An Illegal and Immoral War - Betrayed by Images of Our Own Racism

[CHURCH MOLESTED CHILDS]

An Illegal and Immoral War - Betrayed by Images of Our Own Racism

ROBERT FISK AT HIS BEST - HERE IS A journalist to be admired, not some shit
like friedman - pullitzers are given for incompetence

By ROBERT FISK - http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk05072004.html

First, our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now, we have our own digital
suicide bomber, the camera. Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie
England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi. Take a close look at
the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie could
outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into
the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with
just one tug on the leash.

The Muslim suicide bomber cries Allahu Akbar, God is great. And what does
Specialist Charles Graner--Lynndie's partner-in-crime, the man who appears
in several of the torture photographs posing with Lynndie behind a pyramid
of naked Iraqi prisoners--do back home in Pennsylvania. Why, his garden is
plastered with a legend from the Book of Hosea, about sowing and
righteousness and ploughing.

Could ever Islam have come so intimately into contact with the sexuality of
the Old Testament? Could neo-conservative Christianity--Lynndie is also a
churchgoer--have collided so violently, so revoltingly, so obscenely with
Islam?

And who were the innocent in these vile photographs? The American torturers
and humiliators? Or the Iraqi victims?

President Bush is fearful of Arab reaction to these pictures. Why? For a
year now, Iraqis have been trying to tell journalists of the brutal
treatment they are receiving at the hands of their occupiers. They don't
need these incriminating photographs to prove to them what they already
know to be true.

But, in the history of the Middle East, these pictures already have the
status of those most damaging snapshots of the Vietnam war: the police
chief in Saigon executing his Vietcong prisoner, the naked girl burnt by
napalm, the pile of bodies at My Lai. For Arabs, read Deir Yassin and the
corpses piled in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Chatila in 1982.

Not long after the occupation of Baghdad in April of last year, we got our
hands on videotape of the whipping of Iraqi prisoners by Saddam's security
police.

I'm not sure which circle of hell the victims were enduring in the 45
minutes of sadism which I still have on one tape. They are whipped, they
are kicked into sewers and they cower like dogs. And why were these war
crimes filmed? I thought at first that it was intended for the enjoyment of
Saddam or his disgusting son Uday. But now I realise the videos were taken
so that the prisoners could be humiliated. Their suffering, their pathetic
pleas for mercy were to be recorded--to add the final layer of degradation
to their fate. And now I realise, too, that the pictures of the Iraqis so
cruelly treated--so tortured--by the Americans, were taken for precisely
the same reason.

Someone decided that the photos would be the final straw, the breaking
point, the moment of capitulation for these young men. Make them simulate
oral sex. Make them look at the penis of their best friend. Get a girl to
admire their attempted erection. This was truly Saddamite in its
perversity. So let's, as the Americans say, get real. Who taught Lynndie
and her boyfriend and the other American sadists of Abu Ghraib prison to do
this?

I used to ask who taught the Syrian and Iraqi secret police to do this. The
answer to the latter question was simple: the East German secret police.
But the answer to the first question? Well, we have been told that there
were "contracted" interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

I have reason to believe General Janis Karpinski, the luckless prison
commander who is going to be dumped out of the army for interrogations over
which she had no control, knew "outsiders" were questioning her inmates.
She was never allowed into the interrogation room. And I can see why. So,
no doubt, can she.

So who were these mysterious "interrogators"? If they were not CIA or FBI
staff, who were they? Several names are already doing the
rounds--journalists claim they have no final proof--and a number, I
understand, hold more than one passport. Why were they brought to Abu
Ghraib? Who brought them? How much are they paid? And who trained them?

Who taught them it was a good idea to get a girl to point at an Arab who
was being forced to masturbate, to humiliate an Iraqi by hooding him with a
girl's lingerie?

We are not just talking "sick" here. We're talking professionals. President
Bush at last apologised yesterday to the Arab world for this filth--only,
no doubt, because of the latest picture on the front of The Washington
Post--but the constant, insistent refrain from US officers that these were
a tiny group of unrepresentative Americans makes me very suspicious.

Lynndie and her boyfriend were not part of a "rogue" unit. They were told
to do these despicable things. They were encouraged. This was an order from
someone. Who? When can we see their pictures, their identity, their
passports, their orders?

Yes, it's part of a culture, a long tradition that goes back to the
Crusades; that the Muslim is dirty, lascivious, unChristian, unworthy of
humanity--which is pretty much what Osama bin Laden (now forgotten by Mr
Bush, I notice) believes about us Westerners. And our illegal, immoral,
meretricious war has now brought forth the images that betray our racism.

The hooded man with the wires attached to his hands has now become an
iconic portrait, every bit as memorable as the picture of the second
aircraft flying into the World Trade Centre. No, of course, we haven't
killed 3,000 Iraqis. We've killed many more. And the same goes for
Afghanistan.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.

[Joseph S. Powell, III]

Saddam had a brutal regime which did a hundred times worse what those six
soldirs did, and they did it to thousands more of their people.
It's lousy that these six soldiers did what they did, but let's keep some
perspective and remember that it was only six people out of an Army which
had otherwise behaved very well - let's also keep in mind that had the
positions been reversed, the majority of the Iraqi army would have committed
far worse torture/humiliation upon American POW's.
Imagine. Six U.S. soldiers commit un-American acts toward some Iraqi
insurgents (who had to have done something wrong to have been placed in that
prison in the first place, so they're not exactly "innocent"), and we're
equated with the Nazi's (which better fits the Iraqi army and the Iraqi
terrorist insurgents).
Compare that with history, and you'll find by comparisan that this is really
small potatoes.
The media are only screaming this loudly about the whole debacle because
they're against America - they would never have printed pictures of the
torture inflicted by Saddam on their front page with the bold headline,
"VILE!".

