Torture Orders roll downhill.  Let’s not kid ourselves, people, that the High Command of our U.S. nazi administration doesn’t know almost every move in this torture/sexual abuse horror in Abu Ghraib prison and in prisons throughout Iraq and elsewhere.    

Watch as the “excuse-makers” scurry around like cornered rats trying to find people to blame. Listen to the weak rhetoric bandied about by the Commander-in-Chief, the U.S. War President. Unlike H.S. Truman where the buck stopped, this weak president can’t abide bucks stopping anywhere near the vicinity of his soul. 

Can you hear the screams of the tortured, sexually and mentally abused people in the middle of the night? Can you feel the tears of the Almighty falling from the sky?  Can you even bear to know the traumas of the parents and spouses of these sons and daughters of Iraq and the US? Can you gaze at the swaggering, braggadocios military women and men pointing guns at genitals and snickering over the nudity of Iraqi men? Can you imagine how we would behave if our women were raped and our children tortured? 

If we have any Collective Memory at all, we know the same things have been visited upon Native Americans and African Americans and others by the ruling powers here in the US. So, what do we expect our military and mercenaries to do in other lands?

Tell me, how does this Invasion/Occupation of Iraq solve any of the World’s Terror Problems?  What I see is MORE EVIL unleashed from the pits of hell!   Again, remember this: What goes around comes around.  The Golden Rule has been stomped on and smashed. It has been Urinated on and Stuffed up the Asses of the Captured.  Idolaters have laughed at it. It has been bombed and shot at. It has been Nuked and Mocked!

What do we do now? Because the Buck Stops With Us.   

Thoroughly ordinary young men and women pretend to be gods, lording over darker humanity. U.S. culture empowers them to act out their most hideous fantasies at the expense of “lesser” peoples. Lynndie England demanded that Iraqi men surrender their dignity by masturbating for her sick enjoyment. The Iraqi victims knew that the Americans’ pornographic theater could turn into a snuff film at any moment. To the Arab men, Pvt. England and Specialist Megan Ambuhl must have seemed like “Bay Watch” from Hell….

“This is not America,” said George Bush on Wednesday, pleading the national case to the Arab world. “America is a country of justice and law and freedom and treating people with respect.”

No, America is a country built on genocide, slavery and insatiable land-piracy, where even the lowest status white person is a king or queen compared to a “hajji” or “gook” or some other variety of “nigger.” This is the cultural well from which springs America’s ceaseless domestic and international wars, the fountainhead of aggression as a national trait.

It is also the national characteristic that renders Americans unfit to “change the world” – Bush’s favorite refrain. The same racism that encourages Americans to believe they have a right to dominate the planet, prevents them from perceiving non-whites as human beings – and brings out the dominatrix in Pvt. England.

I urge all people to state their outrage about these abuses.  While it is nothing new, it points to a systemic problem that few have dealt with. Certainly no president.

England and Graner as well as others are pathetic and obviously mentally ill to grin and do the things that they have perpetrated against these human beings. I don't care if they are prisoners.  Where is their discipline and moral restraint?  Every human being has a stop watch in their brain…unless they are mentally dysfunctional.  The rules of punishment should take place. Ms. England had the mental capacity to note that one prisoner, was “getting hard."

Please spare me the rhetoric that she is innocent and was just following orders.

Let's not play games as has been done with police brutality throughout the years. The buck stops here.

Bush stands before the American public and rambles aimlessly to convince us that the troops are doing a good job.  What the hell is this? Stop playing us like you play your instruments.  Our daughters and sons are dying for what? I wonder how sympathetic many of you would be if it were your loved one on display like we are observing?

The media and pirates have done it again. Playing word tricks, the horror, violence, degradation, depravity, murder, atrocity, demoralization, sexual assault, rape, destruction of humanity, and assault on human decency and dignity perpetuated by the basest of animal aggression and violence, has been labeled "abuse."

My understanding of abuse is simple mistreatment. We call abuse not feeding our dog or cat, and not feeding our kids on time. We use criminal terms to describe offenses against persons such as rape, violent assault, aggravated murder, violent aggression, murder, forcible rape, etc. I don't know of any instance where “abuse” is a crime.

What the criminals did in Iraq were crimes of the highest order, and not abuse as we know it. And, these crimes were perpetuated by men and women at the highest levels of rank in Iraq, the finest that money can buy.

If what is done in Iraq is abuse, then we owe Kobe Bryant an apology, and many others who did what these people did and condoned that are now locked away for life, or executed.

