Even The Pope Tells Me I Should Be Shocked And Outraged
By Gordon Bloyer (05/24/04)
I have had it. I’m trying to be shocked and outraged. I really am. I can’t find anything to be shocked or outraged about. The news media, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, the Pope, Chuck Hagel and even the bloody terrorist group Hamas tell me I should be shocked and outraged at the vile horrible prisoner abuse by our war criminal soldiers in Iraq.
Many people did not know they were supposed to be shocked and outraged until these wonderful folks told them they should. I have seen videos of people having their heads cut off, their tongues cut out, people dropped off of buildings and people hanging on piano wire. That is shocking. Men standing on boxes or in piles may be offensive, but shocking?
When I saw the first photos on 60 Minutes, I looked at them and I heard how they were being described by the reporters and I wondered if I was seeing the same photos that they were looking at. They used words like atrocity, torture, and abuse. I saw a picture of some men in a naked pyramid, in another photo a female soldier was pointing at a naked man with a bag on his head.
Well, I had lived in San Francisco for many years and you could see those kinds of things in some parts of town on any night. At the Exotic Erotic Ball you can see women pulling around men on a leash. I could hardly find these photos shocking or very outrageous. I imagine if you are from Angeltown, USA. you might find these photos shocking and outrageous.
The people that are expressing the most outrage are not from Angeltown. Chris Matthews has lived in Washington, D.C. and worked for a politician that had trouble with the truth and leaned heavily on the bottle. Surely Chris has seen almost everything. Ted Kennedy is a guy who has seen death first hand. Didn’t he join in a waitress sandwich with Chris Dodd? Hillary must have seen it all with Bill. She must have seen women’s panties on his head. He is probably fantasizing about that female soldier, right now. John McCain has seen and felt real torture and yet HE is shocked? Give me a break! Quit trying to suck up to the shock-and-outrage pimps. Most of these people would pretend to be shocked and outraged that dogs have fleas if they thought it could gain them some votes. I have to say I’m commenting on what I have seen now. I hear there are photos or video of a young boy being raped. That would be shocking. The Pope might not be shocked by those photos. He had better keep that video hidden, if not half the Vatican might leave to enlist.
On a scale of one to a million, these photos and the actual abuse that took place, would be a low one.
Every country in the Middle East conducts real torture in its prisons and jails today, and those torturers have no moral standing to make any complaints. No one in the Arab countries is being charged or tried for their prison abuse. No one is expressing any outrage or shock. This is where I have to put in the obligatory disclaimer: I do not condone what was done by our soldiers in Iraq. If I do not put that in, some people will say that I’m trying to downplay what happened or that I condone torture. I’m just putting it in a context that best describes what happened and not exaggerate it or make it something that it is not. I’m doing what the press should do and is not doing.
Our government and our military have nothing to apologize for. They exposed the abuse first. They took immediate action. They investigated and are still investigating. They are conducting the trials. No cover-up here.
If anyone owes the American people an apology, it is the news media. They were not interested until they got photos. Then they exaggerated the meaning of the photos. They failed to put the abuse in a context that compared it to prisoner abuse by other nations and even Americans have done in the past. They rarely point out that many of these prisoners are not members of any army. They are terrorists and they have no rights. The press should be praising our government and military for not covering this up and for their fast action. The news media should express outrage when any country tries to express shock at what happened. The media should then point the finger at them for hiding their own torture chambers. What can we expect out of these weasels? They always blame America first.
There are many things that I’m offended about and some things that I’m shocked about. I’m shocked that priests would abuse children. I’m offended that John Kerry called his fellow soldiers war criminals when he came back from Vietnam. I’m outraged that Ted Kennedy would compare our running of the prison to that of Saddam Hussein’s running of the prison. I’m outraged that Chris Matthews would keep harping on this story night after night. I’m offended that Hillary Clinton would even open her mouth about this. I’m offended that she has the nerve to be seen in public after Bill shamed her. There are a lot of people that should keep their mouthd shut so they would not embarrass themselves.
I’m afraid our enemies are going to get the wrong message from this over-the-top shock and outrage that the press and Democratic politicians are expressing. I think that our enemies are going to concludethat we are wimps and we don’t even know how to conduct torture. If we are so shocked by female panties on a prisoner’s head, of course they will probably then show us that they are willing to cut off heads. They assume that real atrocities will send us cowering in fear. Sadly it is true, for some of our people will cut and run at the first sight of real torture.
We need to get a grip. This prison abuse story in Iraq is not very serious in contrast to the problems in the real world. It is a blip in time and does not deserve the attention that it is getting. I don’t want to wake up some day and be shocked that we have been attacked again, by some terrorists that we let go because we were afraid of world opinion.
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