Friday, May 07, 2004

So they've charged the female soldier involved in the abuse incident, Lynndie England with assaulting the Iraqi detainees. Now, I'll agree that this is conduct unbecoming a member of our military, and that she should be disciplined. The "I was just following orders" mantra didn't work in Nuremburg, and it shouldn't work here -- btw, I'm not comparing what happened in Iraq in any way to the severity of the Nazis crimes. But the idea that so far just a private is responsible, when Rumsfeld himself said today that there are more pictures we haven't seen that are worse than what we've seen, then there needs to be accountability at the highest levels. This wasn't a few privates running amok - the military already knew about this and nothing was done or published. I don't see how we didn't sanction such abuse. What makes me angry is not that a few Iraqis were photographed naked, or possibly even scared -- but rather that we're physically abusing prisoners when we've initiated this war and we're purporting to be liberators of a tyrant. We become the tyrant in this case, in the same prison that Saddam used to torture his people. Outrageous. Rumsfeld should resign over this flap. He knew about this months ago.

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