106 How to prepare Congress

On May 13 a few days after the shock of the photos of the Iraqi prisions and after the horror of the beheading of an American on camera, The USAToday wrote: "Decades of research and eons of history point to one conclusion: under certain circumstances, most normal people will treat their fellow man with abnormal cruelty" and then goes on the cite William Golding's Lord of the Flies, fiction that contains a deeper truth.

The members of Congress who say their stomachs churned at the sight of the pornographic humiliation of the Iraqi prisoners should have been "softened up" first with just audio of Howard Stern ridiculing people's body parts and sexuality. He's a master of humiliation and insult, finding great fun and amusement in T & A especially if his victim doesn't think it's funny.

The Congress people who have had their heads in the sand for the last 20 years, could have glanced through an Abercrombie & Fitch Catalog for naked group posing with huge smiles on fresh young faces.

Then they could graduate by viewing the web sites any child can go to on the Internet sites (often in public libraries). These hard core sites are visited regularly by perhaps as many as 20% of the adult population, a figure probably much higher in the age group of our young soldiers. Pornography is one of the "freedoms" many in this country think we are fighting for. Even the left wing war protesters would support any man or woman's right to pornography and the right would support the enterprise behind it.

They would learn, if they didn't know, that wearing women's underwear or a little S & M is just a matter of choice. True, the Iraqis had no choice, but they hadn't had any freedom for many years, so why would a soldier think pornographic humiliation equated with the horrors we've seen when mass graves were dug up, graves that perhaps some of these prisoners helped to fill?

And what about those 17 members of Congress, unnamed, that the NYT reported had received a letter from a concerned relative of one of the soldiers involved? Did they think it didn't sound like such a big deal? With all this outrage, will they fess up to their own carelessness?

Lots of soldiers take photos--with the little digital, slip-in-your-pocket or hold-up-your-cell phone types, it is easy. This web site has a whole list of photo blogs by soldiers, some are absolutely outstanding, and some ordinary. But it should show the Congress that taking pictures of what goes on where you work is pretty common in Iraq.

Nothing in this whole mess is as outrageous as Ted Kennedy comparing it to Saddam's torture chambers and death pits. It seems he has very little respect or sympathy for the sufferings of the Iraqi people. All that puffiness must be hot air.