Iraq's Child Prisoners

[mburbank]

I saw this story on the AP a few days go. I canNOT believe it isn't getting wider distribution.

My hope is that the major media outlets are looking for confimration or denial before running with it, and I'd understand that as it's pretty outrageous material.

I worry though, that beyond the Lindy England trial, the major press feels the public is 'fatigued' by the tprture 'scandal'. I think they've decided that

A.) Speciffic orders, smoking guns, or direct culpability at the top of the chain of command will not be found,

B.) The 'few bad apples' storyline, while totally incomplete, is packageable as copy.

so

C.) They won't go with the much truer but much harder to follow scenario of either a deliberately created 'anything goes' climate, or a simply clear attitude coming from the top down of 'I don't care at all what you do to any fucking Iraqis as long as you find the WMD or kill the dead enders and al quaeda supporters or achieve whatever mythical goal we've convinced ourselves of this week.'

And THAT I think is the real story. Their is no coherent strategy in Iraq because civillian planners in the US utterly refuse to craft one that has any bearing on the realities on the ground. In a chaotic situation, without coherent leadership, without knowing who's orders to follow (Months went by with no clear deffinition of wether Military Police, the CIA or mysterious 'contractors' were in position to issue orders at Abu Gharib), a 'Heart of Darkness' scenario develops, except in this case we've got dozens of Kurtzes. It's a swamp most of the media has no desire to wade into when there are much easier versions of the story to write.