Irony of torture pictures escapes Bush
Plenty has been written and broadcast in alternative media over the months since the United States took Iraq concerning arbitrary disappearance and incommunicado detention, horrendous prison conditions, and torture in the country. For example, Democracy Now! today had an extended report by Aaron Glantz of Free Speech Radio News.
Now comes this week Dan Rather reporting on CBS 60 Minutes II on “Abuse Of Iraqi POWs By GIs”. The power of television has been on display as a worldwide shockwave has followed CBS’s broadcast of pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners by US troops even President Bush has found “disgusting”.
With Bush disgusted, “anger at ’savage’ Iraq abuse” is how the BBC reports reaction in the Arab world. This story also points out how the issue of maltreatment and humiliation of Iraqis by the US and its subordinates is hardly an isolated issue.
Bush clueless
But did he even see the pictures of Iraqi men forced to pose in sexual positions? Again today, without apparent irony, President Bush delivered his boilerplate rationale and benefits of removal of Saddam Hussein as dictator of Iraq during a Rose Garden appearance with the Canadian prime minister:
“A year ago, I did give the speech from the carrier, saying that we had achieved an important objective, that we’d accomplished a mission, which was the removal of Saddam Hussein. And as a result, there are no longer torture chambers or rape rooms or mass graves in Iraq. As a result, a friend of terror has been removed, and now sits in a jail. I also said on that carrier that day that there was still difficult work ahead”.
Bush ignores his own disgust as evidence that the United States is the new Saddam continues to mount. It’s ludicrous that he can’t see the irony, as is very clear from this quote in the aforementioned BBC story:
“Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi, rubbished suggestions the incident was the work of rogue soldiers.
“‘This is the outcome of the culture of hate that the US administration adopts against the Arabs and Muslims.
“‘They removed Saddam Hussein for acts of abuse, but who will remove Bush and Rumsfeld for inciting these acts’”?