If George W. Bush wants Arabs to believe a word he says, then big heads should quickly start rolling in his administration. Starting with Donald Rumsfeld, who played down the torture incidents with the same arrogance he played down the catastrophic looting of the Baghdad museum – when he famously announced: “things happen.”
With the Washington Post’s bombshell report of having more than a thousand photos taken by American soldiers of their obscene escapades, the picture – pun intended – has become much uglier. I cannot imagine who is still naïve enough now to believe that such enormous photographic output could possibly be the result of so-called isolated exceptions, without high level endorsement inside what is supposed to be the most disciplined army in the world.
In fact, what we saw were merely those situations where the culprits had the nerve – and stupidity – to capture their acts on film through incriminating photo ops. The question everyone is asking is how many more similar incidents escaped the lens of these tourist warriors and went unreported. Read More »
By now, most people have seen the images of war-crimes that went on in the Abu Ghraib prison.
This is Rush Limbaugh’s response to the torture, as tactful and intelligent as always:
”This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re gonna ruin people’s lives over it, and we’re gonna hamper our military effort, and then we’re gonna really hammer ‘em ’cause they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day, I’m talking about the people having a good time. These people … you ever heard of ‘emotional release’? You ever heard of ‘need to blow some steam off?’ These people are the enemy .”
I’m convinced that people like Rush Limbaugh were born “in the wrong place, in the wrong time” (This phrase was Lynndie England’s family’s attempt to exonerate her…Lynndie is the cute lil’ girl from Backwoods USA you can see smokin’ a cigarette and giving a thumbs up next to a naked Iraqi). I think the Stone Age would have suited him much better.
Or maybe yet, dear Rush should have been born a pit-bull and spared the human race the embarrassment. Somebody then could put a muzzle and leash on him so he would have the pleasure to at least partially experience what the prisoners went through. Oh no, wait he’s American, we can’t do this to Americans, they’re human beings. Read More »
On Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers”
Decadence is good for you. Take your decadence like you take your vitamins.
I understood this whilst freezing my bum off outside a Canadian Cineplex, arguing with the boyfriend about the artistic merits of Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers,” the movie that has the gatekeepers of America’s family values system being pumped with Thorazine up to their gills.
The film dares to display full frontal nudity, you see.
The horror! The horror! I can’t handle it! Give me some family-friendly bloody violence instead! Read More »
