What lying to our troops gets us

Today I was reading today's Boston Metro on my way to work on the "T" and came across a tiny blurb that said more than its few words.

"A female Army soldier in the notorious 320th Military Police Battalion meted out ''vigilante justice'' on Iraqi prisoners she believed had raped former POW Jessica Lynch, according to a letter from her battalion commander obtained by The Associated Press."

It has been well documented that Jessica Lynch's story was embellished to arouse patriotism (read this versus this). Her rescue footage was released while other items were classified, and many dispute her "all guns blazing capture" and there is no evidence of rape. That initial story from the Post, has been widely discredited.

Of course, the current female foot soldier in question is denying she abused prisoners and further that her commanding officer is making it up. "It's funny how the leadership continues to point downward," said then-Master Sgt. Lisa Girman Girman, a 35 year old Pennsylvania State Trooper in civilian life. (Watch for more low level troops to rat out their commanding officers as court martial trials start).

What struck me about this story, even if the Lynch-"revenge" angle isn't true, is that the story is credible. Most of the troops over in Iraq still think they are avenging 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with it. Why would they think such a silly thing? Well all the right-wing media, all there commanding officers, and all their civilian leaders (all the way up to the president himself) lead them to believe it, because they wanted to believe it too.

It's already unbearable when American troops are dying because of a lie, and Iraqi civilians are as well, but not that there is proof people are tortured because of it, how do the Vulcans (Bush's war cabinet of Cheney Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc) not feel shame? Appearantly not.

Now Rumsfeld and his ilk are disgustingly pleased that an American contractor was beheaded on an Al-Qaida affiliated website, because they now have a good excuse for holding back the rest of the photos and videos. One of these yet-to-released tapes or pictures is of a rape in progress of a female Iraqi. So much for the rape rooms being closed.

And so now the pressure is on CNN (I saw this morning) to do a Fox News style "here's all the good things the US has done in Iraq" segment since people flooded the site with right wing emails. The American people, no the world, demands transparency and concrete steps to fix this problem, not distracting it away with Tit-for-tat vigilantism.