Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

John Pilger has the best column on the state of affairs in Iraq today.

Read the first-hand story of the above photo in Saturday’s Daily Mirror. The teenager being tortured above was picked up for “stealing down by the docks,” tortured for eight hours and left for dead.

This torture practice was widespread across multiple coalition-run prisons; Military Intelligence and CIA were behind it, giving orders to enlisted Army MPs, not the other way around. Don’t believe that? Ted Koppel didn’t tell you so? That’s what your own government says, in two classified reports obtained by Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker. He happens to be the Pulitzer Prize winner that broke the story of the My Lai massacre and exposed the cover-up that occurred afterward, so what does he know anyway?

In honor of the one-year anniversary of Bush’s pathetic carrier stunt, all rant-o-rama photos will carry the official “Mission Accomplished” banner until major combat operations, or torture of innocent civilians, cease. Whichever comes last.