Soap opera lives of prisoner abusers

Quite a story, that of Lyndie England, her ex-lover Charles Graner and his new wife.

"In a military courtroom in Texas last week was a spectacle worthy of 'As the World Turns': Lynndie England, the defendant, holding her 7-month-old baby; the imprisoned father, Charles Graner, giving testimony that ruined what lawyers said was her best shot at leniency; and waiting outside, another defendant from the notorious abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Megan Ambuhl, who had recently wed Graner -- a marriage England learned about only days before." Read on.

It's a bloody scandal that the grunts are taking the fall for prisoner abuse. The one man who should really be indicted is walking free: Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey Miller. He was sent to Baghdad with orders, in the words of one senior officer, to "Gitmo-ize" Iraq. At Abu Ghraib and other prisons, Miller extended the Guantanamo stress and duress techniques. Military police were ordered to soften up prisoners before army intelligence interrogated them.

But then, if Miller were indicted, you'd have to indict whoever started him off at Gitmo and sent him to Abu Ghraib to do the same. And then you'd have to go all the way up to Rumsfeld, Bush, and the whole sorry contingent, including our Attorney-General, who thought we should defend ourselves by forgetting what we stand for. I know this sounds outrageous, but these are the actions of men who, under the strain of keeping their dicks to themselves, have to compensate in other ways to live up to some asshole tough male image. I actually believe this: the way men are brought up, you can expect this kind of shit from them. Put them in groups, and they have to out-macho each other. Put a bunch of neocons together, the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al, and it's automatically foregone you'll have yourself a war.