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Taxi to the Dark Side
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008Amazing, horrifying documentary. If you have HBO, check the listings. If you have HBO and Comcast, it’s on your HBO On Demand menu.
30 Responses to “Taxi to the Dark Side”
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Growing up I lacked discipline. My dad wanted me to join the service… any service but I never did. I still lack a lot of discipline and I often used to wonder if I should have joined the military. Now I know I made the right decision. Not that serving isn’t honorable, but I could not bear witness to this stuff and still sleep at night.
Outrages upon human dignity… vague? I guess I’m smarter than the prez. Props to me.
Doesn’t Bush still claim to be a christian?
he is a Christian (capitol ‘C’ required).
i can see you’re confused; this whole “torture” thing seems bad. but you’re forgetting that we’re right.
;-)
Radley,
I just watched this last night, and I was completely numb for 20 minutes after I watched it. It’s unfathomable what we’ve done to theses detainees. The fact 8 percent of the people have been captured by Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is enough to give pause to the whole operation. It’s hard to be proud of your country after watching this doc.
Um, exactly why should we abide by the Geneva Convention when our enemies don’t?
You have a choice: claim to be better than them and act better than them, or act like them. Choose.
Oh give me a break. The “stooping to their level” argument is the exact kind of useful-idiot crap that means they’re winning.
Tim-
First, torture has been proven to be unreliable to obtaining information/confessions.
Second, it’s barbarous. We should be one of the standard-bearers of the civilized world.
Third, if we treat our prisoners cruelly, they’ll surely respond in kind.
The Geneva Convention does not require that both parties recognize a state of war. Our leaders have repeatedly said we’re at war, but refuse to grant the captured enemy combatants POW status, so they can circumvent international law. We signed the treaty 60 years ago, we should abide by it.
As our government gets more accomplished at flouting international laws, you can bet they’ll apply what they’ve learned on us.
They’re not winning Tim-mah, we’re losing.
Our souls that is.
I fought for an ideal, not just to defend my country. Without that ideal my country’s not worth fighting for. And yes, I’m looking for another one to live in.
Oh, and we’re not exactly defending the country either…speaking of useful idiots, where are you posting from?
omg, I responded to a troll…someone shoot me.
First, torture has been proven to be unreliable to obtaining information/confessions.
Don’t waste your breath because they don’t want to hear it.
Ive been through this enough times to know that the torture enthusiasts don’t really give a crap about “actionable intelligence” or the “ticking bomb” or the inevitability of mistakes that bring innocent people into the system.
They want to torture “bad” people for emotional reasons and all the rest is just bullshit to hide this fact.
The Geneva Conventions are there for a reason. What some people fail to understand, is that war and barbarity go hand in hand! Sometimes people do atrocious things – that doesn’t excuse them. When I was a soldier, I followed the GC in hopes that if I were ever captured, I would receive the same treatment.
Many posters are correct: torture is an unreliable means of gaining information. Let me hang you by your arms for a few hours – I guarantee you’ll say ANYTHING I want to hear to make it stop.”Anything” doesn’t translate to actionable intelligence! Torture only fuels insurgencies, and creates enemies where there were none before.
That soldier in the video made a very good point, and I one I firmly believe: it’s easy to run the war from your couch after playing a little Medal of Honor – “go over there and say that!”
I guarantee that most of these people posting that it’s OK to torture EC’s couldn’t tell you the difference between Sunni and Shiite muslims, or which areas of Iraq they live in. They don’t know what a Baathist is or why some people don’t want a democracy. They know nothing of the difference between ethnic Persians and Arabs, yet these things are what is fueling the fire over there. We don’t need to make it worse by torturing people.
The one thing I do know is that Iraqis, Kurds, Arabs, Persians, et al. are human beings! It’s not about “those who love freedom and those who don’t!” There are many more factors in the equation than that, though that is what the President has trumpeted and the media repeated. We stepped into a veritable civil war that we poorly understood. I was a soldier at the time, and I was against it, 100%. I was asking “why the hell aren’t we going full-force into Afghanistan?!?”
The main thing those soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors are fighting for can be summed up in a few words: the man to his or her left or right! Now, it’s time to put all political bullshit aside, and do what it takes to bring each and every one of them home safely, while at the same time, providing the Iraqi’s the means to deter ethnic cleansing.
