I read an article a while back at Defense Tech, called G.I. JAILERS’ STUN GUNS. Here’s an excerpt:
Since then, there have been momentary glances at how G.I.s policing Iraqi jails are using their stun guns and other non-lethal arms. But a new report from the UK’s University of Bradford gives the most complete picture I’ve seen yet on how U.S. troops are employing these weapons.
It’s an interesting article that delves into how the military police attempt maintain crowd control in Iraqi prisons (and elsewhere), and what kind of non-lethal uses of force are effective, or are humane. Apparently the Pentagon is sensitive to criticism on this issue, and are attempting to stifle and conteract negative media reporting. But they are at a loss on how to control bloggers. How interesting.
Defense Tech
Read more to get some background on the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, and the The Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project.
The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) was established to provide warfighters a family of Non-Lethal Weapon (NLW) systems with a range of optional non-lethal capabilities across the full spectrum of threats and crisis. The Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) is responsible for the centralized coordination and integration of NLW technologies and systems that will support the Services and Combatant Commanders. NLWs are defined as “weapons that are explicitly designed and primarily employed so as to incapacitate personnel or materiel, while minimizing fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment.”
You can read more about the JNLWD program here and you can read about the The Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP) here. Both are .pdf files.
I don’t know about the nonlethal part as I just read this morning that an Arizona man(I believe) died from being tasered while being arrested.
Well, that sort of thing is what they mean by negatice publicity. They have all these programs, and apparently they are more interesting in protecting those programs that they are in whether they are truly non-lethal.
Therefore they are looking to stifle any reporting of incidents like the man in Arizona.
You mean, stiffling people from providing links like this one?
I’m stunned and shocked.
tasered?
thanks for finding a link, Man..I was going to come back and do that and now I don’t have to. I believe I read that the guy was tasered some 9 times…I was going to say that seems like overkill but that’s a particularly bad choice of words under the circumstances.
And to think tasers are being used on kids in schools is even more horrifying to me.
Ok, I’m now confused. At the top:
The man is the 110th person since 1999 to die after a Taser strike.
In the middle:
Even so, medical examiners across the country and in Canada have cited Taser in 15 deaths after police strikes since 1999 . . . None of the deaths was solely attributed to the Taser. Officials say pre-existing medical conditions and drug abuse are among factors that can trigger a deadly end when a Taser is used.
At the end:
“I know they’ve saved a number of lives,” Force said, “mostly people we would have shot if it weren’t for the availability of Tasers.”
As usual they are overlooking the most obvious aspect to ‘controlling bloggers’…and that would be to actually have a free press.
It’s also rather chilling to think they must be working night and day I imagine to try and come up with something to control us. And how many people with sites likes Bootrib, Kos and all the others are being monitored under the umbrella of the Patriot Act or Homeland Security do you suppose?
Why hell chocolate ink, if there was a free press how would bushco and company keep tabs on what information is being disseminated to the public. The blogs are the last and best hope that the American people can be kept informed on what is actually happening to our country. After all Bushco and his propoganda machine are filling the airwaves with their precanned information that the public needs to know about us. Not providing the public with need to know information that might help us make informed decisions about what needs to occur in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Though I am beginning to see more of the land of the Corporate raider and home of the chumps, yet there is hope and that is all one really needs to begin the process of developing change in our country and taking it back from the thugs who have made every effort to thwart our freedom.
As long as the “big” blogs that consider themselves “leftist” continue to support the core principles of US policies and anyone who diverges too far off from that is immediately and roundly labeled everything from an extremist to a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, blogs actually serve to reinforce the message of Washington.
Americans speak with one voice.
Even “leftists” refer to Iraqis defending their families, their towns, their country as “insurgents.”
Earnest discussions are had about options for “containing” Iran.
And enough text to fill libraries has been posted on the subject or Iraq’s “WMD” or lack thereof.
Very few bloggers have questioned exactly who died and made the US boss of who is and is not allowed to have weapons.
“Palestine has a right to defend itself” is a seldom-blogged sentence, and on the rare occasion that anyone dares to suggest such an outrage, they are instantly decried as an anti-Jewish Hitler youth whose aim is to “drive Israel into the sea.”
The real extremism is so universal, and so deep that most are not even aware of it. The Pentagon need not fear that bloggers are any threat to America’s Resolve.
for that vote of confidence.
Leaving aside the big-picture question of who died and made the USA boss, there is a more complicated picture in Iraq than just people defending their homes against US aggression.
There is a government in Iraq, and however imperfect it is, and however distorted or beholden to US interests it is, there is little justification for Iraqis to go on killing each other indiscrimately or, in many cases, discriminately.
Most Iraqis would prefer a more focused approach to getting the Americans to leave than blowing up police stations along with any innocent bystanders.
When you get big, you may see the same phenomena occur here. I hope not, time will tell.
Aggressor nations that invade other countries and occupy them always consider the puppet regimes they set up to be legitimate governments. Germany did, the Soviet Union did, even old Genghis Khan did, but that does not change the reality.
