrove.

[applegrove]

36. I am Applegrove. Don't say that! I am not. I just don't think that the

biggest issue here is that baby didn't get to breast feed for an extra 6 months. I'm not at all worried that mom went through pain. I think the issue is that baby might die - cause daddy is keeping a war going. And there is a tendency of drones to spy on baby's house. And we know what that means.

Do ya get!

Maybe because they arrested her - dadddy will decide never - ever to visit, and so a drone will never see a man who could be mistaken from him going into the house - and the baby will live to be an adult.

Do ya see where I am comig from?

This woman's worst problem isn't that her breasts hurt or that she was questioned. Or that the baby didn't get to breatfeed for a few more months. There are bigger problems - bigger issues - in the family.

[davekriss]

113. Applegrove

Despite the OP highlighting the particular discomfit and humiliation of wresting a baby from a nursing mom while she is taken into custody, I think the Yahoo article is more about the issue of kidnapping wives in order to surface suspect husbands. Is this something we want our military to engage in?

[applegrove]

122. Would you expect them to do more or less to win the war? The war

is awful? Is detaining a wife when they would detain any associate of the husband.. is that really so out of the ordinary? If they figure out the wife - they figure out a little bit about the husband. Maybe it didn't work for them. Maybe that is why we have had a spate of kidnappings.

My point is simply that the biggest issue this woman faces is not being detained and having that special breatfeeding bond between mother and baby severed early.

I agree - policy on wives and women with babies being detained should be looked into.

I just think that if your husbad is at war - there are other issues in your life more serious than you being detained. One - your husband could be a war criminal (and it sounds like he is). Two, your whole dam family could be killed - all your children. Three, you are keeping a war going that is really killing people and making millions of others suffer.

Trust me. I would feel the same way if Lynne Cheney were to happen to take a wrong turn and end up detained for a few days in Iraq. She's not exactly innocent.

[davekriss]

143. OK

I can see where you're coming from, and it is not as preposterous as it first sounds. You are mostly objecting to the emotionalism of the OP.

As far as "keeping a war going" -- all acts of war are evil. Think for a moment of the movie Saving Private Ryan. I can not think of a situation more pervertedly evil than when that older German soldier slowly pushes his knife into the chest of the younger American GI. But the soldier himself is not guilty of the evil, and that brings us to another matter.

Every evil act is evil despite good ends, there is no such thing as "the means are justified by the ends". In the case above, that evil act falls to the moral ledger of somebody, but in the case above it falls to the Third Reich, to Hitler himself, for engaging in aggressive unjust war.

So when our soldiers arrest and detain a nursing mother who happens to have a "suspected" insurgent leader for a husband, it is an evil act, but who's ledger does that evil fall to? To a large part right in the lap of George Bush and his Regime, for they lied American into an unnecessary war to achieve ends that benefit their cabal, their base, not even to benefit the families and friends of the people who unfortunately have to fight the war.

Every soldier asked to commit an atrocity, however, should remember Nurembergh. Doing one's duty does not absolve them of their share of guilt. No matter how difficult it is to say "no".

[applegrove]

167. But I think being detained as the wife of a leader of the war (takes two)

is not as detestable as torture. Or killing.

The worst thing about the war is that it goes on.

That is the worst thing about the neocons. Is that they like war to go on. They see opportunity in crisis or war. And they do very little to diminish the human toll. So - I'd rather see the war end. The hardship going on in this woman's community (or the community where he husband is waging war) is also taken into account. In my mind.

[davekriss]

178. Agreed on all points

THe whole modus operandi of the Republican Party has been to NOT solve problems, but exploit them. Notice Roe v. Wade and the issue of abortion. The last thing they want to do is solve that, it has served as so important a lever in various election campaigns. Ditto Osama Bin Laden. He needs to stay free, as he serves as the symbolic OTHER on the horizon that they can exploit with fear to gain votes and power.

However, I do think the neocons wanted success in Iraq, but only so they could march on to Syria and Iran (and, who knows, maybe China too -- it was one of the nations slated for "regime change" in "Rebuilding America's Defenses").

But then, even on this, you might be right. Bush can still rally America around the "need" to stay the course to victory; he loses this rallying call if indeed victory is had.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments molt and regroup, hydra-headed. They first use flags to shrink-wrap peoples' minds and suffocate real thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to cloak the mangled corpses of the willing dead.
-- Arundhati Roy

[applegrove]

193. Read Assasin's Gate. The author goes 3/4 of the way. And let's

us decide for ourselves. That portion of the neocon doctrine that is never talked about - what is it exactly? Social revolution. And why does getting humans into bad spots for long periods of time - why is that such an important part?

[Lone_Star_Dem]

131. I think that what some of the poster are wondering is how you can assume

that her husband was A) guilty as they claimed. And B) that he was a "leader" of the terrorist.

I've read the emails from the ACLU's FOIA and I've read the original torture FOIA report also. All I saw mentioned about this case was that she and her brother were detained. They state that the brother had information that they thought would lead them to the husband and that they didn't think the woman did. They chose to use her to lure her husband to them anyway. Her brother and she were both released two days later.

For one thing this type of detention is against the Geneva Convention, isn't it? Or are we also now disregarding that 'quaint' document?

For another they never say if the husband was anything other than a "suspected terrorist" how has this morphed into he's a Leader of the Terroristic Movement? Has someone made a statement that I've not seen yet?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

144. Not only is it against the Geneva convention, it's against the UCMJ,

the Uniformed Code of Military Justice that governs all military personnel in war and peacetime. I provided the relevant citation twice in this thread.

Post number 84 on this thread.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

169. I had missed that post

Thank you for pointing it out to me. I learned even more about how wrong this action was.

[phylny]

331. Please, please! Do not confuse us with

the bare-boned facts!

Remember, whether or not it is against policy, it's probably not the worst thing in this woman's life!! Therefore, it's all good!

:sarcasm:

[applegrove]

145. Well if he's still alive after two three years - he aint strapping on the

bombs himself. I thought they said wives of leaders.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

166. No. It never says wives of leaders

Only wives of suspected terrorist. Considering our track record of torturing, and even murdering, suspected terrorist w/o any real proof as to their alleged crimes, I'm not ready to cast any stones at this woman for her choice of a husband. And is that something that she even got to choose or was it a decision that was made for her?

As I also mentioned above, and Mayberry Machiavelli has pointed out to you, this type of detention is not legal even if her husband were what they claimed he was.

Just so you know she fought them when they tired to remove her from her children. I can't say that I blame her either, as far as she knew she was never going to see them again.

[applegrove]

177. I'm not casting stones. I'm saying the worst of her problems is not that

she was detained for three days. She's in the middle of a war. Her kids are targets. Her husband could easily be a war criminal.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

185. Yes, her life is in turmoil

If it takes the fact that she was a nursing mother to get peoples attention then so be it. This was mentioned on my local news last night the tone of the story was 'poor mother'. Many women can associate with the fact that she was removed from her nursing baby. I know it seems trivial compared to what else she's been forced to endure, but this makes her pain seem more real to many western women who otherwise can't conceive of what her life must be like.

If this in any way helps lift a tiny bit of the fog from America's delicate eyes about what is really taking place in our names, what harm can that do?

[applegrove]

196. I hear ya. I was intolerant. I hate war. Especially those who intentionall

y and with aggressive intentions - extend it for years and years and years.

[High Plains]

279. Not every insurgent is a suicide bomber, Applegrove

[applegrove]

287. They spend a good deal of time killing other factions or civilians

in the neighbourhoods at night. Over 100,000+ civilians have died since the American invasion. It is not the invasion or the present American forces who are doing most of the killing of civilians. It is the insurgency.

Rummy is responsible. Neocons too. So are the insurgent leaders.

[Tsiyu]

329. Not at all worried about her pain

That's pretty obvious, Pal.

[applegrove]

334. Saving my compassion for those actually victimized by insurgents

& Rummy.

[Tsiyu]

335. And this one woman is responsible for all deaths by insurgents?

Do you have any clue about this woman's life except that which you've read in news articles?

Do you know if her husband abuses her, or if she is urging people to stop fighting or if she is just so stressed and traumatized from war she has no clue which end is up anymore and just WHO the enemy really is?

