No Wonder Obama Won't Release The Photos

I'd want to hide them too.  While most Americans seem willing and able to justify torture by way of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and confined spaces, methinks that rape is a whole different ball of wax.  Especially the rape of Iraqi women long before we pissed them off and they became suicide bombers.  How sick do you have to be to take, and then keep, photos of a man raping a woman, forcibly removing a female prisoner's clothing or raping a teenage boy? And in what world could you ever justify raping someone as part of your job? These are war crimes and should be punished as such. Immediately. I seriously doubt that the perpetrators have been dealt with.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

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Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.” 

No wonder Stephen Green thought he could get away with raping and killing fourteen year old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.  If she had been American he would have gotten the death penalty.  And deservedly so even though I don't normally believe in it.

There's no point in hiding the photos now that the story is out. I don't particularly want to see them but America deserves to see how far we have fallen and why the violence against our troops escalated for so long.  It's the only way to try and make sure that it doesn't happen again. And we need to raise the standards of who we will accept in the military, no more bottom of the barrel recruits. I refuse to believe that the people I served with would have ever committed these crimes.

I am so ashamed for my country, how will we ever live this down?

BBB