GEORGE POPE wrote in news:1083970996.298.0{at}fidotel.com:

> SA> The American elite soon made themselves at home in Saddam's
> palaces, SA> & the prisons are back to being used for their
> "axis of evil" purposes. 
> 
> *LOL* Good comparison/reference!  I just recently read Animal
> Farm -- wow, was that guy ever spot on!

Not sure I agree totally that the American torture is directly 
comparable with what went on in Saddam's regime. Under Saddam you 
had a system of institutionalised and officially-approved torture, 
rape and murder.

With the Americans, on the other hand, you have frustrated soldiers 
without adequate backing from the Pentagon being put in charge of 
large numbers of prisoners they have no idea how to deal with. A 
lot of them aren't trained to guard prisoners, and a fair few of 
them are probably inclined to do stupid, petty-minded, vindictive 
and cruel things to the prisoners off their own bat - perhaps 
because they buy into the "Saddam helped plan 9/11" crap, or 
because they believe the super-patriotic propaganda that demonises 
resistance to the Coalition, or because they're just dumb hicks.

I really don't think the American torture was officially sanctioned 
by the US government, even if representatives on the ground did 
turn a blind eye to it. What I do think is that Rumsfeld would 
much, much rather have sat on that report and hope that it would go 
away, but the leaks to the media blew that, and that Bush did not 
know about the misdeeds of the troops because he *did not want to 
know* for the purposes of plausible deniability.

Animal Farm: I think the reason it works so well is that Orwell was 
a disillusioned leftist who was sick to the stomach to see the high 
principles Communism frequently alludes to - equality, fairness, 
co-operation and social justice - so utterly and remorselessly 
betrayed and overturned by the Bolsheviks until you ended up with 
Stalinist Russia, easily one of the most unequal, unjust, and 
tyrannical oligarchies the world has ever seen. This makes it both 
a stark warning to the Left of the dangers of its extreme wing, 
whilst it also allows the Right to see a) why Communism could 
become popular amongst the disenfranchised and b) why the failures 
of Communism are not due to it being an inherently evil doctrine, 
but being an inherently *naive* doctrine which assumes that 
opportunists such as Stalin would not attempt to abuse the system 
for their own benefit.

-- 
Little Girl: "So much for your `liberal arts' education, you bloody 
Communists."
- Pokey the Penguin
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