Untitled topic

"In May, [Obama] said: “The most direct consequence of releasing [the pictures], I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”" Is that supposed to be an explanation?

Moreover I can't understand why they let pictures like that be taken.

They didn't and the acts depicted aren't officially sanctioned.

I don't understand. Is the headline already not warning enough? Are you offended by the _existence_ of images?

Then don't do stupid stuff. This is what pisses me off about Obama's policy regarding stuff like this, and deciding to protect the people doing the wrong stuff, and prosecuting the people who expose them instead.

I don't know if it's because he's corrupt, or because he actually thinks he's taking the right decision in "protecting the troops/spy agents/whatever", but ultimately the decision is a bad one, as it encourages that sort of behavior.

Americans (no, not just the American government) think their actions of aggression have no consequence and that there's no blowback.

> "Paul Waldman lays out a list of significant U.S. military actions over the past 50 years, and it adds up to 15 separate episodes, ranging from full-scale wars (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) to smaller incursions (Grenada, Haiti, Panama). For those of you who are math challenged, this means we've launched a significant overseas assault every 40 months since 1963"

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/how-rest-world...

When you're such a hostile nation, do you really expect no blowback, no retaliation whatsoever? If nations as a whole can't win against US, and can't take their vengeance for their destroyed lives and murdered families, individuals will, one way or another. And no, it won't matter if they murder civilians, too, because that's pretty much US' policy overseas, too. So in their minds, fair is fair.

Americans need to take a long hard look at what they're doing overseas, and find the root of the rapidly increasing anti-Americanism, and hatred towards US. The government is lying its own population that it's protecting it against the terrorists, when all they're doing is creating more and more of them [1], with each nation they (illegally) attack (the government thinks that if it's "only" using drones instead of troops on the ground, that's somehow fine), and with each innocent life taken.

As long as that's US' policy overseas, you should expect nothing less than increasing hatred towards Americans, worse international relationships, and more retaliations.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WypX2FHf7eU

Trigger warnings are important. A rape survivor may have braced themselves for a textual story on rape, but have been completely unprepared for the images.