> There seems to be something characteristically American about the
> sexual tortures though. It's one weirdly repressed, religion-saturated
> culture meeting another. Australia stikes me as much more open and
> secular than the U.S., so their tortures might take different form.
I wasn't referring to the particular actions of the guys and gals in the detention center in Iraq (in deference to Chuck Grimes, I won't call it a "prison"). I was referring to Bill's idea that the American public, back home, was behaving in some sort of peculiar American way -- like puppies who needed to have their faces rubbed in the shit. What I was suggesting was that every country's people tend to think of themselves as superior human beings, and therefore need to have their faces rubbed in the shit in order to realize that they can be as degraded and degrading as every other country's people. It's just common, ordinary nationalism -- as human as apple pie and Mom. :-)
As for the particular degrading activities shown in the pics we have all seen, I don't think they are particularly American, either. From what I have read, they seem to have been especially designed to fit the particular ways that men can be most humiliated in Islamic culture. Therefore, I deduce that someone who knew that culture very well drew up the plans for the actions. As has been frequently pointed out, the perps were primarily young reservists from West Virginia and other Appalachian areas, who were hardly familiar with Islamic culture, so I doubt that the whole thing was their idea. We still have a lot to learn about exactly who managed this whole business, and how it was done.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt