I thoroughly disapprove of the mistreatment of Iraqi POWs, and I'm not gonna claim those photos were doctored or staged or anything - unless new evidence comes out to say so. But I'm curious as to just what people are trying to
say with these photos. I've heard a lot of people making generalizations saying that
all our troops are acting in this inhumane manner, which I know for a fact isn't the case. I've also heard that troops are doing this under encouragement from their superiors, which again is total bullshit. What officer would not only go against their own conscience in such a blatant way but throw away their entire career in the process?
There's a little thing called the Geneva Accords that places really harsh penalties on soldiers who mistreat POWs. As a result, that sort of thing happens
very rarely in dominant Western nations (the US, UK, I suppose France if they were ever in a position to actually
take prisoners or be trusted to guard them), and when it has (e.g. Vietnam) it's almost always been attributed to some sort of psychological breakdown among the troops.
Although if I kept hearing that nobody back home cared about me or what I was doing in that war, or that politicizers and armchair senators were using what my friends were dying in as a political football to try and keep the incumbent from being reelected, I'd probably be under some psychological strain too.
