The Roots of Prisoner Abuse
Bravo to Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks for “A Climate That Nurtures Torture” (Opinion, May 9). Our leaders who give lip service to the sacrifices our soldiers are making in Iraq are the first to blame them for the outrages at Abu Ghraib prison. They would like to keep the investigation to those in the photographs and not blame the system they have set in motion. With the power of the president to declare anyone an “enemy combatant” and remove him or her from society, with no rights and possibly never to be seen again, we have gone from a revolution against King George III to a more menacing and powerful King George I.
Michael Hittleman
Los Angeles
I was a Navy hospital corpsman assigned to the 4th Marine Division in World War II and made landings on the islands of Saipan and Iwo Jima. A small number of Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner on both islands. Even though we knew how the Japanese treated American prisoners of war, nothing in what we did to them resulted in any inhumane treatment. If they needed medical treatment, it was given in a capable and kindly manner. I know, because I personally assisted, with no thought other than being professional.
Soldiers in Germany also took prisoners of war, and I have never heard of any untoward treatment in that area.
Do you remember the sign on President Truman’s desk? “The Buck Stops Here.” President Bush should have told the military he realized that prisoners of war would be taken and that absolutely no mistreatment of these people would be tolerated. Bush is responsible. I am embarrassed to be called an American.
John M. Northrop
Pomona
I am a well-educated, middle-class woman who, after going through my life without so much as a traffic ticket, ended up spending 13 days in the L.A. County women’s jail last year. The pictures I saw of our troops abusing and humiliating the Iraqi prisoners looked very similar to what went on there. The average person doesn’t realize that torture and abuse are systematic right here within our own system. I, too, had no idea until I experienced it.
Stepping into the L.A. County jail is like going to a Third World country where human rights are a joke. The guards seemed to enjoy humiliating and degrading the inmates and did so regularly. Strip searches often occurred seemingly for their amusement and/or boredom, and laughing and joking with each other about various parts of the inmates’ naked bodies were commonplace. They would keep you naked and in various humiliating positions as long as they pleased, with no regard for human decency.
Be it in Iraq or downtown L.A., there is a certain mentality that seems to be shared by many of these prison guards who turn into abusers. They feel a need to humiliate and destroy other human beings. And remember, many in the local jail are not convicted of anything; they are awaiting trial. It is too bad we don’t have the same outrage about the everyday abuse by prison guards in this country as we currently have over how our troops treated those Iraqi prisoners.
Patricia Clough
Studio City
So the majority of Americans are shocked and disgusted by what they see? Bush claims this sort of treatment and abuse is un-American, and not representative of what America is all about. Really? Preying upon, abusing, humiliating and victimizing those perceived as “weak” or “unworthy” is the American way, folks. Just visit any corporate boardroom in America, or any school campus. Mistreatment of others, bullying and abuse indeed exist in this country, and we not only tolerate it, we make excuses for it in an attempt to justify this sort of behavior. America’s head is buried in the sands of Iraq.
Rose-Marie Robinson
Newbury Park