Fathers and Sons
 

So, this is pretty awful.

GI: Boy mistreated to get dad to talk

...

Apparently this isn't anything too new, either...

We have your sons: CIA

U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters

U.S. Troops Capture Iraqi Rebel's Nephews

...

Clever remarks and cutting analysis fail me. Discuss as you please.

If you ask me, that pretty much negates the whole "w3 bringz u teh fredom n teh d3m0cracy" idea. Or even better, it inverts it.

I could be wrong but don't both sides have stories like this?

"There is no such thing as good and evil, merely points of veiw"

Although I believe that there is such a thing as evil, I believe its a rare thing and the above statement usually holds true. An entire people can't be evil, the individual yes, and definetely the leaders. But everyone in the country? Or even in the army?

Isn't think just propaganda?

Yea, but we're not supposed to. We're supposed to be able to kick the opponent's ass without resorting to terrorist like tactics.

Well, the fact remains that most mainsteam media outlets have liberal biases, so let's just leave that alone and talk about the post; If this is true (which, sadly, it probably is), then I'm thoroughly ashamed. But, to keep perspective, so long as the people aren't being mistreated, we should continue doing whatever is necessary to combat terror. I also need to debunk this myth that a bit of abuse (and yes, I know more than that went on at Abu Ghraib), is absolutely terrible. Hell, we do worse stuff to American convicts. Funnylooking, you have a point, but phych. warfare and intelligence gathering is a completely different battlefield. You're thinking about the wrong kind of tactics.

That's what I meant by both sides having stories like this. Both sides in general will have "evil" and good people in their armies. Propaganda doesn't have to lie, its just settling on what version of the truth you want to show and picking the stories that will show that truth.

And both sides do it. There are always 3 sides to every situation. How I see it, how they see it and what actually happened.

What actually happened is something that disappears so fast that that its hard to peice together an accurate description of it. In fact, I personally believe peicing together what actually happened is impossible and you can only get an impression of it from whoever obesserved it.

I understand this. But harming a guy's son (which is a much different than just beating the crap out of the guy) to get into a guy is terrorist-like. America shouldn't have to resort to that.

Well... I deleted my earlier second comment on this thread, because I decided I was going to leave the thread be until I'd settled down over the whole thing, let the facts speak for themselves, and seen a bit of what other people had to say. Unfortunately, it looks like the post was up long enough for people to respond to it. At least that's what I gather from Ranger's reference to liberal media bias (a construct whose existence I indicated that I doubted), and Hamster's clarification of what he meant by propaganda (which I asked for in my previous, deleted, post).

As long as I'm at it, I might as well respond to those responses.

...

So, let's talk about liberal media bias for a moment. If we're going to say "the fact is" then let's have some facts.

-A large majority (4/5) of US newspapers endorsed Bush in 2000, including 'even the liberal' New York Times
-Most of them also editorialized in favor of invading Iraq
-There's the often-cited fact that most reporters vote Democratic, but that's more than balanced by the fact that most editors -- the ones who have real control over what gets printed -- vote Republican
-Through most of the Iraq War -- up until about 3, 4 months ago -- the most damning stories on Iraq were buries on page A18 ('Walter Pincus's page').



...

As far as propaganda goes, I mean, I don't know what to tell you, this is what's coming from the military sources themselves. The latter three articles are the official accounts from the people who undertook these operations. I'm not even going to imagine what the 'unofficial' version might be, let alone whatever 'propagandized' account is making its way through the Arab world.

Well, what exactly is "terror," and how do we combat it?

The thing is, these kinds of acts aren't going to help us any. Besides that the end doesn't justify the means, think about how this makes us look. Remember those torture photos that got released just a little while ago? And remember what Iraqi extremests did in response to those photos?

What we have here are two sides that think they are right. The scary thing is, one of us is right. Anyway, because we think we're doing the right thing, we take any mesure, no matter how bad it is, to get our job accomplished. The other side will do the same thing, because they have the same mind set. If we do something like kidnapping in order to get our way, we're going to further villainize ourselves, and we're going to get a violent response from the people.

We should never resort to anything of this nature. The end does not justify the means, and if you don't agree with that, then realize that this will just rekindle the hatred everyone has for this country, and make the war on Iraq and "terrorism" alot harder for us all.

I wouldn't have resorted to this either. But, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. I think it's worth it to save the lives of soldiers, or potentially, civilians.