Letters to the Editor
robotempire
Published Letters: 49 Editor's Choice: 9
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Disturbing...
[Read the article: At her majesty's pleasure]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So little is mentioned of your rape, that is what is most striking to me. Everything else, no big shock. But that your rape is mentioned out-of-hand, almost casually. I assume there are more after-effects than you've alluded to, and they are notable for their absence.
Also striking is how you lay the blame of your detention at the feet of American and British leadership. It wasn't your boorish, outlandish behavior that landed you in prison; no, it was the overly-strident police who have been whipped into a frenzy over the War on Terror. It wasn't you refusing to comply with airline officials; no, it was the British over-sensitivity to name-calling.
You masterfully credit your own actions with the results while simultaneously downplaying those same actions. Way to blame George Bush for you being a huge, stereotypical American jerk.
Sheesh.
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To be clear...
[Read the article: At her majesty's pleasure]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...the sheer nightmare of being in prison is pretty well documented. While no one would (or, at least, should) say that Mr. Kurth "deserved" his gangrape, I have to say that I wasn't shocked that it happened. I am very, very sad and bitterly disappointed in humanity that it did, however. I suppose the only good side to it is that hopefully these men contracted HIV, despite the exceedingly slim chances of that happening. Rapists deserve no better.
Saying that Mr. Kurth deserved to go to jail, however, is not morally or logically equal to saying "he deserved to be raped." I feel he definitely deserved to go to jail for his boorish and yes, criminal behavior. That doesn't mean I think he deserved to be raped or served sloppy chow or take a shower with scores of other men. Regardless of how many well-shaped Chinese men he happened to shower with.
The frequency and voracity with which the letter-writing readership impale Bush's administration on completely unrelated grounds is alarming. You say you can't understand how Bush misled us into war with a foe who did not have the weapons we thought he did. But then on the other you can make him this objective force of evil in the universe around which all bad deeds revolve.
It's ridiculous the amount of illogical hyperventilation that happens on a routine basis in the letter sections of the Salon.com articles.
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"If the jackboot fits..." part deux
[Read the article: Goodbye, Baghdad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Robotempire? You of military age? If this thing is so important, why haven't you signed up?
I have you presumptuous twit. I'm in Al Anbar Province as we speak. I can take a photo next to a jundi with your username on a placard if you like.
Now, who's going to be the first to say that I hope I get shot or lose a limb by an IED in the hopes that I gain some "perspective"? I've heard it before, it's bound to happen again.
Or wait, the other usual rhetorical path is to say that I must be an uneducated loser from small town, u.s.a., a dead-ender with nothing else to do with my life to wind up in "Bush's War". Who's going to throw that one out there?
I've heard it all. The bottom line is that I have first-hand experience with this war on numerous tours over here. 99% of you do not. I leave the wire weekly and interact with Iraqis. 99.9% of you do not and will not ever.
All of your illogical caterwauling about Iraq has completely hamstrung the Armed Forces from making more progress. Fortunately we're shielded in Al Anbar from the hyperventilation surrounding Baghdad. While I'm not in the Iraqi capital, I can assure you it is not American death squads rounding up Shia and Sunni families and executing them. It is not murdering children while they cling to their fathers' legs. The fact that this erupted here after Saddam was deposed indicates to me, and I'm sure any logical human being regardless of their stance on the war, that these conditions were already here. They were simply tipped into an acute state by our offensives.
We are not running mind control experiments here. We are not turning Iraqis into people they were not before. We are not turning formerly innocent, helpful, kind and complacent Iraqis into murderous thugs with laser beams. They were that way before we came.