Anne Coulter...

[Mike Smith]

Originally Posted by Slam_Bradley

So non-extreme torture is ok?

No it's not but this kind of stuff will always happen in war. No matter how many laws we have and high-browed notions, it's just going to happen.

[Tadhg]

Originally Posted by Slam_Bradley

So non-extreme torture is ok?

Only if it's treated like a party-game

[Mike Smash!]

Originally Posted by Samurai

And, IMO, Boldido probably falls somewhere between Rush and McCain politically... He's free to disagree, of course.

And much of the Abu Graib stuff that first came out, when that quote was made, was silly stuff like panties on the head and naked pyramids and such. You literally find harsher stuff in college hazings... heck, 1 student at the local university died during hazing last year due to a stupid prank. IF prisoners were actually murdered (and I don't think that has been conclusively proven yet), that does go farther (too far), but IMO putting panties on someone's head, reading them Harry Potter, and playing loud music doesn't really qualify as extreme torture.

By the way, that is one of the few quotes that I personally heard and know is real, but the context explains it.

When people are hazed in college, it's voluntary. It's something they go through to join a crowd or fraternity.

These prisoners had no such choice and I'll remind that some of those first photos were of a people from a very socially conservative culture forced to pile naked on one another.

If I put out pictures of this and I were an American prison guard, I would be rightfully fired and then a sweeping investigation would find and fire anyone even vaguely connected to this.

Forcibly humiliating prisoners and forcing them to have pictures taken of them naked is NOT a prank or harmless. These were not frat pranks done on people who knew that it was going to end and that they would be able to join the "in crowd" after it was all done.

And Christ, Samurai, some of those inital pictures had them threatening the prisoner's with attack dogs. Where the hell did you go to college?

[Slam_Bradley]

Originally Posted by zogger2

No it's not but this kind of stuff will always happen in war. No matter how many laws we have and high-browed notions, it's just going to happen.

Saying it's going to happen, doesn't make it right. We have laws for a reason. It separates us from anarchy. If those laws are broken, people need to pay for it.

We don't accept "every one else is doing it" as an excuse from our kids (well responsible people don't) we sure as Hell shouldn't accept it from adults who know that what they are doing is wrong.

[Mike Smash!]

Originally Posted by zogger2

No it's not but this kind of stuff will always happen in war. No matter how many laws we have and high-browed notions, it's just going to happen.

So let's just laugh it up, then.

How would Rush react if those same photos were taken by Iraqis forcing Americans to pile onto each other naked and photo'd in leashes and with guns posed at their heads?

Would it just be a frat prank then?

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Mike Smash!

"You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed." [4/23/98] -- Rush on Martin Luther King's assassin.

I'm with Samurai in calling BS on this quote.

To begin with, it's so insanely bigoted on its face that I can't conceive that there wouldn't have been an uproar at the time. And that it would then take seven years for us to hear of it.

It doesn't appear anywhere in the Google Usenet archives. That's automatically suspicious. A Google web search (my specific search was "we miss you james" + limbaugh) produced a whopping 10 results. All of which are dated within the last three months, and most of which credit WikiQuote as their source.

I checked the history for the WikiQuote page. This quote was added on July 20, less than three months ago. Whoever inserted it originally gave the date as "2/21/03." Then a couple of minutes later it was changed to "4/23/98." That's the day Ray died. The user who contributed is this guy. His contributions are limited to really nasty quotes attributed to Rush, Hannity, and Karl Rove.

And surprise: just minutes before he posted the Ray quote to Wiki, he also posted this quote of yours:

"I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."[3/14/03] Rush on slavery.

AND this one:

"I'll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo: every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress." -- Sean Hannity again...

Both of which, like the Ray quote, appear nowhere in Google's Usenet Archive. Each has even fewer hits on a Google web search than the Ray quote, and both only in posts made since July 20.

[Mike Smash!]

Originally Posted by Slam_Bradley

Saying it's going to happen, doesn't make it right. We have laws for a reason. It separates us from anarchy. If those laws are broken, people need to pay for it.

We don't accept "every one else is doing it" as an excuse from our kids (well responsible people don't) we sure as Hell shouldn't accept it from adults who know that what they are doing is wrong.

Especially if we're trying to show a foreign population that we're the "good guys".

Slam is dead on. If it's wrong for one person to do, it's wrong for us all.

[Tadhg]

Originally Posted by Loren

I'm with Samurai in calling BS on this quote.