Post by CHURCH MOLESTED CHILDS
An Illegal and Immoral War - Betrayed by Images of Our Own Racism
ROBERT FISK AT HIS BEST - HERE IS A journalist to be admired, not some shit
like friedman - pullitzers are given for incompetence
By ROBERT FISK - http://www.counterpunch.com/fisk05072004.html
First, our enemies created the suicide bomber. Now, we have our own digital
suicide bomber, the camera. Just look at the way US army reservist Lynndie
England holds the leash of the naked, bearded Iraqi. Take a close look at
the leather strap, the pain on the prisoner's face. No sadistic movie could
outdo the damage of this image. In September 2001, the planes smashed into
the buildings; today, Lynndie smashes to pieces our entire morality with
just one tug on the leash.
The Muslim suicide bomber cries Allahu Akbar, God is great. And what does
Specialist Charles Graner--Lynndie's partner-in-crime, the man who appears
in several of the torture photographs posing with Lynndie behind a pyramid
of naked Iraqi prisoners--do back home in Pennsylvania. Why, his garden is
plastered with a legend from the Book of Hosea, about sowing and
righteousness and ploughing.
Could ever Islam have come so intimately into contact with the sexuality of
the Old Testament? Could neo-conservative Christianity--Lynndie is also a
churchgoer--have collided so violently, so revoltingly, so obscenely with
Islam?
And who were the innocent in these vile photographs? The American torturers
and humiliators? Or the Iraqi victims?
President Bush is fearful of Arab reaction to these pictures. Why? For a
year now, Iraqis have been trying to tell journalists of the brutal
treatment they are receiving at the hands of their occupiers. They don't
need these incriminating photographs to prove to them what they already
know to be true.
But, in the history of the Middle East, these pictures already have the
status of those most damaging snapshots of the Vietnam war: the police
chief in Saigon executing his Vietcong prisoner, the naked girl burnt by
napalm, the pile of bodies at My Lai. For Arabs, read Deir Yassin and the
corpses piled in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra and Chatila in 1982.
Not long after the occupation of Baghdad in April of last year, we got our
hands on videotape of the whipping of Iraqi prisoners by Saddam's security
police.
I'm not sure which circle of hell the victims were enduring in the 45
minutes of sadism which I still have on one tape. They are whipped, they
are kicked into sewers and they cower like dogs. And why were these war
crimes filmed? I thought at first that it was intended for the enjoyment of
Saddam or his disgusting son Uday. But now I realise the videos were taken
so that the prisoners could be humiliated. Their suffering, their pathetic
pleas for mercy were to be recorded--to add the final layer of degradation
to their fate. And now I realise, too, that the pictures of the Iraqis so
cruelly treated--so tortured--by the Americans, were taken for precisely
the same reason.
Someone decided that the photos would be the final straw, the breaking
point, the moment of capitulation for these young men. Make them simulate
oral sex. Make them look at the penis of their best friend. Get a girl to
admire their attempted erection. This was truly Saddamite in its
perversity. So let's, as the Americans say, get real. Who taught Lynndie
and her boyfriend and the other American sadists of Abu Ghraib prison to do
this?
I used to ask who taught the Syrian and Iraqi secret police to do this. The
answer to the latter question was simple: the East German secret police.
But the answer to the first question? Well, we have been told that there
were "contracted" interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
I have reason to believe General Janis Karpinski, the luckless prison
commander who is going to be dumped out of the army for interrogations over
which she had no control, knew "outsiders" were questioning her inmates.
She was never allowed into the interrogation room. And I can see why. So,
no doubt, can she.
So who were these mysterious "interrogators"? If they were not CIA or FBI
staff, who were they? Several names are already doing the
rounds--journalists claim they have no final proof--and a number, I
understand, hold more than one passport. Why were they brought to Abu
Ghraib? Who brought them? How much are they paid? And who trained them?
Who taught them it was a good idea to get a girl to point at an Arab who
was being forced to masturbate, to humiliate an Iraqi by hooding him with a
girl's lingerie?
We are not just talking "sick" here. We're talking professionals. President
Bush at last apologised yesterday to the Arab world for this filth--only,
no doubt, because of the latest picture on the front of The Washington
Post--but the constant, insistent refrain from US officers that these were
a tiny group of unrepresentative Americans makes me very suspicious.
Lynndie and her boyfriend were not part of a "rogue" unit. They were told
to do these despicable things. They were encouraged. This was an order from
someone. Who? When can we see their pictures, their identity, their
passports, their orders?
Yes, it's part of a culture, a long tradition that goes back to the
Crusades; that the Muslim is dirty, lascivious, unChristian, unworthy of
humanity--which is pretty much what Osama bin Laden (now forgotten by Mr
Bush, I notice) believes about us Westerners. And our illegal, immoral,
meretricious war has now brought forth the images that betray our racism.
The hooded man with the wires attached to his hands has now become an
iconic portrait, every bit as memorable as the picture of the second
aircraft flying into the World Trade Centre. No, of course, we haven't
killed 3,000 Iraqis. We've killed many more. And the same goes for
Afghanistan.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the
Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism.