Sunday, May 09, 2004

Abu Ghraib

I haven't been able to post anything about Abu Ghraib or the rest of the story that still seems to be slowly emerging. There are a lot of people out there that have discussed it much better than I can - suffice it to say that while the treatment that we're seeing of Iraqi prisoners would be abominable regardless of who did it and who it was done to, it does make it much, much worse to me that it was done by my countrymen. You'd think after the stories of the torture of American servicemen in the hands of the North Vietnamese would have at least put anyone off of thinking that ANYTHING justified such actions for a couple of generations, but that doesn't seem to be the case, not only from the actions that we're seeing documented but also from the reaction of a large part of the US population. Either denial that it was widespread or the sort of "well, look what they did to us" excuse (not sure if that is equating all Muslims with Al Qaeda or still believing that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked) - either rationale is clearly despicable.

Given the apparent fact that yet again the military put too few resources in place, this time to guard the camp, one could believe that beatings and rough handling were due to overcrowded conditions and blame the brass for not putting enough people in place to maintain control. But that does not explain the premeditated, sadistic torture that is captured in the photos we're now seeing (with what is being said is worse to come). This was institutionalized - there's no way around it and no defense for Dumsfeld. That's Nazi crap and we cannot stand for it. While he should have been fired months ago, there's no bloody way in hell that he should escape from this. The buck's gotta stop somewhere and it's been pretty well demonstrated that it ain't gonna stop on the Preznit's desk. Dumsfeld's got to go.

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