Wednesday, May 05, 2004

The Iraqi prisoner of war scandal is one of the hottest news item around these days. It is a disgraceful act committed by a handful of degenerate soldiers who disgraced their country, their uniform and themselves. Now,we are hearing form the "peanut gallery" Now , I do not mean to show disrespect to members of Congress and the press, but I have to say that their recent actions give me little motivation to heap respect on them. We are hearing calls for congressional hearings on the incident, cries that this must not be an isolated incident, that the military is covering things up or falling apart, and best of all, you would think, from some of the statements that some of President Bush's opponents have made, that the President had to be the one holding the camera for the pictures.
Let's look at what we actually know. Sometime last year, or early this year, a few soldiers did unspeakable things to prisoners of war. The military authorities found out about it in Jan. They did not immediately rush out and send copies of the photos to Al Jazeera, or CBS. They did not call their Senators and Representatives and ask that Congress begin an investigation and hold televised hearings. They did not publicly apologize to the Muslim world for the abuse that the Muslim world did not know about. What did they do. They began an immediate investigation into the matter. They began disciplinary action against those involved and those responsible for those involved. They also began investigations into all the facilities around the world where they are holding either prisoners of war or enemy combatants to be certain that no abuse of detainees was occurring elsewhere, and all this occurred in less than five months. Seems to me that things are being handled correctly. We certainly do not want cover-ups and down-playing of wrong doing by American military personal, but we also do not need an explosion of coverage on this sordid affair, esp. when it is being handled in a timely and disciplined fashion. How about we hold off on the congressional hearings while the military cleans house and then if they fail to do their job, we can publicly flog them.

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