There is a clear and obvious difference between stating that “US soldiers don’t torture,” as it is used in the Ulrich article, and stating that “our executive,” i.e. the President and the executive branch of the government don’t believe torture will help get information in an interrogation. In fact, we made that same point in our article. Did you read the whole thing?

In the quote you mention, Mr. Clement is clearly being asked about entire “systems,” not about individual soldiers.

In other words, just because a government or a military commander makes a determination that torture is not an effective means of interrogation does not mean that his subordinates will never wrongly engage in torture against the wishes of their superiors. Mr. Clement clearly acknowledged that there are systems in place to deal with and punish incidents of torture should they occur. Why would Mr. Clement acknowledge that while at the same time trying to convince everyone that: “US soldiers don’t torture?”

—Sorry, but no, that doesn’t make any sense.

We also do not dispute that Mr. Clement stated that the US is a signatory to conventions that prohibit torture. That is by no means the same as saying “US soldiers do not torture.” What you are writing here is the equivalent of saying that in America we have signed and passed laws against murder and therefore no Americans ever commit murder. Sadly, no that just isn’t the case.

It would appear that you buy into the spin and distortions served up by Mr. Ulrich. We do not and we will continue to point them out everytime.

Hey, if anonymous Pentagon officials say so, you know it can be trusted!

Did you read the entire CNN report I linked from January? Are you trying to deny that investigations took place? If the Bush administration did not take the reports seriously, why did it conduct investigations? As far as the “anonymous” claim goes, the investigations were openly announced by Generals Sanchez and Kimmitt in January. In fact, General Kimmitt announced that investigations were taking place at a press conference on January 16. Gee…that doesn’t sound too anonymous to me…

Here is the timeline if you don’t believe me.

Sorry, no, you don’t have a leg to stand on.

Are you trying to deny that investigations took place?

No, I was mocking your “very seriously” line — somehow it seemed pretty obvious. Do you seriously believe that Clement was simply saying that Bush, Cheney & Co. weren’t engaging in torture? Or was he speaking for the forces under the command of that administration, at a time when he already knew (or should have known) that the US had, in fact, not honored the conventions he referred to? The report released today makes claims about even the executive (narrowly defined) pretty dubious.

Just look at what Clement said: Our executive (the administration) does not say that mild torture will help get information. In other words, the executive does not see torture as an effective means of getting information out of people. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the executive actually physically engaging in torture, it is simply a question of whether the executive says such tactics are helpful or not for subordinates…and Mr. Clement said the executive did not. It is in no way a denial of the fact that individual soldiers in fact engaged in or could have engaged in torture.

Clearly, Mr. Clement simply never said “US soldiers don’t torture” as Mr. Ulrich claims he did. Especially not in the broad and sweeping context that Mr. Ulrich uses it.

What Mr. Clement did say is a clear acknowledgement that US soldiers are capable of breaking the rules and committing abuses such as acts of torture, and that there are consequences (court martials) for such actions, which he also defined. Just look at my article, read the entire thing.

Ray, you’re using the same old defense about what was the exact wording used. Maybe he didn’t specifically say “US soldiers don’t torture” but the implication was there that, well, not so much that US soldiers don’t torture, as the administration would never consider using or condoning torture ever. But don’t use that old argument that “those were not his exact words!” It’s old, tired, and just plain wrong.

The fact that there were criminal investigations (if that’s what they were) started in January, the Taguba investigation was done last year, and I believe it cites some examples from early last year and maybe even before. If they were “serious” about this, they would have started at least looking into it at the frist mention by one of the whistleblowing soldiers.

You really have to be grasping at straws to go into such pedantry and read “US soldiers don’t torture” as “no US soldier could possibly ever torture anyone”.

Of course it’s always implied that any soldier in any army, being a human being, can commit any crimes and torture, rape, kill, steal, or lie.

But, if you speaking in general of an entire army, when you say “they don’t torture”, you obviously mean they don’t use torture as a general practice. Soldiers – as soldiers – are supposed to follow army policies and do what their superiors say.

So, US soldiers don’t torture = the US army does not practice torture = our executive does not command the use of torture. doh.

There ya go, end of reading comprehension crash course for MedienKritik.

From the post

>Well, just to give one example, I think [!] that the United States is signatory to conventions that prohibit torture and that sort of thing. And the United States is going to honor its treaty obligations. [Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, p. 49.]

(Emphasis added) I suppose that Medienkritik (clicking on the link didn’t yield the web page) might seriously question whether this was intended to suggest that the US might honor its treaty obligations sometime in an undefined future (“is going to”), but in colloquial Amerikanisch this really means that it has done so, is doing so now, and that it intends to do so in the future.

So maybe MedienKritik should Kritik something else.

@ naomi

Of course it’s always implied that any soldier in any army, being a human being, can commit any crimes and torture, rape, kill, steal, or lie.

But, if you speaking in general of an entire army, when you say “they don’t torture”, you obviously mean they don’t use torture as a general practice. Soldiers – as soldiers – are supposed to follow army policies and do what their superiors say.

Here is what the article I was talking about actually had to say. This is a direct quote:

“Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib ? the names will stick to US President Bush. They stand for the failure of a government that set out to fight evil, and, in so doing itself took up evil methods. By Stefan Ulrich

Propaganda is seldom exposed so quickly and brutally. On April 28 a representative of the Bush government before the Supreme Court claimed: US soldiers don?t torture.

