If you're on the west coast, you can still catch 60 Minutes II tonight to see this shocking story.
17 soldiers in Iraq, including a brigadier general have been removed from duty and 6 face courts martial for allegations about treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.
The charges include:
- Stacking prisoners in a pyramid
- Striking prisoners and forcing prisoners to strike each other
- Posing for photographs with naked prisoners, men and women
- Threatening prisoners with electrocution
- Positioning male prisoners to simulate sex
- Writing slurs on prisoners' skin
One of the soldiers accused of these crimes says that he will not plead guilty because it was "the way the Army was running the prison" that led to the abuse.
Do our soldiers need "support and training" to know that humiliating and abusing war prisoners isn't allowed? I'm pretty sure we don't need to specify that "you will not simulate homosexual sexual acts using the enemy as props" in our "rules and regulations."
CBS News has photographs of much of this abuse. Surely these pictures are going to find their way onto Arab television. Where will we be then? Is this the freedom, democracy and morality we're bringing to the Iraqis?
I realize that this evidence only implicates a few soldiers, and it is absolutely a good thing that our military is taking this seriously, making no apologies for it, and hopefully will prosecute these soldiers to the fullest.
It's still a nightmare, though, for our campaign to win "hearts and minds," if that was still possible.
Shameful.
