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May 1, 2004
Prisoner Abuse

And here come the excuses.

From an article in the Baltimore Sun yesterday.

The Sun's Friday editions identified two other soldiers facing court-martial. The newspaper cited unidentified Army officials in naming Sgt. Javal S. Davis, 26. His wife, who also spoke to the newspaper, defended her husband.

"We really don't know how those prisoners are behaving," said Zeenithia Davis, who is in the Navy in Mississippi. "There's a line between heinous war crimes and maintaining discipline."

A Sun reporter on Thursday showed a photo of one of the nude prisoner scenes to Terrie England, who recognized her daughter, reservist Lynndie R. England, 21, standing in the foreground with her boyfriend.

"Oh, my God," she told the newspaper from the stoop in front of her Fort Ashby, W.Va., trailer home. "I can't get over this."

The alleged abuses of prisoners were "stupid, kid things -- pranks," Terrie England said. "And what the (Iraqis) do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, does that apply to everybody or just us?"

source


No. No no no no no. No excuses. No matter how these prisoners may have been behaving, this is not acceptable treatment of a human being. Stacking people naked in a pyramid, and taking photographs of yourself smiling and giving a thumbs-up will never qualify as "maintaining discipline."

As for the ridiculous notion that these are "stupid, kid things and pranks," it makes my blood boil. This is not a fraternity hazing ritual, this IS A WAR.

As for the Geneva Conventions, it's really not the point. The standards we should be applying here are not international law but human decency.

British troops are now also being accused of similar crimes.

At least, in England, it's front page news. Here in the U.S., the story has been largely buried on page 10. And the photographs have been hard to find until very recently.

If we really wanted to show the Arab world that this is not representative of us, that it is an aberration, we would be making a huge show of condemning it in the strongest possible terms, as the British are doing. Our tendency to make excuses and apply glaring double standards is going to bite us in the ass in a most terrible way.

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