A Rising Ire Lifts All Activists

I first saw this over at Bad Attitudes, and they cite Talking Points Memo as their source. From AP

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

In an earlier post, Moe Blues reminds me that pResident Bush was feeling a little lighthearted last December on the subject of international law, which, among other things, regulates prison conditions for occupying authorities. Bush joked, "International law? I'd better call my lawyer." Ha ha.

Maybe he should. Because while I can't say I've plowed through the agreements of the various Geneva Conventions, I'm pretty sure humiliation of the kind described above isn't condoned under any circumstances. In fact, I'd like to think that if Bush somehow hears about this, it will wipe the silly grin off his face.

Following up on this topic, Billmon knocks another out of the park, and has a link to MSNBC's copy of the Taguba report, which I'm kind of skimming, more or less, right now. The proprieter of The Whiskey Bar points out a troubling phenomenon: "ghost prisoners." Much like Jacobo Timmerman in Argentina, who wrote Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number (and yes, the Amazon link is Billmon's as well), these are people who've been detained, yet there is no record of their incarceration. Bush might want to talk to his lawyer about that too.

The wrong wingers will attempt to spin this by arguing that, regardless of our actions, we're still better than Saddam Hussein. OK, sure. Would these same people accept murderers walking the streets because they're "better" than Ted Bundy? Do we have to tally the body count?

Speaking of which: Needlenose has a pretty poignant photograph and post about Fallujah. As I noted below, we're definitely the lesser of evils--but that's one hell of a relative scale.