In Reply to: Show it onTV posted by Mr. Don on June 22, 2004 at 13:21:41:
While we're at it, let's have televised body counts of dead Iraqi women, children and other non-combatants. I think the current ratio of dead Americans to dead Iraqis is about 1:10.
Abu Graib wasn't the result of a few U.S. soldiers who ran amuk. It was the result of military detention and interrogation policies laid out by U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Abu Graib isn't on the news every day because a few U.S. soldiers who followed illegal orders did some nasty things to Iraqi war prisoners. Abu Graib is on the news every day because people at the highest levels of our government have sanctioned torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners.
The fact that the terrorist insurgents are more barbaric than us doesn't make me feel good about citizenship in a country that has made the torture and humiliation of my enemies a matter of military policy.
The media are showing HUGE mass graves of Iraqis murdered at the order of Sadam Hussein. I am happy Sadam is out of power and that his slaughter of innocent Iraqis has ended. I am proud of our troops for having toppled Sadam's evil regime. That's the good news in all of this for me. However, the United States has higher moral/ethical standards in its use of military & police power than Sadam Hussein and the Islamic terrorists. We are in serious danger of becoming the thing we fear most when we say the Geneva Conventions don't apply to "stateless" terrorists or that inhumane interrogation techniques are necessary to defeat our enemies.