New photos of Abu Ghurayb. The bleeding
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New photos of Abu Ghurayb. The bleeding
| Sun, 06-27-2004 - 7:19pm |
New photos of Abu Ghurayb. The bleeding prisoners apparently bit by dogs.
Quote, "Use of Dogs to Scare Prisoners Was Authorized
Military Intelligence Personnel Were Involved, Handlers Say
By Josh White and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 11, 2004; Page A01
U.S. intelligence personnel ordered military dog handlers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to use unmuzzled dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees during interrogations late last year, a plan approved by the highest-ranking military intelligence officer at the facility, according to sworn statements the handlers provided to military investigators.

Posted on Mon, May. 17, 2004
Pop culture fostering Arab discrimination
BY MARY C. CURTIS
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT) - If it's true military police in Iraq were softening up prisoners for interrogation, our brains were softened up long before by images in popular culture, images of generic Arab villains.
Surely some of the excess is an attempt to get back at "them" for what they did to "us." But it helps when the line between us and them has already been drawn.
Think "True Lies," the 1994 James Cameron movie for Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Arab terrorists were portrayed as bloodthirsty and stupid. They forget to refresh the batteries before videotaping threats and shoot themselves those few times the good guys miss.
Objections by rights groups got lost in the box office payoff.
In the video version of its popular 1992 cartoon "Aladdin," Disney changed the lyrics after some people didn't see the humor in: "Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam/Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home."
Seldom do I see distinctions between Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran or other Middle Eastern nations, their governments or politics in popular entertainment.
Why get bogged down in details when all Arabs are alike? No nation or people should be immune from retaliation for barbaric acts. But shoving any people or religion into a common, reviled heap sows tragedy as well as confusion.
It's partly because of lazy stereotypes that many Americans still connect Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11, long after President Bush has stopped doing so. It's why the prisoners in Abu Ghraib are called terrorists and assassins though military officials have said, "Most of the people picked up were the wrong ones."
To distinguish between guilty and innocent, you have to be able to discern the difference. To admit that even the guilty need to be treated with humanity, you have to recognize their basic humanity as equal to yours.
As I watched interviews with Iraqis in Baghdad condemning the beheading of an American civilian as horrific and contrary to Islamic principles, I wondered who else was really listening.
You could say Americans - unlike other cultures - are much too smart to believe what they see in the movies. That's never been true before, though.
Recently, someone offered the 1915 film "Birth of a Nation" as proof to me of the heroism of the Ku Klux Klan. For decades, one-sided film images of savage Indians spun American history on its head. The sympathetic and oh-so-handsome Cary Grant gives a speech in 1943's "Destination Tokyo" about how the Japanese don't love their wives and children the way we do. How far a step is it to being comfortable with shipping Japanese Americans off to internment camps.
As other ethnic groups became untouchable, it was still OK to ridicule Arabs and equate Islam with terrorism. After the Oklahoma City bombings, victimized American Muslims hardly got an "Oops, I'm sorry" when it was discovered the terrorist was a homegrown all-American.
Every atrocity by "them" becomes an excuse for "us" to discard morality. Young soldiers - whether on their own or following orders, whether out of cruelty or boredom - fall back on what they think they know.
In life or the movies, when you treat someone as less than human, that's what you become.
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