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I also believe this man has harmed, not helped, American security by his disgraceful conduct.

I have not served in the military, but I have many members of my family who have. It's a tradition and duty in my family for men to serve the country. Most recently my brother (Army Airborne Ft. Bragg) and a bunch of cousins.

I think the people who snapped the pictures, the people who sent them in, and the media have harmed American security. It "seems" wrong for some members of the military to behave in the way we've seen, but if you're not there in Iraq, you can't reasonably come to that conclusion. These people from what I've heard are not like our criminals in our prisons here. The military was interrogating them for needed leads, couldn't get anywhere with them because while they're using "effective in the US" interrogation methods, the prisoners with little English are praying to Allah and completely zoning out. When you use an interpreter I would imagine it would lessen the effectiveness even further. So, should the military have just said, oh well, F it, we're not going to get anywhere with these guys, and just feed them & make them comfortable? I don't think so.

I think each war is different. We need the guys in whatever country it may be to assess the situation & enemy, and THEN devise methods and a plan. Psych ops are important in a war IMO. If you have the enemy thinking you're a joke because they know the military is going to handle them with kid gloves, how far do you really think we could get? These particular people have grown up torturing their own, so obviously to me they need to be dealt with differently. If they're not intentionally harming women and children I don't really care what they do, just keep it on the DL. JMO.

I'll clarify my view, and am doing my best to keep it dog related:

a soldier who uses his dog to lick peanut butter off the breasts of females and the genitals of males is acting deviantly IMO. In one sense the degradation is trivial and gratuitous. It also can accurately be described as bestial. It is not the action of a fearsome warrior or a serious opponent. If we don't view the perpetrator with respect, how can an enemy (especially a fascist religious zealot of an enemy) look at him with respect as a combatant?

I'll back off my suggestion that dogs should not be used for interrogation.

I do believe that all interrogation methods need to be considered in an ethical framework, and that this can include considerations of utility: ie what benefit can be achieved at what cost. What I do suggest is that if dogs are used as tools of interrogation, that part of the cost equation must consider whether a dog as a tool is used to good effect, for a "good" reason.

My own view is no doubt harsher than most "liberals": re interrogation, that in some cases the ends justify the means. However I believe in rules and ethical analysis.

For frame of reference: the decision to bomb hiroshima and nagasaki was an ethical decision by a U.S. president weighing the cost of continuing a war vs. the horror of a nuclear blast. Ethics is everywhere. It doesn't mean you're soft.

rgds andrew may

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a soldier who uses his dog to lick peanut butter

I just read that under a yahoo news article Abu Ghraib dog handler is unrepentant and it made me sorry I even put my 2 cents in here. I hadn't heard that before. That's totally unacceptable and he admitted such. The only thing I'll counter with are the guys words, "soldiers aren't supposed to be soft and cuddly." It's a high pressure situation over there and poor decisions are going to be made.

I'm not willing to judge the soldiers. Whether they were following orders from above, or came to these ideas themselves; I haven't been there myself to see the things they have. There should be rules in everything, of course! I don't know that it's wise to always have the same rules. Each situation is different. There's nothing moral about war, and honestly I have never been in favor of this particular one, but I do support the soldiers. I think we should be torturing everyone in Afganistan till we find Osama <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> -just kidding, sort of... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Without all the facts I don't know how wrong these soldiers were. From what I've read so far though, I don't believe they deserve the amount of prison time they've recieved. Not saying they should get off scott free, just that they shouldn't be punished according to media whims.

I would like to know where the officers were, there always seemed to be one around when I was screwing up/off <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

We should keep in mind that MWD Handlers covers a vast arena from security to patrol to detection to tracking etc. I have known many handlers who served in combat and a few who didn't return, with the most recent being Sgt Adam Cann, USMC.

We can't judge why combatants sometimes react as they do. In this particular case I'm annoyed that we seem to be focusing from the bottom up and not the top down. We place loaded weapons in the hands of young men daily and we shouldn't forget that MWD's are loaded weapons. Sometimes it goes awry and this is one of those cases. Are his actions really different than pointing a loaded squad weapon into the face of an enemy captive in attempts to retrieve information, which happens more than we care to admit?

None of us can fairly judge this young man because we lack all the facts that led up to this one photgraph.

And, I suppose we should ask ourselves...how would we react if one of our KIA's had been our own family member? Would our feelings toward this Handler be the same or would we then applaud his efforts?

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Because we are NOT LIKE them........

Consideration for these soldiers should be very broad, they are getting a hard job done!!!!!!

Exactly. We are a nation of laws. That is what being civilized means. The only thing that makes us different (and in my not so humble opion, much much better) than them is we are civilized and don't resort to mindless violence because someone doesn't think like us or acts a certain way.

Our young soldiers have always been asked to do a hard job, a hard job especially when most doing it have just entered adulthood. That is why strict codes of conducts and military laws are necessary. Two years ago most of these young soldiers were the class clown or klutzy nerd in high school. Now they are defending their fellow soldiers in a hostile environment and must have a solid framework of dicipline to enable them to survive. The concept of dicipline and obeying of military rules/laws did not happen by accident. It was developed out of necessity!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/03/22/dog.handler.ap/index.html

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I just read that under a yahoo news article Abu Ghraib dog handler is unrepentant and it made me sorry I even put my 2 cents in here. I hadn't heard that before. That's totally unacceptable and he admitted such. The only thing I'll counter with are the guys words, "soldiers aren't supposed to be soft and cuddly." It's a high pressure situation over there and poor decisions are going to be made.

Ok, yes that was sick, and sometimes soldiers stuck in the walls of combat and violence do silly crap because frankly sometimes war gets boring.
He DID NOT do that to any prisoners, it was fellow soldiers and he goofing off. Further reading on the issue said, it started when they were joking about whether or not dogs really will just sit and lick peanut butter and whether sick people did that kind of thing, well unfortunatly their inner child said try it and see. Sick YES, abuse of prisoners NO, they were not involved in that. The only thing he is accused of with the dog and prisoners is having the dog bark at them. Big whoop, I wish that was the extent of my worries should I ever be captured by the enemy, a barking dog. Anyone who has attended the Military's S.E.R.E. (survival evasion resistance & escape) course, even wishes thats the most they have to face. The dog is a tool, classified as a NON-life threatning tool, and anyone who has been in for two days, can tell you that was public knowledge of using dogs like that. It was ok'd in Afghanistan, there was never a cease memo drawn up so they carried those same tactics into Iraq, and oh, because the crying heart media felt soooooo sorry for that murdering scum the dog was barking at a subsequent review and investigation showed that it was only ok'd for Afghanistan and that there was no language in the previous memo to extend it to other war zones. What kinda crap is that? When I go back maybe I should have my dog teams and I go out without weapons or armor, holding hands with yellow ribbons around us sporting a few peace symbols, and have all the dogs with bandannas tied on and muzzled. Perhaps people will then think we're playing fair <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Am I alone, or do you guys feel that this has caught so much media attention and this guy has been so severely punished because of the previous offenses by soldiers to prisoners? It just seems that since all that went down, the gov't has almost no choice, and has to make a big deal out of this becuase of the heat they took when all those sick pictures hit the media. If this was a "first-time" offense on the part of soldiers, I really don't think he would've gotten so much time. Now, we're stuck punishing this guy just so we don't look bad...everyone, thank the media.

*I'm not saying he was 100% right*, but I don't feel that, as a Realtor in Naperville Il (Disneyland), I have the right to secondguess a soldier who is living this firsthand. If I read everything accurately, no one was actually injured by the dog, so I fail to see that the punishment fits the crime.