Why I Posted the Saddam Pic

There is a reason and not because I want to make fun of the man. I have no respect for him, of course, but the people in charge of him, Americans, since we're really actually still in control of Iraq, happy horseshit aside, have apparently allowed photos like this to be taken.

The Geneva Convention specifically FORBIDS this kind of thing. So why is it out there?

Tonight, I heard military types insisting that well, Americans weren't the only ones with access to Guantanamo Bay, to Abu Ghraib where the torture occurred, et al. Say what? So we're in charge except when we're not in charge?

Sorry, no. That doesn't fly.

And while Americans might chuckle at Saddam in his tidy whities, what if the picture is of your GI son in his or your Army nurse daughter in her GI issue bra? Or having his Bible destroyed and flushed down the toilet? Like that better? Or your American GI son standing on a box with wires attached to him? Or degraded by having fake menstrual blood smeared on his face, made to pose for simulated sex acts. Still enjoy that? Is it better?

No, it's not.

It's heinous. Regardless of who it is.

The fault doesn't lie with the picture's taker or the publisher either, but with the people charged with responsibility for prisoners of war who allow torture and humiliation to occur so anyone can photograph or report on it.

The United States of America signed on to the articles of the Geneva convention. When our soldiers are captured, we yell loud and hard that the captors must treat them humanely. And yet, every step of the way in the Bush years, we've played with the definition of prisoner, we've allowed terrible abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan. We've carted prisoners to countries where torture and death is the mode of interrogation and we've grinned and nodded and said fine.

Where's our humanity? Our Christian charity? Our nobility? And where does this leave our soldiers if they are captured?

Apparently Washington doesn't know any better. Perhaps we need to persuade them that they should get smarter.