> But the more important thing to do is figure out how to prove this
> (torture) isn't some isolated fluke in Abu Ghraib, but part of a
> general system, part of Bush's war on terror. In other words we are
> not looking at an `incident', we are looking at the `plan'.
One thing is clear -- the whole attempt to portray this thing as a lark by a few reservists and private contractor employees (or a "fraternity prank," a la Rush) is nonsense.
The basic point, I think, is that if you are trying to fight a "war on terror" in which you can't penetrate the "terrorist" cells because you don't have enough Arabic-speaking spies, to say nothing of spies who grew up in the same village in Afghanistan or wherever with the cell members, you have to use "any means necessary" just to find out who you are fighting, much less what they are planning to do.
Claude Salhani, UPI International Editor, speculated yesterday (<http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040505-030517-9479r>) that the Abu Ghraib stuff might have been part of the push to capture Saddam, since (at least in the story that was made public) he was caught in late December, and the Abu Ghraib incidents happened between September and December. At any rate, it seems clear that the whole "war on terror" has to be based on counter-terror, so somebody in the Bush administration must have been plotting this stuff.
Not only in this administration, of course: the whole "defense/intelligence establishment," including ex-Clinton administration types (who are now no doubt advising Kerry to soft-pedal attacks on Bush in this area, because if they win they will have to carry on the "war on terror"), is complicit in this thing.
But it's all starting to come apart at the seams, it appears; who knows where it will end? Starting from a few photos snapped in a prison in Baghdad... Rumsfeld out, Powell finally getting sick enough at his stomach to resign? It's starting to look like Bush's Watergate -- remember that it started with a few "plumbers" forgetting to take the tape off a lock at the Watergate and ended with the whole administration collapsing.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.
-- Sir John Vanbrugh: The Provok’d Wife (1697), I.i.