The French Resistance were not “insurgents,” nor were those in Czechoslovakia who resisted the Soviet Occupation. Afghans who resisted the Russians were even called “Freedom Fighters” by the US, until American interests there changed.
If the US were invaded and occupied, it is unlikely that most Americans would cherish warm feelings for those of their countrymen who chose to collaborate with the invaders.
The Iraqi Resistance does not have anything close to military parity with the US. No one is supplying the Resistance with the kind of materiel that would expedite a “more focused” effort to expel the invaders.
So they do what they can, and it is not too different from what the folks in your town would do, if it were occupied by Iranian gunmen who a few Iranians might refer to as scared young men who were just trigger happy, in such a dangerous place, following orders.
don’t agree with the black/white way you characterize this.
Most Iraqis want the police to function. The police are not just lackeys for the occupation, they are vital for the safety of ordinary people.
There is a big gray area here, and you are prone to make it a simple us vs. them tapestry.
along with the “moral high ground.”
Invading another country removes both at once.
If I break into your house, there is no way that I can claim that my action is justified. There you are, in your pajamas, tied to a chair, and there I am, knocking your family around and helping myself to the silver.
Not even the most skillfully crafted arguments are going to change that reality for you, and convince you that my activities are really the best thing for all concerned.
Nor will you see any gray.
that if I am an Iraqi sitting in my home in Baghdad, deciding whether to allow my daughter to attend school, or commute to her job, or visit her aunt and uncle…
I am as concerned about her being abducted by gangsters as I am about her being harmed by GI’s.
And I would prefer it if the local police department was aggressively patrolling the streets rather than hiding from attacks by other Iraqis.
So, that is the gray that I am talking about.
are collaborators paid by and an extension of the Iranian gunmen that are occupying your town, they are not going to make you feel any more secure about your daughter.
If one of the Iranians takes the notion that she just might be a suspected insurgent that he would like to personally interrogate, and orders the guy who used to work in the office next to you, who has now joined up with the Iranians, to seize her, you will not be aware of any gray as you go vainly from facility to facility, getting slapped around, trying to find out where she was taken.
Once you get rid of the Iranians, you can work on re-establishing some gray.
Thanks to both DFT and Booman for an interesting exchange. DFT’s great prose makes it easy to imagine being in a scenario as s/he describes.
Maybe there could be some degree of trust in law enforcement, even if ‘sponsored’ by an occupying force. But it would require extended and extensive training – not the window-dressing exercise that we see. Kerik left just over half-way through his assignment last year. Another ‘Mission Accomplished’!
Who are the recruits? Are they properly trained and equipped? Competent command structures, discipline, corps spirit? I think not. So there is no trust and maybe they are seen as opportunists.
There are resistance fighters and fanatical suicide bombers who think nothing of killing civilians, in fact use their deaths as strategy. There are resistance fighters who kidnap people and sell them to criminal gangs who resell them to (?). There are Iraqi families taking revenge for the torture in Agu Ghraib, or the savage treatment of their loved ones, or the unjustified shooting and bombing of their loved ones on the streets. There are Iraqis killing other Iraqis over religion and ethnicity.
The US Military occupation is unable to stop violence in Iraq and in many ways, it is making it worse. The US Military never had any right to invade Iraq in the first place. They should leave and send money for reparations.
Has anyone ever been able to post
“The USA needs gun control legislation.” on DKos?
ductapefatwa,
Until the rest of the world recognizes that Israel is in fact perpetuating many of the same crimes that were inflicted on Jews in the 30’s and 40’s, nothing is going to change in Palestine. As for the big blogs, a small pebble rolling down a mountain will one day create an avalanche of change. The small blogs will help facilitate change in this country and that makes me proud to be a member of several small blogs and hope to help them grow. I am sure someone will label me an anti semitite for my view on Israel but I could care less, watching and learning, keeping an open mind and hoping that more moderate heads begin to prevail in Israel are my hopes for the future of that region. That the Palestinians will one day have a contiguous state living side by side with Israel is not out of the realm of reality. As for the military, it is not their job to control information concerning the peoples right to know what they are doing, of course Bushco and company are the most secretive and classifing SOB’s in the history of the USA, not even during WWII has so much be kept from so many by so few.
wondering how I managed to double post my comments
I think I am brain dead and just haven’t realized it today. Someone unplug me from the computer so I can just slowly dissolve away. lol
your right hand from the mouse. (or vice-versa)
Take a deep breath.
Then go have a cup of tea.
Came home from work, kissed my wife, hugged my children and kicked my dog, not really, patted her on the head, she is after all a 105 lb Great Dane and took her for a walk. Got back from that walk and played with my son outside for 40 minutes and then gave my daughter her bath, my son his bath and put them to bed. My wife continued to work on here resume, she is applying for a well paying position, that will make it possible for me to work part time and spend more time with our children. Then replugged myself into this wonderful blog. lmao I do love life and my family is the most important part of it.