Body and Soul is back. This is a long post that is a must read. She covers a lot of ground and ends with...

And in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink
A scattered and contradictory post on responsibility and Abu Ghraib

Why do we want to absolve people implementing immoral policies? One of the reasons, I think, is relatively honest. It goes back to what I was saying about the video of the killings in Iraq. Just speaking for myself, I can't imagine what those soldiers are going through. Even if the people they killed were innocent and unthreatening, I'd be loathe to second guess what they did because I don't honestly know what I'd do in the same situation. Another honest reason is that even when we recognize that people have done horrible things, some innate need for justice rebels against the least culpable, the ones who are in the weakest position, receiving the greatest blame, the most punishment. But Toufe also suggests a less noble motive for our hesitation to grant individual soldiers responsibility for their actions: Perhaps we shy away from this deeper recognition of individual moral agency because it has such far reaching consequences. When we deny another's moral agency, we help to create the conditions for denying our own. If we start talking about individual responsibility when it comes to soldiers, how long is it before we discover our own individual responsibility when it comes to war, colonialism, disproportionate consumption, racism, ecological damage, global poverty and hunger, millions of dead children who lacked simple drugs. In absolving them, we absolve ourselves. Unfortunately, self-absolution isn't worth much.

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Torture and Truth

Last November in Iraq, I traveled to Fallujah during the early days of what would become known as the "Ramadan Offensive"—when suicide bombers in the space of less than an hour destroyed the Red Cross headquarters and four police stations, and daily attacks by insurgents against US troops doubled, and the American adventure in Iraq entered a bleak tunnel from which it has yet to emerge. I inquired of a young man there why the people of that city were attacking Americans more frequently each day. How many of the attacks, I wanted to know, were carried out by foreign fighters? How many by local Islamists? And how many by what US officers called "FRL's"— former regime loyalists? The young man—I'll call him Salih —listened, answered patiently in his limited but eloquent English, but soon became impatient with what he plainly saw as my American obsession with categories and particulars. Finally he interrupted my litany of questions, pushed his face close to mine, and spoke to me slowly and emphatically: For Fallujans it is a shame to have foreigners break down their doors. It is a shame for them to have foreigners stop and search their women. It is a shame for the foreigners to put a bag over their heads, to make a man lie on the ground with your shoe on his neck. This is a great shame, you understand? This is a great shame for the whole tribe. It is the duty of that man, and of that tribe, to get revenge on this soldier—to kill that man. Their duty is to attack them, to wash the shame. The shame is a stain, a dirty thing; they have to wash it. No sleep—we cannot sleep until we have revenge. They have to kill soldiers. He leaned back and looked at me, then tried one more time. "The Americans," he said, "provoke the people. They don't respect the people."

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'I will always hate you people'
Family's fury at mystery death

The Red Cross visited him on January 19. On February 17, the organisation informed the family that he was dead. "I went to the morgue in the hospital and found him in a black US body bag," Ashraf said yesterday. "There was a cut on his head behind his right ear. It was hard to miss." It was discovered that US doctors had made a 20cm incision in his skull, apparently in an attempt to save his life after the initial blow. The family presented its autopsy findings to an Iraqi judge. "He told us, 'You can't do anything to the coalition. What happened is history,'" Ashraf said. Yesterday, as darkness fell around the scientist's home, the family showed some of their father's belongings returned from the jail - a few Red Cross letters, a bag of clothes and a framed photo. But there also was the legacy of emotion - of a kind now common across Iraq, and swelling into a storm. "I won't allow myself to rest until I have got revenge for him," Rana said.

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A Corrupted Culture   thanks to BuzzFlash

US general linked to Abu Ghraib abuse
Leaked memo reveals control of prison passed to military intelligence to 'manipulate detainees'