(U-WIRE) -A great lie has permeated the international media -including news agencies here in the United States -and it is a lie that, if left unchecked, threatens to destroy the seeds of democracy America is diligently planting in Iraq. This lie asserts that at the core of the prison abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib lies a structural mandate reaching as high up as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to conduct interrogations through psychological torture, humiliation and sexual perversion. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
By now, the world has been saturated with pictures of prisoner abuse from the Iraqi prison and, yes, these images are troubling and inexcusable. But these pictures represent the actions of a few soldiers and not the wishes of high-ranking military personnel or the secretary of defense. There is simply no proof to support claims that Rumsfeld orchestrated an elaborate plan to interrogate prisoners through torture and humiliation -such an assertion is laughable.
But laughable assertions and liberal politics often go hand in hand and, not surprisingly, this has become a partisan issue, with Democrats doing everything they can to demonize the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war. Reports issued by the politically-left magazines Newsweek and The New Yorker first accused Rumsfeld of not only knowing about the misconduct, but encouraging it, according to MSNBC. However, these magazines offer up as proof nothing more than hearsay, anonymous sources and the sworn testimony of prisoners of war. In all fairness, the world deserves more justification for these accusations than untraceable sources and the words of alleged terrorists and murderers sworn to fight against the United States. No such justification exists.
It is absurd to think that the secretary of defense for the strongest nation in the free world would encourage torturous interrogation tactics in a war his nation was winning at the possible expense of his political career. Even more absurd is that his well-thought and highly secretive plan would involve unskilled military reservists being ordered to pose for staged photographs with nude Iraqi prisoners. Surely, this nation's defense experts could come up with a better plan of interrogation than that.
Sadly, only one Democrat has crossed partisan lines and has been vocal in his support of the U.S. response to the scandal. Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said that though U.S. forces have apologized for the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, he has yet to hear any apology for the 3,000 American lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.
The issue, through selective reporting, has taken on a life of its own. For example, the discovery of the chemical agents sarin and mustard gas last month by U.S. forces was largely ignored by the media in spite of the fact that these chemical weapons represent the justification for war the Bush administration has sought for so long. Most of the liberal media has shown that it is so bound by partisan ideology that it would rather continue to subvert its own country's war efforts than concede any sort of justification for invading Iraq. This is a shame.
The Bush administration has done the right thing by instituting its own investigation into the abuse scandal and fully disclosing what it knows about soldier misconduct.
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