An epidemic of 'bad apples'
It didn't take long for someone representing the Bush regime to minimize Abu Ghraib: The Prequel.
Reports The Associated Press:
CAIRO, Egypt -- A former [U.S.] military spokesman in Iraq said [yesterday that] new pictures showing apparent abuse of Iraqi prisoners were the acts of an isolated few but will be used by some to try to tarnish the entire U.S. military.
Gen. Mark Kimmitt, now based in Qatar, spoke on the pan-Arab television network a day after the U.S. military launched a criminal investigation into photographs that appear to show Navy SEALs in Iraq sitting on hooded and handcuffed detainees. Other photos show what appear to be bloodied prisoners, one with a gun to his head.
The photos, found by an Associated Press reporter, were among hundreds in an album posted on a commercial photo-sharing Web site by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq after his tour of duty.
Some of the photos have date stamps suggesting they were taken in May 2003, which could make them the earliest evidence of possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The far more brutal practices photographed in Abu Ghraib prison occurred months later.
The photos were turned over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which instructed the SEAL command to determine whether they show any serious crimes, said Navy Cmdr. Jeff Bender, a spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, Calif. That investigation will determine the identities of the troops and what they were doing in the photos.
Kimmitt, the spokesman in Iraq at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, said he believes the photos show the acts of an isolated few. After months of investigation, Kimmitt said, the number of U.S. military troops involved in acts of abuse has been found to be very limited.
Asked by al-Jazeera if such pictures are a problem, Kimmitt said they are certainly a "tool" and some will try to use them to show the U.S. military in a negative light.
After outraged reaction from the Arab world to the first Abu Ghraib pictures, President Bush appeared on Arab television in May and said the torture was the act of a few.
The new photos drew strong reactions in Arab media, as did the earlier ones.
"The two scandals confirm the image about the Americans known in the Middle East: that the Americans are not a charity or a humanitarian organization that is leading an experiment of democracy," said Sateh Noureddine, managing editor of the Lebanese leftist newspaper As-Safir. "Rather, (the U.S. government) is leading a retaliatory operation following the Sept. 11 attacks."
Noureddine said the photos "will definitely be front page news" in his paper's Monday edition. Yonadem Kana, a member of an Iraqi government advisory and oversight group, said the photos were "rare cases exaggerated by the media."
One photo on the front page of the daily Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram showed three hooded prisoners pressed against one another on a floor with what appear to be white sheets wrapped around their torsos. The photo caption read: "Signs of a new scandal."
On a Web site known for its militant content, contributors also posted some of the photos, showing the faces of the Navy SEALs -- one with a serviceman sitting on top of a group of prisoners -- but with the faces of the prisoners blackened. The photos were similar to those carried by the satellite stations but had comments on them such as "God destroy America," and "God help the Mujahedeen," or holy fighters.
It is unclear who took the pictures.
Words can't describe how wonderful it is to live in nation that can do no wrong. Even when there are pictures that prove U.S. wrongdoing, we are told over and over again by Emperor Bush and his toadies that it's just a case of "a few bad apples" -- even when the incidents of wrongdoing have spanned a large geographic area, have happened over several months and have shared striking similarities, such as the Nazi-like use of hoods on Iraqi detainees and U.S. military personnel giving a Nazi-like "thumbs up" for the camera while humiliating Iraqis. (Some of the "thumbs up" photos have portrayed U.S. military personnel giving the "thumbs up" over an Iraqi detainee's corpse.)
For every incident that is photographed and brought to the world's attention, how many similar incidents are not photographed or are photographed but the images never become public? The police beatings and the atrocities committed by members of the U.S. military against Iraqi detainees that we ever see are just a fraction of the incidents of wrongdoing that we'll never see.
I wholeheartedly agree with the Lebanese newspaper editor who remarked that "the Americans [in Iraq] are not a charity or a humanitarian organization that is leading an experiment of democracy."
