Either these photos are false, or...

Or there's a lot more going wrong than just the US losing a war.

Warning: Not graphic. Just incredibly, gut-churningly unpleasant.

Photos show jail abuse by US troops
April 30, 2004
Sydney Morning Herald

... The program reported that poorly trained US reservists were forcing Iraqis to conduct simulated sexual acts in order to break down their will before they were turned over to others for interrogation.

In one photograph naked Iraq prisoners stand in a human pyramid, one with a slur written on his skin in English.

In another, a prisoner stands on a box, his head covered, wires attached to his body. The news show said that, according to the army, he had been told that if he fell off the box he would be electrocuted. Other photographs show male prisoners positioned to simulate sex with each other.

The "program" was 60 Minutes II; given that people are up on military charges for these acts, I suspect they actually happened.

We are not merely creating a new generation of America-hating terrorists; we have carefully plowed the field and spread it with fertilizer, and now are carefully pruning weeds to make sure that the crop comes in strong. "I am going to kill America--not today, in ten years" is the motto of our fradulent president.

UPDATE: Here's the transcript of the actual 60 Minutes II piece. It's also available in a printer-friendly version and full video from that page.

Short-term memory, political style

I was just re-reading some of my LJ posts from 2003 (the "Calendar" view makes that really easy), and came across an omnibus political post from August 31 with two pieces which resonate particularly strongly today:

Incidentally, Jim Henley's Unqualified Offerings is all over the, as he put it, American government's increasingly open embrace of torture.

and

Ah, and according to a UPI article, Bush has decreed:

Perhaps the only hope lies in the story going around town that President Bush has told the Pentagon he wants "no more American dead" after next March.

Also, he will hie himself in his royal sedan chair to the Chesapeake Bay and prohibit the tides from flowing.