I get sick every time I see the word abuse attached to what has happened in Iraq. The stage is now set to pardon these people, or as the headlines in our local paper assert: “Rumsfeld apologizes for prison ‘abuse.’" And, "Soldier charged with ‘abuse.’" What happened and is happening is beyond abuse or we will have to throw out our own criminal "injustice” system and call what Charles Manson did a "boys will be boys" party.

Is the term "abuse" now truly redefined? It is a palpable travesty to see grown men and women in the United States Senate and Congress asking questions about "abuse" when they ought to be describing what is happening according to our own laws. That whole inquiry is a "dog and pony" show.

Murder is murder. Violent, forcible rape and sodomy is just that, not simple abuse. I now watch the worst examples of depravity laboring to "label and dismiss" this violence against humanity. My only consolation is that there is a divine law that operates whether one has faith in Jesus Christ or not. The law of sowing and reaping never fails. There is a Price for this mess. The USA will pay in ways that are as yet not perceived.

We could not agree more with your May 6, 2004 article, "America Unfit!"  The analogy is that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely!"  Few of those in power ever concede that might does not make right! 

The scriptures of the Holy Qur'an say:  "Corruption has appeared upon the land and upon the seas on account of what man's hands have wrought." 

The planet Earth has never seen a more corrupt, rebellious, and hypocritical government than America. There is much for them to reap, including the whirlwind!

I recently listened to the Honorable Louis Farrakhan in a press conference held in Washington, D.C.  He brought a great deal of clarity to some issues of this engagement in the Iraq war. Your article also brought clarity. I am now listening to learn how much this country is committed to protect Israel at the expense of occupying Iraq, soon going after Iran, Syria, and any other Middle Eastern country threatening the survival of Israel.  Farrakhan implies that it is the occupation of America in Iraq that has created the recent deaths of soldiers. I totally agree with that, but more importantly the American people, all of us, are now targets for any retribution for trying to protect Israel.

However, I also agree with you that it is that good ole American hatred that is responsible for the photos of prisoner abuse currently being played all over the world.  Farrakhan has also stated that these were "home-grown" examples of the hatred in America. The fact that they were socialized to become arrogant and demeaning of difference is what being an American is today.

But if you understand what Farrakhan is suggesting, it makes perfect sense. American neo-conservatives are on a mission to eliminate any country that could be threatening to Israel and its current existence. It is believed Israel has all of the weapons of mass destruction and no other Middle Eastern country should stockpile them. But it was WMDs that served the purpose to go after Saddam.  Bin Laden was lost in the search, but he continues to create havoc in Afghanistan.

What is not being discussed is how the Administration believes it needs to change how the world does business, and should adopt the policies and mindsets of America.

As your article eloquently demonstrated it is the mentality of hatred that is perverse in America, and has contributed to its success as a world leader. Unfortunately, the servicemen and women who are involved in the photo fiasco are only expressing what they have been taught by their trainers. You have a president who says, “Go get 'em boys," and now a country that cannot stomach how dirty American military tactics are.

For those of us who know no better, we can only assume that these activities do not impact our lives, but in fact they do.  What will happen if Israel becomes more powerful than America?  Why is it so important to protect Israel?  It is totally unfathomable that no one can explain why we are fighting in this war on terror, except Farrakhan. None of the major networks covered the story, but I can tell you the room was full and C-Span was there.

I cannot express how disturbing these events affect me, since I have a daughter serving as a United States Marine in this awful mess. The nation could withdraw, but Bush is not having it, just like he would not admit that weapons of mass destruction did not exist, but launched his missiles anyway.

May Peace be with you and this wonderful publication.

Black Commentator is hard-hitting today!  Can it get any worse out there in Bush La-La land?  As a woman, as a human being, as an American citizen, I am filled with shame after the last incident of torture of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib jail.  I am filled with shame for my country, for my nation, and most of all for the poor people of Iraq, and all the poor people across the Third World who have and continue to suffer from the unethical, immoral practices of our country in the name of "safe-guarding American interests" and in the name of "Democracy."  

I'm just praying we pull out of Iraq as soon as possible, and bring our troops home immediately!!! Give Iraq back to the Iraqi people, and for God's sake, for the sake of our national pride and honor as a people, let us stop dominating the world with our unfair business and environmental practices, our total disregard for peoples' cultural and religious differences (if they are different from the Anglo white American norm), and whose resources, land, and cheap labor is all we want, leaving them to live in slums, landless, devastated by our funneling money to corrupt governments and militia armies of our own making. It's just got to stop.  

