Misplaced Outrage During The War On Terror

Lee P Butler

Straight from the mouths of our representatives in Congress to the headlines throughout the media across America and the world, the cries of outrage have been deafening. Adjectives such as; ‘horrendous’, ‘intolerable’, ‘abhorrent’, ‘terrible’, ‘tragic’, ‘unconscionable’, ‘despicable’, have flowed in an alphabet soup of bile directed at some of our military personnel who were captured in photos mistreating Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The ‘torture’ photos have fueled anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East, giving the media there reason to rail against America in rants that have only been bested by liberals here in the United States who have taken the occasion to attack our military and denounce the president, his administration, and what they impugn to be the unlawful, imperialistic, occupation of Iraq.

Leading the charge is Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) who leveled an accusation on the Senate floor so heinous it’s unimaginable. “On March 19th, 2004, President Bush asked, ‘Who would prefer that Saddam’s torture chambers still be open,’ recited Kennedy, “and shamefully we now learn that Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.”

That’s right, Senator John Kerry’s number one supporter for the presidency somehow found it in his convoluted conception of America at the present to equate Saddam’s henchmen with our military personnel however misguided and wrong they may have been in their actions at the prison. Some people should be adding him to their ‘he needs to resign’ list!

Thank goodness for members of Congress who have the gumption to speak out against the abominable utterances from the ‘hate America first’ crowd like the Republican Senator from Oklahoma, James Inhofe who pointed out Senator Kennedy’s vulgarity. “I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons,” the Senator said. “When he was in charge, they would take electric drills and drill holes through hands, they would cut their tongues out, they would cut their ears off. We’ve seen accounts of lowering their bodies into vats of acid.” Senator Kennedy has yet to apologize.

While his Congressional Democrat colleagues and most of the national media are calling for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because he didn’t inform them of the ‘atrocities’ in the photos earlier, Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out that, “They (Central Command) told everyone in the world there were allegations of abuse and they were being investigated,” and that they, “announced not only allegations, but they listed the types of abuses.”

On top of that several top members of Congress and the governor of Virginia were alerted as far back as February by the parents of an accused soldier about the situation. All but one were Democrats, including Senators Robert Byrd, Bill Nelson, Edward Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, and Paul Sarbanes. Only Sarbanes and Republican Representative Roscoe Bartlett made even a cursory attempt to check into the situation. Yet you throw a photo on the table and suddenly they are all ‘outraged’ and ‘sickened’!

The mainstream media has joined the attack of our military as The Boston Globe, a subsidiary of The New York Times, published photos that show what they said were American soldiers taking part in ‘gang rapes’ of Iraqi women without ever verifying their authenticity. They have since been proven to be pictures taken from an internet porn site. The newspaper has since given what they consider an apology but still refuses to accept their own complicity.

Then there is the Vatican who has decided to chime in that the abuses were, “a tragic episode in the relationship with Islam,” and that they were “A more serious blow to the United States than September 11- except that blow was not inflicted by terrorists but by Americans against themselves.” Here is the Vatican who has done little more than repudiate the scandal of sexual abuse in it’s own ranks, yet seems compelled to admonish America whose military is actually taking measures to rectify the abuse scandal and started the investigation and legal proceedings voluntarily!

Then one of the most abominable, gut-wrenching tragedies to take place during the war on terror since 9-11 was video-taped and broadcast on a radical Islamic website and exposed the heart of terrorists the world over. A group of five hooded cowards slaughtered in cold blood an innocent 26 year-old Philadelphia man named Nicholas Berg by decapitation. The one who wielded the knife is purported to be al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The media has given the atrocity scant coverage and has already gone back to the prison abuse story. The Arab world has shown little or no ‘outrage’ or condemnation of this barbaric act. Yet the American military has been vilified across the globe because of the idiocy of a few.

Nobody in the media; except Fox News, seems to care about the positive things our troops have accomplished in Iraq: Stopping the murder, rape and torture of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the opening of over 2500 schools, electricity and working plumbing, economic prosperity where there was none, new books, a healthcare system, a legal system, freedom of speech, 120 newspapers, the use of computers and telephones that aren’t monitored, or technology that provides over a third of Iraqi households with television and that’s just the beginning.

For those who want to feel ‘outraged’, fine, but motivation to confront these vermin is the only thing that’s going to stop the terrorists. Our military doesn’t need the sanctimonious vituperation of Senator Kennedy while they are bravely facing the calculating evil of terrorists every day.

How many innocent people have to die before liberals in this country realize that terrorists don’t play by their politically correct rules and that terrorism is a network that is interconnected throughout the world? Saddam was a terrorist and his loyalists and supporters of al Sadyr are terrorists. Groups such as al Qaeda, Hezbolla, and Hamas sponsor terrorism. These entities and all like them constitute that network and are a threat to America and our allies. The connection is obvious and what needs to be done to end that threat is also. There should only be outrage if we fail to do so.