Rebecca MacKinnon Quotes
Whether or not Americans supported George W. Bush, they could not avoid learning about Abu Ghraib.
MacKinnon, Rebecca. Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom. Basic Books, 2012.
See {618460} for the kinds of statements that stimulated this type of political attack.
Abu Gharib was a prison in Iraq in which the officers in charge and the command structure failed to prevent a number of American soldiers from abusing and sexually and religiously humiliating Muslim prisoners. Photographs of the abuses traveled around the world and that particular unusual incident unfortunately fit the propaganda preconception of the Americans promoted by Islamic fundamentalist extremists. Tragically, as General McChrystal observed, Abu Gharib served as a recruiting tool for the terrorists.
Khanenei failed to make three important distinctions. First, the crimes committed by American forces in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were NOT the policy of the American government whereas all of Hitler’s crimes were not only government policy but Hitler had laws passed to enable these atrocities. Bush and the American Military command may have not been competent enough to prevent the problems, and may have been too lenient to punish the guilty, but they never intended them to occur. Second is scale. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo illegalities led at most to the deaths of one or two people. Hitler killed over 6 million in his prisons. Third, as soon as Bush found out about the problems, they were stopped whereas Hitler continued until militarily removed from power and neutralized.
Abu Ghraib was the major prison in Iraq during the Iraq War. American military committed many crimes on prisoners ranging from murder to sexual humiliation. The actual perpetrators claimed that the higher ranks of officers knew what was ongoing and provided the policies, rules and culture of the prison. The president and the Vice President many thought were the officers responsible and violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Their administration had issued a legal memorandum that for the first time in American history would allow some kinds of torture of prisoners in the War on Terror. A few enlisted personnel were punished and a general was transferred but no senior military or civilian personnel were held responsible or punished.
Rebecca MacKinnon is an author, researcher, Internet freedom advocate, and co-founder of the citizen media network Global Voices. She is notable as a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. She is on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a founding board member of the Global Network Initiative and is currently director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute.
