A rose by any other name . . .

This picture could easily be a "recruiting poster" for al Qaeda in Iraq. It is only one of many photographs taken by US military personnel stationed at Abu Ghraib and circulated among other soldiers until finally leaked to the media.

Happy 10th Anniversary of Abu Ghraib!

How time flies when we're having fun. April 28, 2014, is the tenth anniversary of the release on Sixty Minutes II of the first pictures from Abu Ghraib which awakened America to its role as a garden variety torturing power in the 21st century--Cheney's dabbling in the "dark side."

You would have thought we as a modern nation would decry such policies, or at least significantly debate them, possibly even have the courage to prosecute the authorizers and perpetrators of such blatant violations of our military code, body of national laws, and international conventions. You would have thought so given our nominal "principles." 

There are so many terrible policies which flow from our failure as a nation to call torture by its right name and our failure to hold the people accountable for their evil deeds. But to do so in President Obama's opinion would be "looking back," when he'd rather we "look forward." 

"Forward to what," we should ask . . . further retrenchment from our beloved principles? Say like authorizing the killing of American citizens without due process? Yep. We do that now. Say like authorizing the deaths of women and children by remote control drones because we can't "efficiently" capture terrorist suspects and try them in our own courts or, God forbid, in international courts? Yep. We do that too. 

Karen Greenberg reviews the whole story up to today which, while it's not comfortable reading, is timely and necessary. Not to review this horrid condition would be to redon the moral blinders prepared for us by both the Bush and Obama administrations. [cf., Dangerous Recent Reading: The Necessity(?) of Evil in War TWT&NB March 2014, especially remarks about Adolph Eichmann in Eichmann in Jerusalem]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175836/tomgram%3A_karen_greenberg%2C_abu_ghraib_never_left_us/#more