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Photos and text, unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003,2004,2005,2006 - Alan M. Pavlik
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Consider:

"It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape."

- I. Compton-Burnett, letter to Francis King (1969)

"Cynical realism – it is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation."

- Aldous Huxley, "Time Must Have a Stop"







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Tuesday, 25 May 2004

Topic: Iraq

A whole Lott of love here...

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly follows rationalizations (everyone need a hobby). Here's his take on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
A few weeks ago I half-jokingly noted that mainstream conservative reaction to Abu Ghraib had shifted over time.

Phase 1: horrible, just horrible.

Phase 2: yes, it's bad, but keep in mind that it's not as bad as Saddam.

Phase 3: give it a rest, OK?

And then I guessed that there might still be a Phase 4 to come:

Maybe torturers as heroes, thanks to testimony from someone or other that one of the scraps of information they extracted saved a convoy somewhere? Hey, war is hell.
Well, he thinks the mainstream conservative right has reached this Phase 4.

His evidence? He points to what the Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and that would be Trent Lott, had to say today to Channel 16 in Jackson, Mississippi.

He thinks this is disgusting.

What set Kevin off?
"Frankly, to save some American troops' lives or a unit that could be in danger, I think you should get really rough with them," Lott said. "Some of those people should probably not be in prisons in the first place."

When asked about the photo showing a prisoner being threatened with a dog, Lott was unmoved. "Nothing wrong with holding a dog up there unless it ate him," Lott said. "(They just) scared him with the dog."

Lott was reminded that at least one prisoner had died at the hands of his captors after a beating. "This is not Sunday school," he said. "This is interrogation. This is rough stuff."
But you see the logic.

Well the Taguba report says sixty percent of those held in that prison were clearly picked up by mistake - just folks who looked funny, or didn't, but might be useful, or not. The Red Cross (ICRC) pegs the number of the hapless and useless being held there at up to ninety percent. But if one of them, by some chance, may perhaps know something that might be useful - that kind of justifies the majority tortured. And some of them die. This is war. The argument falls under the general heading of "you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs." And that is true, when making breakfast.

So, the short form?

Wimps unwilling to torture even these randomly detained and probably useless bystanders, for the greater good, endanger us all.

Now we will see who joins Lott in this line of reasoning.

Posted by Alan at 18:57 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Tuesday, 25 May 2004 19:05 PDT home

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