a placeless world

There is something else in those photos. Something that we don't want to see. Something worse.

President Bush this week took the the Arabian airwaves in an effort at damage control the likes of which we haven't seen since his playboy predecessor admitted to knowing "that woman."

As have his cohorts, Bush took the stance that the individual soldiers pictured torturing and humiliating Iraqi men — most of whom the Pentagon acknowledges are completely innocent of any wrongdoing — are not representative of the vast number of American soldiers occupying Iraq today.

This was, Bush claimed, an aberration.

It is a very few, a very evil few, that hope otherwise. And it is a very few that seem to believe otherwise.

But consider, for a moment, a few other "gotcha" moments in recent American history. The Rodney King video tape comes to mind. So does Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.

In neither of those cases did we believe that the incident in question was the only incident that happened — only that we had caught the perpetrator for a change. That Bush and his advisors — and the American media as well — seem so willing to buy the idea that we happen to have photographs of the only incidents of abuse speaks volumes to the power of denial.

That we expect the Arab world to believe that is insulting.

Take with me a trip to Christmas, 1997. The good ship U.S.S. Nimitz is in the northern Persian Gulf. Its pilots sit in their ready rooms on high alert. Saddam Hussein has denied weapons inspectors entry into his palaces, once again.

A group of young sailors goes berthing to berthing, wassailing a horrifying tune.

"Bagdad's burning, are you listening?
In downtown, kids are glistening.
We're bombing the sites,
All through the night,
Iraq is in a hellish wonderland."

And now, a trip to Oregon State University, circa 2000. A cadre of Marine midshipmen are on the fifth mile of a 20-mile hump. The guide — a junior history major — sings cadence.

"A-10, A-10 flying high
drop that napalm from the sky.
See those kids by the river
drop some napalm watch them quiver
Napalm sticks to kids"

And the future Marine officers respond in kind: "NAAAAA-PALM STICKS TO KIDS!"

Who, we want to know, are the people in those photos? The same young men and women — good young men and women — who were in the gulf in 1997 and at OSU's Naval ROTC in 2000.

The same young men and women who painted smiley faces and nasty limericks on AGM-88 missiles destined to take the lives of Iraqi soldiers. The same young men and women who gave you My Lai.

This is not an aberration. This is what happens when those indoctrinated into a way of life that discounts the value of human life are allowed to run a prison without training, without support, without supervision.

This is not an aberration. This is a gotcha moment. And there will be more such moments before the United States is through in Iraq.