U.S. Army Sullied - 1

I just came from the London Daily Mirror website where photos of detainees being humiliated by U.S. Soldiers have been posted. Certainly see for yourself if you like, but they are images of young men, naked save for a bag over their heads in varying poses with camouflage-clad troops grinning like great jackasses.

My first reaction is disgust. We are not barbarians. Once the enemy has been stripped of his ability to fight, there is seldom any need to strip them of their dignity. Stripping Osama Bin Laden and parading his naked, beaten body up and down the streets of New York just before rendering him into Purina Hog Chow might be defensible, but not your garden variety insurgent. The laws of war are such that the use of captured combatants are not to be used for public spectacle or for propaganda. This is what they do, and we are better than this.

I am further disgusted to see a woman GI posing and pointing to the genitalia of a captive. I understand how men can fall into this sort of foul behavior, but I am doubly shocked to see the fairer sex joining in. Please allow me my delusion that women are a civilizing force. Perhaps this sister's sensibilities were overwhelmed. It's not that I want to hold her to a higher standard…I just guess I presume an inherent higher standard.

That a civilian reported these depraved actions is a further embarrassment to the Army, and to the United States in general. Our U.S. Armed forges are not just the muscle behind a bunch of self-interested mobsters, they are the muscle behind the idea of self-government, the notion that men do not have to have their darker angels restrained by tyranny.

Your character is not found in what you do when you do not have power, but in what you do when the power is in your hands. The clods smirking behind a pile of naked Iraqis are a disgrace to the uniform, and a disgrace to their comrades who died that men might be free.

One might say that at least these captives were not butchered, immolated and strung up from a bridge. One might argue that at least they still live, rather than be forced to dig their own grave and get shot. Granted, but that just isn't good enough.

These photos are evidence of a breakdown of discipline, and a failure of the chain of command to train and supervise. At the very least I expect to see reductions in rank and career-terminating notations in Department of the Army records to all who took part. I'd feel little sympathy for their dishonorable discharge as this handful of monumental pinheads have given the enemies of this country a powerful propaganda tool, one that may cost American lives.

No soldier involved in this can possibly state that this behavior was somehow acceptable, and the individuals should be held to account.

Tim McNabb