Perhaps the US soldiers should have just turned the 3 men over to Al-Sistani for punishment:

A quick search through Sistani’s official website turns up this page, translated as:

Q: What is the judgement on sodomy and lesbianism?

A: “Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.”

Insight 7 –

Abu Ghraib Inhumanity

I admit it. I am tantalized by morbid fantasies about “torture.” In reality I am a pussyfoot. I am squeamish about killing mosquitos.

But, over the decades, I have been fascinated by pictures of the rack, the bastinado, the Iron Maiden, red-hot branding irons. You get the idea.

And I saw pictures about the atrocities that were committed by guards at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad. I must admit I was intrigued by looking at the snapshots that were taken of the incidents involving Iraqi prisoners.

Why take candid pictures if what one is doing would provoke world-wide condemnation?

I see dark young men who are mother-naked and guards who are

manipulating them. They have been piled up, in one shot, like a rugby player being smothered by opponents. In another one, a man is dressed in some kind of filmy dress and has wires leading from his hands and feet. It doesn’t show where the wires are attached on the other end—if indeed they are. I remember stories about victims of other wars who were attached to field telephone generators. In some, there are dogs, on leashes which are lunging at, but not touching, the prisoners.

Well…it seems to me that this is kinda tame stuff, compared to the fingernail splinters and dripping water on the head of a victim in stories of Asian atrocities.

And, of course, there is the now-famous picture of the woman guard looking at a cowering naked prisoner, and she is sneering at the configuration of the man’s appurtenance.

(If this is torture, I want to declare that, in my lifetime, I was subjected to it several times in my dating years and I never considered going to the United Nations!)

What astounds me, is the fact that the same people, who watch horror movies and grisly crime tv programs, are driven to righteous fury by the display of nude Muslims. “Agonizing!” They say. “Inhuman behavior!” How many of the outraged people went to the movie, “Brokeback Mountains?” Was that about torture?

The matter that interested me most was: “What kind of vital battle strategy could be wrung from blushing young men whose pudenda had been exposed?”

And don’t tell me that good old “electrodes-to-the-gonads” Rumsfeld was scandalized!