Well according to the U.S. media nothing else is happening in the world except the Abu Ghraib prison scandal which our administration is “shocked” and “disgusted” about. Of course we had to hold W’s and Rummy’s feet to the coals before they acquiesced and released belated half-assed apologies. When I was young and got in trouble I would always blurt out an insincere apology in the hopes of leniency with my parents. My mom would always respond, “Are you really sorry, or are you sorry because you got caught?” And she was dead right, if I was really sorry I would have ‘fessed up before I got busted.
Similarly the administration is sort of sorry only because of the pictures catching us red-handed. If it had been just a report, it would have been filed away and the appropriate reprimands and staff reshufflings would have happened without any public scrutiny or notice. But I don’t really blame the administration, they’re only doing what we want them to do. If we really are such a moral, decent, nation as W keeps professing we are, we would demand pictures and proof that the Guantanamo detainees were not being similarly tortured. We would demand similar scrutiny and human rights standards for all the military aid we dump on Colombia and Israel. But considering we can’t afford human rights training for our own soldiers, why would we care about anyone else?
The truth is the U.S. doesn’t care about what is right and just in the world. If we did we would be outraged that our little pre-emptive war had no sound basis. We would shutdown the School of the Americas, and we would stop extorting other soveriegn states to do our bidding. The U.S. just like adolescent sandblade, feels bad when we’re caught. Like Dorian Grey we despise and hide the picture of our true selves, and want the world to only see the freedom loving nation we pretend to be.