Ramblings' Journal

What part of "isolated incident" do you not understand?

Everyone has seen the photos. Everyone in the US. Everyone around the world.

The photos of a pile of naked bodies, with two beaming soldiers smiling as they stand over it.

Photos of a prisioner standing on a box, while wired to God knows what.

Photos of men, whose sole desire for Americans is that we all die.

Photos of men with more in common with the animals that flew planes into buildings two and a half years ago, killing thousands here.

People across this nation are reacting in shock and horror at those photos, and, while they continue to be fed by a willing and complicit press, those same people are starting to compare our military and the Bush Administration with the Saddam regime.

I have heard people -- some otherwise very intelligent people -- insist that the President and the Administration are no better than Saddam Hussain and his sons, because of this incident. This isolated incident.

These same self-righteous people are so wrapped up in their images, fed by the loathing of reporters from CBS and CNN, from ABC and the Washington Post, from NBC and the New York Times. Fed by Pacifica and Indymedia. Fed by Ted Rall and Michael Moore. They are so wrapped up with the constant barrage of hatred that they forget the reality: that this was an isolated incident which was soundly denounced by officials from the President on down.

The radicalists are trying their damnedest to not only try to paint this isolated incident as standard operating procedure for our military, but to insist that this is how we treat prisioners in this country, too. That police departments across the nation use these so-called procedures as the normal course of business for law enforcement.

Everyone trots out the Geneva Convention as a sort of blanket to throw over this situation.

The vast majority of people fail to recognize that the Geneva Convention does not apply to this situation. That's right. Does. Not. Apply.

The Geneva Convention was designed as a sort of "Marquis of Queensbury" rules for engagement for countries and entities in military conflict.

The problem is that the Islamists do not subscribe to the Convention -- that is, until their thugs get caught.

The Geneva Convention says that a captured individual is and must be treated as a military prisioner of war only if he is reporting to a commander, if he wears a distinctive insignia recognizable at a distance, if he carries arms openly, and if he, himself, conducts himself according to the rules of war. The Islamists do not do that. They dress as the remainder of the civilian population. They do not report to a commander. They do not have a recognizable insignia. They do not carry arms openly.

They do not conduct themselves according to the rules of war.

They throw the rulebook out the window. They hit below the belt. They headbutt. They try to bite off their opponent's ear, to coin an expression.

Are we, as a nation, obligated to use the rulebook, when our opponents have thrown out the same rulebook? Are we obligated to hamstring ourselves while dealing with an enemy who wants nothing more than to kill each and every last American soul?

I'm not condoning what happened in those isolated incidents in Iraq. On the contrary. Those activities are reprehensible.

But those activities are not indicative of our fighting men and women. They are not a part of the concept of truth, justice and the American way.

They are not a part of "normal."

And at the same time, for someone to try to not only equate that isolated incident with SOP, and to then say that we are worse than Saddam has no logical concept of what "normal" is. They have no concept of what Saddam was.

Saddam had rape rooms. Saddam had torture chambers. Saddam had children's prisons. Saddam had mass graves. Saddam used giant shredders to feed living, screaming people into, in order to prolong their pain and agony. Saddam was a tyrant. Saddam was an evil man.

Saddam today, is a sad, old man awaiting his fate; undoubtedly in front of a firing squad.

Contrary to Charles Barron's incessant screeching in my ear on Hannity & Colmes last week, the Coalition of the Willing has rebuilt the infrastructure of the Iraqi nation in less than one year. Schools are open. Hospitals are open. Newspapers are printing. Markets are opening. Telephone service has been restored. Mail service has been reestablished. Internet and e-mail service, believe it or not, is coming.

This does not sound like the activities of a tyrant. This does not sound like the activities of an Administration that is "worse than Saddam."

This is the picture that Katie Couric and others in the press do not want you to see. This is the reality that John Kerry and Hillary Clinton do not want you to know.

This is the truth of the victory of President Bush and the Coalition.