Sunday, May 09, 2004
And remember, it's going to get worse
Brad DeLong surveys what's coming out now. The post is complicated (with quotes of quotes). Here's a selection:
First, we invaded Iraq to get Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Turns out there weren't any. Then, we were going to turn Iraq into a democracy and stabilizing force for the Middle East. That hasn't gone exactly as planned, now has it? Finally, we were told that at least we had ended Saddam's reign of torture. But guess what? Abu Ghraib is just under new management, and the rape rooms are still open for business. But now many of the rapists are Americans.
None of this has stopped Bush from incessantly bragging about stopping WMD, democractizing Iraq, and closing the rape rooms. Or implying that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 (still zero evidence of that, and we own every filing cabinet in Iraq, so I think the issue is settled). There is just no connection between what this man says and reality---perhaps no connection between what he knows and reality.
Of course Donald "Democracy is Messy" Rumsfeld should resign. The real question to ask when you see the rest of the torture footage is: Shouldn't President George "Rape Room" Bush go to?
U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.
...
This article in tomorrow’s Guardian suggests that some of these sexual humiliation methods apparently practiced at Abu Ghraib are taught to various special forces and military intelligence troops in the US and the UK, both to use them and also to prepare themselves to withstand them.
First, we invaded Iraq to get Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Turns out there weren't any. Then, we were going to turn Iraq into a democracy and stabilizing force for the Middle East. That hasn't gone exactly as planned, now has it? Finally, we were told that at least we had ended Saddam's reign of torture. But guess what? Abu Ghraib is just under new management, and the rape rooms are still open for business. But now many of the rapists are Americans.
None of this has stopped Bush from incessantly bragging about stopping WMD, democractizing Iraq, and closing the rape rooms. Or implying that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 (still zero evidence of that, and we own every filing cabinet in Iraq, so I think the issue is settled). There is just no connection between what this man says and reality---perhaps no connection between what he knows and reality.
Of course Donald "Democracy is Messy" Rumsfeld should resign. The real question to ask when you see the rest of the torture footage is: Shouldn't President George "Rape Room" Bush go to?