We are the most corrupt country in the whole world, without a doubt.  If there are countries that are corrupt and use sadistic tactics with their prisoners, you can be sure we taught them how to do it. Our country is the most sadistic, ethnocentric, religious right wing warmongering culture of obscene mass consumption, sucking the world's resources as fast as we can while the rest of the world falls further and further into poverty and misery.  It appears we seem to have total disregard for life.  Why can't they (the Pirates who control this nation and the world) see we all come from the same Great Mother.

Let's begin, on this Mother's Day, to honor her in all her manifestations and glory.  It is time to bring the "Grandmother Council" back into our own system of government, as the original Seneca and Iroquois tribes had as their system of government.  If we had such a council, there would be no more war.  One man, such as the maniac we now have leading our country, is a recipe for disaster.  To rectify the damage that has been done by this administration and this one maniac will take many, many years.  Our democracy is, as Fela, the great Nigerian singer, said: “Dem all Crazy!”

I hope someday I will be able to say I am an American with pride.  At this point I am just hanging my head in shame, and praying for a better day, a day when the tribal council of the Grandmothers is brought back and we are all redeemed from this shame that is being committed by our country, our young men and women, in our name and in the name of democracy.  For shame, America, for shame.

Of all the websites and all the writing on any given subject you cover, I have found yours to be the clearest, sanest, strongest and most devastating to our feeble minded powers that be. You cannot loathe Bush, et. al. more than I do but you certainly state it better.

I am a "white" (hate that term but for description's sake use it here) lady of nearly seventy. I have been a left-leanin' commie pinko liberal all my adult life. I was southern born but NEVER bought into the thinking of my time. I do recognize that I was, indeed, stunted by it all the same. It gets into your bones and bloodstream like heavy metal contamination. It is a sickness that I don't see many folks fighting and yet it MUST be fought and fought hard if it is to be driven back.

Your intelligent commentary is an excellent tool in that fight. I wish members of your staff were available as pundits for the mainstream media. You have ideas that cry out to be heard.

This is a good article. I am not surprised that truth is uttered  by an African American brother. I think you are right, this is America. And this is the American culture, with its sick racist mind-set. The America that was founded upon the genocide of the natives, and the slavery of the Africans.  It is a culture that is morally, spiritually and thus humanly bankrupt. And they are not fooling human beings, the world over, no more. All can see now that the emperor has no cloths. He has no morals, no values, no humanity, no sense of shame, of justice, of truth, of human decency, dignity...none, totally naked, and so repulsively ugly at that.

“America unfit to change the world” – another excellent Iraq commentary! All the more insightful and poignant because apparently only a black American commentator has the inside information – to spell out the demonic confluence of  racism, violence and imperialism that drives US foreign policy under Bush. Well done.

Having just read your piece "America Unfit to Change the World" (via the link provided at Rense.com), I would like to thank you for your remarkably keen, sharp-witted analysis.

Surely, as I know you will agree, the racist underpinnings of American worldwide hegemony have not yet begun to be challenged in the mainstream press as a thoughtful approach to the topic would require.

I love the English language, maybe because I devoted many hours of my life to learning the little I know. The main reason for learning English was to be able to read some authors I considered vital in their original version.

But the use of the English language by American authorities sets me off balance. In recent years I had to incorporate terms such as "friendly fire" (firing at a person can't possibly be considered as a friendly action), "preemptive attack" (even the media enjoyed the perspective of attacking and destroying a distant country that few Americans know anything about, except that it is sitting on an enormous oil well), "collateral damage" – fancy words to express that civilians,  women and children included, can be easily killed ignoring the Geneva Convention, cities can be bombed, houses destroyed without producing any visible emotion of repulse in most of the inhabitants of "the land of the free." 

We could also assume that before pronouncing the word "democracy" they should remember it means "government of the people, by the people and for the people" and not just having the chance to vote for the least of several evils and keep fingers crossed hoping they don't do too much harm while in office.  As of yesterday I have to add the word "contractor" to this preposterous list, as "somebody hired to torture and interrogate prisoners." Among these contractors I can guess there must be a number of beings (human is omitted on purpose) with vast experience in training South American army men during the "cold war" (can a war be cold, can blood be cold?) to catch, torture and disappear people with the wrong political ideas. Remember the School of the Americas in Panama?

But perhaps the most revolting use of the English language is to hear Rumsfeld and Bush say they are “sorry" about the torturing of prisoners in Iraq. Of course, that is because they were not brave enough to end the sentence they had in mind: "I am sorry the photos and videos...became public."  The general impression I had after hearing the senators debate this issue is that they are also sorry because those monsters don't really represent the American citizens’ values and it's bad for business that people around the world might think they are capable of such vile actions.

