Words Can't Even Express How Outrageous This Is

Digby on the torture of Iraqis:

Apparently, at least for a time, people at high levels ordered our military to behave like barbarians. And gosh, it's really worked out so well.

I know that war is hell and all, but it's really important to keep in perspective one particular thing. We invaded Iraq; it didn't attack us. We weren't invited in either. We just did it. And as we now know, the reasons we gave for doing it were false. And when we got there we were so unprepared that we allowed the country to immediately devolve into chaos. Out of that chaos an insurgency developed. Our reaction was to "take the gloves off" -- in a country we had allegedly just liberated -- the same way we "took the gloves off" with al Qaeda.

The vast majority of Iraqis were not Saddam's bitter-enders, not insurgents and certainly not terrorists. They had just spent 30 years under the thumb of a totalitarian dictator. And yet we were rampaging through their homes, "hunting insurgents" and treating them as if they were an enemy. We sent in too few troops and those we sent were untrained and inexperienced. And we let the CIA and other unacountables have a free hand.

Again, these were Iraqis, the people we claimed to be liberating --- not a country of terrorists who threatened our way of life. And yet I think many of our troops did not understand this. And why would they? The president of the United States constantly made it sound as if they were one in the same. He evoked 9/11 in the same breath as Iraq over and over again. Many of our troops believed that the Iraqis were responsible for the terrorist attacks. And with the instructions to "take the gloves off" they took out their rage against those they believed were responsible.

Goddamn, this is fucked UP. If god exists, then everyone who pushed this war, sanctioned this war and approved of this war should go to hell-- most of all Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice. Motherfuckers. The soldiers, I will cut some slack, they were given a bad deal and used by very cynical people.