Why are we focused on Iraqi prison abuse? Because it was done by AMERICANS!!

By now, we all know about the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Many Iraqis were photograph in rather offensive and disturbing ways by a group of our own men and women, forceably. There's so much of a list about what they actually made these people do that was, in my mind, just plain disgusting. Everyone should be, as well, disgusted at those actions.

However, now there are Republicans who are trying to take the high road and say that it's not as bad as everyone's making them out to be. Maybe. Maybe the extremists did more to us that we could ever hope to do to them. That could be right. But it's not JUST the photos of the actual abuse and/or it being done alone that is causing this outrage.

With the extremists doing it to us, we know already about how dangerous they are, and what the ramifications of war will be to them. It's kill or be killed to them, and they wouldn't have it any other way. We know that they want to kill us, and we know that we have to defend ourselves (although I think this entire Iraq war is wrong, and think that it's become a huge MESS of a war).

This abuse scandal, however, should be blown up for the simple reason that Americans, the very same men and women who are sworn to protect those Iraqis, were responsible. Yes, Saddam also abused many of his prisoners, but was he expected to not do those things? No. Were we expected to uphold our American morals when going in there? Yes, we were. Iraqis were wanting relief, and although controversial, bottom line is that Americans went in there and "liberated" Iraqis.

Trust me, if it was someone like Al-Quedia pulling this stunt, this wouldn't have been blown up as much as it is. That is because we expect Al Quedia to be sick and cruel, and we expect them to be disgusting excuses for human beings. But it's not just the what here, it's the who. And nowhere in our so-called "mission" (I personally don't really know WHAT Bush's real plan was to go into Iraq was anymore) did it say that we take photos of these prisoners do sickening things. The citizens of Iraq trusted us, one way or another, to HELP them, not to hurt them.

And yes, this was company amongst a crowd, but the company provided a blemish that the crowd didn't exactly need at this point, and the blemishes are adding up pretty quickly. The unreasoned (if that's a word) deaths of our troops who shouldn't be there to BEGIN with, Bush turning his back on the UN, popular or not, to go though with this war, the botching on many things during this war, and now THIS?! The actual overthrow of the Saddam regieme was a success over there, but that was the ONLY thing over there that was.

In short, yes, what the extremists did and continue to do to us is bad, as well, or maybe even worse, than what those soilders (if you can call them that) did to those Iraqi prisioners. But it's not a case of what was done alone, but who did it. We are expected to not be like Saddam, or bin Ladin, but those few soilders (the "company") put a bad name to the rest of our brave soilders (the "crowd"), telling that we were just as bad, when we shouldn't have been.

And the ignorance of the Bush Administration about this is appauling. Basically, they should've seen something like this coming, and should have kept a more carful eye to what happened. And we first hear of this through CBS's 60 Minutes II, instead of someone like Donald Rumsfeld? I don't think he should resign just yet (if he fails to even try to fix this problem, then I'll be the first one to demand it), but he should at least take some responsibility for it, since he was and right now is a part of the ever long chain of command, and he didn't make sure that it got through clearly what the mission was.

And finally, some of the blame has to be on the President himself. If we have had at least some support from the UN (I know that's not a popular gesture, but no one can deny that we needed all the help we could get, especially now), this wouldn't have had a big of a chance to happen as it had. And it's quite obvious now that President Bush has got to really pull it together, or else his days as President of this country are going to be seriously numbered to days.