Abu Ghraib
While we cannot fully discount the possibility that Hitchens is only telling us what the Iranian Secret Services want us to know, this Slate column of his on June 14th is pretty damning over the coalition behaviour at Abu Ghraib."The graphic videos and photographs that have so far been shown only to Congress are, I have been persuaded by someone who has seen them, not likely to remain secret for very long. And, if you wonder why formerly gung-ho rightist congressmen like James Inhofe ("I'm outraged more by the outrage") have gone so quiet, it is because they have seen the stuff and you have not. There will probably be a slight difficulty about showing these scenes in prime time, but they will emerge, never fear. We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see. And one linguistic reform is in any case already much overdue. The silly word "abuse" will have to be dropped. No law or treaty forbids "abuse," but many conventions and statutes, including our own and the ones we have urged other nations to sign, do punish torture—which is what we are talking about here at a bare minimum."
As Backword Dave noted however, then Hitchens goes off into his own favourite brand of non-sequiters and strawmen.
posted by Matthew @ 6/24/2004 01:22:00 PM
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