What we have on this mother is mere hearsay. She is not here to defend herself. Unless you are some divine entity who knows all and sees all, you seem rather non - progressive to have such selective compassion without having all the facts.

[sproutster]

11. 90% of the detainees are said to be innocent.

My problem is that sociopaths such as yourself couch yourselves in patriotic colors and call it all good.

My problem is that if you had to face the same circumstances you would fight for the occupation of your country completely and directly opposite of your stance now?

Or would you welcome the liberators with open arms?

[applegrove]

13. I'm not a sociopath. Sorry. I would not have a baby sitting in a house

in Iraq with me and all the other kids if my husband was out suicide bombing all day long. Would you? You wouldn't take your kids and go somewhere else?

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[applegrove]

20. Leaders of the insurgency. Who rarely bomb US occupied buildings and spend

lots of their time bombing mosques and roadsides. Using teens and poor and the desperate as missiles. To kill poor, and kids & civilians.

[proud2BlibKansan]

70. So do you propose she hire a private jet and leave?

Or maybe Greyhound?

You assume she has CHOICES??

[applegrove]

72. If her husband has access to millions of dollars of TNT - she's probably

not suffering in the money department. Not like many of the people in her neighbourhood. She may be doing quite well. That often happens in war. The officer's families live high. Everyone else in the war is starving or desperate.

One would think this lady would be desperate, and desperate for survival and desperate to keep her children safe.

[proud2BlibKansan]

83. And you are sure he has access to all these millions of dollars?

Tell me something, do you also support the torture that went on at abu graib?

[applegrove]

86. No. Not millions. She is living better than everyone else in her town.

War is like that. Have you not noticed that the famlies of soldiers are not doing as well as Rummy or Cheney or McCain?

That is the way it is. The war goes on - other people suffer more than her. All she has to worry about is a bomb that willl take out the whole family. Dropped on her house by any number of groups.

As to Abu Graib? I was shocked. Less worried that some man had to wear a funny cape in prison than I was upset that it meant rendering and water-boarding were likely really going on. Cause there had been rumours of those more painful types of torture going on. But until Abu Graib - I didn't know whether to believe it or not.

Dogs bad. Genital humiliation bad. All of it was bad at Abu Graib. But again. For more worried about the pictures we didn't see. We of course know now that 100 people died in custody at least. Glad some people went to jail. Not high enough up the ladder. Someone in the WH should be on trial too.

[proud2BlibKansan]

91. How do you know all this about her standard of living?

I didn't get that from the posted article.

[applegrove]

98. The leaders families are always doing well. Resources are poured

towards the war effort. Civilians suffer but somehow - the families of especially the leaders do not. I read a book on Iraq. Assasin's gate. Iraqis do have access to some stuff. But in the poorer - real war torn areas - people are suffering a great deal.

[davekriss]

116. "husband has access to millions of dollars"

Got a link? ;)

[applegrove]

124. I don't think the leaders of the insurgency are using potatoe battery

fuel cells to blow up humvees and tanks. They have access to guns and light artillery and serious explosives.


Usually the leaders of the war are celebrities. And they get rich that way if not by a special budget to care for them. They do better than those around them.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

137. applegrove has provided NO citations for any of the statements being

made here, aside from telling one poster to go read a book.

[applegrove]

149. I just meant read "Assasin's Gate for a take on what it is like for people

on the ground in Iraq. Those neighbourhoods with the factional insurgencies - are really having a rough go. People are getting hurt and raped and civilians killed. All the time. And it isn't the US that is doing that.

The shorter the war. The better. Why are we not complaining about the brother? He went to jail for a few days. Why isn't he being worried about?

[High Plains]

281. You read a book.

That's no excuse for apologizing for US war crimes.

[applegrove]

288. I think the bigger crime is going in and not having enough troops

to ensure security. Letting the insurgency - which was completely predictable - happen. Firing the army and the police at all levels. God - it is awful. Like Rummy wants to smash the living daylights out of the Iraqi pshychi - in a way only 10 years of war will do - and he is using the "development" of insurgents to do the job.

Well if someone is trying to dial it down - I'm glad.

[High Plains]

322. Right, I'd be shopping in Paris.

Gee, Applegrove, maybe her Visa card is maxed out. Sheesh.

[applegrove]

325. The people not in the hierarchy - in the middle of a war zone - suffer

terribly.

[applegrove]

19. I'm not patriotic. Or socipathic. I am outraged that we weep for a woman

who got put in jail because her husband is a leader of suicide bombers who coop teens and men & women to kill themselves and civilians all day long. I'm pissed off that we are so concerned with her being forced to stop breast feeding her baby. Yes it hurts. So does breast feeding often. But the least of this woman's problems is that she was arrested. She is involved in terrorism. And if she is not - then she will be let go. Perhaps she didn't know a damned thing. Now she does. Hopefully she will move away from the asshole with all her kids so none of them die in retalitorial, or US bombings. At least now she knows what her husband is up to. Now she can actually PROTECT THE KIDS FROM DEATH! Then again - maybe it was a price she was always willing to pay.

[sproutster]

29. Oh now her husband is a leader?

Wow, well why don't we do this to american criminals?

BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING WRONG. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

[applegrove]

32. If there was an american criminal suicide bombing 5 people a day -

the wife would be in jail if she new something and wouldn't talk. And if she was breastfeeding her baby - it would not be with her in prison.

You are assuming they had the wrong person. If the wife knew nothing (seems strange she would not be aware of extra security precautions around her house by the clan) - now she does. Yippee! Move your kids from house to house lady cause there is a 20% chance your house will be bombed by one of many factions or the US of A in the next 5 years.

[sproutster]

35. Isn't there a little law... (could be outdated)

Spouses cannot testify against their partners.

[applegrove]

37. I think when civilians are being murdered every day by terrorism -

I don't think they care about that type of nicety in a war. There is a war going on. Someone told me to have compassion for this lady fighting for her country - sure - if you send the kids away and stop using manipulated people as missles to bomb civilians.

[sproutster]

39. LOL laws = nicety? WOW are you in the wrong place.

Torture begats torture, deaths, humiliation, degradation, inhumanity, and terrorists.

Keep on keeping on.

[applegrove]

41. Was she tortured?

[sproutster]

43. Yes she was. You cannot separate a mother from her breastfed infant

AND NOT CALL IT TORTURE.

Wake up and smell your humanity.

[applegrove]

46. Happens every day in the USA. Do you know how many incarcerated

females in the USA give birth and then are separated from their babies? All of them!

[sproutster]

49. Actually laws are being enacted for breastfeeding. Google if you dare.

GUESS WHAT THE REASONING IS?

[applegrove]

57. That it is vitally important for both the mother and baby in the first few

months. I know.

They also have had laws on the books about suicide bombings and killing civilians. Those horrid acts have been on the books for hundreds of years. Cause they are much more obviously detrimental to society.

[sproutster]

61. You forgot the entry on torture and kidnap. Geneva Conventions are quaint

[applegrove]

74. What of the people who are starving in her neighbourhood because

her husband is at war? Why is he at war? He doesn't want to vote in the elections. A majority of relitious shiites won.

Don't know why the husband wants to manipulate desperate people to turn themselves into missiles that will then kill civilians and some 19 year old soldiers.

I still stay the woman has a great deal more to worry about than being detained. And being separated from a child - who she now has to stop breastfeeding early.

[sproutster]

76. How can they be starving, didn't you assure us the baby had PLENTY?

What will you have your wife do if we become occupied? Where is safe? Just curious - I know you will evade this question because what is going on in iraq will begin to make sense.

[applegrove]

80. I said her neighbours could be starving and struggling terribly for

the insurgency the husband is running. That is what war is often like. You don't think that the leader's kids are at risk from rickets or dehydration.. they are usually doing better than most. So her husband has a war of his own, her neighbours are likely not doing as well as she is, and her kids are in danger of being bombed.

That is why I say - her worst problem is not the fractured nature of how the breat-feeding stopped. But the WAR - her husband wants.

[sproutster]

129. Ohh... She's living in riches and her neighbors are starving

LOL Why don't I believe that?

[applegrove]

150. Read Assasin's gate. The neighbourhoods with the insurgencies

and lack of security are suffering the most. They are.

