Torture in Iraq

President George W. Bush claims to be bringing democracy and western values to Iraq.

A former US Army interrogator in Iraq, Tony Lagouranis, testified on Sky News that Americans used torture to acquire information in Iraq. They did not torture only such people who they supposed to be guilty of hostilities, but anybody, in the belief that all Iraqis had information about the hostilities.



As a result, in Iraq anyone could be tortured by the Americans.

Word Magic

You can call a Golden Retriever dog a Golden Retriever, to distinguish it from other kinds of dogs.
You can call a Persian cat a Persian, and you can call a Friesian horse a Friesian.

But you cannot call a negro a negro, to describe his genetic characteristics.

Any word will catch negative connotations, if negative emotions are assigned to the concept itself. Banning words communicates the emotions of the banners, not necessarily of the potential users of the words.

Guilt of the Abu Ghraib Guards

The guards of Abu Ghraib (Baghdad Correctional Facility) during the Iraqi war have been criticized and consequently punished for their abusive behavior.

Punishing the guards is debatable, as such behavior was certainly known to develop, unless not especially prohibited. Thus the ones actually responsible to the abusive developments are those who should have controlled the guards: the prison officers and the US Government.

In 1971 Stanford University conducted a psychological experiment to understand roles and behavior in prison. In the experiment voluntary students were randomly appointed to act as guards or prisoners:

"The simulation became so real, and the guards became so abusive, that the experiment had to be shut down after only 6 days rather than the two weeks planned."

The Stanford Prison Experiment was funded by government grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

For details of the experiment see Stanford Prison Experiment
For details of Abu Ghraib see Wikipedia

Presidential Administration slipping out of control

Supreme power has a tendency to get out of hand, if not democratically controlled.

In the 1980s Reagan Administration sold weapons to Iran to fund Nicaraguan Contras, the right-wing guerrilla organization.

• Selling the weapons to Iran was illegal, as Iran was considered an enemy of the US.
• Funding the Contras was illegal, as the Congress had decided against it.
• After the sales were revealed in 1986, President Ronald Reagan denied them on national television.
• Reagan Administration destroyed large volumes of related documents.

For details see Wikipedia

Fear of Racism

A witness in Finland may tell that the offender had dark eyes and dark hair. But they may not tell that the offender had dark skin.

Thus the police will be seeking for dark eyed, dark haired, fair skinned people, none of whom will be the offender.

This is not considered to be withholding crucial evidence. It is considered politically correct conduct. Anything else would be racism.