David Brooks:
Whose bright idea was it to keep Saddam’s gulag open as a U.S. prison, anyway?
Senator John McCain:
I have seen a lot of people die. I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my life. But to see it done by Americans to human beings is what’s so appalling. It’s so outrageous, I can’t describe it.
Spc. Joe Roche:
I’m at a place right now where there are thousands of U.S. soldiers. I went to breakfast and dinner at the KBR dining hall here. It is huge, hundreds of soldiers gathered to eat. Around us are large-screen tvs, and yes, the news was mostly about the prison abuse. Everyone is so angry. I mean, angry! It is as if those soldiers hurt us more than the enemies here in Iraq have. I don’t think that if that RPG last week had hit and killed us in my hummwv, there would have been any of the damage done to our cause here that those soldiers have done.
Charles Krauthammer:
The pictures of American women soldiers mocking, humiliating and dominating naked and abused Arab men. One could not have designed a more symbolic representation of the Islamist warning about where Western freedom ultimately leads than Thursday’s Washington Post photo of a uniformed American woman holding a naked Arab man on a leash.
Me:
Those who did these things and those who allowed them to happen should be punished. They should also be educated to know that what they did will probably cause the deaths and torture and the humiliation of many other American soldiers and and Middle Easterners and will most likely prolong the hatred and violence indefinitely. All because they wanted “to have some fun.”