Torture, Al-Qaeda Style

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Torture, Al-Qaeda Style

Drawings, tools seized from Iraq safe house in U.S. military raid

May 24, 2007

The Smoking Gun

These pictures are pretty graphic and disturbing, so don't look unless you don't mind. From the article (but without the embedded links):

In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses. Photos showing injuries sustained by those captives can be found here. (12 pages)

This is normal to al-Qaeda members. This is why we do not need to be very sympathetic to them when they are captured.

Michael

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Torture, Al-Qaeda Style

Drawings, tools seized from Iraq safe house in U.S. military raid

May 24, 2007

The Smoking Gun

These pictures are pretty graphic and disturbing, so don't look unless you don't mind. From the article (but without the embedded links):

In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images, which you'll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. Photos of those items can be seen here. The images, which were just declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. In a raid earlier this week, Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses. Photos showing injuries sustained by those captives can be found here. (12 pages)

This is normal to al-Qaeda members. This is why we do not need to be very sympathetic to them when they are captured.

Michael

These tactics are an attempt to escalate the costs of combat and induce fear in Al-Qaeda's opponents. The same tactics were used by the Japanese, Vietnamese, Soviets and many others. Fear is an effective weapon in combat and one advantage Al-Qaeda has is that they can induce it and they have very little of it.

Jim

Edited May 24, 2007 by James Heaps-Nelson

[zantonavitch]

This is normal to al-Qaeda members. This is why we do not need to be very sympathetic to them when they are captured.

Wrong! All these "terrorists" -- as fatuous Westerners universally label them -- are jihadi suspects. Either they're guilty or they're not. Either they're Al Qaidists and jihadists or they're not. This last is determined by law and via trials. "Sympathy" or "niceness" is irrelevant and absurd.

All these "terrorists" need to be savagely killed or else set free. Big difference.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Kyrel,

Wrong?

What on earth are you talking about? Maybe you missed the part from The Smoking Gun about this manual being obtained from an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq?

Let's keep things within reality and add to it, if necessary. Not deny it.

And at least read the print part, not just look at the pictures. This is not a Playboy magazine.

Dayaamm!

Michael

[zantonavitch]

Let's keep things within reality...

Point noted. Still--

I live for the day when someone prominent observes the above safe house and finally exclaims: "God damn it! These Muslims are absolute monsters. I really hate their guts. We should fuckin' kill the bastards!"

No apologies, no qualifications. No PC, sanction-of-the-victim, appeasement, depravity about how "Not all..."

An open statement of moral revulsion and visceral loathing toward the belief-system and its adherents which make Michael's pictures possible.

It would change the world.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I live for the day when someone prominent observes the above safe house and finally exclaims: "God damn it! These Muslims are absolute monsters. I really hate their guts. We should fuckin' kill the bastards!"

Kyrel,

Er... does this include such prominent person being in the safe house at the time the manual was discovered and being surrounded by the (mostly Muslim) Iraqi armed forces that worked with him to get there?

Somehow I don't think that would change the world for hardly anyone except him.

Michael

[zantonavitch]

Er... does this include such prominent person being in the safe house at the time the manual was discovered and being surrounded by the (mostly Muslim) Iraqi armed forces that worked with him to get there?

Yes. But I'm really looking for George Bush, Tony Blair, or the head of the UN. Also the presidents and heads of the philosophy departments at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge. Also Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley.

Say it, or drop out, counter-productive surrender-monkeys! :nuke:

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Kyrel,

In this hypothetical, after all the Muslims have been wiped out, do you have any other groups you would like to equally eradicate from walking on this earth?

Michael

[zantonavitch]

According to Ibn Warraq -- world's foremost authority on Islam -- Muslims are worse than communists and Nazis. So everyone should openly hate them, just as everyone decent openly hates communists and Nazis.

This doesn't mean killing them. This doesn't even mean violating their rights.

That last paragraph is blazingly obvious. Even a retarded child can understand it. But if there's a single Objectivist anywhere on earth who comprehends, I'm unaware of their existence.

There are essentially 3 kinds of Muslims in the world:

1) Jihadis -- who should be killed

2) Supporters of jihad -- who should be hated

3) Opponents of jihad -- who should be slapped

This last suggestion is perhaps metaphorical or verbal. Group 3 "Muslims" -- maybe 5-10% of world population -- who reject jihad (war) and sharia (slavery) basically need to get a new religion. Or they need to explain themselves ten times louder and ten times longer than currently. And they need to morally condemn and openly revile their fellow Muslims in a whole new way and on a whole new level -- just as modern Christians do to medieval Christians.

