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Having just seen the photos, and not having any real evidence as to whether they are true or not, I will say that I do not believe the photos. If the soldier had been kicked and beaten for 8 hours (and had his Jaw broken), I would expect to see some bruising (although bruising can sometimes take a while to appear) and, more likely, blood. As they say in the article on the BBC website, the shirt to guy is wearing is still white as well. I doubt they would have changed a person they were torturing into a new shirt just to take his picture.

If these beatings are taking place in Iraq, I hope the purpetrators are brought to justice (whatever nationality they are).

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Hmmm..........I don't see any similar outrage when the Iraqis tortured, mutilated and burned 4 US civilians last month ?

But then we do seem to very PC when it comes to 'us' being possibly guilty of wrong doings.

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I didn't notice the Iraqi's invading and occupying the USA.

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Its not really a invasion and occupation in that sense though is it?

They will get their country back and they have a voting system and no more saddam. We and the USA did a good thing for them despite the troubles all the polls coming out of iraqi have said things are still better than saddams time.

we shouldn't take away the good work of the army because of a few photos which might not even be true.

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I think you missing the point Kronas and going off on one again, what a lot of people here are saying is that the pictures should never have been published by the Mirror in the first place UNLESS they had absolute proof of their authenticity.

I am being patriotic as you say though, i stand guilty as charged on that one, but only because photographs like this are being published in an anti-war newspaper like the mirror simply to allow them to make more money, at the expense of the security and reputation of our people in Iraq WITH NO PROOF. Contrary to what you may think, many foreign combatants, irrespective of the outcome of whether these photos are real or not, have already made up their mind.

People could lose their lives because of this, what happens the next time a Soldier gets captured?

And no the mirror would not "concoct such a hideous library of images", but I'm sure as heck that someone might, and anyhoo whats so hideous about them, you assuming that what you are being told is the truth - very clean that Iraqi t-shirt is that he happens to be wearing isn't it?

Lets just wait and see - if this has happened its wrong, but I have my doubts at the moment due simply to lack off proof.

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has the daily mirror answered the british armys questions yet ?

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Allegedly in todays paper. They haven't answered all questions exlusively, and admit that they simply dont know why some details don't add up, but they have defended some apparently, but I havent read the article yet.

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Have you heard some of there excuse's there rubbish. It really doe's show how thick the people at the Mirror really are

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You cant blame the mirror they just want to sell papers and the fact that this will sell papers is typically of some of the public some people nothing better to do than complain.

They love it, as long as they can complain about government, celebrates and also go on a long rant about something they will. Especially with the war, many people had real objections but equally so many people used it to walk around on there moral crusade showing off there 'moral views'. They never give a fl*ing f**k about the people that would die they just loved acting high and mighty and telling people (i.e. me) that I was evil to think that it was the best course, these people didnt care about the issues like the REAL anti-war people where they just jumped on the bandwagon and now are walking around with a secret happiness at these pictures because they think it makes them right.

It is always the same people over here complain about the americans always being proud of there country. GOOD FOR THEM. Well dont we have that we always think that the UK is the worst in the world at everything. "france have got a much better health system than us" but they dont mention that thousands upon thousands of people died in the heat wave over there because the system could not cope as many staff where on holiday!?

We need to have more pride in our country and stop trying to find fault with every single thing we do

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The problem comes when papers like the Mirror start lying, and people believe it is the truth.

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Xaccers, do *YOU* have any *PROOF* of these accusations? That the Mirror really would "rather have kept Saddam in power"? That they deliberately published them "to damage the work we are doing to rebuild Iraq and relations in the middle east"?

Whatever my or your opinions may be of the Mirror as a news paper, for you to sling around accusations like this without anything to back them up is no better than them publishing the pictures without corroboration.

Oh, and please don't try to claim these are "opinions", because you, like they, are stating them as *FACTS*.

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Only because they want to, we in this country love to believe negative news people will always believe something bad about people or government but never anything good.

If its bad its the truth

if its good it must be a lie/cover up according to the mind set of those reader

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and undermine everything they do, then again the mirror and mail do that anyway

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I've now read the Mirror, and i'm unconvinced that the pictures are genuine.

Firstly, the Mirror counters claims about floppy hats, missing badges, and incorrectly laced boots by publishing pictures of floppy hats, missing badges and incorrectly laced boots, and saying: "There you are. We were telling the truth". But there are no independent good quality reference sources quoted. There aren't even any sources of any kind. Now you don't have to be a genius to think if you want pictures to prove a point, you might want to source them. For all I know they could have Googled "british soldier", and published the first one with floppy hats. Half the pictures might not have been taken in the middle east, by the look of them.

They quote 2 soldiers anonymously as explaining away the pictures. But when they get to the tough questions, they just go: "I don't know", or "I can't explain that".

The one (and only one) point that makes sense is the clean gun. I know the SA-80s are standard issue, but are extremely fragile, especially in dusty/desert environments. The guns would have to be stripped and cleaned down more or less every day. Certainly every couple of days, even if it been stored indoors. So the gun would of been relatively clean, but i'm still not totally convinced because there still would of been scratches, knocks, etc.

I probably shouldn't get into this again (not least because it is off topic), but I believe, war for oil, or weapons of mass destruction, every anti-war protester was a vote for Saddam to keep him in power. Noone has every proposed a sensible way of getting rid of Saddam without force, especially after removing sanctions. I always thought it should of been the other way around. I would have thought the 'bleeding heart' liberals (that are supposed to care for every poor, down-trodden, and abused person around the world), would have been supporting the war, and the 'money hungry' conservatives would have been protesting such an expensive move that didn't directly benefit ourselves. Funny how things work out.