Les Jones

News > Mistreatment of Iraqi Soldiers

InstaPundit has a good roundup of the blogosphere reaction to the photos showing U.S. and British soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners. It's terrible what happened, and those few soldiers responsible are undermining support for the entire coalition effort to bring democracy to Iraq. From the Telegraph:

London, April 30 (Reuters): Photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners drew international condemnation today, prompting the stark conclusion that the American campaign to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a lost cause.

Nice. Ever thought about giving up reporting and writing for the opinion page?

“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back for America,” said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi. “The liberators are worse than the dictators. They have not just lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis but all the Third World and the Arab countries,” he said.

Note to Mr. Atwan: what the U.S. soldiers did to those people was despicable, and the soldiers will be court martialed. But in no way is this worse than Saddam Hussein. What the U.S. soldiers did was done of their own volition, not under orders as part of an intitutional culture of routine torture and mistreatment, as under Saddam. Uday Hussein did worse than this to Iraqi Olympic athletes, and much worse to political prisoners. Where was your outrage then?