Its not pretty. America has perpetrated some of the most disgusting acts imaginable. Abu Ghraib looks like par for the course. Here's the NY Times and the Guardian:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/10/22/world/middleeast/detainees.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks
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It seems to me like there has to be a distinction between what American personnel do and what Iraqi personnel do, and from what I can tell so far, most of these atrocities come from the latter. Of course, that's wholly reliant on my (potentially flawed) understanding of the level of US involvement in this situation. It's a truly horrific state of affairs, but maybe the comparison to Abu Ghraib is a little off base? That being said, the policy of ignoring abuse doesn't really make sense. If they think the Iraqis are that independent of them, they're fooling themselves. I could more readily see a "we don't have the manpower" argument, but that just rebounds on itself. When I asked David about this, he said his immediate response was something along the lines of "it doesn't do much good to say I opposed the war from the beginning." We were stupid to think "fixing" Iraq would be as easy as toppling the "bad" government and letting the "good" government take over... it's such a mess, with no end in sight. Very disheartening.
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