It’s one thing when blowhards like Rush Limbauh compare the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to a “fraternity prank,” and express some pleasure in the rape, torture, and murder of the Iraqi prisoners, but it’s something else when members of the U.S. Senate stoop to the same offensive level.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Fresh off his latest exploits of undermining science and promoting an anti-environmental agenda, Inhofe shocked a full committee hearing today by attacking human rights watchers, Democrats, Rumsfeld critics, and everyone else who believes the Abu Ghraib scandal is a stain on our country.
As others condemned the reported abuse of Iraqi prisoners, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe on Tuesday expressed outrage at the worldwide outrage over the treatment by American soldiers of those he called “terrorists” and “murderers.”
“I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment,” the Oklahoma Republican said at a U.S. Senate hearing probing the scandal.
“These prisoners, you know they’re not there for traffic violations,” Inhofe said. “If they’re in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.”
If only Republican officials weren’t so opposed to reading. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Myers didn’t feel like reading the Taguba report, and Inhofe apparently hasn’t seen the Red Cross report — given to the White House last year — that estimates as many as 90% of the thousands of Iraqi prisoners had been “arrested by mistake.”
Just as an aside, Inhofe also condemned “humanitarian do-gooders…crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations.” What a class act.