Great Moments in the National Review
Some selected responses to the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse story.
The message is perfectly consistent with what Americans can see almost any day of the week on MTV, HBO, or until recently, Howard Stern.
The Americans sexually humiliated Iraqi prisoners, forcing them to masturbate, to wear women's underwear, and to commit (or feign committing) unnatural acts, and captured it on film. If they had done this stateside in different circumstances, they might be very rich and perhaps even up for an Adult Video Award.
Left-wing critics of the Iraq war are no doubt delighted to finally see evidence of the atrocities they falsely accused a previous generation of soldiers of committing.
But nothing going on in Iraq is quite as alarming as the panic of our political class about it.
Obviously, very real abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib, but news operations don't show pictures of rape victims, never mind actual rapes, even when they're sure they're real and the consequences for doing so are comparatively meager. [?]
CBS's scoop has gotten someone killed [?]
John Derbyshire, explaining his "mental state":
1. The Abu Ghraib "scandal": Good. Kick one for me. But bad discipline in the military (taking the pictures, I mean). Let's have a couple of courts martial for appearance's sake. Maximum sentence: 30 days CB.
2. The US press blowing up the Abu Ghraib business: Fury at these lefty jounalists doing down America. They just want to re-live the glory days of Vietnam, when they brought down a president they hated. (PS: They hated him because he was an anticommunist, while they themselves tought [sic]communism was just fine.)
John Derbyshire, defending his mental state:
If you think you can fight a war against a ferocious and unappeasable enemy without your interrogators kicking prisoners, you are dreaming.
No wonder Goldberg wishes the photos had never been released.