Oh, and dsmallwood, tell me why we’re right! I’ll patiently await your reply. is it because the bible says so? If so, show me the part that says “thou must torture Iraqis so that ye shall winneth the war – after all, thou doth the right thing…”
And no, we don’t capitalize christian because we’re not christians. I guess you can retaliate by not capitalizing “agnostic” or “atheist.”
Religion is a largely evil thing, as you’ve clearly demonstrated by saying “we’re right.” I didn’t know the bible advocated torturing people! Definitely not the kind of God I want to worship.
Bush and Co. have no idea what it means to be an American and even less of an idea what it means to be human.
Win or lose, Jan. can’t come fast enough.
Psyop, I’m pretty certain dsmallwood was speaking sarcastically. That’s my read on it, at least.
In the age of unending and Undeclared Global Wars on Abstract Tactics victory is an undefined and moving target, and anyone can be declared an “enemy combatant” at virtually any time, for virtually any reason, and without proof or availability of legal recourse.
It’s sad but true that our own government has become an enemy combatant at war with our freedoms.
#10 OMG/Dhimm-Sam-Mah, I’m not a troll, I’m just saying that the Geneva Convention comes up a lot (as it did in the trailer for this documentary), and our enemies here (Muslims of both stripes, #12 PSYOP) have hardly bothered to observe them. The idea that we are above meeting our enemies on the mat is a sure path to defeat. I don’t seem to recall such a flurry of GC reminders when American civilians’ burned bodies were strung from bridges after being dragged through streets and so on….
Has Bush overstepped his authority, shredded the Constitution, and so forth, time and time again? Absolutely. Is everything (or virtually, anything) we’ve done in the war on “terror” (Islam, ultimately) the right thing? Probably not. I just think it’s ridiculous that we be held to some set of war rules that our enemy has demonstrated time and again to have no intent of observing. OMG, what a thought.
Tim the difference is that our “enemy” is not a national army, they are a loose colection of insurgents, the things they do are not the actions of nations, the horrors they commit are given no legitimacy. It’s evil people doing evil things.
But when those same actions are preformed by US troops when given direct orders by superiors going all the way up to top US officials, then it is a system of evil. It is a nation doing evil things. In the eyes of the rest of the world that nation is guilty. We are preforming the same acts that we claim Saddam Hussain was so despicable for doing.
Did it ever occur that maybe the reason the “enemy” doesn’t follow the rules of war is that because from day one they have been told that America is the evil empire, that we are nothing more than moral-less imperial conquerers. Perhaps we would do better if we did not behave in such a fashion that reinforces those ideas. Perhaps if we behaved better than the monster their leaders make us out to be, we would not have so many “enemies”.
random guy, has it occurred to you that perhaps if we defeated our enemies, whom we didn’t choose, in this war, then we also wouldn’t have said enemies? Also, our enemy in this war is far from “a loose collection of insurgents.” This kind of statement and attitude are typical, but vastly incorrect, and yet another reason why we’re not going to win anytime soon.
I can’t believe that people like Tim actually get to vote.
goddammit, i dvr’d the thing, but *still* watched it
Tim, I hope you take some time off from spouting off and watch this thing.
I sure as hell won’t be able to sleep now. I’ll be spending the night apologizing to the child in my womb for the world it’s about to meet.
Granted, I made a similar apology to my son just a few moments after meeting him.
What sort of morally bankrupt nation are we leaving behind us?
Please forgive that borderline “think of the children!” sentiment, but goddam if it doesn’t apply for once!
Well, that was barely coherent….
I’ll just mutter some excuse about hormones and go stew on my own.
I am not sure why Tim C would draw a corollary between burning the bodies of U.S. contractors in the streets of Fallujah with the systematic torture of perhaps some people who do deserve to be tortured, and some who were tortured whose only crime was driving a taxi, or sold out by a rival war lord or tribal leader.
Tim C, Here is what I want to know:
Tell us EXACTLY how we are going to “win” the war in Iraq.
Tell us how we did not choose to invade Iraq.
Tell us if you still believe there were WMD’s in Iraq, and that that was a legitimate reason to invade a sovereign nation.
