July 2004 | Hightower Lowdown
Outrage Over the Outrage
by Jim Hightower
Leave it to the kooks in congress and their sidekicks — the right wing pundits and talk-show yakkers — to see a “liberal conspiracy” behind the torture photos coming out of U.S. military prisons in Iraq.
To them, the public outrage over the torture and humiliation of Iraqi detainees is a lot of fuss about very little. Media coverage of it, they say, is being prolonged by liberals in order to pound Bush. “Some people are overreacting. The people who are against the war are using this to their political ends,” grumped Tom DeLay, the GOP congressional boss who is infamous for using anything and everything to further his own, right-wing political ends.
Rush Limbaugh spewed and sputtered that the pictures show nothing worse than fraternity pranks, and even Donnie Rumsfeld tried to pass off the behavior of the prison guards as “abuse,” not “torture.” Indeed, Rummy primly described one video segment as showing several American soldiers “having sex” with a woman detainee. Excuse my crudeness, Donnie, but “having sex” with a prisoner is called “rape.”
The Mr. Sensitive award, however, goes to Senator James Inhofe, the right-wing nutball from Oklahoma. At a committee hearing, Inhofe puffed himself up like a blowfish and let loose with this sour opinion of the vast majority of Americans who are revolted by the torture: “As I watch this outrage that everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners, I have to say and I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment.”
To gild this rhetorical lily, Inhofe then assailed all of us Americans who want a full investigation, caustically calling us, “humanitarian do-gooders.”
What kind of people would we Americans be if we were not outraged by torture done in our names, and what kind of country would we have if those responsible, no matter how high their position, were not held accountable? If that’s being a do-gooder, then mark me down as a proud one.
Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back, on sale now from Viking Press.
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