More Abu Ghraib pictures

By Lee Russ

Thursday, February 16, 2006 at 06:53 AM

More Abu Ghraib torture pictures have been published, in Australia, then republished in several places.

I've looked at the pictures. They make me wonder exactly why Senator Dick Durbin apologized a while back for saying that acts against prisoners at Guantanamo were the kind we associate with Nazis and other tyrannical regimes.

According to a poll commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2004, The first batch of Abu Ghraib pictures sent Iraqi opinion of the U.S., and of the coalition forces in Iraq, into a nosedive from which we have never really recovered.

But I have no doubt that the official US position will remain what it was when the first Abu Ghraib pictures surfaced: these were the illegal acts of some out-of-control, undertrained peons at the prison.

Check your mailbox or your local Fox channel for the official explanation.  Just got mine this morning:

Dear Citizen:

We are aware that more pictures of the ugly incident at Abu Ghraib have recently surfaced.  We would like you to know that we find them as shocking as you do, if not more so.

The important thing to remember is that absolutely no one of any real authority or status had anything to do with this. Never mind what the ex-prison commander, Janis Karpinski says; never mind what the grunt level torturers say; never mind what common sense tells you; never mind our prior pronouncements on the Geneva Convention's obsolescence or that tricky definition of torture we laughed so hard about.

We had nothing to do with it, do you hear? Nothing!! And if you say we did, you probably hate America, love Bin Laden, don't support our troops, and couldn't tell your Bible from a convertible, subordinated debenture.

Signed:
Al (Gonzo) Gonzalez
Don (Rum'n'coke) Rumsfeld
Dick (oops!) Cheney
Condoleeza (whiz kid) Rice
Paul (Just Call Me Strauss) Wolfowitz
And the whole gang down here at the Weekly Standard, the Project for a New American Century (where our wish is their...and your..command), and the Free Republic (where the insults to foreigners are free, and the Republic is temporary, indeed).