1) I'm sure you've ranted before - take a look at some of the Stu conversations (BTW - Stu - where are ya?)
2) Did abuse take place during WWII?
Yes, of course it did. My own grandfather has told me stories of Japanese being machine-gunned after being convinced to lay down their arms after having pamphlets dropped over them that promised them good treatment if they surrendered (told to him by someone he knew from back home that he was visiting in a hospital)
He also saw a plane full of Japanese prisoners take off from an island an hour from anywhere - yet it came back empty in half an hour. So, yes, they were dumped into the ocean.
3) This situation is different than WWII. We are not in a life and death struggle with the Iraqi nation. The Iraqis did not force a great number of US soldiers to go on a "Bataan Death March." The Iraqis had little or most likely nothing but a very very vague support role in the 9/11 attacks (by support I mean cash that was not specifically earmarked for that attack but rather terrorism in general) so you can't even make a Pearl Harbor comparison. (However, I keep on hearing and reading stories about every 6 weeks ago about a connection with the Oklahoma City bombing and McVeigh - that timing makes more sense to me since it was so much closer to the Gulf War but its just rumors and shadows and McVeigh is dead so we can't ask him)
The situation with our enemies in WWII was different in that we weren't trying to sell democracy to their peoples - we were trying to kill them.
The situation in Iraq requires subtlety and finesse and that damned woman with the leash and the cigarette (and all of her creepy friends) pretty much made a big SNAFU of the whole thing.
4) to be fair - the prisoner thing is really not as bad as the press makes it out to be. It is degrading and humiliating and I am outraged that it even happened and I am embarrassed that my country is being represented by people such as those. My first instinct is to hand over all of the perpetrators to the families of the victims and let them put them on leashes, etc. for a three day weekend (Memorial Day is coming up..) But, the press has acted like this was just a hair less evil than a Nazi death camp. On the grand scale of things, there are frat houses on college campuses (campi?) that did worse to their pledges last fall. (BTW - I'm also against that as well, but that's why I didn't mess with the frat system at Indiana University)
To sum up - I am ashamed of the degrading frat boy behavior that some of our soldiers perpetrated upon some Iraqi prisoners - like they were their personal playthings. However, it is not comparable to other war atrocities, such as beheadings by Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations (that is 2 so far - Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg. See this link for a commentary and appeal by Pearl's father on the death of Berg.link here to dailystar.com)
I fully agree with Adilbrand...it must be "the day after tomorrow" (NT) -- Abba's Son, 15:34:21 05/27/04 Thu