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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
It's not the who. It's the how. It's the ends not justifying the means. And the ends aren't even there (yet, hopefully). The lack of Saddam doesn't make them free. Ballots without candidates listed doesn't make a free election. An occupying force dead set against international standards of prisoner treatment doesn't make a free society. Contractors with legal immunity guarantees don't make for a secure environment. If Iraq turns out hunky dory in the end, I'll be glad, but it won't excuse the way it was done.
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The ends certainly do justify the means in this case. The lack of Saddam
does free them to find another leader. The last batch of ballots might not resemble ours, but they're a big step forward -- these people weren't worried about their pet political figure being beaten, they were worried about making it home from the polling places with all their limbs (made possible by our presence, I don't need to add). Our occupying force is THE standard as far as standards of POW treatment is concerned, which is why we've stooped to "journalism" like that displayed in the Newsweek farce. Gitmo is Club Med compared to the jails those thugs are used to. They are able to raise such a huge ruckus over supposed mistreatment of the Koran while we gloss over the weekly beheading video and moan "look what you've driven the noble Arab to, GW Bush."
Abu Ghraib would be a Motel 6. But even so, being shown nekkid ladies and posed in offensive ways is juuuuuuuust a tad less jarring to the old psyche than, say, having your head sawn off with a dull knife. Priorities, people.
Contractors with legal immunity guarantees? What's so threatening about that? They sleep in a barracks inside a cordoned-off military area (the ones that are smart -- some have tried for private housing, but they often end up shot or beheaded because they took their hostile environment too lightly. Perhaps a little protection for the good guys isn't really such a BAD thing.
The template for the left's argument is the old Vietnam-era notion that: 1. ALL military action is evil (particularly if the US is involved), 2. ALL conservative presidents must be thwarted at any cost, and 3. the media must be unified in making sure the country believes 1 and 2, with no regard to fact.
It's boring, frankly.