[davekriss]

205. O I thought for a moment you were talking about George Bush!

After all, George Bush lied and misled and deceived us into an unnecessary war that has already cost American's $250+ billion and is likely, in the end, going to cost upwards of $1 to $2 trillion.

Interest rates will rise ... the dollar will decline in value ... as $1 to $2 trillion is shunted off to pay the interest and principle on the borrowed money (and who has money today to buy the vast majority of these bonds?). These trillions otherwise could have been invested to improve American education, or provide healthcare for all. Instead they're gone in a flash over the city of Baghdad, while the owners of our military-industrial machine just go giddy when they count how many dollars each replacement bomb means to them!

How many jobs will be lost because of this redirect of future American funds? Do you count them, too, when passing moral judgement on the spouse of a kidnapped wife of whom you know very little?

Save your indignant tone for George Bush, please, on whom this whole mess can rightly be blamed.

[applegrove]

213. I blame all the warmongers. All of them. Including the ones in Iraq.

[High Plains]

282. This is some sick reasoning, Applegrove.

You want to make the husband of this woman responsible for the entire insurgency. You don't have any more idea of his role than I do, but you read a book and now you're an expert. Tell it to the Freepers.

[applegrove]

289. I have more sympathy for the civilians and the woman's children than

I do for her or her husband. Yes it is true. The context of the insurgency. It is war. In each neighbourhood where there are insurgents. Each case is a case of aggressive war. Her husband benefits. Thousands die. All innocent.

Yeah - I hope the US army can dial down the wars. They've been shoved a whole lot a bull and one of the biggest pieces of bull shit is likely that the neocons actually want peace quickly. WE are in YEAR THREE. NEOCONS PROMISED A TEN YEAR WAR. I BET they want it. I'm not going to stand by and clap for this woman who is married to a man who is going to carry out Rummy's plans.

I'd like the war to end.

[applegrove]

42. Are you not aware the USA is at war in Iraq? That people get arrested

every day. That quite a few less get blown up for being kids.

[davekriss]

197. Absolutely!

Hatred ever kills, love never dies such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
-- Ghandi

[applegrove]

201. I like Ghandi's quotes. Hear he was a little bit of a pervert. Though

maybe that is CIA.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

206. You got a citation for THAT? You seem to have worse coherence,

and spelling, with each new post.

[applegrove]

217. Yes. I'm responding to everyone here. Caused quite a stir. I think I

am at 100 posts in this single thread.

Yes read a book on Ghandi. And was in love with him. At the end it said - at the end of his life - he liked to sleep with children (not touch them) but even the author thought it was wrong and a signed of a repressed something (Ghandi was celibate after his coversion). Sorry - you quoted Ghandi so much - I thought you knew. I just read the one book on him. So he wasn't a molester. Just a little odd.

sorry.

I doubt not one wit that I make no more sense and the spelling has gone from bad to worse.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

218. Have you got an author and book name?

[applegrove]

235. Naomi Klien - The Nation has done some good stuff. Al Franken. Everything

put in the editorial section of the DU?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

237. These people wrote about Gandhi being a pederast?

[applegrove]

251. No - sorry you and I have changed topics. No - they are the people I

cite when I talk about insurgency and wrong headed Neocons invasions. Sorry. You were asking about Ghandi and it was a biography that was really thin - about 200 pages or less. Part of a collection of three or four books. All paperbacks. Really cheap. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it was Tim LaHaye or some asshole who wrote that particular biography - why I said - maybe cia when I sited that fact - because like I said - I so admired ghandi all the way through the book (never saw movie) that I was like "dam no" when I came across that paragraph. So look for a cheap less than 200 page biography of ghandi or research it yourself.

It was never insinuated that he was anything but a dirty old man - no touching or assault - just a little creepyness. Enough for me. Sorry.

Get back to me if you find out. I imagine if it is an untrue rumour - it would be tackled by his fans and author authors.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

253. Why would it be on ME to dig this up and find out, when I'm not even

confident that there is any such book or assertion?

"Get back to me when you find out" indeed.

[applegrove]

257. You took great offence. I likely should have kept that "ew ghandi "

experience to myself if I was not prepared to back it up. Sorry. You are right. Ignore me on that. Like I said - a cheap set of books.

[H2O Man]

305. Gandhi.

Considering your spelling error, the following error is not surprising. Gandhi did not sleep with children. There is something to what you are speaking about, but it is not children.

[applegrove]

311. Sorry - young women. I was out of sorts. He was an odd duck at that

time in his life.

[sproutster]

211. ... Anything I say is simply an insult at this point. I am beyond

logical discourse. For you to describe one of the greatest freedom fighters as such is simply too much. I am done with this discussion.

My view is clear, and I would love to see more coverage on the central topic of this thread. And that is the experience of a mother being separated from her breastfed infant. It is a case of kidnapping and torture that the average american woman will instinctually understand and will not condone.

I will say I am very heartened that there was one voice of outrageous opposition (imo).

[applegrove]

223. Sorry. You seem to think the husband is an innocent. He isn't. And the

people in his neighbourhood suffer. Insurgents try and kill the local police (do you know what it is like to live without police). I understand the bond between mother and child. I understand it as a hugely important relationship - one of many deep bonds. I think that people are dying all around this woman. So there is so much disruption going on in the lives around her - because of the choices her husband makes or has made - that I really don't think gettng picked up and going to jail is the worst she should expect. There are many more types of horrors going on around her.

And the worst thing the USA did wasn't arrest someone on something half true for two days - the worst thing the USA did was go into war and tear up the battle plans, ignore the generals advice - ALL OF IT! And do a "humanitarian intervetion" half assed. With half the troops. So the insurgency even developed and took off. That - is inexcusable.

Shakking the tree to get some likely war criminal to turn himself in - where he will be locked up until a peace deal is signed and then he will go free to skip on with his life - that is not so harsh.

What is going on in that woman's neighbourhood WAR is alot worse than jail. It is a much bigger crime.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

224. It's not just disgusting, it's GRATUITOUSLY inflammatory, not even related

to the main topic of the thread, thus feeding the suspicion that the purpose is to disrupt.

[applegrove]

239. No I'm not trying to disrupt. At this point I am just tyring to answer all

your questions. I took offense at the painting of an insurgent's wife as some innocent who would have the feelings of the average american woman - and I'm sorry - she is at war. Her husband is making war - there are lots of things she has to think about that are more serious. Like how to keep her children safe. How does she feel about the horrors her neighbours for 1/2 hour in each direction living in fear - when she is safe (cause she is connected).

I hate people who start and keep up war. And I don't think the wives should be treated different than anyone else in his possy. Maybe they could have put her in a house somewhere with the baby. Maybe they are not allowed to put a baby in custody. Maybe they suspected the husband of killing forty people in the last year. That is enough. Stop him.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

241. What is gratuitously inflammatory is your making unsupported comments

about Gandhi being a pedophile, when Gandhi is not even the subject of the thread.

[applegrove]

258. Sorry. You quoted Ghandi a few times - I was reminded at my shock

at the end of his biography. I should have been prepared to proove that to you. I am not today. I have too much clarification to do only my negative feelings towards insurgents, neocons and war-mongers in general.

[davekriss]

231. Huh? (eom)

[applegrove]

244. She started a thread on the sanctity of motherhood. I blew it away

with my feelings on mothers whose husbands contrive and enable war. I understand her anger at me. I thought I was being opinionated a bit. But not as much as it blew.

I've since tried to be open and explain my feelings. And cite where I've read what I've read.

And I'm having a hard time being concise or precise because I am responding to so many people at once.

[davekriss]

270. Understand

I think part of the reason you are getting an onslaught of responses though is your posts seem to reveal hidden prejudices toward the Iraqi people, a tendency toward conclusions of fact without supporting evidence. I acknowledged earlier that I see you were responding to the emotionalism of the OP. I see that you wanted to place the circumstance in its wider context. But this "wider context" does not, we say (those of us responding to you), justify the act.

It's not that the U.S. military separated a mother from her nursing baby, it's that this reveals that the U.S. military is engaging in kidnaping and detention of spouses of suspected insurgents, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Geneva Conventions.

