Stay away from Rush...he's Craaaazy
If you haven't heard, Limbaugh explains away the humiliation of Iraqi prisoners as a prank, or a way to "let off steam." Josh Marshall has this right:

"how about Rush Limbaugh's idea of a fun night out and blowing off steam?

You know when you're worked to the bone and you really need to unwind there's just nothing like grabbing a half dozen Arab dudes, stripping them naked, tying their bodies together against their will and pressing one guy's penis up against another guy's butt to make it like they're having anal sex. Right?

Party time for Rush, it would seem, is a mix of Studio 54 and Jack the Ripper.

As fun as A Clockwork Orange."

I'm going to try and change the subject after this (we'll consider this a 3-post series, so scroll down and read the last 2 if you want to know what I'm thinking through), honest. As for the Milgram experiments, Stevie T points out that many of the respondents in that experiement expressed hesitation and second thoughts and genuine anguish (before they went ahead and, so far as they knew, rendered another person unconscious or worse with an electric shock, just because a guy in a white coat told him it was ok).

With that in mind, read the notes of Chip Frederick, a man now involved in this controversy at the Abu Ghreib prison. We'll take his words with something of a grain of salt, as they could have been constructed after the fact only to save his own hide. My interest is in the sense that, far from just being a bizarre exercise in cruelty for the sake of it, every indication is given that nearly all the tactics used were sanctioned, indeed ordered, by Military Intelligence, the folks running the show at this prison. If you've seen the most recent pictures, of Iraqis tied up in the middle of the floor, while no less than 8 or 9 soldiers are out and about, it comports with this version of events--certainly no one looks surprised or trying to hide what's happening.

If we take these letters at face value, Chip indeed did express concern about the tactics being used, and was told "don't worry about it" and "that's how MI wants it done." Excuse? no. But if this investigation is going to be throrough it sounds more and more like it should be about the approved, understood, accepted means of gathering intelligence through interrogation in our own military, not just a renegade band of cruel, cold-hearted underlings.