<...just horror that our dirty laundry has now been so thoroughly aired?>
A recent CNN poll asking "Is torture ever justified during interrogation?" yielded 47% of respondents answering in the affirmative, which explains why there hasn't been much stateside outrage over prisoner neglect in the past. It's that Faustian with-us-or-against-us mentality rearing its ugly head once again, promising safety but tempting us to dehumanize others and lose our souls in the process.
commondreams.org
We are seeing an unintended consequence of new and cheap digital photo taking/sending technologies. It gets harder and harder, to glorify war, and believe our rose-tinted self-image. Reading a description of torture, doesn't have near the impact, of seeing a videotape of it, or even a series of still photos.
The other interesting thing, is the inability of the guilty, to stop themselves from making incriminating documents and photos, and bragging about it. Remember the executives at Worldcom and ADM, who left an email trail about their thievery? The sadists in uniform in Iraq would have been able to continue torturing with impunity, if they hadn't taken pictures, and then shown those trophy pictures to their buddies, and let their buddies download them, send them home to mom, etc. |