Mayberry Machiavelli, on post #84, already highlights the relevant passage from the UCMJ (809. ART. 9. IMPOSITION OF RESTRAINT Section d). I suggest you google up a text of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, to which the United States is a party, and search for "hostages". An example of the response you'll find (and there are several) is: "Art. 34. The taking of hostages is prohibited."

So, on what basis does the U.S. military have the right to kidnap spouses of suspected insurgents? If there is no probable cause (and the Yahoo article offers none other than the unfortunate fact that the women married these men), then the soldiers are in violation of the UCMJ, a very serious violation.

If, on the other hand, the women are siezed in order to coerce action from their spouses, then this is an act of hostage taking, in violation of the aforementioned Article 34 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

If your claim (or US claim) is that the insurgents are "enemy combatants" and, thus, by trick of words not covered by the Geneva Convention, then they're still in violation of the UCMJ, but I challenge you to find any law or written policiy permitting this behavior. It is a violation of treaty, or law, and of morality.

The soldiers engaging in it are committing a war crime, albeit not of the most serious kind. It should not be done, we should be indignant, we should do what we can in our "democracy" to see it ended.

[applegrove]

276. I want the war to end. And all the people who use killing & war as a

means to an end to be halted. You are right. I do find it odd that a woman whose husband has so damaged the people who are in his neighbourhood that some of them have PTSD, are murdered for no reason, have to sign up with some wacky belief system to get protection because insurgents kill police and the US army gets rid of them.

It is like the neocons at one end and the insurgents at the other end are doing a dance - and everyone along the way are just puppets. Like the neocons want to use the insurgents as a weapon to smash any will for anything out of the hearts of Iraqis - so this war will go on underfunded, undermanned with the WH playing "oh no - not again - what fools we are - incompetent - man are we incompetent" for years and years and more years. Two world wars ended Europe's long powerlust & war-mongering. Why woudlnt' neocons have the same plans for the middle east? So the US army - all 100,000 18 year olds - they sit around undermanned and try and try and try and make an inroad and catch one guy - and then another and convince them to drop the insurgency in their town, and then they move on to the next town. And it is going so slow. And I think it is meant to.

I don't have much patience for a fundie preacher who teaches hate and lives in luxury as he passes along hate of gays and liberals and dances like a neocon puppet.

Neocons require some evil in the world to get on with what they want to get in on with. They trust in a bin Laden, and insurgents, and all we are seeing is more anger in the middle east. And I'm not sure this ain't part of the neocon plan.

I'm not sure Iran was not supposed to be baited - but only a long insurgency that cost Iran so much money it wasn't easy pickings. And here they go. Will the neocons decide in their wisdom to dial it up or dial it down?

Well here were some soldiers in Iraq. Who are really trying to dial it down (the insurgency). Whether or not it is the master plan of neocons and Rumsfield - ending the insurgency now - these soldiers are doing their best and working their hardest to end the war and have peace in Iraq. They are soldiers. Tell them a myth - they'll carry it out the same as the truth.

I wish all the evil characters and the necessary foils - that allow neocons to thrive - and dial up a whole world of trouble - I want them all to shut the fuck up and go home. I want the fundies rich preacher asshole who hates gays and scapegoats every day he stands by the pulpit - I want him to go home too. And I don't like the preacher's wife either! And you know what - if they grabbed her and put her in jail for two days because they wanted her husband for massive hate crimes against gays... I'd say that was technically wrong & brutal. But yeah - arrest his ass and shut him down.

[davekriss]

194. Maybe they will stop...

..."using manipulated people as missles to bomb civilians" when we stop manipulating our 18 year olds into straffing anything that moves in order to bring the no-longer-moving our flavor of "democracy"!

[applegrove]

198. The biggest attrocity the USA comitted was not enough troops to keep

the peace. So that the 18 years olds would be in control and not so scarred they shoot at cars.

[davekriss]

229. I don't agree with that...

...the biggest atrocity the USG committed was the aggressive war itself. Just recall the 16 words of the SOTU and there should be no argument. Bush and Cheney knowingly inflated the threat of WMD and conflated Iraq with Al Qaeda and 9-11 in order to maufacture consent (really, steamroll through manufactured passivity) for a war that didn't have to be fought.

[applegrove]

260. I worked for human rights organization for a bit and Saddam Hussein was

really a danger to his people. A danger that was ignored for such a long time. I think the UN should be given its own army and power to go into places when it needs to. They know what they are doing and they don't experiment with people's lives like the neocons do. Everything a grand new laboratory for them.

[davekriss]

275. Who has killed more innocent Iraqi civilians...

...the U.S. or Saddam Hussein?

[applegrove]

292. Saddam killed 500,000. A few million if you count the Iran Iraq War.

U.S. may get up there and be responsible for another 500,000 civilian deaths if this insurgency is allowed to go on. Which it is. I think Rummy said it would take 10 years. That would probably be 500,000.

He's not using the US army to bash in the psychis of the Iraqis to hobble them till the end of time. He's using the insurgents. And they will take the blame for the civilian deaths. And what the US army is doing if nothing else is keeping armies from the middle east from getting in to get control. Insurgency for 10 years? Nope. Not acceptable. I'm sure the truth neocons sit on is nowhere near the surface in the order of the troops. They've been told to fight for peace (with wholely inadequate numbers). So they are trying to dial it down.

Dialing down insurgency good. Not dialing down insurgency genocide. 100,000 people die a year for every year the insurgency goes on.

Two bad ends of the same coin. USA will kill 500,000 civilians and the insurgents will be the tool they use to do it. And the point of the neocons? Maybe to draw others into war in the middle east. To tire Iraqis out. To scare the wits out of all Arabs? Who gives a shit. They went to war and did everything possible to have and insurgency.

I'd like to see the war end.

[High Plains]

285. How about starting the goddamned war in the first place?

Your colors are showing, Applegrove.

[applegrove]

294. My colors aren't showing. I bought into Powell's speech like a lot of

people. I know now the neocons a little more. I want the war to end. Neocons are using the insurgency - which they let happen - to bash the hell out of the Iraqis. So psychically - they'll never be up to anything but living quiet lives. Don't know why?

But the insurgents are very deadly tools. I want the war to end.

Maybe the tool the insurgents are is something as simple as tutoring Mercains in how to live comfortably with wars going on around the world in their names. "See war can be fun guys". Maybe that is why Rummy didn't go in with enough troops. Could be. Neocons are obsessed with the British in the 1880s. And they loved war.

This is why the insurgency was allowed to happen. Why at every turn Rummy makes bad decisions in Iraq. Why the police and army were fired. Why never enough troops.

Could be. This whole insurgency. One long term lesson in how to have the psychi the 15 neocons think all Americans should have. How else do you sell perpetual war. Since that is their plan for the future. Other than to teach people how to love. it.

I want it to end.

[jbnow]

318. Be careful suggesting wives of war leaders

be arrested. People will think you want Mrs. bush, Mrs. cheney and so on arrested.

[Sapphire Blue]

321. ...

See post 182 & subsequent replies.

[applegrove]

326. Obviously not. My point is that if Laura wondered into insurgency

central in Baghdad - would we or would we not expect her to be incarcerated? Just using it as a point of argument. Obviously it has no bearing on reality.

Saddam Hussein's daughters were questions and under detention when they arrived in Jordan (or where-ever).

[LSK]

108. SUSPECTED

YOU KNOW FUCKING DAMN WELL ITS NEAR IMPOSSIBLE FOR OUR SOLDIERS TO DETERMINE WHOS AN INSURGENT AND WHO ISNT.

FUCK!

[applegrove]

112. They know who the leaders are though. That is much easier to tell.

[sproutster]

126. Do they have "I AM A LEADER" on their foreheads?

Good to know.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

130. The US military generally "knows" these things, like with the WMD.

[sproutster]

139. True - unlike untrustworthy memos re: airplane terrorists.

Mah faith hath been restored!!

[applegrove]

189. Throughout history - in most insurgencies. They know who the upper

echelons are.

[davekriss]

192. So full of facts, so few annotated

Applegrove: "...husband is a leader of suicide bombers who coop teens and men & women to kill themselves and civilians all day long. ... She is involved in terrorism. ..."

Um, got a link?

I think your tendency to so quickly conclude as fact things not mentioned in the Yahoo article reveals your tendency to trust in our State to, well, at least try to do the right thing in all circumstances. It reveals your belief that we are the shining city on the hill and ignores our actual history of violence that continuously emanates from our nation towards most of the world as we strive to impose the will of our elites.

