I'm so relieved that Inhofe's remarks seem to be getting denounced, and not just in Counterpunch, but McCain slapped him pretty good on Nightline.
http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson05122004.html
On Tuesday, May 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony from Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, whose report documents American atrocities and administrative failures of various kinds at Abu Ghriab prison; Stephen A. Cambone, the Defense Department undersecretary for intelligence, who worked very hard to keep from letting any responsibility for anything land anywhere; and Air Force Lt. Gen. Lance L. Smith, the deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, who looked the entire time as if he desperately wished he were anywhere else but where he was. The subject was torture, responsibility and accountability.
Some of the senators asked questions that elicited interesting and useful answers from the witnesses. An equal number asked questions articulating or staking out political positions regarding the Bush administration's war in and occupation of Iraq. A few talked so long there was no time for any of the witnesses to respond.
But the remarks of Senator James M. Inhofe (R., Okla.) were transcendent. They were like the remarks of no other senator on that very large panel. His basic position seemed to be that since some Iraqis had done terrible things it was outrageous for anyone to be questioning Americans for having done anything terrible to anybody. If we have Iraqis locked up and if we are torturing them, they must deserve it, and it's a shame and a scandal that we're giving the Department of Defense a hard time over this trifle when they're out there protecting the flag and whatever. The fact that we have those Iraqis locked up is all the proof we need of their guilt, so they are only receiving punishment they've earned. <Q.e.d>. It was straight out of the Inquisition Handbook.
Inhofe's remarks were full of pomp and smugness; they were devoid of ethical sensibility. Listening to him was like listening to someone on his way home from a lynching 50 years ago: 'They deserve what they get, whether or not they did what we said. They are what they are, aren't they? If they weren't, why would we have lynched them? Goddam right!' If our enemies abroad were as interested in words as they are in photographs right now, Inhofe's words would serve them as well as the Army reservists' digital photographs from Abu Ghraib.
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