NOW WE DESERVE THEIR HATRED (via ef brown):

Abu Ghraib as Symbol (Charles Krauthammer, May 7, 2004, Washington Post)

We think of torture as the kind that Saddam practiced: pain, mutilation, maiming and ultimately death. We think of it as having a political purpose: intimidation, political control, confession and subjugation. What happened at Abu Ghraib was entirely different. It was gratuitous sexual abuse, perversion for its own sake.

That is what made it, ironically and disastrously, a pictorial representation of precisely the lunatic fantasies that the jihadists believe -- and that cynical secular regimes such as Egypt and the Palestinian Authority peddle to pacify their populations and deflect their anger and frustrations. Through this lens, Abu Ghraib is an "I told you so" played out in an Arab capital, recorded on film.

Jihadists, like all totalitarians, oppose many kinds of freedom. What makes them unique, however, is their particular hatred of freedom for women. They prize their traditional prerogatives that allow them to keep their women barefoot in the kitchen as illiterate economic and sexual slaves. For the men, that is a pretty good deal -- one threatened by the West with its twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation.

It is no accident that jihadists around the world are overwhelmingly male. It is very rare to find a female suicide bomber. And when you do, as with the young woman who blew herself up in Gaza, killing four others in January, it turns out that she herself was a victim of sexual subjugation -- a wife accused of adultery, marked for death, who decided to die a martyr rather than a pariah. But die she must.

Which is what made one aspect of the Abu Ghraib horrors even more incendiary -- the pictures of female U.S. soldiers mocking, humiliating and dominating naked and abused Arab men. One could not have designed a more symbolic representation of the Islamist warning about where Western freedom ultimately leads than yesterday's Washington Post photo of a uniformed American woman holding a naked Arab man on a leash.

Hard to believe intelligent people believe the things they're saying about these photos. On the one hand we're asked to believe that torture is something truly awful, but on the other that the prospect of being tortured will be a recruiting tool? If the worst thing these guys can imagine is being led around on a leash by G.I. Jane then why would they risk going to war with us? Meanwhile, there's the argument--offered here--that the Arab wotrld believes this is how we act all the time, but this confirms it. If they believe it already then so what?

Guards abuse prisoners; it's the nature of the beast. But it's presumably better than just executing them. Deal with this specific problem and move on.

MORE:
Hazing At Baghdad U (William A. Mayer, May 10, 2004, PipeLineNews)

At the center of the Iraqi prisoner controversy, stand six individuals accused of abusing approximately 20 detainees at Saddam’s infamous Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

These six have already been reprimanded by the US military, another six are currently under investigation for having possibly participated in the incidents, all of which seem to have occurred in November and December of 2003.

Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was the head of the 800th Military Police Brigade and in charge of the entire Iraqi prison system which includes the Abu Ghraib jail. She was also in command of the 3,400 National Guard troops assigned to the city of Mosul.

Karpinski [whose husband continues to serve in Oman] denies any knowledge of the events, claiming to have been “shocked" when the information became public.

Regardless, she has been reprimanded and relieved of command, a career destroyed.

So what exactly is the grave activity that those involved in this behavior are accused of?

Humiliation basically, that and placing subjects in circumstances where they believed that peril could ensue.

No actual physical torture is being alleged.

No skin broken, no bones shattered, no cattle prods, no meat hooks.

Getting a Grip on the Iraqi Prison Scandal (NewsMax, 5/08/04)

A few points should be emphasized:

* The overwhelming majority of inmates at the Abu Ghriab prison were suspected of having participated in or having knowledge of attacks against U.S. soldiers. Very few of the prisoners were common street criminals.

* The photographs of prisoners being abused were taken at a cellblock known as "The Hard Site," where the worst and most dangerous were being detained.

* To date, there's no evidence whatsoever that any of the prisoners depicted in humiliating photos suffered anything more than embarrassment.

* At least two of the abused prisoners have embarked on a whirlwind tour of media interviews. And one even says he'd like to come to live in the homeland of his "torturers," the good old USA.

* None of the photos released to the media so far show anything like what has been alleged in anti-Bush administration media reports, which have ballyhooed allegations of forcible sodomy and even murder with little evidence to back the claims up.

* The murder charges: Two allegations of murder have been reported so far. The first is apparently based on an incident detailed in the Taguba report, which chronicles a prison riot during which suspected terrorists hurled rocks at U.S. military guards.

One soldier drew his weapon and fired in what appears to be an act of self defense, killing a suspected terrorist inmate. The soldier was charged with using excessive force and was dismissed with what was described in press accounts as "a less than honorable discharge."

* The other charge of murder refers to an Iraqi detainee who reportedly died after being grilled by a CIA interrogator. No further details of this case have been made public, including what type of intelligence the suspect was believed to be withholding or whether there was any provocation.

* The Taguba report also details several prison uprisings by suspected terrorists, some of whom had obtained weapons from Iraqi guards recruited by U.S. authorities. U.S. guards were repeatedly injured in these altercations, with at least one shootout in a jail cell reported. [Under these circumstances, humiliation and intimidation tactics might have been employed to keep suspected terrorist inmates too disoriented and demoralized to mount more prison attacks]

* It's worth reminding Americans about the case of Col. Alan West, who foiled a terrorist attack against his unit by extracting critical intelligence from an Iraqi detainee by firing his weapon into the air during an interrogation. Because Col. West exercised the good judgment to bend the rules of the Geneva Convention, countless U.S. soldiers in his unit - not to mention the Iraqi detainee - are alive today.

* It's also worth reminding Americans about the circumstances of the death of CIA interrogator Johnny 'Mike' Spann, the first casualty in the U.S.'s counterattack in the war on terror. Spann was killed when al Qaida prisoners jumped him and his partner during an interrogation session in Afghanistan.

* The only rape reported in any detail so far was allegedly committed by an Iraqi jail guard at Abu Ghraib who was recruited as part of the Iraqicization of the occupation. According to NBC's Jim Miklasewski, this Iraqi guard may have raped several female prisoners and perhaps even a young male detainee.

* The Taguba report includes an allegation of sodomy with a broomstick. This, along with most of the rest of the more lurid allegations being touted as gospel by the big media, is in fact based on the account of a suspected terrorist detainee. To date, no photographs have emerged to substantiate the charge, no eyewitnesses have gone public to corroborate the charge and no U.S. soldiers have confessed to committing the crime.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2004 3:41 PM