was it worth having three more american soldiers killed just to bag a couple of saddam’s sons, one of whom probably killed his own sorry self?
the only thing that gives me comfort is that maybe you’re not as dumb as all your critics say you are, and that some spark buried beneath layers of oil and baseball flashes up in the middle of the night—even during your month-long vacations—and that spark, the dull remnant of a thousand lies—makes you just a little bit miserable.
and why is it that we were allowed to pitch such a fit when al-jazeera showed pictures of american soldiers dead, but we gleefully show the bodies of iraqi soldiers—as both uday and qusay were? is it because our current administration is so desperate to have something tangible to hold onto—sixteen words can weigh a lot more then you’d think—that we’ll splatter the destroyed bodies of our enemies across every news channel in the world?
our administration is made up of hypocrites and liars, thieves and bunglers. they lot of them should be thrown out into the streets—with bush the lesser their pathetic mock-king, worthless at last, shown to be, known to be, known to all.
I saw the pictures. the were reasonably gross, but what took the cake for me—as i’m watching the news at lunch—is how they could not stop with it. not that they showed it, but they couldn’t stop. they’d split the screen when someone was talking to keep showing it. then they’d cut away from the speaker to show a live v. dead comparison on the full screen. this went on (cnn, msnbc, fox) for 30-45 minutes straight.
While i DO think the comparison to complaints with Al Jazeera is completely on point, 2 things should be pointed out. the US govt supplied the pics, private news organizations ran with them. The other thing is that Al Jazeera is based among societies where public killings and dead bodies in general ARE seen by the public pretty often compared to us. its not as shocking to them. none the less, the administration clearly doesn’t care about its double standard about showing the dead.
The administration sure must be glad that the networks are showing the Hussein bros’ before death, after death, first day of school, little league, prom, and wedding pictures all afternoon. Otherwise, they might have to cover the story that a newly released intelligence/security assessment says that the federal government has basically done nothing to prevent future attacks like the ones that occurres Sept. 11. Oh, and the fact that there were no Iraq-al Qaeda ties to justify invading Iraq.
More of my rant here:
http://45net.org/archives/001088.html
Hmmm…I didn’t really mind them showing the pictures because of Iraqi skepticism. I have no love lost for Uday and Qusei. And the fact that the military had a lot of trepidation about gloating, despite Rumsfeld’s gung-ho attitude about showing the pictures, gave me a little hope. It seems like a lot of the generals actually have brains which is more than I could say about the administration.
bg,
that doesn’t make any sense. “iraqi skepticism” justifies it? then why are we showing them in AMERICA? show them in iraq, perhaps—but there’s no need for the porn loop of them that has been going on.
and no matter who is skeptical of what, it falls prey to the same arguments we made about the geneva condition—except of course we’ve done it worse.
But showing pictures of dead soldiers is not prohibited under the Geneva Convention…showing pictures of political prisoners is. And, hey! I don’t think there’s anything wrong with showing them in America. I think we should show more stuff like this. Seriously. I think people should see how horrible this stuff is. I take the journalists’ side on this one: the pictures were pretty fucking newsworthy and would have leaked out anyway. So show it. I don’t really have a problem with it. Just as long as it’s handled to diminish the gloating aspect of it. I just can’t get hot and bothered about it. Was it worth the lives of three soldiers? God, who am I to say? No? I don’t know. I’m glad they’re dead. I’m glad Saddam Hussein is dead. The end result of the war doesn’t bother me so much (excepting, of course, the bungling of post-war shit), just the means to the end that kills me. We went to war over a hypothetical, a phantom. If we had gone to war for human rights from the beginning, I swear I would have probably supported it. I just don’t liking having my intelligence insulted. I’d send troops to every damn place to make it better if I could, and if I knew it would actually help things. The Bushies haven’t convinced me yet. What the hell am I talking about now? I need to sleep.
“I’m glad Saddam Hussein is dead.”
He is? Did I miss something?
I’ve heard many times that if we would just SHOW the public how bad these things are, they’d be horrified and recoil. war, death penalty, etc. I don’t believe that. we have a long history of not being bothered by violence. hell, they used to have PICNICS around lynchings and would snap photos of families at the scene to be used as POSTCARDS. jesus, that’s creepy. either way, i don’t mind them being shown, but less of it and more tasteful. i do agree that it is virtually identical to Iraqi’s showing our dead on their state TV. we deserve any complaint we lodged at them over similar acts. that doesn’t mean don’t do it. it just means don’t be shocked by the reaction.
jp, you took the words out of my mouth. I’ll add that I’ve read accounts of people going to executions thinking they’d have a “pleasant” time and walk away horrified, but who can say how many people had the same thoughts. Maybe i’m underestimating the American people here, but I don’t know if they would actually interpret the media’s presentation of the dead bodies as “look at the horrors of war,” considering our current hawk-like tendencies. I see it being misconstrued as a glorification of war, and I suspect that this could have more of a brutalization effect than a positive reaction.
i agree with agent. i was eating dinner at cherokee last nite, and there’s a tv playing (sigh) fox news.
i don’t know what they were saying, but anytime i’ve got a grinning newt gingrich interspersed with flashes of the fotos it’s NOT being used as a “horrors of war” effect. it’s just a fucking drop-in foto.
they didn’t preface the pictures with warnings (that i could see, anyway), and they seemed to drop them in regularly and at random. it did not seem useful to do so.
CNN used warnings at first, Fox News never. At least as far as I could tell. I didn’t mean to say Saddam Hussein is dead…I meant his regime, not him. Oops.
I thought it was great! I saw NOTHING WRONG WITH IT WHATSOEVER! We should have done it in ‘91 but at least we finally did it. I hope when they get Saddam That they make a movie of the execution. I for one, Would buy it and watch it over and over again! They need to clean up the rest of the region NEXT!!
KC, we intentionally didn’t go after Saddam and his family in ‘91—for good or for bad.
Bush 41’s foreign policy (like most Democrats and Republicans before him) relied on the ideal of not unsettling a region too much. “Interaction” was fine—that is, a little military boost to restore Kuwait. One didn’t want to go too far because the resultant instability was worse then the crimes or horrors at hand.
Well, that’s the theory. I must admit that I often espose it myself, although it may go contra to my personal beliefs. However, one must weigh one’s personal beliefs against the interests of a nation of 300 million: to put a fine point on it, are we going to be better off or worse off without Saddam?
It’s easy to assume we’ll be better—or at least Iraq will be. There will be no more of the torture and humiliation; but there is massive instability. And we still have two or three American soldiers dying every day.
Again, I must admit to a growing conservative streak as I get older—not socially, in any way, but certainly in foreign relations: I’m more for restraint. This administration has shown that it disregards caution and intelligence and just staggers ahead, like a fraternity pledge out of a bar at two a.m. I’d rather they were more cautious.