Abu Ghraib

"The prison where the abuses are alleged to have taken place was a notorious torture center during the Saddam Hussein era."

The more things change...

UPDATE: Video

UPDATE: More astounding photos at The Memory Hole. Warning: graphic.

This story is so disturbing I'm having trouble resisting the urge to just block it out of my mind. If you would have asked me yesterday, "Are Iraqis being stripped naked, humiliated and tortured by U.S. troops?" I would have said not likely. I accepted as fact that Iraqis were better off without Saddam Hussein.

But here U.S. troops are, doing what Saddam's agents did--and obviously having fun doing it. And it is clearly not a single, isolated incident. And clearly they aren't worried about being held accountable--they're smiling and posing for pictures!

I'm searching for some way that this doesn't obliterate any notion that the U.S. is fundamentally better for Iraqis than Saddam's regime. It seems like an argument about the quantity of mistreatment now, not so much the quality of it.

I can't even process the idea that my country did this. Is doing this?

UPDATE: Rape.

How many new terrorists do you think these pictures will create? Personally, I don't think the number is zero.

UPDATE: U.K. soldiers, too. There's nothing like the picture of a Western soldier urinating on an Middle Eastern prisoner to help with that pesky trust issue.

I'm sure that as a result of these photos, peace will bloom all over the Middle East, just as they planned.

UPDATE: Wikipedia has photos.