With all the talk of religion and morality in Congress these days, it’s odd how little outrage has been expressed over the latest revelations from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
A Pentagon report issued last week described, on page after page, women soldiers performing lewd sex acts on terror suspects during interrogations.
The report describes female soldiers removing their uniform tops, doing lap dances on manacled suspects, draping panties over their heads, giving them massages and even smearing fake menstrual blood on them.
There is something insane about a country proclaiming its own morality while debasing its female soldiers to break down another culture’s morality.
We’re not sure how many suspects “break” under the stress of a lap dance, but these tactics are just wrong.
First, it’s wrong to ask or order male or female soldiers to have sexual contact with people under their control. This is no different than a guard at a prison having sexual contact with an inmate.
Second, the damage done to U.S. prestige and respect is incalculable. The revelations simply feed the widespread public opinion in the Islamic world that the U.S. culture is corrupt, perverse and that we really do not respect their religious beliefs or, perhaps, even our own.
Finally, we’re struck by the similarities between these reports and the shocking photos that came out of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
So far, the U.S. military has contended that renegade soldiers were responsible for the lewd interrogation techniques employed there. And, so far, it has only sought to prosecute a few low-ranking National Guard soldiers.
It stretches plausibility that nearly identical techniques would, simply by chance, emerge in two prisons on opposite sides of the globe.
Will privates and sergeants go to the stockade while the officers or even civilian leaders who devised and condoned this behavior get medals and ribbons?
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