Gasoline Drawers

Perhaps to some, the pictures of Saddam Hussein in his draws (drawers) reduced him from mythic status to regular Joe prisoner who wears and puts his pants on one leg at a time. However, it is highly likely that the pictures served as gasoline drawers for the reputation of the United States and further proof that we have no respect for Arabs/Muslims, their culture or their sensitivities. I don't understand why, after two years at war, we cannot get it right.

"'The event that had the biggest impact for me was when I saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib in the newspapers,'' says Samir Naguib, manager of a Cairo mobile phone company. 'What do I think of when I hear 'America' now? The global bully.''

Mr. Naguib, who has vacationed in America and once entertained offers to work there, is among the millions of past admirers of America. A report earlier this month from the Council on Foreign Relations summarizing a series of focus groups in Morocco, Egypt, and Indonesia found that America's efforts to win hearts and minds aren't working.

'The growth of hostility to America in Muslim countries increases recruitment, and support for extremism and terror,'' the authors write. 'This hostility is a change for focus group members: Most recall that their earlier attitudes towards the US were quite favorable.'

Mr. Naguib says the pictures of Hussein aren't nearly as interesting to him as news on Iraqi war casualties, claims of US abuses of detainees, and the Abu Ghraib scandal.

'Saddam ... deserves what he gets, but the pictures show that if a person is behind US-controlled bars then anything can happen to him. It's clear now that America isn't very different from the Arab states in this,'' he says. 'The Abu Ghraib trials were only at the level of the soldiers, not raised to the levels of the generals that permitted this to happen.'"