In times of war like these, the high court should be able to believe what the government says. On the same evening the Justices were taught otherwise.

The CBS network broadcast pictures from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It could be seen how American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners. The photos must have made an impression on the Supreme Court.”

First point: Again, Mr. Clement never made the statement: “US soldiers don’t torture.” as Mr. Ulrich says he did. You can twist what he said any way you like, he just never made that statement.

Second point: In his article, Mr. Ulrich clearly talks about specific incidents of torture at Abu Ghraib, namely those on display in the pictures, as disproving the statement: “US soldiers don’t torture.” So it is Mr. Ulrich that is implying that Mr. Clement was attempting to convince the Supreme Court that “no US soldier could possibly ever torture anyone.”

Third point: Obviously the government did not support such torture abuses, because they initiated their own investigation into the matter no later than this past January, well before the pictures were made public.

So, US soldiers don’t torture = the US army does not practice torture = our executive does not command the use of torture. doh.

I guess that what it equals if you don’t have a problem stretching the truth and you’ve never read my article and don’t know what it is that I am criticizing in the first place. If you really want to know, just check out my article.

Sadly, no, you still don’t have a leg to stand on.

Just a note, the following above should also be in italics as it is a quote from naomi’s posting:

But, if you speaking in general of an entire army, when you say “they don’t torture”, you obviously mean they don’t use torture as a general practice. Soldiers – as soldiers – are supposed to follow army policies and do what their superiors say.

Ray D:

Third point: Obviously the government did not support such torture abuses, because they initiated their own investigation into the matter no later than this past January, well before the pictures were made public.

Wow, if that’s enough for you as explanation of what went on, then it explains why you don’t even want to see the forest behind that tree.

The whole point of the torture scandal is the question about how far did responsibilities go, because we can sit here all day long repeating the line that the US army never ever officially sanctioned torture or even never ever closed an eye on torture, but is it enough to explain on on earth, if it wasn’t condoned at least in that prison, did such massive abuse escape supervision for so long? What about the accounts of military intelligence instructing soldiers on interrogation techniques? It was just a bunch of idiots, sure. Well, if the context had been a business company instead of the army, and massive frauds had been going on in even just one of their offices, you bet the company would be held legally responsible. Either supervisors know what’s going on, and closed an eye on it; or they didn’t have a clue, in which case they’re even more liable for being so incompetent and not doing their job.

Factor in the torture memos and the picture starts to get even more ambiguous. The executive specifically asked for legal advice on how to justify torture in the name of security and anti-terrorist policies. Long before the scandal came out or the investigation even started. Investigation which has led to what, apart from conveniently pinning the entire blame on ugly white trash Lynndie England who just didn’t know better?

Yeah, I see how the real outrage to you is one German reporter simply repeating the line of defense of the army – our soldiers don’t do this, if it happened it was just a few idiots, we don’t condone torture, we’re signatories to treaties, maybe, I think (even if the legal advice in the torture memos specifically says that the US is not held by those treaties and the orders of the executive take precedence; and even if only last year those treaties have been defined as “outdated” and irrelevant by none other than the Secretary of Defense, hello. Those treaties and conventions don’t allow even for things like Guantanamo, so clearly compliance to them is spotty at best).

Believe what makes you feel better. But I’m curious, why pick such a ridiculously neutral line in a German paper when even American ones have written far more overt condemnations of the way the government approached this whole thing?

naomi,

I’m sorry to say that you are knocking down a strawman of your own making. I am talking about spin in the German media. It is spin to claim someone said something they never said in a context that never existed and then to label that “propaganda.” That doesn’t strike me as “ridiculously neutral.”

I would challenge you to find an example in the main stream US media displaying those characteristics.

our soldiers don’t do this, if it happened it was just a few idiots, we don’t condone torture

In fact our government does not condone this and took independent action to correct the problem, something you just can’t give them credit for. Abu Ghraib happened because of a breakdown and failure among individuals in the system, not because of the system itself. The system itself proved to be self-correcting long before the media entered the equation. It is clear that many people failed and it may well be that people failed to some extent all the way to the top. I agree entirely that they should be held responsible and punished to a degree equal to their failure. But no one can say that the Abu Ghraib abuses were approved or condoned by anyone in an official capacity in the government. That is what you seem to be implying…

I’m not ‘implying’ anything about the government, Ray D. The government did seek out legal advice on how to justify torture in the context of having signed treaties and conventions against torture. That’s not my implication, it’s fact, it happened. How does all that relate to Abu Ghraib? How many degrees of separation are there? All we know for sure is that that legal advice was sought out long before the scandal came up, in fact, before the abuses even started. Given that you’re willing to give such credit to the good faith of the executive, tell me, how do you explain that?

It wasn’t a German paper publishing the story about those memos (and 30-plus pages from one of the documents), it was the Wall Street Journal, hardly known for being “anti-Bush propaganda”, right? Maybe you missed that particular item of news a few weeks ago? I guess you were too busy scanning the German papers for proper syntax.

But thanks to the wondrous powers of the internet, you can still do some googling and catch up. Good luck.

Simmah down naaa! Look what happened to me your favorite comedian? I started asking questions and got Obamanated!