Videos Amplify Picture of Violence (washingtonpost.com)

Videos Amplify Picture of Violence (washingtonpost.com)

More pictures have emerged of the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. I listen to Rush fairly regularly. He is outraged about the release of these pictures by "liberal" media outlets, and labels it as simply more of the partisan mainstream press' attempt to unseat Bush in November. Rush is actually a fairly good political observer, and there is some truth to his statement.

Nonetheless, I frankly want to see these pictures. I want to know what we are talking about when it comes to these pictures of abuse. What is being done in my(our) name. I'm a very hard thing to be in Black America. I'm a black male who is a social and fiscal conservative, and count myself a Republican. I was not always this way. If you knew me in college or my younger days before I had a wife and 3 children, I was as liberal and on the left politically as they come. Having responsiblities, accepting Jesus as savior has changed a lot of that.

I voted for Bush. I believed he was the better man for the job and the better leader for America for fiscal reasons, for religious reasons and for political reasons. I don't agree with the social agenda of the Democrats. I don't agree with their fiscal policies when it comes to taxes. And other things.

I'm patriotic. I believe we are a good country, of good people. But those beliefs are really shaken by things like this. Scenes of abuse like these of tied up men by US soldiers makes me wonder if all of the left wing opinions I used to have (The US is imperialistic, racist, nearly evil, we oppress people around the world for power and economic gain) really did represent a correct picture of who we are as a country.

I'm listening to the hearings and reading the information coming out about this scandal, and it does make you question what you believe about the fundamental nature of our country. The military says this is the work of a few bad apples. That there were no orders or approval from higher ups to do these things. But its hard to credit that. The majority of the soldiers involved are very young, very junior in rank with no training in interrogation. But the things they were doing to these prisoners are in fact recognized high pressure interrogation techniques. I find it hard to credit explanations that they just stumbled into these particular actions on their own with no guidance or direction. Military Intelligence (MI) was involved in the prison, and in fact had been given authority over large aspects of the prisoners daily existence. The people who were supposed to be in charge were not, didn't know what was going on. Its plausible that the solider's stories are true.

Gen. Taguba's report clearly points to the presence of MI at the prison. The soldiers indicate that they got orders from them, orders which they believed to be properly coming from within the chain of command. In fact, there is disagreement between Gen. Taguba and one of the other general's who testified before the Senate Armed Forces Committee about just how much of an operational and command role MI had at the prison. Also involved were "other government agencies", a euphemism for the CIA.

Some people believe that Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and the many other detention centers the US has set up and is currently operating outside the United States are quite clearly an off shore, extra judicial information extraction penal system, set up in a way intended to put it beyond the reach of U.S. Courts and Congressional oversight. That argument can be fairly made based on what we have seen. It really troubles me.

On the other hand, I believe quite firmly that we are facing an extremly dangerous enemy in the terrorist network of Al Qeada and its affilliates. 911, the Nick Berg killing, the Pearl killing, are all proof positive of this. I believe that the US strategy for the War on Terror, of which Iraq is a part, is sound and that it has been effective. We are in danger of losing the tactical battle in Iraq, and if we do, the larger strategic conflict could be lost as well, but thats another post. But we are facing a very vicious enemy. How far is too far to go in defending ourselves? Its a not quite so extreme version of the hypothetical "if you had a terrorist in custody who knew when and where a nuclear bomb was going to go off, how far would you, could you, justifiably go to extract that information from him?". What you see in these pictures is not on that level. These prisoners are bound and helpless.

So, what am I to believe about our country? Do the prison abuses really represent who we are as manifested by our government's actions? If thats true,it means that so much else that is negative must also be true. Or, is this really the work of a few bad apples, who will be punished, and our honor as a country is and remains intact.

I don't know. I really don't know....