The US Secretary of Defense decided to visit Iraq today to see for himself the conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison where US personnel have been torturing prisoners or, as the US government would prefer us to say, ‘abusing’ them because it sounds just a little better.
Presumably his visit will have been preceded by a clean up operation, perhaps even some new coats of paint and decent meals for the day, so that he’ll be able to report that he found nothing untoward going on at all. No doubt he’ll also be able to talk to a few carefully selected prison staff who will tell him that everything is just hunky dory. Who knows, he might even talk to some people who they tell him are inmates; they might even be inmates though they sure as hell won’t be any of those who’ve been mistreated.
Such a pity that he won’t be able to experience at first hand what it’s like to have to parade around naked while dogs threaten to bite his balls off or to discover for himself how it feels to be part of a pile of naked people.
Posted 13 May 2004, 22:50 BST
