So, Abu Graib's not the fault of those who committed the crimes, but that of the good, true Americans who "snitched" and exposed the story, right? Read my previous post – "Of Horrors and Hope, Heroes and History" – on this issue.
So which messenger do we kill on this one? Which good American soldier has to go into a witness protection program for reporting his fellow soldiers committing war crimes?
Or is it the ones who commit war crimes – not the ones who report them – who should be castigated?
The identity cards of murdered mom, dad, and daughter (from The Guardian.)
Read another take on this on AlterNet. Here's a more mainstream one in the NYT.
The F.B.I. affidavit portrays a crime at once chilling and calculated. Before raping one woman, Private Green confined her relatives to a bedroom, the document states. Shots were heard inside, after which Private Green came to the door and said, "I just killed them, all are dead," the affidavit goes on. Then Private Green and another "known participant" were seen raping the woman before Private Green shot her in the head "two to three times," the document states.
An AK-47 already in the house was used in at least some of the slayings and was dumped in a nearby canal afterward, the F.B.I. agent said.
The affidavit says prosecutors have 15 crime-scene photographs that corroborate the accounts of witnesses. "These photos include, but are not limited to, pictures of an Iraqi female, an Iraqi male, a young girl," the affidavit says. "These photos also depict the burned body of what appears to be a woman with blankets thrown over her upper torso."
Good to see that we can continue to read about this through the good ole BBC. Regardless of what this does to the "morale" of the American people, those same "American people" have a right to know what affects the opinion of the GI's on the ground in Iraq, which is also what "the enemy" uses against us to recruit snipers and suicide bombers.
Unjust wars, inhumane policies of torture and interrogation, and horrific crimes such as the ones described in the BBC story – this is what's unnecessarily killing American soldiers on the ground, eroding our reputation abroad, and destroying the moral/ethical core of the greatest of our American values.
But it's easiest just to label such criticism "un-American." Unfortunately, more and more, they're right.
Already, standing up for what's obviously right just because it's unpopular, or criticizing the President, or even engaging in one's right to gather voices into legitimate political protest – these things are becoming more "un-American" by the day.
When I return to America, I wonder if I'll even recognize it anymore.
Oh, right. Me even making this criticism will probably get me labeled as "un-American."
The people who go through the motions of supporting the fundamentally American right to protest one's government and leaders, or blow the whistle on immoral and illegal acts committed in the name of MY country, yet bemoan and belittle those who do so – these are the true hypocrites who eat away at our core American values.
If the soldiers accused are indeed guilty of the crimes for which they are accused, these men are the biggest traitors and walking insults to every good American soldier and citizen. Take a look at this link that I find interesting in that it links the (faked) photos supposedly depicting GI's raping Iraqi women, but mixed in with (very real) photos from Abu Graib,
What has really been lost here is the fact that so many people – even the Boston Globe (here and here) – were ready to believe they were real, because given the reality of the confirmed horrors committed by American troops, now bolstered by real rape/murders by American GI's, such horrible acts are not merely plausible (as they were in 2004) – now, they are established fact.
So sadly, the apparent inauthenticity of those particular "GI Rape" photos is actually merely an academic matter.
Because the real acts in question did actually take place, and were carried out with more horrible cruelty than even the imagination of the suspected anti-American groups who fabricated them could dream up. As always, fact is way more fucked up than fiction.
They capped her family as they took turns gang raping a 14-year-old girl?
Christ. I don't even know where to put that in my head.
