Looking for Causes of Abuse and the War

Since the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal broke, the Bush administration has said that, in Iraq, it always insisted on following the Geneva Convention on humane treatment for prisoners. But in a letter to the Red Cross dated Dec. 24, 2003, the administration asserted that detainees in Iraq were not entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Convention.

It seems to me, if there was a directive that sidestepped the Geneva Convention rules, then by what rules are the military guards being court-martialed?

Carolyn Crandall

Camarillo

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Rebecca Hagelin’s diagnosis of the American cultural maladies that she imagines led “Down the Sewer to Abu Ghraib” (Commentary, May 26) is rooted in the same combustible amalgam of sexual hysteria and theocratic longing that animates the Muslim fundamentalists who would destroy us. Truly, we live in the age of irony.

Don Symons

Santa Barbara

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Now we’ve heard it all: The godless and amoral 1960s are to blame for Abu Ghraib. Hagelin has apparently forgotten that our own pious, God-fearing president has consistently sought, by way of exceptional classifications, to ensure that our prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan are not granted the protections afforded by the Geneva Convention.

The ultimate source of the Abu Ghraib scandal lies not in the historical past. He resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where no doubt he prays daily. The buck stops there!

John J. Thatamanil

Assistant Prof., Theology

Vanderbilt Divinity School

Nashville

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At a cost of $100 billion, 800 U.S. dead and the loss of our esteem in the eyes of our allies, we have found at last the weapons of mass destruction that so threatened our nation and the world: one 155-millimeter artillery shell dating from the 1980s with nonlethal sarin gas inside (“Sarin Confirmed in Bomb, Officials Say,” May 26). Another victory like this and we’ll be ruined.

Paul Gulino

Santa Monica

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To summarize “Chalabi’s Long, Costly Charade,” Commentary, May 25: An ex-con (Ahmad Chalabi, convicted in Jordan for embezzlement) conned the neocons in the Pentagon who, in turn, conned the naive-cons (Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney) to bring on (board) the old cons and start a war (in Babylon). All this was precipitated by a single man?

Muhsin Abo-Shaeer

Goleta

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Did Iraqi political opportunist Chalabi lie about the weapons of mass destruction at Saddam Hussein’s disposal or was he telling a tale fed to him by his Defense Department handlers? A thorough investigation of Chalabi’s ties to Defense Secretary (or War Minister) Donald Rumsfeld is long overdue.

Anthony Garavente

Los Angeles