Well, none of them look like they could have appeared in a Mapplethorp exhibit funded by the NEA, so that's one strike against them.

And I didn't see anything in any of them that makes the US look bad, so that's another strike.

Just like it says Carthago Delenda Est at the Top of your web site, it says Bush Delenda Est at the tops of the Web sites of the major east cost media.

They will run those pictures when they think it will help their cause.

At the Greek Kalends.

Stop whining people. These photos will never be plastered across the media because they are good news. And no news is good news. This doesn't reflect a liberal bias on the part of the media, it reflects a journalistic bias. Nobody reports that a plane landed safely or a house didn't burn down.

As a former USAF officer I can't begin to describe the disgust and shame I felt when I saw those photos of American soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners.

It doesn't matter now whether the war was a good idea or justified. All such arguments are now moot, because the war is over.

And we lost it.

All the brilliant warfighting and ambitious nation building has come to naught because of a half dozen despicable scumbags. The war was never going to be won on the battlefield. Heck, we showed that we can do that without breaking a sweat.

What mattered was the fight for what we used to call "hearts and minds". These pictures hit the Islamic world, with its pride and shame culture, harder than any smart bomb. We will never be trusted and all of our promises of a better world through democracy will fall on deaf ears. The Islamic theocrats and their followers always believed that democracy equalled moral decadence and pornography. Now there will be no convincing them otherwise. We didn't just humiliate those prisoners. We humiliated the Arab world.

And they will never forgive us for that.

All we can do now is cut our losses, hand power over to some sort of Iraqi government (with at least the appearance of democracy) and bring our GIs home.

Mr. duffy:

It only dimishes the Iraqis and artificially inflates us to believe that a few pictures mean anything in the long run. The Japanese did far worse to Americans and we rebuilt their country for them.

The Arabs aren't us. Despite there use of modern weapons or ability to fly airplanes into skyscrapers, they remain at heart a misogynist, backwards, tribal society based on first cousin marriages. As a "pride and shame" culture whose logical culmination was the Taliban regime, they will never forgive us and will despise democracy as the source of moral corruption. The fact that this investigation is an example of American society correcting an aberation is a subltlty that will be lost on them.

To believe that a picture of a naked Iraqi prisoner being lead aroung by a dog leash by a WOMAN will not permanently inflame their views of America and American democracy shows a profound ignorance of Islamic/Arabic culture.

Permanently? That's mere arrogance.

Arrogance has nothing to do with it. These people are still pissed off about the Crusades and the loss of Grenada.

That sound permanent to me.

You think Americans are still irate about Waco because of Tim McVeigh?

Arabs are not Americans OJ. They are two totally different cultures. America has nothing like the same institutional memory which still gets angry over the Crusades or the loss of Grenada. Now stop being a weasel and address the point.

everyone is an incipient American.

Non sequetor OJ. These pictures have made it impossible for even incipient Americans to embrace our culture. We've handed the enemy a perfect propoganda weapon on a golden platter.

As for insipience, no democratic seed can hope to grow or flourish unless it is planted in suitably fertile cultural soil. It took centuries from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence. No American style democracy would have been possible without that cultural development.

No one's mind is changed by the photos.

OJ, that's not the point. The pictures make it impossible to change the hearts and minds of the Arab would so they would embrace democratic values.

And for once would you address my points or answer my questions?

They aren't juveniles--they aren't going to be the one people on Earth to forsake prosperity because of a fraternity initiation.

What kind of morally repugnant monster are you to consider rape, murder and descration of a corpse to be equivalent to a "fraternity prank".

A fraternity brother. If they didn't make the guys bang sheep it's not even hazing.

Mr. Duffy's argument is self-defeating. "The culture is so backwards that even an insignificant event can turn it against you forever".

Oh well.

If they STILL haven't forgotten the Crusades, and 1492, and 16-whatever-it-was, blah blah blah, what is the point of trying to convince them of anything today? People will believe what they want.

They respect power, and we showed that already, in a pretty convincing fashion. Sorry, but it is not a serious intellectual position to say that people whose minds are changed forever by a few pictures of some scumbag terrorists in embarrassing positions are people we should worry about convincing.