Commentary:

To all the torture apologists

I have not been saying the war in Iraq itself has had only bad results.

What I AM saying is that you lose the moral high ground when you commit immoral acts such as torture, especially if the government that ordered the invasion searched for legal justification to avoid having the Geneva Conventions apply to prisoners, so that "pressure" could be applied to them.

Saying "Saddam did worse" or "all we did was humiliate them" does NOT justify what was done, especially in light of the new information coming out (note-emphasis added):

New documents released yesterday detail a series of probes by Army criminal investigators into multiple cases of threatened executions of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers, as well as of thefts of currency and other private property, physical assaults, and deadly shootings of detainees at detention camps in Iraq.

In many of the newly disclosed cases, Army commanders chose noncriminal punishments for those involved in the abuse, or the investigations were so flawed that prosecutions could not go forward, the documents show. Human rights groups said yesterday that, as a result, the penalties imposed were too light to suit the offenses.

The complaints arose from several thousand new pages of internal reports, investigations and e-mails from different agencies, which, with other documents released in the past two weeks, paint a finer-grained picture of military abuse and criminal behavior at prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan than previously available.

The documents disclosed by a coalition of groups that had sued the government to obtain them make it clear that both regular and Special Forces soldiers took part in the abuse, and that the misconduct included shocking detainees with electric guns, shackling them without food and water, and wrapping a detainee in an Israeli flag.

The variety of the abuse and the fact that it occurred over a three-year period undermine the Pentagon's past insistence -- arising out of the summertime scandal surrounding the mistreatment at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison -- that the abuse occurred largely during a few months at that prison, and that it mostly involved detainee humiliation or intimidation rather than the deliberate infliction of pain.

After the latest revelations, including the disclosures that officials in other federal agencies had objected to these actions by soldiers -- to the point of urging, in some cases, war crimes prosecutions -- White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded yesterday with a promise that President Bush expects a full investigation and corrective actions "to make sure that abuse does not occur again."

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The new documents include several incidents of threatened executions of teenage and adult Iraqi detainees. In one instance, a soldier in a unit that lacked any training in interrogation -- but was nonetheless assigned to process and question detainees -- acknowledged forcing two men to their knees, placing bullets in their mouths, ordering them to close their eyes, and telling them they would be shot unless they answered questions about a grenade incident. He then took the bullets, and a colleague pretended to load them in the chamber of his M-16 rifle.

The documents indicate that the perpetrator, who was investigated on charges of assault and a "law of war violation," was given a nonjudicial punishment by his commander. Threatening detainees with physical harm to compel their testimony is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In a second case, Army investigators concluded that a sergeant committed offenses including assault, dereliction of duty and cruelty when he conducted "a mock execution of an Iraqi teenager" in front of the boy's father and brother, who were suspected of looting an ammunition factory. Investigators also found that the actions were condoned by a lieutenant who conspired with the sergeant.

An investigative report also details an incident two days earlier, in which the lieutenant ordered a suspected looter to kneel, pointed a 9mm pistol at his head and then pulled the gun away just as he fired a shot. The outcome of both cases is unclear from the records released yesterday.

The documents also divulge a probe of the beatings of three mosque security guards in Baghdad in September 2003. After being arrested and cuffed during a search, the three Iraqis were kicked, stomped and dragged by a group of U.S. soldiers. Five soldiers were given reprimands and reductions in rank after being found guilty of maltreatment of prisoners, assault and other charges, the records show.

In another Baghdad case, a U.S. soldier was accused of trying to force an Iraqi civilian to hold a gun as a justification for killing him. The soldier punched the civilian in the face, held an M-16 rifle to his head and flicked the safety off to threaten him, according to the accounts of 19 witnesses. Another soldier eventually stepped in to protect the civilian, who had been hired by the U.S. Army to guard the Museum of Iraqi Military History, the records show.

Other documents describe the death in 2003 of detainee Abdul Kareem Abdureda Lafta, 44, in a U.S. Army jail in Mosul. He "appeared to be in good health" when taken into custody, and he quickly gained the attention of MPs by continually trying to remove the hood placed on his head and talking when guards told him to be silent, the documents say. One night, Lafta was put to bed with his hands tied behind him. Even so, one guard said he spent much of the night "constantly moving around on the ground" in his cell. In the morning, he was found dead.

A doctor who examined the body told investigators "he did not know what killed him." Another Army document says he was found to have a small laceration on his head. The investigators said "there is no documentation . . . explaining the lack of an autopsy."

In another case, Army investigators found probable cause to court-martial a soldier for shooting to death an Iraqi detainee, Obede Hethere Radad, without warning. But he was punished administratively and discharged.

To all you who are wearing blinders and say "the news media is exaggerating things for their own, left-wing agenda" I say "Bullshit!!!"

All the attempted justifications of "Saddam was far worse" excuse NOTHING that we do that is wrong. Because someone else cut off a man's hand, I'm OK because all I cut off was a man's finger, is this the kind of "logic" we need to sleep well at night?

Stop justifying and face facts. We have done wrong.

When I was younger and first learned about World War II, I could not conceive how the people of Germany allowed the atrocities that the Nazis committed against not only the Jews, but many other groups. Now, I see how many people see ONLY what they want to see and are WILLINGLY BLIND to whatever does not meet their preconceived notions, their agenda.

A comment to a previous post responded to one of the torture apologists in a way I felt was quite succinct:

...does it matter how they stack up side by side? Is this a frickin' competition? Or are you looking to see if we can somehow justify ourselves? "Oh, he was worse than we are, so we're OK." It's NEVER OK. It's always appalling.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I have not and am not saying that no good has come out of the war, so stop justifying the war. I AM saying that these brutal, appalling acts of torture, perpetrated under an administration that deliberately sought legal means to avoid having the Geneva Conventions apply both undermine the moral justification for the war AND soil the United States almost beyond redemption.

I find a huge irony in the fact that we are about to celebrate the birth of a man who was tortured and nailed to a cross to die, acts recently depicted in all their brutality in a movie that helped many understand their faith better, and yet people are being apologists for acts that are of the same nature by saying "they are of a lower degree."

Wrong is wrong. Evil is evil. In this there is no "degree" that justifies NOT SPEAKING OUT AGAINST IT. In saying "Saddam did worse", you are merely pointing out that we are now in the same category, it is NO EXCUSE AND NO JUSTIFICATION FOR ACTS THAT ARE ALWAYS UNJUSTIFIABLE.

As I have written before: The acts which expose the feet of clay of the hero, of whom is expected better, cause far more damage than the acts of those who the world already knows are evil.