(Yes, I have links! However, just google up Zinn and Chomsky and Blum!)

We are not the shining city on the hill, the shine has been bismirched by mud and sand and blood almost upon our nation's inception.

[applegrove]

199. Oh I know you are not. But the insurgents are not princes. Maybe some

of them actually are. But they are really doing some damage to the towns they run in - and they intentionally kill police or anyone who tries to get control - and the people in those specific neighbourhoods have a bad time of it and people get murdered by gun at night - for no reason or for a good reason and then during the day - civilians get bombed.

I hate them. For coninuing a war. And I don't think alot are shiites. Alot of the early ones were outsiders and Sunnis and baathists who want what is impossible - they want control over the oil on land that they do not live near. They want not to face war crimes tribunals.

It is sad.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

214. Yes, they should just lie down and surrender when a foreign country

invades their country for no reason. :sarcasm:

I was curious about this "Assassin's Gate" that applegrove keeps referring to, so I looked it up on Amazon, and here's the review:

As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia.
How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess.We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war. --Alex Roslin

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374299633/002-5452431-9211263?v=glance&n=283155

So it's a book by a guy who was for the war in the beginning, whose argument is mainly against the way the Bushies conducted the war, not the war itself, and whose account of the Iraqi said comes from "one prominent exile."

Yeah, that's an authoritative source on the status of that woman's husband. Everyone whom the U.S. picks up must be gulity of something, right?

[applegrove]

255. The Iraq "after the bombs stop dropping" is Iraq when the insurgency

finally starts. That is why I site it when I talk about the insurgency. And really - he interviews about 10 Iraqis from different walks of life all the way through that second half.

In the first half of the book he touches on the rumour that neocons want to kick palestine into Jordan, Jordan into lebanon, Lebanon and Syria into Iraq and give Israel all of Palestine & Israel. That is a pretty creepy momment.

So too - the part where the Iraqi says to him at the end - after all of Rumsfield's mistakes .... "are they meaning to do this? I mean - could anyone be this wrong - is this part of some god awful plan allowing the insurgency".

Really a good book. And most of it is not coming to conclusions but simply reporting the facts through the eyes of 10 different Iraqis at different times. Chock full of primary information.

Like they say the last half of the book is on the insurgency. It is nothing to be proud of. The insurgency.

[davekriss]

222. It is sad

And I hate to argue with someone who probably agrees with most of the moderate left (as for myself, I admit I sit fairly lonely here on the extreme left). I see the star next to your name. I acknowledge that bad people, both within Iraq and here in the U.S., seek to exploit this situation for personal or clannish benefit. I'm just hesitant to conclude, with a lack of facts, that the kidnapped mother is complicit in the purported crimes of her husband.

Mere kidnapping and detention is not the same as murder and torture. The fact that the mother was nursing elevates the seriousness of the situation. However, I do not think the US military should be in the business of kidnapping spouses (or children) in order to surface (even known) insurgents, period. Again, I liken it to kidnapping John Giotti's wife without charge in order to surface Giotti for arrest or worse. While I can construe special extreme circumstances where this would be permitted, in general it is just not permissible in my ethics.

You know, the Death Squads and torture chambers in the Central America of the eighties (and probably today) did that. They'd round up the family of, say, a labor leader, and they even tortured their children in front of them -- purportedly to gain information, but usually just to break their will, keep them from being effective leaders in the community. The jailers and torturers were often trained on technique at Ft. Benning, Georgia, at the School of the Americas (now known by a different name). So it comes as no surpise that, under GWB, we abandon the pretense of proxy and engage directly in some of the same terror tactics as we promoted elsewhere. In all cases, such State terror is meant to break the will of a general population to resist the will of an authority most often serving the interests of a small elite.

However, mere kidnap and detention is not the biggest problem we see in Iraq, but as our democracy and even moral standing is dying a death of a thousand cuts these days, it is right to include this among them.

[applegrove]

265. Yeah - I agree with with you. The neocons and the tribalism they

instill everywhere they go. Very scary. And the experiments that always seem to fail - very scary. How could an invasion succeed if you cut half the troops out of the battle plan? and then there is the clannishness of the insurgents in Iraq which may be a result of Saddam. But which is really deadly. So in my book - both sides are monsters. And I lack empathy for the wives of monsters. I don't know why. I just do. I guess I was more concerned with the immediate future of her kids - whether they survive war. And same for the community trying to simply exits - not wanting much. Those are the innocents in my eyes.

[qanda]

14. You are, of course, making an assumption that her husband was guilty

Your post is filled with loads of flying leaps.

[applegrove]

21. I think they ususally are not so wrong when they are talking about

"leaders" of this movement or that. People need to know who they are following - so there is usually tons and tons of intel on who the leaders are.

[qanda]

25. Yes, just as there was tons and tons of intel about WMD

Pardon me if I trust very little of what this government asks me to believe.

[applegrove]

28. They really are usually not wrong when they talk about who the leaders

are. I cannot think of a time when they have been wrong about leaders. Everyone knows who the leaders are. There is like a thousand times the intel on the leader - because there has to be an inspirational leader for their to be a strong insurgency. So that people will follow.

[sproutster]

31. Why was it your leader and commander

Safely took bin ladins relatives to safety? Must have pissed ya off.

[applegrove]

38. I'm not a patriot. I am more concerned that the baby will be bombed

by the USA than you are.

Mommy no take baby to war.

[qanda]

33. I have no clue how you would know when they are right or wrong

Perhaps you know more than the rest of us, but your willingness to blindly trust anything they say is truly disturbing.

[applegrove]

40. I trust that when they said a leader. They new they had a leader.

And his wife. Perhaps it is somebody elses wife. And that the leaders in Iraq are fighting using vulnerable people as missiles and killing civilians. For the most part that is what the leaders have done.

I was outraged at the attack in Pakistan on a home. May have garnered # 345, 346, & 347 in Al Qaeda. Don't know if that really is going to keep Pakistanis in the fold. I wonder.

Today I wonder if the woman's worst problem was sore breasts and a baby on formula. I think she has more serious issues in her life. Like a drone sending coordinates of her house to someone in the USA army.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

34. So you think it is justified to kidnap family members of people? If they

are not involved with insurgency then they'll be let go? It's all good?

If this is an "ends justifies the means" then is there nothing that is not WRONG to do, even if it DOES save some American soldier's life?

Is it OK to threaten to rape, or to rape that wife to get the info? Torture the child? After all, AMERICAN lives may be at stake!

Seriously, what is your position on this?

[applegrove]

44. The child was not torured. The wife was not tortured. And if she didn't

know anything about her husband's activities now she does. And she can do thing to protect her kids from a drone, a rival factions attack, or a whole host of other things. If she did know about her husband's activities and kept her children on the front lines with her - well then she's a fucking monster. I think she has access to money. She could have gotten her kids somewhere safe.

Maybe all her other kids are safely somewhere else - in some little compound nobody knows about and they are safe from war.

That still doesn't explain what is so great about the way her husband fights war. Why civilians have to die. That is terrorism.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

47. So, are you saying, "yes, it's okay, in fact GOOD, to kidnap family

members of known or suspected enemies"?

[applegrove]

52. They arrested her. Like they have thousands of others.

[sproutster]

48. Is the baby alive?

You seem to know everything. You know her bank account, you know she has access to the greyhound bus system, you know she wasn't tortured because you too have had a baby and breastfed the most vulnrable of all humans, you know the baby was fed, warm, and dry and had similac readily available.

Sheesh, I wonder why the soldier had the nerve to complain? He too had your intel, no?

BECAUSE IT IS WRONG.

[applegrove]

55. I think we all have painted a pretty distinct picture in our minds. We

don't know. And too assume interrupted breastfeeding is the worst of her problems - I think is terribly naive.

You are not worried that she could be blown up by a US bomb tomorrow? Don't you think she should move her kids?

[sproutster]

58. Where to? I think her worst problem is KIDNAPPING and TORTURE

[applegrove]

75. She was not tortured. Breasfeeding is not inflicting pain. Did you want

the baby to go to jail with her? Cause that doesn't happen - even in the USA. Mother's and babies are separated all the time.