Tell us what military unit you are in, and where you are stationed.
Which “stripe” of Muslim comprises Al Qaeda?
If Al Qaeda is a “structured” military organization, give us a run-down of the chain of command – who is the brigade commander in Iraq? How many divisions are there?
Seems you were getting kind of pissy that your “kill ‘em all” attitude wasn’t exactly embraced here. I’ve met thousands of people like you, and what else can I do but pity you?
One last thing. I can tolerate ignorance and piss and venom. There is one thing I will not tolerate -you dare call me “the enemy,” though I served my country and wore that uniform with pride and the memory of every soldier who gave their life so that we could sit here and BS back and forth? Here’s my email (Billybreathes@live.com) Feel free to contact me and set up an appointment – I’d love to hear you say that to my face.
Dsmallwood, I’m really sorry if you were being sarcastic – I deducted my own karma.
The “American civilians dragged through the street” thing is a pretty piss-poor argument for adopting torture. I absolutely think it was an atrocity, but I think you you’re trying to spin the facts to make your hate-filled, illogical argument.
Those “civilians” were Blackwater, USA “security consultants.” Their names were: Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague. At least one was a former Navy SEAL. They were killed in a grenade attack in Fallujah. Supposedly, they were unarmed. I don’t buy that for a second. If they’ll carry weapons while helping after hurricane Katrina, they’ll carry weapons in a war zone – especially Fallujah in 2004.
Now, that said, on 16 September, 2006, Blackwater mercs and helicopters opened up on a crowd of Iraqis in Baghdad. They killed 17 civilians, many while they were running away. The FBI found that at least 14 of the killings were unjustified, and could find no evidence that BUSA mercs were fired upon.
So, I guess in the end, BUSA got their pound of flesh and made the Iraqis pay for their actions. My point is, both sides are guilty of wrongdoing, but WE chose to go to Iraq. If we hadn’t gone there under false pretenses, this wouldn’t be happening to Iraqis and our military personnel! Someone has to take the high ground. Two wrongs do not make a right.
I knew some fellow soldiers that ended up working over there as PSC’s, and you know what they told me me when I asked why they decided to do that? “Money, and no pesky chain of command to reign them in.” The use of mercs who can carry out tasks that the average soldier would go to prison for is another Bush Administration trick to subvert the Constitution. Plain and simple.
More arguments against torture: It’s not just that it doesn’t give you reliable information, it’s that it feeds inaccurate information into your plans.
The folks on the other side are not going to be good sports about what you’re doing to them and their loved ones. You don’t have to feel empathy for people you don’t like to understand that they feel empathy for themselves. Torture causes permanent mental and physical damage. The people who are living with it will think it’s your side’s fault if your side did it. This sounds like a tautology, but I mean that they will not give the same weight to your justifications for torture that you do.
Treating prisoners decently means people on the other side are much more likely to surrender. This helps to protect your side from attack.
Hi Tim,
I’m gonna keep this simple. Our argument for Iraq and the WOT as a whole is that this is a clash of civilizations and that we are better people. The only way this argument works is if we behave like the better people. Otherwise the whole thing will look like an oil grab/neocon circle jerk.
To the rest: that part where they were writing on the guy’s arm made this grandson of an Auschwitz survivor queasy just from a visual standpoint.
I think a good reason to follow the GC is for public relations. If we can say “See, we follow the rules and they don’t. Even when they break the rules we still treat them as the Geneva Convention says.” That would create much more good will across the the globe as opposed to the “fuck the rules were angry and we don’t give a damn anymore” mentality. We have the numbers, we have the guns, we don’t have any reason to resort to those tactics.
I agree completely with Matt, Z, Nancy, and everyone else but would like to draw attention back to what PSYOP said earlier: they are still human beings. I don’t care who they are or what they have done, you do not torture fellow human beings. Tim, you claim to be a Christian. I’m usually not one to question one’s beliefs or religion, but I can’t help it in this case. You are not a real Christian if you support torture. It disgusts me that you and people like you disgrace Christianity by claiming that you love God and supporting torture in the same breath. Loving God means loving the other people here on the planet, and treating them as you would like to be treated. Sound familiar?