RAY SUAREZ: Well, Hisham, the photos had a few days to soak down into the various information channels in the Arab world, descriptions of what was going on at Abu Ghraib. What's been the reaction?
HISHAM MELHEM: People were shocked, they were stunned that these abuses were occurring and that the Americans were the perpetrators now. Those who came supposedly to Iraq as the liberators ended up as the tormentors of those people. The irony that these abuses were taking place in Abu Ghraib, the most notorious prison during Saddam's regime, a facility that should have been razed to the ground and in its place built a shrine or memorial to its many victims. These abuses were taking place in that most notorious jail.
Also the irony, now that the issue or the excuse of weapons of mass destruction no longer holds, we have a president who is telling the rest of the world, wrapped himself with a moral cloak, telling the world that we came to Iraq to liberate the Iraqis, to build a new Iraq with freedom, human rights will flourish.
If you wanted to write a script or a scenario as to how you undermine the credibility of the United States in the Middle East today, you couldn't have done a better job. I thought last month with the incredible violence in Iraq, with President Bush's embrace of Ariel Sharon that America's credibility in the nation reached it's nadir. I think I'm mistaken, I think now. I think one could argue if you have any illusions about winning hearts and mind in Iraq and the Arab world for that matter, you should forget that. I think what happens --.
RAY SUAREZ: Forget it -- you mean like game over?
HISHAM MELHEM: Yeah, I think so. I think this is qualitatively a severe setback for America and either many allies in the Middle East and Iraqi allies. People wonder how come there was no strong explicit condemnation from Jerry Bremer or from the president of the United States. The president said he felt disgusted and I believe him that he felt, that he didn't like it one bit. But that's not strong enough.
I mean, I would have expected a strong denunciation of what happened, this is not what America stands for, this is not why we came to Iraq, those people will be punished, those who are responsible for them will be punished and there will be Iraqi judges watching the procedures. None of this. None of this. How come the president did not take to the air, how come Bremer did not take to the air, and say these things to the Iraqis first and foremost. Today the Iraqis for the first time saw it an their own media, they saw it on Arabia, by the way, after CBS and al-Jazeera and others. Sometimes I wonder the people in Washington have no clue as to what their policies are doing in the Arab and Muslim world.
Is abuse by U.S. troops a common occurrence?
RAY SUAREZ: Sy Hersh, is the reaction that Hisham Melhem looking for eventually going to come, is it a question of machinery slowly grinding into place and things rolling out in the way that they do eventually?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Is that a serious question?
RAY SUAREZ: Yeah.
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