The subject of prisoner abuse (search) has popped up again. And again some journalists and editorial writers are doing back flips trying to prove that there's a pattern of abuse.
They're not getting anywhere and here's why. You may remember at the beginning of the war when some Saddam loyalists flying the white flag approached a group of U.S. Marines in a place called Nasiriyah (search).
When the Marines lowered their weapons, the enemy pulled weapons out from under their clothes and killed several Marines. I happen to know more about this story, because my son was with that Marine task force.
Later on, he was assigned to guard some of the same Iraqis who had killed his friends. Imagine seeing your brothers shot down and then guarding the same murderers without doing them any harm! Well, according to Marines and journalists I've talked to, the Marine guards at Nasiriyah were vigilant in not violating a single digit of the Geneva Conventions.
That's why isolated cases of abuse, whether in Abu Ghraib (search) or elsewhere infuriate the soldiers and Marines who've worked so hard to do things right. Can discipline break down in war zones? Of course it can. But soldiers and Marines aren't trained to make mistakes. They're trained to do things right. And on the whole, that's exactly what they are doing.
And that’s the Asman Observer.
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