Allegory In Starship Troopers

In the article, “The Torture Myth,” Anne Applebaum explores the controversial topic of torture practices, focused primarily in The United States. The article was published on January 12, 2005, inspired by the dramatic increase of tensions between terrorist organizations and The United States. Applebaum explores three equality titillating concepts within the article. Applebaum's questions the actual effectiveness of using torture as a means of obtaining valuable information in urgent times. Applebaum explores the ways in which she feels that the United States’ torture policy ultimately produces negative effects upon the country. Applebaum's final question is if torture is not optimally successful, why so much of society believes it

The organization of the essay is impressive. The introduction is effective in grasping the audiences’ attention. Mae begins the essay by giving information about the topic. She states that “[i]n 2004, when the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib became known, many Americans became concerned that the government was using torture as part of its interrogation of war-on-terror detainees.” This quote makes readers want to read further into the essay, and it also shows how the topic of essay is

During the Iraq war that between 2003 and 2006, the united states army committed a series of human rights violations against prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Bagdad. The violations included murder, sexual and physical abuse, rape, torturer, sodomy, humiliating and dehumanizing prisoners. In 2004 the abuse that was carried out was exposed by the publication of images that were taken by the soldiers that carried out the violations. This paper will be looking at what social psychology can teach us about what happened at Abu Ghraib.

The Abu Ghraib torture scandal left a large blemish on the occupation of Iraq and George Bush’s War on terror. As stories of the torture happening in the Abu Ghraib prison began circulating, American citizens had trouble comprehending the acts of evil their soldiers had committed on Iraqis. Some began to see a correlation between Abu Ghraib and the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Though the guards in both situations were brutal to their captives, distinct differences lay in the severity of their actions. Abu Ghraib’s guards were much more vicious to their captives, and this can be attributed to the prejudices the guards felt against their captors, the environment, and the lack of training, compounded with a lack of accountability in the leadership.

The subsequent case study, prepared by James P. Pfiffner, Torture and Public Policy, (2010) analyzes the torture and abuse of war prisoners by United States military personnel in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following photographs of the abuse spread around the world in the fall of 2003. Pfiffner points out that the United States Military, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfield, and President George W. Bush assumed a role in the events leading up to the exploitation, even though it has never been corroborated that President Bush or Secretary of State Rumsfield directly condoned the abuse.

The United States citizens have been wrestling with the question of, whether their government intelligence agencies should be prohibited from using torture to gather information. According to Michael Ignatieff, this is the hardest case of what he describes as ‘lesser evil ethics’—a political ethics predicated on the idea that in emergencies leaders must choose between different evils Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, torture was viewed by most American’s as only actions that brutal dictators would employ on their citizens, to keep order within their country. However, this all changed when in May 2004, The New Yorker released photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The disturbing pictures were released on the internet showing bodies of naked Iraqis piled onto each other, others showed Iraqis being tortured and humiliated. There was a huge up roar, which caused the President at the time George W. Bush to publicly apologize, and threaten the job of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Soon after, the CIA Conformed the use of waterboarding on three Al-Qaida suspects in 2002 and 2003, which further annihilated the topic. Since these reports, torture has been in the forefront of national politics, and the public opinion has been struggling to commit on whether torture is right or wrong.

The My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib torture prison were both tragic events in history that Americans were involved in. The My Lai massacre took place during the Vietnam war in 1968. Lieutenant William Calley ordered the Charlie Company to proceed with the attack on the village of My Lai. Their goal was to exterminate the Viet Cong combatants and any one who stood in their way, but they ended up killing hundreds of innocent unarmed civilians instead. The Abu Ghraib torture and prison was an american military run prison that was active during the Iraqi war in 2003 until 2006. They captured Iraqi soldiers and tortured them in extremely inhumane and unimaginable ways. These horrific occurrences made an impact on a countless amount of communities and people’s lives around the world whether they had connections to the incidents or not, which is why this issue is such an important matter to discuss. The concepts that will be discussed in this essay are the similarities between the events of the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib prison, the major difference between the two, considering who was truly responsible for the events at the Abu Ghraib prison, discussing whether or not the lessons of My Lai were learnt, and the steps to take to insure nothing alike these events would ever take place in the world again.

