[lbo-talk] Hitch on the torturers, plus a defense of Chalabi

[Stephen E Philion]

Hitch wrote:  It has defiled one of the memorials of regime change. I 
was a visitor to Abu Ghraib last summer, and the stench of misery and 
evil was still palpable in those pits and cellars. It is as if British 
or American soldiers had not only executed German prisoners of war, but 
had force-marched them to Dachau in order to commit the atrocity.

--one key key difference. the american soldiers, short on good 
intelligence and good translators actually haven't got a clue whether 
these prisoners are guilty of anything more than being in the wrong 
place at the wrong time [i.e. near an American raid].  In Germany, it's 
safe to say the Americans were not running around Germany making random 
arrests and then being unable to engage in communication with them due 
to language barriers....
These are the kinds of things the Hitch of old would have thought about 
before making such analogies...

steve