Rep. Chris Shays fired a few low blows himself as he attempts to move Republicans further from two recent revelations, Rep. Foley’s pursuit of underage male pages via sexually explicit e-mails and President Bush’s rewriting the definition of torture while giving himself permission to authorize more “severe measures”.
Shays thought if he put both Republican revelations together, they might cancel each other out in the world of public opinion. At a debate, the incumbent wearing his Republican glasses through which he views the world said:
"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture…It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked….And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."
What definition of torture was Chris Shays using? It must have been the new, Bush approved version because the horrors of Abu Ghraib clearly met the old definition which banned “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment”.
Rep. Shays failed to mention the Major General sent from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to force more actionable intelligence from its detainees. Did Geoffrey Miller operate a sex ring on the Cuban Naval Base prior to his Iraqi assignment? If it’s just a porno ring, why all the other “stuff”?
The American Civil Liberties Union released documents describing complaints of serious abuse of Iraqi civilians, including reports of electric shocks and forced sodomy, and accused the military of not thoroughly investigating the cases.
The documents list dozens of allegations of abuse at American detention centers - the use of cigarettes to burn prisoners, aggressive dogs, electric shocks, sexual humiliation and beatings - that began at about the same time such acts were occurring at Abu Ghraib prison.
How many sex rings use cigarettes to burn prisoners, aggressive dogs, electric shocks and beatings, Mr. Shays?
No comments:
Post a Comment