Posted on 05/11/2004 10:46:19 AM PDT by Lando Lincoln
The photos of Iraqi prisoner abuse were disturbing, but they were not scenes of torture. Torture is how Saddam and his thugs ruled Iraq. They cut out people’s tongues, cut off limbs, crushed feet, raped and killed children in front of their parents, lowered people feet-first into vats of acid and plastic shredders, and filled graves with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
The pictures from Abu Ghraib were of humiliation and abuse. The guards who committed these acts should be punished to the full extent of the law, but these abuses should never be equated with the torture ordered by Saddam. To do so is to minimize the suffering of Saddam’s victims.
To make such a comparison is an unfair smear against our armed forces. Hundreds of thousands of American men and women are serving honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our soldiers have freed millions from one of the most brutal regimes in history. They are rebuilding a ravaged nation, building schools and hospitals, enabling Iraqis to receive water, food, and electricity, and establishing the rule of law. To date, over 750 brave Americans have died in service to Iraqi freedom and American security. The crimes of 10 to 12 deviants must not be allowed to reflect poorly upon thousands of American heroes.
Those who would capitalize on this tragedy are opportunists who would sell out our nation for a few dollars in campaign contributions. Witness the Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd comments during the questioning of Donald Rumsfeld on May 7, 2004:
KENNEDY: ''To the people in the Middle East, and too often today, the symbol of America is not the Statue of Liberty. It's the prisoner standing on a box wearing a dark cape and a dark hood on his head, wires attached to his body, afraid that he's going to be electrocuted.''
BYRD: ''How are we supposed to convince not only the Iraqi people, but also the rest of the world that America is indeed a liberator, and not a conqueror, not an arrogant power? Is the presidential apology to the king of Jordan sufficient?”
American soldiers serving with honor and freeing millions are more than a sufficient answer to the Iraqi people and to the world.
Nearly as vexing is the ultimate flip-flop engaged in by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry:
''The chain of command goes all the way to the Oval Office,'' Kerry said. ''Harry Truman did not say 'the buck stops at the Pentagon'…We should be the leaders in condemning the appalling images of abuse, not following others who showed them to us. We should be the leaders in setting a standard of behavior that we talk about in the abuse that we've seen flashing across television screens all across the world." (CBS/AP)
Kerry’s statement seems reasonable on its face, but where did the ''buck stop'' for him? Kerry claimed to have committed war crimes of his own during his four months in Vietnam:
Meet the Press April 18, 1971:
SEN. KERRY: ''There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 caliber machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down.''
The prison guards of Abu Ghraib are being prosecuted, yet John Kerry is a U.S. senator and a presidential nominee. What does this say to the world? If Lynndie England [the female in many of the pictures] were to form a group called ''Abu Ghraib Sadists Against the War,'' there is no telling how far she could go as a Democratic politician.
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