Ok, so I finally get down to doing some reading. I had heard little summaries, but this is absolutely sickening.

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates.

Why? It goes on.

Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

I have been spending so much time during the past several days focusing on that which is good and beautiful, not watching the news, and barely reading any of it on the web, that I have been blissfully blind to this hideous aberration, except for hearing hints in headlines here and there.

Where is my compassion?

I'm not sure whether to agree with Riverbend or not, when she says...

I want something done about it and I want it done publicly. I want those horrible soldiers who were responsible for this to be publicly punished and humiliated. I want them to be condemned and identified as the horrible people they are. I want their children and their children's children to carry on the story of what was done for a long time- as long as those prisoners will carry along with them the humiliation and pain of what was done and as long as the memory of those pictures remains in Iraqi hearts and minds..

I certainly sympathize with her position.

Even though I didn't support the war, and believed no good would come of it, I never imagined it would result in anything so bad as this. A systematic institution of abuse and torture of the worst sort, carried out by Americans. Remind me again. How are we any better than Saddam?

I may become a misanthropist yet.