Like our leaders, we Americans tend to think that everything is a matter of opinion--and that what we don't know does not matter. Take for instance this blogger,who, after posting the ridiculous question "Are the Iraqi photographs real or fake?", has the nerve to write this on his own commenting log:
If you ask me the vast majority of these photos are fake. Sure, there's going to be a few bad apples in the army but there's so many photos coming forward now they've got to be fake.Never mind the fact that this is a PENTAGON report, or that even the Bush administration and the military have both acknowledged the validity of the photographs as well as the report. To no less extent, Donald Rumsfeld also makes an ass of himself, as John Marshall clearly points out by simply juxtaposing Rumsfeld's comments with the text of the Taguba Report.
Just look at them - wrong guns, clean shirts, no blood...
Somebody is just trying to make our lads look bad out there.
Don Rumsfeld: "I think that -- I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture. I don't know if it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the torture word."
Taguba Report: "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee."
-- Josh Marshall (May 04, 2004)
