Word: ghraib
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...negative impact of the Abu Ghraib scandal on the ability of the U.S. to achieve its objectives appears to be felt more widely than in Iraq. The State Department's Intelligence and Research Department is reportedly warning that the fallout from the revelations has been devastating, not only in the Arab and Muslim world, but globally, even among some allies in the Coalition. In this wider setting, what is at stake is the benefit of the doubt granted by allies to the U.S. in the waging wars where legal gray areas abound - from the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo...
...Ghraib photographs capped a month of bad news for the Bush administration from Iraq. There was the Shiite uprising and the mutilation of bodies at Fallujah, and the defection and dissolution of Iraqi security forces and mounting rebellion from inside the Iraqi Governing Council. There were the photographs of flag-draped coffins being flown home in a month when an average of four American soldiers were killed each day, and then the no-win standoffs with insurgents in both Fallujah and Najaf. And the fact that with the planned handover of symbolic sovereignty a month away, no plan...
...over the year since Saddam Hussein's regime fell. And that survey was taken before U.S. actions against insurgents at Fallujah and in Baghdad sparked widespread condemnation among even pro-U.S. Iraqis. It's a safe bet that in the wake of the mass circulation of the Abu Ghraib photographs across all media platforms in the Arab world, the number of Iraqis wanting an immediate U.S. withdrawal will almost certainly have increased...
...Like a well-targeted attack-ad in a U.S. election campaign, the Abu Ghraib images make a visceral connection with an Arab audience, that no amount of contextualizing, apologies, reprimands or school-painting can reverse. No ad agency could have produced a more effective al-Qaeda recruitment tool: Bin Laden's movement presents its goal as the redemption of Muslim honor which has been "prostituted" before the West by "apostate" pro-U.S. regimes. Scenes of graphic humiliation of Muslims by American soldiers - women mocking the genitalia of naked men - will reinforce the appeal among the shamed young...
...that trust may be shaken not so much by the photographs themselves, but by what they reveal about the level of oversight in the operations of U.S. forces. For example, two of the interrogators accused of abuses in the Abu Ghraib scandal are so-called "civilian contractors," men hired by private U.S. firms to whom the military has outsourced such sensitive functions as interrogating suspected insurgents. One of the companies named, the Virginia-based CACI, is still advertising jobs for interrogators on its web site, and the job definition specifies that the candidate would work under "moderate supervision." The phrase...