Ok, it's time for a rant...I mean a REAL rant...like kicking it old school style rant. I went today to go see the movie "The Great Raid". Now if you don't know what it is or what it's about, I'll summarize a bit. Early in World War II, the Japanese took thousands of American and Filipino troops prisoners in Bataan. Seeing how it was the Philippine Islands, the troops had nowhere to retreat to so they had to surrender. Plus, they had been fighting for a long time with no supply lines coming in and a lot of them were malnourished or sick. The Japanese wanted to move the prisoners about 100 miles to a camp, so they forced the prisoners to walk. anyone who fell was shot. They marched for about a week and were rarely given water. This became known as The Bataan Death March. Years later once Americans started gaining a foothold in the Pacific, the Japanese would slaughter POW's instead of allowing them to be liberated by American forces. This movie dealt with a raid on a POW camp the Japanese had where the prisoners had been there for years. The healthy ones were usually moved to Japan for labor, so these camps held the weak, the sick, and the dying. This movie was about a group of approximately 200 soldiers who's job was to liberate the camp before the POW's could be slaughtered. Now I knew a lot of background leading into this movie seeing how I'm a World War II history fanatic, and I knew the horror stories of how the Japanese treated POW's...and I'm so glad this movie showed it. I don't mean that in a way that I enjoyed watching the brutality or anything, but maybe...just maybe it will be a kick in the head to those idiots like Senator Dick Durbin who want to refer to our troops manning Guantanomo Bay as Nazi's or whatever else term those idiots want to use to make a soundbite on the nightly news. Let's just take a brief look back at history over the last 70 years or so and see how the actions of American soldiers today stack up against what other countries have done that we've fought against -
1) Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany - responsible for the massacre and slaughter of millions in death camps. Under his rule, Josef Mengele (nicknamed The Angel of Death) performed experiments on the Jews in Auschwitz for "research". These included dissections done while the people were still alive to study organs, sewing others heads on another body, removing eyes and teeth and slicing off skin on people while they were still alive for experiments. And this was not just some rogue officer either...Hitler mandated the exterminations of the Jews, the handicapped, the retarded, even some elderly, the gays, basically anyone who didn't fit the idea of what he though a human should be. They were shot in masses, forced into shower rooms where poison gas poured in, and thrown into ovens to be burned alive. Remember...millions met their fate this way.
2) Joseph Stalin - leader of Russia during the time of World War II. Millions dies under his orders in labor camps and gulags. He was as crazy and evil as Hitler and was responsible for about as many deaths as well. Many people died under extremely cruel conditions being starved to death, tortured and beaten. Granted they were an ally in World War II (which I'll never understand), but if Patton had been given his way, we would have wiped them out after Germany was occupied. This major blunder under Roosevelt was responsible for decades of nuclear standoff between them and us.
3) Hideki Tojo - while he wasn't the emperor of Japan during World War II, he might as well have been. The guy was a monster and instituted the barbaric treatment of POW's during WWII which resulted in the starvation and beating deaths of thousands...and his policy was reflected in "The Great Raid".
4) Vietnam - I think we've all heard TONS of stories about the horrific conditions as a POW under North Vietnamese rule including the Hanoi Hilton. Those guys were absolute savages in every sense of the word.
5) Sadaam Hussein - gassed thousands of his own people, look at all the mass graves our troops have found. Also used to cut off people's limbs for fun and video tape the tortures he inflicted to watch later in his palace with his sons.
Ok, there's a little background. Let's see what American soldiers over the last couple of years have been up to with their prisoners.
1) Abu Ghraib - naked Iraqi prisoners were photographed in a human pyramid, one was shows with panties on his head, one was shown with a german shepherd dog (and man I love those things) barking at him, and a few were shown with bags on their heads masturbating. Oh wait, one was shown with a bag on his head hooked to electrical wires that weren't on, but he was told they were. And yes, one photo showed a dead Iraqi prisoner (who was involved in a riot and attacked an MP) with a soldier giving a thumbs up over the body.
2) Guantanomo Bay, Cuba - Korans were mishandled and supposedly one was flushed down a toiled which has yet to be proved because it came out later the prisoner flushed the Koran. Prisoners are sometimes left in rooms where the air conditioning is turned up very high to make the room cold, rap music is played loud to mess up their sleep, and troublemakers are left in stress positions for hours.
I can't even think of anything sarcastic or witty to say about this...I really don't. We've got these absolute brain dead idiot morons in Congress trying to compare the treatment of the prisoners our troops are holding to the barbaric acts of madmen!!! What the hell??? I don't get it...I don't!!! It pisses me off beyond belief!!! See, this is one of the reasons I'm running for the Senate in 2006...I want soooo bad to be on Capitol Hill when some idiot Senator tries to pull the crap Dick Durbin (and his first name couldn't sum it up any better) did. I want to follow up by just absolutely calling him out on his BS and asking for a member of the House of Representatives to start impeachment proceedings to get his sorry ass out of the Senate. That goes for ANYONE who would talk that way. Impeachment isn't done enough...it really isn't. Ok, if hear some Joe on the streets saying the crap he did, I just count it as sheer stupidity and thank myself that the person who said it doesn't have enough brains to ever amount to much, but for a government official to say that kind of crap just so they can oppose the President or whatever is soooo stupid that the one who said it shouldn't be holding office because obviously they are mentally incompetent. And this goes for anyone who tries to compare what our troops are doing the acts of Nazi's or saying we're in a fascist state or whatever...you have no clue what the hell you are talking about at all. It just pisses me off that Congressmen act this way...and yet NO ONE comes out to challenge them on their BS because they're too worried about their own political careers. Whatever...I hope a day comes where those spineless cowards are thrown out of office. Politicians just suck...they have no spines at all. I'm pissed now...and I'm done. I just hope the next time you hear some idiot in Washington spouting off about the harsh treatment the terrorist prisoners are getting that all this puts everything in a different perspective. Those who say that crap are idiots and should be kicked out of office....and I truly hope a day comes when I can be in Washington and say that on the floor of the Senate.