so i was standing on the corner...

...minding my own business, when...

so elsewhere i noted

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ann coulter's latest comments (29 december) on abu ghraib:

On the basis solely of media coverage, Abu Ghraib was the biggest story of 2004, maybe the biggest story ever. And for good reason: An American soldier was caught on film not only humiliating Iraqi prisoners -- but smoking!

The New York Times even had to drop its coverage of Augusta National Golf Course to give Abu Ghraib due prominence. Only the Rumsfeld autopen scandal was big enough to knock Abu Ghraib off the front page.

I personally haven't been so singularly disturbed by an atrocity since I had to sit through all of "The Matrix: Reloaded."

what. the fuck. abu ghraib is about as offensive as a movie? the brass fucking balls on that one, i can't believe...

no, i can't even pretend i'm surprised.

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and someone posted (anonymously, of course) that

No... her point is that the overly enthusiastic MEDIA had an orgasm over the story, 3 months worth. A bit much, compared to the beheadings during that same time period, don't you think?

i can't understand human beings.

i think it's perfectly justified coverage, myself. people who torture and maim people, hold them without trial or evidence - those are the people we went to war against. we strut about our great american principles, but then we have shit like my lai in vietnam and abu ghraib and guantánamo now.

only my lai was some batfuck-crazy soldiers, and they got spanked hard.

these are systemic implementations of torture, and the torturers did it for a very long time, and the pentagon knew what kind of insane thuggery was happening there and ignored it.

the media frenzy should be all about abu ghraib and guantánamo. beheadings make the news just fine - shouldn't we be intensely vigilant about horrific actions taken by our own troops? the point is that we cannot stand on arrogant self-righteousness. we have to hold ourselves to the laws by which we are governed, or all that fucking flag-waving is no better than an empty gesture. gonzales aside, america doesn't sanction torture. period.

we follow the geneva protocols because we are a civilised nation with an orderly and proud military, at least in spirit. we might miss our goals and fuck things up, but we try to have honour and fairness despite the asshole commanders and legalisers who screw queers and women, or skip screwing them and just kill them. these are fuckups. we don't idealise the fuckups. we set a code that is supposed to be represent the ideals of our country, and that's the bottom line. (sweet six-titted mother of the tcho-tcho, i'm defending the u.s. military!)

if my grandfather was alive, he'd prolly spit on the ground. he fought at okinawa and lived - one of many native americans to fight proudly in the service despite the shit he lived with growing up - he once said to me of his life in the south, "the only thing worse there than being a nigger is being indian," but that didn't stop him from fighting for the ideals he saw - and for a way out of the south and total poverty.

my (scottish/irish-american) father is alive, and he was special forces, green beret, ranger. and he spits on the ground for this kind of crap. there's a lot of servicemembers who feel the same way, people who served in hinky wars like vietnam and saw Very Bad Things. they think this is horrific, that these activities are going on and we are excusing them and the now-revealed torture sessions at guantanamo because they 'aren't on u.s. soil'. bullshit, i say. bull-shit.