I was talking to a friend the other day who was, surprisingly, not very shocked by the horrifying photos that were taken of Iraqi citizens at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. His response was very similar to Rush Limbaugh's absurd response, which was essentially that these are just a bunch of young soldiers letting off steam. My friend thought that the photos that he had seen, which were essentially naked piles of Iraqis, were not really displays of torture at all. It wasn't until I told him about the prisoners that were sodomized, beaten, or killed that he began to change his tune.
He also, like most Americans I would imagine, had no idea how many of these Iraqis are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. This from Josh Marshall, opening with comments made by Sen. Inholfe about the prisoners at Abu Ghraib:
"'These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.'
"Of course, according to American military intelligence officers who spoke with the ICRC, 70% to 90% of the detainees in Iraq were there by mistake."
So, if you indulge me for a moment and look at the photo on this post, I would ask you to try to think of all the other photos of this hell that we have seen, and to think of these men's families, their children. I want you to think of sodomization, laughter, being ridiculed in a language you don't understand. I want you to try to comprehend the humiliation, the shame, the fear. Then, I want you to imagine that you did nothing, nothing to warrant such abuse. Then ask yourself who the terrorists are.
Posted by Paul Hina at May 12, 2004 11:05 AM