Arab Rage and the American Way

[maddezmom]

By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; 5:30 PM


When President Bush told Arab television viewers Tuesday that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners "does not represent the America I know," he sailed into a powerful current of thinking in the Middle East and around the world that holds exactly the opposite view: torture and humiliation of others is the American way.


While Bush said, "people in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent," online commentators in the region were saying that American expressions of contrition are meaningless and that the Arab response will be violent.

"Didn't the American president repeat that Iraq will be a model for the region?" asked columnist Abdulwahab Badrakhan in the London-based Dar al Hayat.

"This is the model in his American-Israeli formula," Badrakhan said. "Thousands of prisoners without due process or investigations, the revenge of angry soldiers, military agencies allowing the abuse of prisoners, wars between the occupation forces and civil groups."

In a front page column for the Iran Daily, a reformist newspaper in Tehran, columnist Mohammad T. Roghaniha wrote, "What is unfolding in Bremer's Iraq more or less resembles the black days when U.S.-backed military dictators ruled in Latin America."
~snip~
more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4838-2004May5.html

[many a good man]

1. Bush*'s only regret:

<<<"A dictator wouldn't be answering questions about this," he told Al-Arabiya.>>>