Why did you take pictures?

"These soilders should be punished if for no other reason than the fact that they took pictures of it. You don't take pictues. What were they thinking?
Maybe that is the whole problem with this whole thing. They just weren't thinking.
This was made known back in January and no one paid any attention until their were pictures." (exact words).

Yes, this was a comment made in one of the rightwing blogs. There were many more, even worse comments, but this was the most interesting (!) one. To many, including this person, taking pictures seems to be the biggest mistake not the nature of the crime. And not the fact that the soldiers were told to "make it hell and soften up the prisoners for interrogation". And not that this whole thing is not an isolated incident and that this was wide spread and US officials knew about it all along and that this is the result of the dirty nature of this occupation that also includes the wide spread abuse and torture by British occupying forces as they were tought how to torture.

Having said all this, I am sure those "few" soldiers who are detained now for "taking pictures" are being told in their detention spots, "Look what you did! What were you thinking? Why were you so stupid? Why did you take pictures? Couldn't you do it without showing it off?"

Also read:
"The coalition has revealed it received reports of maltreatment of inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in January."
and
The (UK) government has confirmed it received a Red Cross report on alleged abuses by UK troops on Iraqi prisoners in February.
and
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it warned American officials of prisoner abuse in Iraq more than a year ago and that the mistreatment was “not individual acts.” “There was a pattern and a system,” Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the ICRC’s director of operations, said in Geneva. Some of the actions were “tantamount to torture,” he said.