Pfc. England? Larry Flynt called. Please return ASAP...
Congress, having "overdosed on depravity" (what, again?), is -- as Bear and others have indicated --
disinclined to share the latest batch of Abu Ghraib photos with the American public:
Quote:They gathered in a secure room on Capitol Hill, as many as 150 at one time, but the pictures and slides they viewed so silenced U.S. lawmakers that one said later, he could have been in the room by himself.
Afterward, they emerged on their own or in small groups, some spitting out disgust to the waiting microphones, others appearing ashen, unsure of how to describe what their eyes had just seen.
But in the wake of the brutal videotaped murder of American Nicholas Berg, members of the U.S. Congress were split yesterday as to whether the photos and videos of abuse they had just viewed, perpetrated by their own soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, should be released to the public.
They saw Iraqi women forced to bare their breasts, forced homosexual sex, sex between U.S. troops, hooded Iraqi prisoners forced to masturbate in front of their captors, another forced to sodomize himself. (Don't ask me. I just cut and paste this stuff, okay? -- PD)
They also reported viewing pictures of dead bodies, badly wounded soldiers and untrained soldiers stitching up injured detainees. A couple of Congress members were struck by pictures they said showed a detainee forced to smash his head against a wall at Abu Ghraib until his skull appeared to split.
Some legislators said they couldn't view them all because they'd overdosed on depravity.
"The sadism, the violence, the sexual humiliation ?- after a while you just turn away, you just can't take it any more," said Illinois Democratic Senator Richard Durbin . . . .
Reservist Lynndie England, pictured around the world, a cigarette dangling from her lips giving a thumbs-up and a smile in front of Iraqi detainees, told a Denver, Colo., TV station yesterday she was ordered to pose for trophy pictures "for psyop (psychological operations) reasons, and the reasons worked.
"We were doing our job," she said, "which meant we were doing what we were told ... They'd come back and they'd look at the pictures and they'd state: `Well, that's a good tactic. Keep it up. That's working. This is working. Keep doing it. It's getting what we need.'"
One tactic in particular worked so well that Pfc. England used it over and over and over again:
Quote:Shocking shots of sexcapades involving Pfc. Lynndie England were among the hundreds of X-rated photos and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shown to lawmakers in a top-secret Capitol conference room yesterday.
"She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual," said a lawmaker who saw the photos.
And, videos showed the disgraced soldier - made notorious in a photo showing her holding a leash looped around an Iraqi prisoner's neck - engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners, Pentagon officials told NBC Nightly News.
"Almost everybody was naked all the time," another lawmaker said.
Many members of Congress left the 45-minute viewing session early, thereby missing the porno performance by England, but there were enough other images of torture, humiliation and intimidation to sicken anyone.
"I don't know how these people got into our Army," said Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.).
And I am still trying to understand why our Army is there, Senator.
Did we actually invade Iraq to bring them freedom, democracy, and (quoting a certain pill-popping radio bloviator), "good old American pornography"?