The author, Melissa Mae, explains the issue, along with the opposing sides, clearly. Mae begins the essay by introducing the issue. She says the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib gained attention around 2004. Americans became concerned when they found out the government was using torture and were extremely upset about it. She states that people believed torture was being used as a part of the government’s “interrogation of war-on-terror detainees.” Though she tells the readers what the issue is, she never fully explains it. She only tells us that the essays she wrote about were written around the time the debate was heating up. A positive trait about this essay is that she stated the issue in the first paragraph.

In her essay “Cluster Fuck” Linda Williams discusses Errol Morris’s documentary Standard Operating Procedure. She believes that Standard Operating Procedure should receive more “scrutiny” for its investigation of the frame. She discusses how images of death and torture are framed by the people who take them and how they are then publicly received as the truth. Williams argues that Standard Operating Procedure asks the audience to question their visual interpretation and investigate the framing of the visual culture of war. By investigating the investigation into the actions that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison and the system in place to punish such acts Williams argues that Standard Operating Procedure reframes and contextualizes these forced

The mass media is responsible for providing the general public with information regarding current events and issues that are occurring in the world. In addition, journalists have the ability to influence and impact individuals’ ideologies about certain topics by the way they present the information, either in a positive or negative manner (Beckford 1994). On the other hand, scholarship strives to methodologically and critically study and analyze a phenomenon in order to present factually correct information. Furthermore, this paper will discuss the difference between journalism and scholarship, and will use the tragic incident that occurred at Waco as an example to illustrate each fields differences in discussing/reporting the events that unfolded.

Censorship of war information in the United States between the mid twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has changed drastically. The role, methods and freedom of the media fundamentally changed between World War II and the first Iraq War in the early 2000’s. During World War II, citizens´ options for obtaining information, in general, and especially about the war, was extremely limited. All of these options were heavily controlled and censored accordingly at the Federal government’s discretion. In contrast to this, by the time of the first Iraq War, citizens had many more ways to get information and investigate the status of the war effort. The

In the article The Case For Torture by Michael Levan his emotional tone and word choice enforces the importance of the issue of torturing terrorists. Michael Levin uses imaginary highly unlikely scenarios to get into the minds of his readers. For example in paragraph 6 he tells readers to imagine that a terrorist group kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital. Then he asked four mothers of newborn babies if they approved of torturing the kidnappers in order to get their child back. This method gets into readers heads.

Firstly, the “war on terror” had reduced the humanitarian concerns down, and the foreign policy. Furthermore, media coverage had become more deferential and constrained: therefore, reducing the chances of media influencing policy. The “war on terror” most importantly provided journalists with a guide in which they could understand global events and policy makers with the ability to justify a more aggressive foreign policy plan. At last, the “war on terror” had constructed an ideological bond between journalist and policy makers which created stronger media management. Techniques developed to display coverage of certain issues over others to frame stories that support official

As previously explored, the film opens with recordings of real 9/11 phone calls made by World Trade Centre victims during the attack. We hear one caller ask an operator “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” , another describes how she’s “burning up”, while a third hangs up after telling their partner that they love them. Such an opening is evocative - even emotionally manipulative - and as an audience we’re clearly positioned to sympathise with these anonymous victims. The subsequent immediate smash cut into a scene of an Arabic man with ties to 9/11 being abused by a US agent is no mistake, arguably placing the practice of torture as payback (Bruni, 2012).

“If the media were not there to report terrorist acts and to explain their political and social significance...terrorism as such would cease to exist” said John O'Sullivan, an editor of the Times of London.1 This is also the way many other people feel about the recent increase in terrorist activity; they feel that the media is causing it. The media is doing this by fulfilling the terrorists' need for publicity.2 Terrorists need media publicity in order to get their views spread to the public.3 Because of this need for publicity, terrorists are committing their acts of terrorism in areas where a lot of publicity will be gained; the United States and Western Europe are the most recent targets. The bombings of the federal building in