Official documents released after a Freedom of Information suit by the UCLA have revealed that children as young as 11 were held at Abu Graib prison by American authorities. No-one will say why the children were being held.
Although the Pentagon has already issues its rote denial that any children were abused, eyewitness documents also released under the suit tell a different story.
In one case, witness statements among the released documents allege that four drunken Americans took a 17-year-old female prisoner from her cell and forced her to expose her breasts and kissed her.
In another documented incident, troops are alleged to have smeared mud on the detained 17-year-old son of an Iraqi general and forced his father to watch him shiver in the cold.
What the fuck do they call that if not abuse?
Imagine you are the father or mother of that seventeen year old daughter. If some group of assholes in uniform did that to her, whether officially sanctioned or not, you would be very ready to reach for the Kalashnikov. Tell me you would feel different and I will call you a liar.
Imagine you are the parent in this case, not even being told the charges against your child:
Brig Gen Karpinski, who was in charge at Abu Ghraib from July to November 2003, said she often visited the prison's youngest inmates.
She said in her interview that she thought one boy "looked like he was eight years old".
"He told me he was almost 12," she said. "He told me his brother was there with him, but he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother. He was crying."
If you have a child, look right now at him or her and imagine how would you feel? Would it win your heart and mind?
Enough is enough, surely. We need someone with authority to look as high as it takes to investigate evidence (not allegations, evidence) of torture and abuse at Abu Graib, Guantanamo and sundry foreign lands like Syria that the powers-that-be are happy to ship human beings to. We need a Senate investigation of this besmirching of America's honor.
Who would argue otherwise?
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