Untitled topic

Agreed. This isn't about things being safe for work, this is about letting people not have panic attacks when they click through on an article.

> don't get life sentences

An accusation and some photos should not automatically be grounds for life imprisonment. But yes, there should be an investigation and a trial.

While I don't have much hope for enough public outrage to make a specific change, I still feel that leaks like these change the world. Not by any public actions, rather it plants a seed of accountability in minds of every individual and official involved on every level. It's the probability of unstoppable leaks that will make all of this no longer ok. Such behavior is no longer safely hidden away under the "fog of war". Even if up to this point many didn't get punished for these atrocities, what matters is that in the future they might, increasingly likely. Somehow the anger from this post made me feel almost optimistic.

You are absolutely right. The images are not of a real rape but a porno one. The fact that the real images haven't been leaked yet is an indication of how protected the troops are, as in "showing this would endanger the troops by making them targets for retaliation". It makes me wonder though, who is making this site writing about the real rape, murder and torture by US soldiers, then attaching fake porno pictures. It's almost as if it deligitimizes the whole story.

The last time I saw these specific photos in a story (== propaganda piece), it turned out they were from a Balkan porn movie involving consenting (I guess) actors, with a military theme, taken out of context. This was maybe 8 years ago.

I'm certain US forces have committed rape. Generally, against other US forces. There were probably some cases of US vs. Iraqi rape, such as the Tikrit child-rape referenced in the story, but murder or other non-sexual violence was generally a lot more likely than sexual violence. Plus, the trade embargo, war, breakdown in law and order, and occupation did both directly kill people and contribute to violence which killed or otherwise caused bad things to happen, and I think the US has a lot of responsibility for that (along with Saddam, and the militias, etc.)

The US isn't even perfect at prosecuting US on US rape in the military (although a lot of the most recent fuss about it conflates sexual harassment statistics with rape, which does a disservice to everyone; there is a world of difference between "rude or inappropriate comments" and "forced sex", and blowing up the stats by combining them trivializes the problem by making it seem universal). The US isn't particularly good at finding and prosecuting US vs. LN crime in a war zone, although it's probably better than any military ever has been before (traditionally, the concept of invader vs. LN civilian crime didn't even exist). Once it gets to USA CID or USAF OSI, I'd probably trust the investigation as much as I'd trust a US civilian investigation, but they were very underresourced so it took a long time, and there was a lot of pressure to not let anything actually get reported to them (think the ghetto "no stiching" rule, combined with self-interest.)

Promoting fake images as real doesn't help anyone, though.

(I just tried to find the original of this video; failed, but also now I hate humanity slightly more too. Ugh.)