How Abu Ghraib abuse dented US 'moral superiority'  

ALEX MASSIE
The Scotsman
 Wed 19 Jan 2005
 
 SHOCK, disgust and shame were the dominant emotions felt by most Americans when the first photographs of the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad were published last year. For many, they put a dent in the idea of US moral superiority.

 Each report and batch of documents released since then have suggested the pictures most widely published were tame compared with some of the humiliating and sadistic treatment meted out to prisoners.

 Congressional leaders and pundits fretted that the pictures had done incalculable damage to the country’s reputation in the Arab world, demonstrating to the country’s critics that the US was as barbarous as the regime it toppled.

 But the public has done its best to move on and the mainstream US media has shown little appetite for keeping the story in the headlines.

 The pictures and the abuse scandal instead became the butt of comedians such as Jay Leno on late-night chat shows. They still are.

 This week, however, the conduct of US guards at Abu Ghraib has returned to the evening news bulletins.

 The conviction of Specialist Charles Graner for the "depraved" abuse of prisoners and his subsequent ten-year jail term brought back unwelcome memories.

 The administration’s critics say the abuse was a result of a relaxed attitude towards the interrogation of prisoners and a willingness to ignore aspects of the Geneva conventions.

 The US public, however, generally agrees with the official Pentagon position that, although highly regrettable and shameful, the abuse of prisoners was the action of a few "rotten apples" only and not a matter of deliberate policy.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=65742005