Counterpunch, December 21, 2007
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government’s war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, “You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.
Hey, who knows? Maybe the torture center prevented a ticking time bomb from going off? And who’s to say that chains, blood-spattered walls, metal beds, and an electrical shock system really constitute torture? Doesn’t torture depend on each person’s subjective determination of the term?
By the way, wasn’t there torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? I wonder if his justifications for torture were different from those employed by those torturing in Iraq today. I wonder if they were different than those employed by current U.S. torturers.
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