This wasn’t just ‘blowing off steam’

I had never gauged the depths of Rush Limbaugh’s indecency until I read what he said about the Abu Ghraib atrocities.

Limbaugh said: “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it, and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You (ever) heard of need to blow some steam off?”

One of the prisoners in the pictures was Hayder Sabbar Abd, arrested in June. He told a New York Times reporter that he was taken with six others to the room shown in the pictures.

He said the prisoners’ heads were beaten on the walls and doors, and Mr. Abd’s jaw was broken. The soldiers took away their beds and threw cold water on the floor for them to sleep on. The torture went on for 10 nights. “All of us believed we would be killed,” he said.

A month later, he was transferred to a civilian prison. Two weeks later, an Army military investigator showed him the pictures and questioned him about them.

Mr. Abd was released in mid-April, without ever having been interrogated or charged with a crime.

But he did give some American G.I.s the opportunity to blow some steam off.

Ann Adams

Oak Harbor