It didn’t matter that, say, Abner Louima was in America when the police raped him with a broom handle during ‘questioning.’ And being in America didn’t keep John Paul Penry off Death Row, despite the fact he had a mental age of six. Heck, the fact they even have the death penalty is plain uncivilised.

Not, of course, that the UK is run by blameless lovelies, but compared to most First World nations, the US has a shitty human rights record when it comes to its own people (recently, not just in terms of that nice Apartheid system they had going until the 70s). Amnesty say so, and I tend to believe them - so it’s no great surprise they’ll treat prisoners of war like that.

Update: Perhaps I should read the news before checking this site - evidence of British soldiers committing similar war crimes, which rather scotches my brutal American society leads to brutal soldiers theory.

no doubt seen as mildly humiliating and highly amusing by their perpetrators, they simply stank of american arrogance.

i dispair of the these times.