I am horrified
Hmmm, I guess I'll go ahead and post something politically-oriented. This is my page after all. If you don't want to read my political diatribe, kindly skip this post...
I just got through reading about a new round of Iraqi abuse photos published by the Washigton Post. These follow photos and an article in the New Yorker magazine. If you haven't heard about these yet, go look them up online and read the articles.
I just can't get those images out of my head. I'm going to have nightmares about them. The thing that really sticks with me isn't the naked, humiliated prisoners who are being forced to commit or simulate various sex acts; it's the smirking faces of the (male AND female) prison guards who seem to be taking such delight in the torture. Ironic isn't it, that the Abu Ghraib prison, which was notorious during Sadaam Hussein's reign for its torturous treatment of prisoners, was STILL being used to commit atrocious acts of torture after the Americans took over.
Bush and Rumsfeld are trying their best to put spin control on the whole thing, calling the photos 'abhorrent' and claiming that the incidents are isolated. But the evidence keeps mounting that these were no isloated incidents at all. Rumsfeld is in some pretty hot water now, that's for sure.
And why are they acting so surprised about this? It's easy to torture someone if you don't think of them as human, and that's what war is really all about. Military terminology refers to things like 'eliminating the target', rather than 'killing the people'. The US military has killed thousands of civilians in this conflict, many of them women and children. How can you think of a person as a real, living human being and then blow him or her away? No, they are simply 'the enemy'. They are 'animals'. Then it's easy.
I just got through reading about a new round of Iraqi abuse photos published by the Washigton Post. These follow photos and an article in the New Yorker magazine. If you haven't heard about these yet, go look them up online and read the articles.
I just can't get those images out of my head. I'm going to have nightmares about them. The thing that really sticks with me isn't the naked, humiliated prisoners who are being forced to commit or simulate various sex acts; it's the smirking faces of the (male AND female) prison guards who seem to be taking such delight in the torture. Ironic isn't it, that the Abu Ghraib prison, which was notorious during Sadaam Hussein's reign for its torturous treatment of prisoners, was STILL being used to commit atrocious acts of torture after the Americans took over.
Bush and Rumsfeld are trying their best to put spin control on the whole thing, calling the photos 'abhorrent' and claiming that the incidents are isolated. But the evidence keeps mounting that these were no isloated incidents at all. Rumsfeld is in some pretty hot water now, that's for sure.
And why are they acting so surprised about this? It's easy to torture someone if you don't think of them as human, and that's what war is really all about. Military terminology refers to things like 'eliminating the target', rather than 'killing the people'. The US military has killed thousands of civilians in this conflict, many of them women and children. How can you think of a person as a real, living human being and then blow him or her away? No, they are simply 'the enemy'. They are 'animals'. Then it's easy.