Kidnapped? Well if every single man hanging with the suicide bomber leader husband gets arrested when they go to jail - why not her? Why don't you call them kidnapped?

[sproutster]

132. I can link an article about afganistan women wanting their infants in jail

with them to breast feed. There is an entire movement so they are not separated. I'm sure it's based on nothing. Certainly not humane treatment.

[applegrove]

190. Good. Perhaps the US army will learn from this. But the wife of an

insurgent has other things to deal with. Her husband is at war - killing civilians - may be a war criminal - may go on trial - may be killed - her house may be bombed - she has lots on the go.

[applegrove]

60. What do you think her family would have done with the baby? Or US

troops if the baby was in their custody. What do you really think? Do you think one or the other just put the baby in a garbage can? Is that what you think.

[sproutster]

65. I think there was a reason the soldier complained

What do you think it takes a soldier in a foriegn land to complain about the abuse of a mother and infant? Do ya think he's up for promotion? Do ya think he was whining? Do ya think perhaps he was taking a stand against kidnap and torture and thought a life might be on the line?

You pick answers one and two respectively, so spare me.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

73. I'm sure the guy who complained was a "troublemaker" LOL who sympathized

with the terra-ist insurgents, hates America, and isn't reporting all the GOOD things we are doing over there. :sarcasm:

[applegrove]

78. He sounds like a good egg. More power too him. What are the policies

on detention and infants. Those should be clearly worked out. And improved.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

84. From the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

http://www.constitution.org/mil/ucmj19970615.htm#II



809. ART. 9. IMPOSITION OF RESTRAINT

(a) Arrest is the restraint of a person by an order, not imposed as a punishment for an offense, directing him to remain within certain specified limits. Confinement is the physical restraint of a person.

(b) An enlisted member may be ordered into arrest or confinement by any commissioned officer by an order, oral or written, delivered in person or through other persons subject to this chapter. A commanding officer may authorize warrant officers, petty officers, or noncommissioned officers to order enlisted members of his command or subject to his authority into arrest or confinement.

(c) A commissioned officer, a warrant officer, or a civilian subject to this chapter or to trial thereunder may be ordered into arrest or confinement only by a commanding officer to whose authority he is subject, by an order, oral or written, delivered in person or by another commissioned officer. The authority to order such persons into arrest or confinement may not be delegated.

(d) No person may be ordered into arrest or confinement except for probable cause.

(e) Nothing in this article limits the authority of persons authorized to apprehend offenders to secure the custody of an alleged offender until proper authority may be notified.

[sproutster]

135. Please send that to [e-mail]

He seems to believe otherwise. As did the whistleblower.

[applegrove]

77. No - if he wants nursing mothers to not be detained or for babies to

be brought to jail in cases where the mothers have to be questioned those are great issues. Bring them up. I don't doubt he was a great egg. And I can tell you that if that soldier has kids - he sure as hell doesn't have them in the line of fire.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

51. Do you think the way the U.S. fights war, no civilians have to die?

Do you think that no civilians have died at the hands of the U.S. in Iraq? What are you thinking?

[applegrove]

62. Of course civilians die. Especially when mommy is living with all

the kids in a known place and daddy is a leader of a faction. That is why I'm so pissed off. Her breast feeding relationship with your baby is the least of her problems!

[sproutster]

67. Kidnap, torture and the welfare of her baby were the worst of her problems

[applegrove]

81. Well I think having a husband who is growing suicide bombers is

the worst of her problems. Puts her kids in danger. And jail is not the worst danger her kids are in.

That is just how I feel.

[sproutster]

141. GROWING SUICIDE BOMBERS??!!!

How dare you minimalize children to war weapons.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

148. Sometimes the stuff you hear on Rush and O'Reilly just comes out

when you type.

It's involuntary! :shrug:

[sproutster]

157. Man if this is the mind of the neocon - no wonder were doomed.

The more I read the more I fear our future. The future is today, and we must fight for tomarrow. No one ever created peace by rape, humiliation, torture, killing, and genocide.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

162. It's scary, depressing, sad, and makes me angry all at the same time.

[applegrove]

227. I hate torture & hate & war. That is why I don't have sympathy for

sweet wife of insurgency leader. I hate neocons too. Read the rest of my 100 posts.

[applegrove]

225. LIke what exactly? Cause I've never seen their shows or heard them.

Ever.

[applegrove]

208. No. I meant that they take a teen, or a man who is poor and wants

to join the ensurgency, and they play a whole game with him - that is how they get the bombers. Some of the bombers are likely grown - starting as teens in mosques in Saudi Arabia. Some of the bombers in Iraq are Saudi Arabian young adults.

And you are a guy. And religion treats you nice. And you are poor. And it feeds ya. And you get religious - and then especially - you are not allowed to touch a girl till you can marry one - so you go on 25 or 30 year old man - and you are still poor - and you cannot marry - and if you loved allah you'd become a bomb - and we'll buy your mom that house she wants...

That is what I mean by growing. The manipulative dance that we know about. It happens.

And occasionally some middle class nut gets a bug and just simply volunteers to be a bomb. They take them too. They likely are mentally ill. And they become bombs.

[LSK]

105. innocent until proven guilty - MY HOW WE HAVE FORGOTTEN AMERICAN IDEALS

[applegrove]

115. She got detained. They are at war with her husband. All the other

people around him would have, or have been detained whenever possible. Why not her? Is she a baby?

[Sparkly]

117. She wasn't arrested because of anything SHE did.

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

What next? If she were in fact the one they were after, would it be okay to take her children, hoping to "leverage" her into surrender?

[applegrove]

128. I don't think they touched the wives. I'd pretty much rather see the

wars end faster rather than later. I agree the policy should be looked into. The husbands are not innocent.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

168. How do you KNOW what was done! You wouldn't even KNOW about

this woman being detained to "leverage" the surrender of her husband if the press hadn't reported about it!

Would you "know" about the Iraqi general being suffocated to death if there were no news about it?

If it brought about a "faster end to the war" would you be in support of the woman being tortured or raped to bring it about? Are there NO LIMITS?

[applegrove]

312. She wasn't tortured. She wasn't raped. Nobody but the civilians under

the insurgents has been raped in Iraq. Torture - yes - at abu ghraib. 100 dead in dentention - all in Iraq - no I think at Guantanamo & elsewhere too. Horrible.

Press reported it. After it had passed by the Pentagon. I worry that the Pentagon will do anything to slow end of insurgency down. That is what they have done so far. One step after another - slowing it down.

[Sapphire Blue]

319. Nobody but the civilians under the insurgents has been raped in Iraq?!?!?!

That is a false statement. Why do you insist on posting outrageous false statements????

Children were raped @ Abu Ghraib. Children, for God's sake. The rapes were videoed. Abu Ghraib is/was not run by insurgents.

Kids sodomized at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has the videos - Hersh: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/7/14/193750/666

Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh_children_raped.html

Prison Formerly Known as Abu Ghraib: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh_children_raped.html

Your disinformation is disgusting.

[applegrove]

327. I didn't know kids were raped in abu Graib. I've stayed away from

reading up on torture. That is awful.

[Sapphire Blue]

330. Yet you stated that "Nobody but the civilians under the insurgents has...

... been raped in Iraq." Stated it as fact. Applegrove, the expert on the Iraqi insurgency. :puke:

You seem to have stayed away from reading anything but Assassin's Gate. Please read something else... and please stop posting outrageous crap.

[applegrove]

332. I just don't think you can say that on the ground - US troops are trying

to do anything but the very best of their jobs. We are obviously not going to see eye to eye. I admit I saw abu graib and the secret prison system out side Iraq as something other than the norm. Or the situation currently on the ground.

I worry that the Neos are not so much upset that the war is not going well - but that Americans are not enjoying it. When they say "support our troops & don't feed the terrorists" it is less about wanting the violence and human rights abuses (on all sides) to end during this war, and more about the majority of Americans not being on the long 10 year learning curve of enjoying war that the neocons likely want. How else would you get the perpetual wars in the future that the neocons really want?

I don't enjoy it one bit. And I want it to end.

We just disagree on how.

[Sapphire Blue]

333. Either you're posting gibberish or my comprehension has made an exit.

... and we disagree on a whole lot.

