Quote:
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COULTER:... and perhaps you'll think I'm insane....
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I'd prefer
"rabidly self-loathing", but hey, if the shoe fits. At least the transcriptionist got the [cackle] part right, what a freaking witch.
Let's review, so far we are blaming gays* and women. (*or at least homosexual tendencies, which I certainly wouldn't argue, but we would have to talking about
repressed homosexual tendencies in "straight people," since Spc. Charles Graner (who worked in a prison stateside) and Pfc. Lynndie England, the man and woman figuring prominently in the photos were lovers, and none of the others implicated were openly gay.)
What a desperate attempt to avoid the obvious.
Personally I think it's incredibly naive to believe that such acts as these are not fairly typical of both war and
prison situations in general, and to argue that they simply didn't happen, as some in this thread seem to want to believe, in the face of an explicit internal US Army report that
they did is just willful avoidance.
Anyone familiar with Dr. Stanley Milgram's work or the Stanford Prison Experiments in the 70s would probably consider such events
almost inevitable. In fact, these acts of 'mild' mind games and pseudo-sexually-based humiliation are almost exactly what the Standford experiments produced, down to the stripping, bags on the heads, golden showers and the small dick jokes, and these were "normal guys" without any additional motives of possibly obtaining valuable information or any "intelligence" lurking around dropping hints about 'softening' interrogation techniques.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and having the scruples to resist such corruption is a factor independent of gender, sexuality, race or creed.
(except for republicans...
joke!)
In spite of the the tone and the focus about Arab reactions in most of the reportage, I think Americans are far more outraged by it than Arabs, because Americans insist on promoting a totally unrealistic and sugar-coated view of both war and human behaviour in general, and we're always shocked when the truth leaks out. We'd like to pretend I suppose that
most people, having listened to the lamentations about the horror perpetrated on our country for three solid years and then put in a situation of total control over 'suspect Iraqis,' would probably serve them chamomile tea, play some Yanni and run warm bubble-baths for them.
You can continue to argue whether these acts were "torture" all you want and whether it's a 'gay thing' or a 'female thing,' it doesn't really matter, The only question is whether you think it's
excusable behaviour--
for anyone.