I don't think that the Bush regime's invasion and occupation of Iraq is even "a retaliatory operation following the Sept. 11 attacks," however. Sure, the Bush regime has implicitly painted its invasion of Iraq as a retaliatory act to gain support for its Iraqi misadventure from those millions of dumbfuck Americans who cannot or will not make the distinction between the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and Saddam Hussein and Iraq. (Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and not one of them was an Iraqi.)
But the Bush regime's invasion and occupation of Iraq was never about the safety of Americans, as Iraq never posed a threat to Americans before the Bush regime's invasion of it in March 2003 -- but the Bush regime's invasion and occupation of Iraq now poses a threat to Americans' safety because the fundamentalist Muslims now have a slam-dunk case against the American imperialist pigs (which is exactly what we are). There are no better recruiters for fundamentalist Muslim terrorists than George W. Bush and his neo-con henchpeople.
Nor, of course, was the Bush regime's invasion and occupation of Iraq ever about "democratizing" or "liberating" Iraq, as evidenced by the thousands of unnecessary Iraqi civilian casualties and, of course, by Abu Ghraib and other atrocities committed by the U.S. military against Iraqis. You don't humiliate, torture, maim and kill those whom you wish to "liberate." And the Bush regime's installation of a puppet who has sold out his own people and who is willing to kiss the Bush regime's ass for whatever personal rewards the Bush regime has given him and/or promised him is not "democracy."
No, all along the Bush regime's invasion and occupation of Iraq has always been, and will always be, about increasing the wealth of a handful of Americans -- those of Halliburton and other subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp -- who are already filthy fucking rich.
The Iraqi "insurgents" stand in the way of what this tiny minority of uber-greedy Americans want, and therefore they must be killed. (The "insurgents" stand in the way of "freedom," the members of the Bush regime constantly tell us. The "insurgents" stand not in the way of the freedom of the Iraqi people, however, but in the way of the freedom of BushCheneyCorp to further loot Iraq.)
And the thousands of members of the U.S. military who are being killed and maimed for "freedom" are only the tool that the American oligarchs and plutocrats are using to get what they want from Iraq. You think that the members of the ruling class are going to put themselves in harm's way to get what they want? When did George W. Bush ever put his precious rich white ass in harm's way even once during his lifetime? (That drunken driving incident [the one that we know about] doesn't count; I'm talking about heroic acts, not stupid and/or drunken acts.)
It's ironic that the members of BushCheneyCorp should claim to support our troops when they are the ones who sent our troops to Iraq, which posed no threat to the United States whatsoever, yet those of us who think that our troops should never be put in harm's way unless absolutely necessary are widely seen as not supporting -- or even of being against -- our troops. (This is a symptom of how fucking stupid millions upon millions of Americans are, that they actually believe that the oligarchs and plutocrats who now run the U.S. government -- and who slap pretty labels on all of their sinister acts, from "No Child Left Behind" for systematically dismantling the U.S. public education system to "liberation" for slaughtering innocent Iraqi civilians in their quest for even more personal wealth -- actually have their interests at heart.)
In his most recent column, Ted Rall wrote:
Now we're at it again, this time in Iraq, a nation that would never have invaded us. Everyone, even the Bushists who manufactured the war from whole cloth, admits that Iraq never had weapons that could hurt us or means to hit us with them if they had. And we know that they didn't attack us -- not on 9/11, not ever. Our soldiers may be doing their duty, fighting fiercely, and giving their lives in the bargain. But since Iraq neither threatens our freedom nor our borders, they're neither protecting our freedoms or fighting for America. The best anyone can say is that they're fighting for our country's geopolitical interests -- and what those are is subject to interpretation.
It's even worse than that. Much worse. "Our country's geopolitical interests" implies that the spoils of Iraq are going to be distributed among all or even a good chunk of Americans, who have paid the cost of the invasion of Iraq in billions and billions of their tax dollars that are going not toward the things that they need, such as education and health care and a clean environment, but are going into the money pit that is Iraq -- and, of course, in blood.
No, the spoils of Iraq, gained at the expense of millions and millions of Iraqis and Americans, are going and are going to go into the hands of a few.
And we Americans deserve whatever becomes of this because we are allowing it to happen.
12:51:55 PM 
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