Wow. I missed those quotes earlier. Beyond the fact that they would have caused a huge uproar, They don't even sound right. That doesn't sound like how Rush or Hannity talk.

[Mike Smith]

Originally Posted by Slam_Bradley

Saying it's going to happen, doesn't make it right. We have laws for a reason. It separates us from anarchy. If those laws are broken, people need to pay for it.

We don't accept "every one else is doing it" as an excuse from our kids (well responsible people don't) we sure as Hell shouldn't accept it from adults who know that what they are doing is wrong.

My belief is that once a population supports a war they should not act all surprised and not in part responsible for this reprehinsible behavior. Please don't think I'm trying to condone these actions or anything but war is war is war. No matter how civilized the society is, a military in fighting is going to resort to questionable tactics at some point to gain an edge. My point is society should consider these types of things when deciding to support war, as oppossed to I don't know, a standing UN sanction and international process.

[Wesley Dodds]

The Ray quote does sound like misattribution.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Loren

I'm with Samurai in calling BS on this quote.

To begin with, it's so insanely bigoted on its face that I can't conceive that there wouldn't have been an uproar at the time. And that it would then take seven years for us to hear of it.

It doesn't appear anywhere in the Google Usenet archives. That's automatically suspicious. A Google web search (my specific search was "we miss you james" + limbaugh) produced a whopping 10 results. All of which are dated within the last three months, and most of which credit WikiQuote as their source.

I checked the history for the WikiQuote page. This quote was added on July 20, less than three months ago. Whoever inserted it originally gave the date as "2/21/03." Then a couple of minutes later it was changed to "4/23/98." That's the day Ray died. The user who contributed is this guy. His contributions are limited to really nasty quotes attributed to Rush, Hannity, and Karl Rove.

And surprise: just minutes before he posted the Ray quote to Wiki, he also posted this quote of yours:

"I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark."[3/14/03] Rush on slavery.

AND this one:

"I'll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo: every filthy Democrat in the U.S. Congress." -- Sean Hannity again...

Both of which, like the Ray quote, appear nowhere in Google's Usenet Archive. Each has even fewer hits on a Google web search than the Ray quote, and both only in posts made since July 20.

Well researched, Loren. I did Google searches too, and like you found that they only appear on Wikipedia. I didn't know they were all from the same person, though... that pretty much clinches it IMO. All of those are fake.

Edit: Someone else has already removed the 2 Rush quotes and I just removed the Hannity one. I saw several others there that are highly suspicious, though I left them alone.

[Noah Johnson]

Originally Posted by Samurai

All of those are fake.

You meant to say "Except for the well-established one about Abu Ghraib", right? I mean, I know you wouldn't be deliberately misrepresenting something... that'd be lying.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Noah Johnson

You meant to say "Except for the well-established one about Abu Ghraib", right? I mean, I know you wouldn't be deliberately misrepresenting something... that'd be lying.

I was talking about the 3 quotes Loren and I researched, and were all made up by the same person. I already said earlier I know the Abu Ghraib quote was real, but it was made a few days after the story broke, when glorified frat pranks was about the only credible allegations yet made. Like I said, some of the quotes are fake (the 3 we erased), others are taken completely out of context.

[Loren]

I just edited Rush's WikiQuote page to remove those two quotes. I noticed that the same guy added a third quote to Rush's page:

"Was there any excrement, any shamelessness in any form, above all in cultural life, in which at least one African-American would not have been involved? As soon as one even carefully cut into such an abscess, one found, like maggots in a decaying body, often blinded by the sudden light, an African-American. [2/21/03]

Astoundingly racist, no? That's because it's a paraphrase of a much older quote by...Adolf Hitler. The word "Jews" was simply replaced by "African-Americans." The precise wording comes from a particular translation of Mein Kampf, but you can read it in the text itself if you like. Search for 'maggot.'

Needless to say, I removed that quote too.

[Paul McEnery]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I was talking about the 3 quotes Loren and I researched, and were all made up by the same person. I already said earlier I know the Abu Ghraib quote was real, but it was made a few days after the story broke, when glorified frat pranks was about the only credible allegations yet made. Like I said, some of the quotes are fake (the 3 we erased), others are taken completely out of context.

Huh.

Nice job, both of you.

I'm not sure I'm with you on the context quotes, but the made-up ones -- oy!

Once again, good job.