Last week the
New Yorker published photos showing United States military personnel engaged in what clearly looked like they were abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. We asked some people for their reaction.
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Benjamin Armstrong
Santa Fe
Director of catering
What was your response when you heard about the photos showing Iraqi prisoners being mistreated? It stirs a great question in my mind as far as how righteous we are being with our pursuit of freedom and security.
How should the perpetrators be punished? If proven beyond reasonable doubt that they indeed did do what they have been programmed to do, they should be removed from any opportunity to repeat this process. I feel the system will hopefully take care of its own to make sure that they are not able to do this thing at another opportunity.
How should the military ensure that this does not happen again? Police themselves a little more carefully.
The military has said that only a few rogue soldiers were responsible. What do you think? That that's a typical response, one that is always the given response. Whether it's crime in a local community, petty theft or maybe a shooting at Columbine. It's all about people that get out from under the radar screen. They can't deny that, but it doesn't give an answer as to why it happened.
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George Brown
North End
Ice-cream maker
What was your response when you heard about the photos showing Iraqi prisoners being mistreated? I try to not put too much emphasis on that. I tend to reserve making a decision how that actually goes, unless I was actually there.
How should the perpetrators be punished? They should be punished under the laws of the Geneva Convention. They should pay that price.
How should the military ensure that this does not happen again? Tough to do, because unfortunately we have the human factor that's involved. When things like this occur, even though people are trained to do the proper thing, under certain circumstances those things don't get done.
The military has said that only a few rogue soldiers were responsible. What do you think? Normally that is what occurs. There will be rogue soldiers whose anger gets the best of them.
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Tabitha Denney
North
McDonalds server
What was your response when you heard about the photos showing Iraqi prisoners being mistreated? It was terrible. I didn't like it at all.
How should the perpetrators be punished? They should go through the same thing that the Iraqi prisoners went through. It's not very nice, but maybe it'll teach them not to treat people the same way.
How should the military ensure that this does not happen again? Change it, change everything about it.
The military has said that only a few rogue soldiers were responsible. What do you think? I don't trust them at all. I just have my doubts.
