- Sound familiar? It's almost exactly the same nonsense John Reid came out with a couple of weeks ago, just before the footage of British troops beating up some Iraqis emerged.
Only this time he goes even more mental - we should be "slow to condemn our troops" because they are "increasingly constrained not just by international law and conventions, the standards we want to keep, but by media scrutiny, by videophones, by mobile phones, by satellite dishes". Eh? Mobile phones, videophones and satellite dishes? You what, John?
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I believe John Reid subscribes to the CNN response to images of torture and abuse - condemn the images, and let the torture continue.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0216-23.htm
Oh, and John Reid apparently believes it's ok to torture and abuse because "thousands of Americans died" on the 11th September 2001.
He conveniently forgets the fact that our own citizens died, and the fact that the Bush regime had a whole load of intelligence which could have prevented those attacks.
I forget the exact wording, but a Republican senator, Richard Shelby actually said that the regime had all available evidence to prevent what happened that day, but did absolutely nothing to prevent it.
I think Reid should remember who he is supposed to represent, or is he intentionally attempting to be the assistant to Rumsfeld?
It appears to me Reid's comments are very disrespectful to the British victims of "911".
This argument makes no sense. We should be slow to condemn abuses committed by our armed forces, because due to video cameras and modern media we're more likely to find out about those abuses.
Should we also go easy on muggers, vandals and alcohol-fueled violence because of the spread of CCTV? Perhaps the fact that a new computer system makes it easier to catch people not paying their road tax means the sanctions should be less severe? And as victims of domestic violence are increasingly likely to come forward, let's give those poor wife-beaters a break, yeah?
This is an especially egregious case of what I call "vulgar globalism" by analogy to "vulgar Marxism" - we can't do this/need to do this "because of globalisation".
The idea is that it sounds briefly plausible if you're not thinking.
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