What those soldiers did by abusing those prisoners was bad, very bad. A year or so ago, when a Lt. West was in trouble for threatening a detainee with a gun in order to get information to save his troops lives... That was good. Not that he was in trouble, but that he broke the rules a bit to save lives. The abuse on the prisoners at Abu Gharib, however, was obviously wrong. They weren't trying to get information from these people, they were merely abusing them. Turns out two of the guys charged with doing it were former prison guards. Maybe if the drug war was ended, there would be less prisoners to abuse, and thus less creeps like these guys getting a chance to live out their dominant fantasies with men unable to protect themselves.

Unfortunately this sort of behavior crops up all over the world, in every society. Only in America, however, do we not try to hide tour dark underside, we show it to the world and tell them we're sorry and we don't want it to happen again. Do you really imagine that, say, the French, with all their colonial holdings in Africa, haven't had similar incidents? Or the Russians? We know without a doubt that msot of the Arab countries in the middle east commit far worse horrors on prisoners and political dissidents. The pictures that are all over every news medium in the world are only shocking because everyone else hides their pictures. We show them. That's the difference between the US and the rest of the world. They hide their shame and allow it to continue. We reveal ours and do our best to stop such behavior.