by James Glaser
March 17, 2004

The Bush Administration wants us to believe that it was just seven evil low ranking National Guard Troops who were responsible for the sexual torture of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib Prison.

They want us to believe that these troops thought up the whole thing and that nobody higher up is responsible at all. Just like nobody was responsible for the breakdown in National Defense on September 11th 2001, which cost us 3000 American lives.

Like nobody was responsible for the bad intelligence that led Bush and his team to believe that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were ready to attack the USA.

Like nobody was responsible for the lack of an exit strategy for the war in Iraq.

And for sure nobody is responsible for the fact that our troops didn't have the equipment needed in Iraq. I guess nobody was in charge of ordering enough body armor or armored Humvees.

The White House is trying to foist another lie on us. Low ranking people follow orders, they do not make up the rules nor do they do as they want. We are now told that these National Guard Troops just happened to figure out what they could do to Iraqi prisoners that would humiliate them more than anything else. Do we have smart troops or what?

I think it is "what." If you are a low ranking person in the military, you don't take anything upon yourself. You train your whole career to follow orders. What do you think the United States Army would be like if everyone in it was allowed to do what they thought was best for the Army?

Yes, these troops that have been charged should be punished, mostly because they followed orders they should have known were wrong and illegal.

What is so sad about this whole affair is the way Washington is trying to get out of taking the responsibility that is theirs. We have Republican Senators that are running cover for the President by saying they are upset that Americans are upset about this torture of Iraqis.

We have American Government officials that are telling the world that what we did was not that bad when compared to what Saddam did. Like that makes our crime OK, because it wasn't really that bad of a crime. That is like saying two wrongs do make a right.

What Americans have to understand is that we do these things in each and every war we are in. Maybe we don't do this type of "sex" torture, because that is what worked best in Iraq, but we do torture in all wars.

Take a look at the American prison system and you will learn that men raping men is common and these are Americans raping Americans. Of course there are no photographs to incense the public about what is going on right here at home.

I just watched a movie called "Kill Bill." The whole movie was killing and blood, one long act of revenge. American troops can look at what goes on right here in America, and decide to follow orders, because like most Americans they believe that they are in Iraq as an act of revenge for 9/11.

George Bush still talks about Weapons of Mass Destruction and how we are bringing freedom to Iraq. Our troops think they are the good guys and every thing we do over there is for the good of the Iraqi people.

I don't buy that and I don't think the rest of the world does either. Frankly, President Bush is delusional and he probably really thinks that some good will come out of what we did to the Iraqi prisoners and for sure he believes that it is unfortunate that we have had to kill so many thousands of Iraqi civilians, but we are doing that killing to help those people.

I don't understand how those National Guard troops could do those things to those prisoners and think it was right, orders or not. I have no idea of what kind of people we let in our military now. I also have no idea of where our President learned what is right and wrong.

I do know that this episode in Iraq will hurt our Nation for decades and all we can do right now is have somebody in a position of power take responsibility for these crimes at Abu Ghraib and resign their position in our government. That won't give us our self respect back, but it would tell the world that we take this crime seriously. I think we are going to try and sweep this under the rug with the speedy conviction of some low level troops.

We no longer have the high ground when we talk about right and wrong. The world now sees that America is no different than any one else. For years the American people thought we wore the White Hat, we were the good guys and just maybe the American people learning that we also do evil in this world will cause some long needed changes in Washington, but don't hold your breath.

I don't like to say this, but there are reasons that much of the world refers to us as the Great Satan. It is true that our government and our corporations do a lot of evil and yes, it hurts when we find out about some of it. It wasn't just a few evil National Guard troops that committed this prison torture in Iraq. It was our whole government that did it. And you know what? They did it in our name.