How hard, really, is any of this to comprehend? Ah, but I know the answer to that for Objectivists. Impossible.

Edited May 26, 2007 by Kyrel Zantonavitch

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Kyrel,

Actually, it is not because of impossibility that I have my difference with you. It is because you are flat-out wrong.

Ibn Warraq is the world's foremost authority on Islam? According to whom? Just because you say so? Not a very good criterion.

You confuse people with their ideologies. Decent people do not hate communists and Nazis indiscriminately and in a collectivist manner as you preach. They hate the ideologies and hate those communist and Nazi individuals who implement the ideology enough to be a threat.

I will not argue the rest. Enough hate speech. You are proposing bigotry wedded to violence. Pure collectivism. OL is not the venue for that. This is an Objectivist site. Individualism and all that.

Michael

[Wolf DeVoon]

modern Christians morally condemn and openly revile medieval Christians.

Sir, this is silly. Educated, modern Christians revere Bonaventure, Aquinas, and dozens of other medieval saints. Christmas and Santa Claus are medieval concoctions. Please name a non-Muslim who reviles the Crusaders or any other aspect of Christianity's lunatic, blood-drenched past.

W.

Edited May 26, 2007 by Wolf DeVoon

[BaalChatzaf]

modern Christians morally condemn and openly revile medieval Christians.

Sir, this is silly. Educated, modern Christians revere Bonaventure, Aquinas, and dozens of other medieval saints. Christmas and Santa Claus are medieval concoctions. Please name a non-Muslim who reviles the Crusaders or any other aspect of Christianity's lunatic, blood-drenched past.

W.

How about me? Christianity prior to the Enlightenment was Bad for the Jews. Even in its somewhat detoxified form I find Christianity incredibly anti-human. The concept of Original Sin is what I detest the most. In the early days of Islam Jews had a better time of it in Islamic Domains than in Christian Domains.

Of the various Christian sects I find the Evangelistic Protestants and Fundamentalists the most annoying. Catholics have become bearable since Vatican II. As long as you don't discuss religion with them they are alright.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Wolf DeVoon]

Christianity prior to the Enlightenment was Bad for the Jews.

Medieval banking was dominated by the Jews and Levantines

Columbia Encyclopedia

Merchant banks, now so called, are in fact the original "banks". These were invented in the Middle Ages by Italian grain merchants... The Jews could not hold land in Italy, so they entered the great trading piazzas and halls of Lombardy, alongside the local traders, and set up their benches to trade in crops. They had one great advantage over the locals. Christians were strictly forbidden the sin of usury. The Jewish newcomers, on the other hand, could lend to farmers against crops in the field, a high-risk loan at what would have been considered usurious rates by the Church, but did not bind the Jews. In this way they could secure the grain sale rights against the eventual harvest. They then began to advance against the delivery of grain shipped to distant ports. In both cases they made their profit from the present discount against the future price. This two-handed trade was time consuming and soon there arose a class of merchants, who were trading grain debt instead of grain. It was a short step from financing trade on their own behalf to settling trades for others, and then to holding deposits for settlement of "billete" or notes written by the people who were still brokering the actual grain... The next generation of bankers arose from migrant Jewish merchants in the great wheat growing areas of Germany and Poland. Many of these merchants were from the same families who had been part of the development of the banking process in Italy. They also had links with family members who had, centuries before, fled Spain for both Italy and England. This course of events set the stage for the rise of banking names which still resonate today: Schroders, Warburgs, Rothschilds...

Wikipedia "Merchant Banking"

[Wrighty]

It is not that long since the IRA terror campaign spilt over to the English mainland.....because of all the nationalistic and religious nuances of their actions I suppose we here could have been justified in waging a vengeful war against (1) all Irish and (2) all Catholics - wherever they were in the world ???? :getlost:

Perhaps the war really is Civilisation v Fundamentalism?

The latter and its perpetrators (in whatever religious guise) chill me to the bone.

Wolf, thanks for the banking historical background....fascinating!

[Chris Grieb]

In the discussion of Ireland there is a movie set in Ireland about a couple one of whom is Protestant and the other Catholic who eventually run afoul of the local RC priest. They are then boycotted by all the Catholics in the town. The boycott goes on for a long period before it is called off. The movie suggest the story reached the Pope and he ordered it ended. Has anyone else seen this? This occurred very recently. Like the 60ths or 70ths. I mention this to suggest that in Ireland they take their religion very seriously.