Chain of Prisoner Abuse Starts at the Top

[Vitruvius]

by Marie Cocco

There is nothing so liberating as a resignation.

Ann Wright is now free to say what few dare: That no young military reservist could possibly have concocted the strategy of interrogating Muslim men by using religious humiliation and tactics of sexual degradation worthy of the Marquis de Sade.

"It came from the minds of some of the senior interrogators who are very well-versed in Arab cultures," Wright told me. "Those types of things would be very well discussed."

She has no proof, nor does anyone. We are officially told that the abuse of detainees in American custody - who were stripped naked and beaten, forced to simulate sexual acts, their beards shaved, leered at by women interrogators who rubbed their breasts against them, or smeared them with fake menstrual blood, or grabbed and sometimes kicked their genitals - is the handiwork of a few rogues who are duly punished when caught. To accept this as true we must also believe that these average kids from average American towns are experts on Islam, so well-versed in its strictures about sex that they dreamed up these methods all by themselves.

This makes no sense to Ann Wright. <SNIP> Being a former military woman herself, Wright knows a thing or two about giving orders, and about following them. <SNIP> Wright has questions -- like, what happened to the additional photos of the scandalous behavior at Abu Ghraib, some of which the Pentagon showed to members of Congress a year ago? If we could see these pictures, would the face of the scandal still be female - or would men star more equally? <SNIP>

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