To the millions of us who don't practice hypocrisy as a way of living, all this didn't come as a shock – believe me, most of us have degrees in "American double speech" – but anyway, we can't help shivering because hypocrisy is one of the most corrosive evils in the world against which people of good will have no defense. In a couple of years we will also have to put up with some movie, the kind we are now and then given as a way to exorcise demons and clean consciences which will attempt to show some of the true facts and prove to the world that the American society is capable of self-criticism, provided sufficient time has elapsed so that it's too late to correct errors.

I am sorry too.

The cheerleaders for war don’t believe that Iraqis are human beings. If the Iraqis have no humanity then one can believe anything about them that is convenient. Of course Iraqis have feelings of pride for themselves and for their nation. The media may tell us that “insurgents” have taken up arms against the U.S. military, but in fact many ordinary citizens have decided to defend their country for the simple reason that they don’t want to be an American colony….

If pictures are worth 1,000 words we should no longer hear the clueless question, “Why do they hate us?” Americans are hated because we want to control and dominate, which always leads to killing, stealing or helping others who want to do the same thing. They hate us because we say we want to free a country from the grip of an evil dictator when we really want to take a nation’s resources and turn it into a military base. They hate us because it is inevitable that the theft and destruction will lead to using the dictator’s torture chambers for our own torture sessions. They hate us because after we kill and destroy we ask stupid questions as if we were innocent.

Your article, "White Supremacy in Iraq” was superb. I guess it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the whole concept of the war in Iraq, from the lies to justify it to the torture and killings are facilitated by appealing to a racist image of the Iraqis. However, I don't see much mention of this in any media, so I was pleased to see your article.

In my opinion, Americans are basically not interested in the suffering of Iraqis at all, just as they are not interested in the suffering of Africans anywhere. The reasons are based on racism as you describe.

Thanks for a very good article on an important subject.

I've read several of your articles since subscribing to Black Commentator. It feels good to see that there are a few of us out there that see things as they really are and willing to call a spade a spade.

I am angry but not surprised at these atrocities. These people felt safe in doing this because they thought that they were amongst those who wouldn't expose this type of behavior. I never accepted the [9-11] statement, " We as Americans must put race behind us, and stand together as one as this was an attack against us all." In fact, I went into what the military used to call Defense Condition (DEFCON) Alert, because when they say that, they need us for some hidden agenda. Once they've  achieved that agenda, it’s back to business as usual.

I'm also sure that Confederate Flags went up in these camps as they did during Gulf War I.

What a powerful piece of writing.  Thank you for your eloquence in saying what MUST be said.

I have family in Iraq (my dad's country of origin), and I am always encouraged by the courage of those like you who dare to speak out the truth.

Many thanks for your excellent work.

Thank you for having the strength of character to speak out.  I am in South Africa and deeply admire people who hold justice and truth close to their hearts.  I have seen many a journalist who have almost been programmed to only say what pleases the ruling power.  Truth is very often the casualty.

Another excellent issue. Jenel Few's article (“The Odds are Against Them: The Black Male Education Debacle”) really hit home, in particular the paragraph below:

"…minority students aren't likely to be well counseled about college preparations or expectations and the importance of advanced courses, Kirst said. Even middle-class blacks aren't always fully aware because they are typically first generation middle-class and don't travel in circles where these things are common knowledge."

That's us, too. I'm one of those parents who always coached my kids’ teams, took them to museums and libraries. Read them stories, and stressed pride in our heritage. My people think I did a great job ‘cause the girls all graduated high school without being pregnant. I always assumed they'd go to college, but I didn't know all the college prep stuff. How White people start planning college when they're first in high school. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college. I can tell you this without embarrassment.

Whites would probably think I was stupid or lazy and blaming them for everything.

Freedom Rider – great work as usual. The last sentence is classic: “They hate us because after we kill and destroy we ask stupid questions as if we were innocent.”

Unfit to Change the World – the kind of analysis which so impresses me. Stan Goff wrote another excellent analysis this week [“Another Open Letter to the Troops in Iraq”] which pointed out how those who think the Abu Ghraib abuse is the exception must then believe that the only abuse occurred on camera, when no cameras were around no abuse took place and our 1% bad apples were all in one place, one shift, in just that one prison.

Just when I thought our occupation couldn't be any stupider – the new Iraqi flag!

May 13 2004
Issue 90

is published every Thursday.