May 19, 2004
OPPRESS US, PLEASE...:
What Abu Ghraib Scandal?: While the West rings its hands over the fraternity pranks played on Iraqi prisoners, the Arab Street wonders what the big deal is. (Dr. Walid Phares, 5/19/04, FrontPage)
[O]ther people in the region...see the crisis through a different lens. In Beirut, amazement was mostly about George W. Bush addressing Arab TV. Lebanese were certainly disgusted by the aired images but they were stunned by the fact that a U.S. President was "talking" to Arab citizens. The region is infested with worse ugliness than the prison scandal, yet no one can remember any Arab leader addressing his people about abuse.
"Our dictators never showed up on any media, at anytime, for any picture" said many Syrians, "despite 28 years of horrors in their detention centers." Thousands of citizens were tortured in al Mazza, the Syrian equivalent of Abu Ghraib, yet no one lifted a finger. Many in the region have their own horror pictures, but who will publish them as long as no Americans were involved?
From Iraq, other voices blasted the media: "What was happening in the same cells of Abu Ghraib under the Baath defies human logic. The awful photos of today would be only appetizers," said Saddam's survivors. "We have pictures, we have documents, but that won't please your elites."
These survivors invited the world to visit the mass graves, to see piles of corpses, but to to avail. Shiites are cheap, unless they join the anti-American chorus. Their pictures won't make it to BBC, let alone the Arab networks.
You can tell this scandal is over because much of NPR has gone back to regular programming and at the hearings today the Senators were mostly apologizing to the generals for taking them away from their real duties. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2004 12:25 PM
Georg Fischer, aka Alois Brunner, emeritus instructor to the Syrian Moukharabat, ethnic
cleanser of the Vienna, Salonika ghettos, and
the chief of Nasser's WMD effort (the Real
Odessa Files) must be having a great laugh at
this; as are the remnants of the Muslim Brother
hood from Hama, are reserving comment
