Maybe my blog posts are so depressing and fatalistic because it seems like I live behind a veil of privelige that screens me from the things that are happening in the world. Nay, the things my country is doing in the world.
Activist lawyer Bill Quigley recently emailed us a long story about the thirty-three mistakes of Katrina, deliberate or otherwise. Briefing them is beyond the scope of this blog, but you may read them for yourself at Counterpunch: How to Destroy an African American City in 33 Steps.
But this is not the miscarriage of justice that makes me feel the veil is lifted momentarily. I Stumbled Upon an article about the things they don’t show in the pictures of Abu Ghraib. Charges of children being held at the camp, children being rapedand tortured so that their parents might confess to crimes. Women were passing out messages “saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling.”

The writers of these articles and blogs thought that many of these things that were supposedly caught on tape will soon see the light of day.

That was in 2004.

I remember when this whole travesty happened, the pictures they showed were anti-climactic. And I remember waiting for the American public to get a look at all those darker home movies that would rip open the veil and reveal the Iraqi quagmire up to the elbows in shame. I remember casual mention of children at the camps but no mention of torture of children. And if this did come up, is this the maximum outrage our culture can muster? Is it too late for me to be outraged by these things now? I feel like a Jewish child just being taught about the Holocaust for the first time.

Did I miss something? No, really, please tell me: has anyone reading ever heard anything about this? Or do I have to read newspapers written in German to get the whole story?