This is the headline a Voice of America article gave to a story on the New York Times’ article yesterday on how the Pentagon realizes that prison abuses in Afghanistan are fueling the Taliban.
Life is unfair. You beat a few innocent prisoners to death – hanging them from the ceiling by chains, etc. – and then all of a sudden, you are smeared with a permanent bad rap.
Actually, we have no idea how many innocent prisoners have been murdered in Afghan prisons. The U.S. government has kept its crimes there covered up far better than it did at Gitmo.
After 7 years of such abuses, the Pentagon suddenly realizes that the bad PR from torture can boomerang on American forces.
If only George W. and Cheney had known…
This is such a long settled issue that Frederick of Germany had banned torture . The modern Washington Technocrat, history -averse as ever finds this all a little “quaint”, having…of course never seen a battle-field or brig themselves.
Military minds abjured torture or prisoner abuse out of respect and care for their own men who were exposed to it if the practice accelerated.
Not that anyone should consider morality mind you but if it coincides with the PR Budget, what the heck, maybe the morality box can be checked.
Hard to have a retroactive PR success on this score…