Bloodless Coup

More Abu Ghraib Stories

OK, so by now you've probably already seen the pictures, and heard what we did to the prisoners (torture, various forms of abuse, and we seem to have killed at least five of them in actions related to their "interrogations"). And of course most of the people in the prison weren't guilty of anything. And it's pretty clear that people high in the chain of command (including the president, if you believe Colin Powell) have known about the abuses for months. And it's pretty clear that this is making us less welcome in Iraq than Nazis at an AIPAC conference. These actions have greatly endangered American interests and American lives, at home and abroad. But just in case you are still in the camp that cuts the president some slack, and thinks that this is just what we have to do to make the world safer, I give you this:

A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father's resistance to interrogators. The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees. Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.

Yes, that's right, according to the president "they" hate us because they hate freedom. Yeah. Right. It has nothing to do with the fact that Bush and Rumsfeld are systematically using the American military to carry out jobs typically carried out by mafia enforcers.