And rightly so. Seems some of our troops aren’t behaving any better over there than Saddam did. Psychological torture, sexual assault, beatings and other abuses by the troops overseeing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad appear to have been the rule of the day. Some pretty graphic pictures have been released along with eyewitness accounts and at least six U.S. soldiers are already up for courts-martial. Meanwhile, the Arab would is outraged:
MSNBC - Arab outrage grows over alleged prisoner abuse
“They were ugly images. Is this the way the Americans treat prisoners?“ asked Ahmad Taher, 24, a student at Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University. “Americans claim that they respect freedom and democracy—but only in their country.“
Hussein al-Saeedi, spokesman for Kuwait’s al-Salaf radical Islamic group, said the images “make every sensible person doubt all the principles Western democracies are offering” and show the need for an end to the U.S. occupation.
“America justified its invasion of Iraq by saying the country was under a dictatorship. Unfortunately, Americans are now torturing the Iraqi people in the same place Saddam tortured them,“ he said.
So much for winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, let alone the Arab world. As far as they can tell we’ve removed one dictator only to take his place. Ah, but this is what we get when a man who sees foreign policy solely in terms of “good” and “evil” is handed the Presidency by judicial fiat.
