The descriptions of the horrors to which our two young soldiers were subjected in Iraq - the two who were captured, tortured, beheaded, and so brutalized that they were unrecognizable - would seem to put Abu Ghraib and other such episodes in a somewhat different light.
How anyone can think that putting underwear on somebody's head and having a dog bark at prisoners is in the same moral universe as what was done to these men escapes me. Yet, the word "torture" is used to describe both as if they are in some bizarre sense morally equivalent.
We were subjected to Abu Ghraib horror stories and photos for months and years after it came to light. We were urged to reflect on what kind of a nation we are that we would spawn people who could do such awful things as put detainees in humiliating and embarrassing poses. Calls went forth demanding that we leave Iraq because we'd lost the moral high ground. Then came revelations of allegations that Korans had been flushed down toilets in Guantanamo and prisoners having been forced to endure loud music. We flagellated ourselves for our barbarity. We condemned ourselves because we were "torturers."
Now we see what genuine evil looks like. We see Americans subjected to unimaginable agony at the hands of sub-human savages. And the MSM can scarcely bring themselves to acknowledge what has happened. A day or two in the news and the story's gone. No photos, no descriptions, no nightly reminders of the evil against which we fight, nothing that would give the American people insight into what real evil is. The left-wing bloggers yawn and return to their fantasies of indicting Karl Rove. The media returns quickly to its fascinations with Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie. It has no time to be drawing the important distinctions between what our interrogators do and why they do it and what the Islamists do and why. The media spent almost as much time fretting over whether our troops treated Zarqawi roughly before he died than they have on the fate of Kristain Manchaca and Thomas Tucker.
It almost seems as if they just don't care.