Fraters Libertas

A Little Perspective Please

It goes without saying that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was abhorrent and is indefensible. But a few points should be kept in mind:

1. The people being held in the camps were not randomly plucked off the street. Of course not all are guilty, but most of them were there for a reason (I'm not buying the Red Cross claim that 70% to 90% of those detained are innocent.) Again I'm not saying it was right, but if you listen to folks like Ted Kennedy you would think that we were indiscriminately abusing Iraqi civilians.

2. There isn't a real cut and dried definition of torture. I know that some human rights groups have tried to put it into words, but two people can easily look at the same action and come to different conclusions about it. So far most of what has come out of Iraq is not what I would consider torture. This is torture:

"I was in terrible, terrible pain. They were using the rope trick. The Vietnamese -- we called it the Vietnamese rope trick and that was to take the arms behind your back, tie your hands together, tie them up real tight and then rotate your arms behind and over your shoulder until your shoulders dislocate. Well this one is already broken and dislocated so that was easy. And I remember this one starting over the top and I can remember the cracking and breaking and my elbow also dislocated. I was in terrible pain. Trying to scream. Wishing I could die. I finally said I can't live. I can't live another day."

3. Right now all we're getting is one part of the story: the abuse of the prisoners. What about the lives that were saved as a result of this abuse? Once again, I'm not condoning it, but, if this conduct was intended to break down prisoners before interrogation and make it easier to extract information, it seems logical to believe that it worked in some cases, and likely saved the lives of American soldiers and/or Iraqis. Let's hear about it. If the American public were to know that say forty, maybe fifty American lives (I'm just speculating here) were saved as a result of this behavior, it might cause us to view these events in a little different light.

In order to judge what happened in the prisons in Iraq properly, we need to consider the complete context of the story. Critics of the Bush administration like to chide the President when he uses terms like "evil doers" that the world is not so easily viewed in terms of black and white, rather that it is more realistically a murky gray. But with the prison abuse story the fog has seemingly lifted from their eyes and all is now perfectly clear. The United States is completely in the wrong and any and all who seek to reinforce this view or benefit from it are right. The issue is not that simple.

The mistreatment of the prisoners in Iraq crossed a line and those responsible (at all levels) should be held to account for it. But we are at war and at times, we will need to push matters right up to that line and should not be afraid to do so.