Doh!

Afghan detainees routinely tortured and humiliated by US troops

Haven't we already determined that this is a given? Isn't the prisoner abuse in the Middle East mirroring the common practices in the United States ?

"... I'm not a politician or a pundit; I'm Black in America. I've seen the tapes of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by members of the LAPD. I haven't forgotten the 1997 torture of Abner Louima by members of the NYPD, who forced a broken broomstick up his rectum. I've known enough people who were or are in prison to be clear that the humiliation and abuse of suspects and prisoners is as American as apple pie.

Such treatment, especially of people of color, has been going on in U.S. jails and prisons for as long as those institutions have existed--and before that, during slavery. Sexual abuse and humiliation, rape, beatings, the use of snarling dogs? Sounds familiar, whether you're talking about the maintenance of slavery in the 18th century or the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Black people in the 21st. (It should also come as no surprise that at least one of those charged in Iraq is a former prison guard.)

So, too, the leering, almost joyful faces of the army personnel as they pose, sometimes thumbs up, with those they torture should sicken and enrage, but not surprise, us. Take a look at the animated expressions of spectators at the lynching of Black Americans, or the snarling crowds participating in the humiliation of civil rights workers during the 1950s and '60s, or the smug police officers acquitted of brutal acts in recent years ..."