[The Stranger]

120. Unless you have a link showing their husbands were "suicide bombers,"

it is clear your post is bigoted, war-mongering and consistent with the propaganda being disseminated by the Christofascist, Neocon Totalitarians who have hijacked the U.S. government.

These people's land was invaded, and they are seeking to defend their homes and their families. Saying that she is somehow a terrorist is Right Wing smear/fear of the very worst kind.

[applegrove]

133. It isn't the guy on the street who is fighting. It is leaders of clans and

outsiders and Sunnis. People who have alot to loose from democratic elections.

If these puppies are locals - let the USA make peace with them. They will be let go after the war is over. And likely not put in jail forever. Which is less suffering than you can say for the families of people who have been killed by the insurgents. Most of them civilians.

[jbnow]

121. Suicide bombing all day long?

People usually do that ONCE.

[applegrove]

134. Not the leaders. The fools who get lured into it do it once. The leaders

plan it again and again.

[Danieljay]

252. self deleted..not worth my energy.

[High Plains]

261. So, are you excusing this tactic, Applegrove?

The taking of hostages among the population you invaded?

[applegrove]

295. I want the insurgency to end. Cause I'm not sure The White House

does. I think that was the plan all along. I want the army to gather up the insurgents and make them sign deals. And then take the next town.

[High Plains]

323. You want the US military to crush the insurgents.

And then take the next town. Please explain again how you are different from Bush. Other than your bizarre suggestion that he wants the insurgency to fester.

[applegrove]

328. War is bad. I was human rights abuses to stop. That includes bombings.

Civilian casualties. Those 100,000 civilians a year who are dying in Iraq.

[The Stranger]

22. Kick and recommend for greatest.

[Canuckistanian]

45. For the first time in my DU membership, I'm using IGNORE

I even had to look up how to do it.

I simply can't believe the utter ignorance and fascist-enabling comments in this thread by a certain member.

[applegrove]

50. Canuckistan - we've fought before. I have your friend Iverglass on

ignore. It was bound to happen at some point.

I think most people here understand where I am coming from. If you prefer not to - great.

I don't think children should in any way be involved in war. And if they are - the issue isn't that mommy couldnt' breast feed - more serious issues than that if daddy kills civilians all day long.

[sproutster]

53. The issue is kidnapping innocent women and leaving defenseless infants

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

54. According to applegrove, she was "arrested" and not "kidnapped".

Because of the apparent distinction it's all good.

[sproutster]

56. Oh I forgot the law=nicety. *goosestep*

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

59. If the U.S. does it = "arrest" regardless if there are actual charges.

If a stranger in your neighborhood does it = "kidnap".

If the president does it = legal.
If a Democrat does it = illegal.

[applegrove]

82. In a time of war people can be detained without charges for a bit.

I'm not into the whole patriot act. But under the geneva convention - there are prisoners of war. And I don't think children are allowed in prisons. Don't know what the convention says about breastfeeding women under suspicion.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

85. The Uniform Code of Military Justice says otherwise

http://www.constitution.org/mil/ucmj19970615.htm#II

(d) No person may be ordered into arrest or confinement except for probable cause.

Where's YOUR source? John Yoo? Bring it!

[applegrove]

87. I think being married to someone who terrorizes and murders every day

is probable cause no?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

89. I do not. Do you think here in the U.S., being married to a murderer

would be "probable cause" to arrest and detain them?

[applegrove]

93. said murderer was killing 5 civilians and 1 troop a day - yes I think

the wife would be held. I think all the families of military leaders are often held. Under some kind of detention.

I think it is pretty run of the mill. Start a war, kill civilians - your family is under some sort of watch - and that is if you are lucky.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

96. Where are your citations for this "accepted military policy"? Or are

you just spouting off, firing from the hip? And who exactly started a "war" in Iraq? Who did that?

[applegrove]

100. The people who started the War in Iraq are living pretty high of the

hog? It happens.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

101. I'm assuming you're talking about Bush and Cheney?

[applegrove]

136. Big oil, military companies, all the stock traders on wall street who

did high-fives when Iraq was actually attacked.

War is good for the leaders.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

140. Whew! I ALMOST thought you were implying someone OTHER than the US

started the war in Iraq! Man am I relieved!

[applegrove]

182. I hold Rumsfield in as much contempt as the leaders of insurgencies.

Rummy and the neocons have done nothing to speed this horrible occupation and war up. War is awful. When it is an aggressive war - if you say you are doing it for humanitarian reasons - then you FUCKING GO IN WITH ENOUGH TROOPS TO WIN IT.

They are all assholes. They are all aggressively engaging in war. And there wives should expect detention or derision.

[sproutster]

187. FU "And there wives should expect detention or derision."

[applegrove]

228. The wives of all people who start wars. Yes! Pickles too! If she went

to Iraq she should expect to be arrested by an insurgent?

[Sapphire Blue]

216. For God's sake, Laura Bush, Lynne Cheney, and whoever is married to...

... Rumsfeld "should expect detention or derision"? Is that what you are trying to say? If so, do you realize how foolish you are sounding?

[applegrove]

296. I think if bush or Laura showed up in "Insurgentown Iraq" I do think

we would expect them to be detained. Same difference with the woman here. She got detained by the people her husband is at war with.

As to derision. YOu don't think that people who hate the war have feelings on the wives of the politicians? Or the wives of the pastors who get up every day and scapegoat gays? Why do we call Laura Pickles?

[Sapphire Blue]

303. Speak for yourself; please don't use 'WE'. And please read another book.

I disagree w/most of what you have posted throughout this thread, and "we" would not expect, nor would "we" accept Laura Bush, or anyone else's spouse, American or Iraqi, being detained in Iraq or anywhere else.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

123. Who are you saying STARTED the War in Iraq????!!!

[applegrove]

313. Bush & Cheney & Rummy & neocons.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

99. What is the threshold for number of people being killed per day before

people who are associated with that person can be detained without charges? Is it 1? 0.1? 100?

Or, like art or obscenity, you just "know it when you see it"?

[applegrove]

103. If he is a leader. People are dying may days a week. By suicide bomb or

just random shooting and murders as some clans try and get control of some neighbourhoods. I think something like 30 people a week started showing up at Baghdad morgues. That was after the first year. That is alot of murders/assasinations. That was not all army activity. It was mostly - clanish wars and bombings of civilians. Baghdad is only one city.

I would hope the USA would do the right thing and get a handle on this right away. Not to is criminal.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

118. "In a time of war people can be detained without charges for a bit." Hey,

I gave MY citation from the actual military law, that they CANNOT.

I'm still waiting for your CITATION to the contrary, not your STATEMENT of "this is pretty much how it goes".

[applegrove]

66. Do ya think the men you hang around her husband are being kidnapped?

OR are insurgents being arrested?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

71. I reject that we have a right to be in Iraq in the first place, much less

to throw a bunch of people in jail on no charges.

And, yes, I DO believe that many of the people being imprisoned by the U.S. military are in fact being "kidnapped" if there is no legitimate charge to do this, regardless if the military is calling it "arrest".

If you recall around the time of Abu Ghraib there were studies, Red Cross and others, showing that a huge majority of the folks caught up in these sweeps were "guilty" of nothing.

Since we have NO oversight and transparency, and since even when the U.S. has ADMITTEDLY killed people in custody, resulting in NO JAIL punishment for the perps, why WOULD you trust that anything was different now?

Are you in fact telling me that you are in full support of this Iraq invasion and occupation, and everything the U.S. is doing over there?

[applegrove]

88. No - I am not in full support of the invasion. I wanted the UN to go it.

To stop Saddam from terroizing his people. Neocons going in with "exactly" 1/2 the troops to get the occupation handled - is criminal I think. Rummy should resign.

[applegrove]

64. Did the US army kick drop the baby? The woman was arrested.

Why the hell should all the men around a knwon leader of the suicide insurrection be arrested and not her? Do you think that is fair. You do think that the people who hang with this leader get arrested don't you?

You don't seriously think that a breastfed baby gets left to just sit there and die of dehydration when there are resources all around? Does that happen anywhere?

[sproutster]

68. What resources?

Quote from a clip from iraq:
"I woulda fed you bastards if you didn't throw a rock at me"

[applegrove]

92. I don't know what that quote is from don't like it. Nobody let's babies

starve. Nobody. Not even Saddam - apparently.

