{"id":2227,"date":"2007-02-26T08:33:01","date_gmt":"2007-02-26T13:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/26\/rethinking-abu-ghraib\/"},"modified":"2007-02-26T08:33:01","modified_gmt":"2007-02-26T13:33:01","slug":"rethinking-abu-ghraib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/rethinking-abu-ghraib\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Abu Ghraib"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.townhall.com\/columnists\/DineshDSouza\/2007\/02\/26\/rethinking_abu_ghraib\">Townhall.com<\/a> Dinesh D&#8217;Souza February 26, 2007<\/p>\n<p>HBO&#8217;s documentary &#8220;The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,&#8221; aired a few days ago, is yet another attempt to use the scandal to portray the Bush administration as soft on torture. Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to minimize the significance of what happened there. Some characterize Abu Ghraib as no big deal, what James Schlesinger termed \u201cAnimal House on the night shift.\u201d Others defende Abu Ghraib as a way to get valuable information about potential terrorist attacks. Rush Limbaugh claimed that \u201cmaybe the people who ordered this are pretty smart\u201d because, as an interrogation technique, \u201cit sounds pretty effective to me.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Throughout the Muslim world, Abu Ghraib was viewed very differently. To see why, we need to take a closer look at the scandal. Fortunately we have a detailed picture of what happened, both from the military\u2019s 500-page report and from the trials of Private Lynndie England and Private Charles Graner, the two main figures involved. After marrying at age 19 \u201con a whim,\u201d as she put it, England left her husband and enlisted in the military. There she met Graner, who was fresh from a divorce in which his wife had taken out three protective orders against him. <\/p>\n<p>Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the former head of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, left, with legal counsel Capt. Samuel Spitzberg, arrives at a military court in this Oct. 20, 2006 file photo, at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. Jordan, the only U.S. military officer charged with a crime in the Abu Ghraib scandal will be court-martialed on eight charges, including cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners, the Army said Friday Jan. 26, 2007. (AP Photo\/ Steve Ruark, File) Shortly before they went to Iraq, England and Graner partied together with another soldier friend in Virginia Beach. \u201cThey drank heavily,\u201d the New York Times reports, and when the other soldier passed out, \u201cPrivate Graner and Private England took turns taking photographs of each other exposing themselves over his head.\u201d In Iraq, the two began an affair which they continued even though both were warned that their sexual trysts on the night shift violated military rules. <\/p>\n<p>. . . <a href=\"http:\/\/www.townhall.com\/columnists\/DineshDSouza\/2007\/02\/26\/rethinking_abu_ghraib\">more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Townhall.com Dinesh D&#8217;Souza February 26, 2007 HBO&#8217;s documentary &#8220;The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,&#8221; aired a few days ago, is yet another attempt to use the scandal to portray the Bush administration as soft on torture. Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to minimize the significance of what happened there. Some characterize Abu Ghraib as no big deal, what &#8230; <a title=\"Rethinking Abu Ghraib\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2007\/02\/rethinking-abu-ghraib\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Rethinking Abu Ghraib\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1319,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}