I read through the document from The Smoking Gun, available
here. From what I can tell, it looks like a few people (the direct chain of command from the Brigadier General to some of her Lieutenant Colonels, the direct commanders of the Military Police platoon responsible for these abuses, were lacking in good judgement.
However, a good number of people (whom the investigator notes) refused to participate in the abuses. That speaks volumes.
Yes, this is a bad thing that a few dumbass soldiers decided to harass Iraqis. It wasn't a nice thing, and we can all agree on that. Whether or not they "had it coming" either, that's debateable. However, the important thing is that the United States is one of the leading nations of the world and we should hold ourselves to higher moral standards,
no matter how much shit the Iraqis may do to our soldiers that are POWs.
So the Arab news stations don't bother reporting about how their suicide bombers killed a bunch of Israeli children or how they spent all night torturing and raping a 19 year old female soldier they captured. Do you really expect them to? Of course not. But we can't give them material that they
will broadcast - like the harassment of Iraqi POWs.
And as to
slvrnblck's comments - I'm not even going to bother responding for fear of starting to foam at the mouth - and I love this board too much to risk getting banned over such ignorance.