[sproutster]

125. Use the search function

I'm pretty sure you commented on it as well, but I could be wrong. That was acceptable, even laudable behavior according to your positions on warfare.

This is torture and kidnapping. It's the ticking bomb senario without the ticking bomb. I failed to see where this saved any soldiers life nor did it stop any warfare. It appears the only ones harmed were mother and child.

I'll tell ya what - You take my son away from me in a war torn town and I'll confess I'm a witch. Burn me but first give me my child so I can be assured that he is alive and well. Have mercy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

94. Yes it does happen

every day in war zones all around the world.

It is just despicable, IMO, that our soldiers are now acting just like the ehtnic cleansing soldiers in eastern Europe or the Nazis in Germany. That may work for you, but it sure doesn't work for me.

[applegrove]

95. I think you go too far.

[proud2BlibKansan]

110. We are not abiding by The Geneva Convention anymore

Our country flies its 'enemies' to foreign lands to torture them. (rendition) The prisoners at abu graib were tortured. Guatanemo Bay is filled with prisoners whose rights are violated daily.

I don't think we are going far enough. And no matter how you frame the argument, you will never convince me it is okay to take a nursing baby away from its mother.

[jbnow]

151. Why do you keep saying

"knwon leader of the suicide insurrection" or that he is killing civilians every day or that it's normal for the wife to be held hostage?

Did you read the article? It said the man was a suspect, not a suicide bomb leader.

You aren't making any sense, you are assuming if we arrests someone they are guilty and we have the right to take hostages (since the article says Saddam did it)

Then when we arrest the wife of a SUSPECT we can just hold her and everyone in the prison without evidence or trial.

That she shouldn't have her kids there because SUSPECTS obviously have a lot of money and obviously tell their wives all about their suspected crimes.

Guess you will like the new america.

[applegrove]

179. Have you read any about what it is like on the ground. Those neigh

bourhoods with the factions & insurgents. They are really suffering. The Army doesn't go into them at night. All hell breaks loose. People are murdered. Then during the day there are suicide bombings. And folk are signing up for one faction or another in these places for protection. And factional leaders are targetting police recruits - so that rule of law never comes to their neck of the woods. It is really creepy and sick.

I hope the war ends sooner rather than later.

[jbnow]

320. QUIT SAYING LEADER

or prove it, cite it. Your intuition on it is not impressive. The article says:

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show

It does not say LEADER. It does not say KNOWN insurgent.

[qanda]

146. I certainly don't understand where you're coming from

And if there are others who do understand where you're coming from, they most certainly have not made themselves known in this thread.

[applegrove]

180. One person did. Realized I am very antiwar and am angry at all the

players that keep it going. People are suffering a great deal. Some insurgent faction leaders don't want rule of law - they want clan fifedoms and shoot out their neighbours and murder their enemeis at night and suicide bomb police recruiting stations during the day - so that rule of law cannot be established in their town. And more and more civilians die. And more and more civilians sign up - because they need protection - not because they would rather do anything than vote and live peacefully.

So factional leaders really mess up the parts of cities they hold.

[sproutster]

186. Give me a break. Antiwar my ass.

I'm antiwar but if we DO go to preemptive war then I think there should be no laws, torture and kidnapping should be SOP. They are all rich and shouldn't be there anyways. They are all guilty. The military people that have spoken out citing as much as 90% are to be lauded, but the people kidnapped are at fault because they didn't leave.

Just wow. Back away from the koolaid.

[applegrove]

283. I'm angry that the war continues. I'm angry that the insurgents are the

tools neocons need to keep the war going and perhaps growing in the middle east. Ya dig? I don't like the wives of fudies either. People who let themselves be used as puppets and cause death or massive scapegoating - they can all go to hell in my book.

The army soldiers are not the problem. Neocons could not continue without an enemy. Insurgents will not loose their homes or their freedom or the vote if they didn't do anything under Saddam very serious. Why give Rummy the insurgency he obviously wants?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

79. Detainees = hostages held by "our" side.

War Crimes = What the other side does.

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Gandhi

[Mutley]

226. This entire thread of 220+ posts is being used to attack one user.

:shrug:

So you all disagree with this person. Why keep piling on?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

232. Why do they get to have the last word and have their statement

unchallenged?

[Mutley]

236. It looks like the statement has been challenged quite a bit.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

238. It makes me angry when people on the board that is my ideological "home"

feel free to spout ignorant and inflammatory statements. If they are challenged, and respond, then I will respond in kind.

Why are they free to respond, and I not?

[Mutley]

245. It just seems unfair to have 10 or more people piling onto one person.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

247. Well if you have supportive arguments for applegrove's position,

that it's okay to detain family members of suspected insurgents on no charges, because they should expect this and deserve this, then please let's hear them.

[Mutley]

249. Excuse me. I have not given an opinion one way or the other

on the topic of this thread so please don't assume anything.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

254. There is no "fair", if people on this board say something wrong and

outrageous, they get flamed by a lotta people. Surely you've seen this before. Do you go on every such thread and complain that it's unfair piling on?

[Mutley]

259. I've never seen one this bad before

but yes, I usually do.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

263. I don't think the poster in question is any the worse for wear, if they

were I suspect they'd stop responding to each post.

[applegrove]

278. I'm not worse for wear. I said something in knee jerk - and then

felt I owed it to stick around and explain. I did ruin the original op's thoughts. It was a pile on. I took on 6 people at a time. They all wanted answers. I think though I didn't have the time to be precise or re-read - I reached an understanding with many of them.

Actually it was explained to me - I was offended at the lack of context for the emotional empathy the op felt for a woman separated from her babe. And I have more empathy for victims of war. And it is all so messed up the truths and facts. And you know - it is hard to be right on when you are explaining and argueing with so many people. I would have given up or said I give up if I could not take it.

The war is a very emotional thing. With so much myth and lying going on - it is hard for people of different backgrounds to see things the same. I felt that all the way along. And that I couldn't devote enough time to any one poster to really hear them.

I think the OP was likely broadsided by me. I am sorry. How is she. All she was doing was empathiziing with someone across the world.

[applegrove]

280. I didn't have the time to respond with care to each and every one of you.

I think that kept it going for a bit too. Plus their is just so much in the way of myths and lies out there. The book said Iraqis under SAddam were just running up and smashing into each other emotionally all the time. And accusing each other of things. Such it is when you have sociopaths like Saddam Hussein or the current WH. People just smash. Everyone's former narrative is smashes. All they new is going. People are angry and defensive. I'm the same.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

286. If you can't respond "with care" or with FACTS, why respond?

[applegrove]

299. Couldn't respond with care because I was trying to get to 10 people

at once. I did respond with facts. I felt it was terrible to ignore the context of the woman arrested and that the days her husband would quit war - would be the days her small part of an Iraqi city - would have peace.

The reason why I get so upset - is because - I don't really feel in my heart that the WH wants this war to end. That every single time something was happening - the WH did something rash. That I dont' think the insurgency is anything but a tool in Rummy's hands.

I read a book. And do you know what those 100,000 + are. Civilians killed by the insurgency being allowed to exist. Almost completely unopposed, for two years. And now going on three.

Yes - yes - yes - I want to see the soldier do what they think their job is. Let them call in insurgents and broker deals.

People being murdered every night and day by insurgents. All so that Mercains can gain a lining in their stomach after say 10 years - that says "hey - war - doesnt' affect me". "hey -war in my name - hell there is an underclass who are always available to live and die that way" "perpetual war, perpetual war". I don't want to see the insurgency let to happen for 5 more years so Americans can learn to love war. I don't think 15 neocons have that right. To teach you that - by sending in too few troops - at letting insurgency happen.

Anyone who makes a serious attempt to try and end the insurgency. I'll clap for that.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

301. If U.S. troops leave Iraq I suspect that might end it.

[applegrove]

302. Don't ya get it? Rummy said 10 years at the start. They are not trying

to win. The prize isn't Iraq. It is that in ten years - people will be used to war. Kids will accept it. Cause nobody is sacrificing but the few soldiers.

[FreedomAngel82]

308. It is so sad

:cry:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

314. They're pertectin' us from dangerous "terrorists".