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Pastimes : Rarely is the question asked: "is our children learning"

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To: SalemsHex who started this subject	5/15/2004 12:21:40 PM
From: John Sladek	of 2171

May 13, 2004 - Torture and Degradation in Iraq - Revenge American Style? By COLM O'LAITHIAN Amongst the mass of comment and analysis that has flowed from the media around the world since the publication of "those pictures" was a small perhaps un-regarded, late-night piece on Radio 5, one of the of the British Broadcasting Corporation's domestic radio channels in the United Kingdom. It was about Mother's Day in the United States in the weekend that has just gone. A Marine "mortar-man" talked about his joy at being home in New York for this Mother's Day having spent the last one in Iraq on duty for the Coalition. His tearful mother was equally, naturally overjoyed that her son was home safe. Every parent would empathize with her and with him till he began to explain his motivation for joining the Marines in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Centre and for being in Iraq. It seems he had lost friends or relatives in that catastrophe. He joined up he said to defend the United States against terrorism. What came next was the most revealing not to say chilling as he quietly stated how in Iraq he "had sure got his revenge". What was this man taking revenge for and against whom and how? Was it by torturing prisoners? As we see the iconic photographs that will forever characterize this disastrous war is that the mentality that has taken hold of the United States and its troops? If it is then it emanates directly from Bush and the deliberate conjunction in the American mind of Iraq and Al Qaeda when of course no such conjunction existed or at least under Saddam Hussein. If it exists now it is because of the actions of the Coalition. Are we in fact seeing the American collective revenge against the Arab world and does Ms. England and do her fellow torturers represent the stark, pictorial reality that finally confronts America with the perversion of its own supposed values? ... The torture and degradation of Iraqis and Afghanis does not represent an aberration from the American norm by a few mindless and sadistic soldiers; it represents, in European and certainly Arab eyes at least, the very essence of modern America, ignorant, arrogant, violent and utterly disregarding of the culture and humanity of those it sees as its potential enemies or even its friends. In the American collective mind the whole of that part of the world that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Afghan frontier with Pakistan appears as one indistinguishable implacable enemy with one indistinguishable Islamic culture at once responsible for the attack on New York, Saddam Hussein and countless other evils. That view has been fostered by Bush and his right wing coeterie and reflects the deep penetration into the US administration of the anti-Arab sentiment of right wing Israeli politics inherently hostile to any genuine settlement with Palestine and profoundly racist in its view of Arabs generally. ... counterpunch.org

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