Torture at Abu Ghraib: The Terrorist Tactics of a Modern Democracy and the Oppression of the Muslim “Other”

Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured. Anyone who has suffered torture will never again be at ease in the world, the abomination of the annihilation is never extinguished. Faith in humanity, already cracked with the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again. Torture, a word adeptly derived from the Latin " to twist, " is the dirty little secret of modernity. Because the general advancement of civilization supposedly left this particular brand of brutality behind in some dark age, the world was shocked and outraged when in 2004 images surfaced of American soldiers torturing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. A prisoner on a leash, prisoners naked and forced to mimic sexual acts on each other, a prisoner standing on a box, arms outstretched and hooded, wires dangling from his fingers—all this while American soldiers looked on smiling, mugging for the camera, flashing the thumbs up. This was no accident, no misrepresentation: it was undeniably torture, and no blurring of the definition could hide its truth. Members of the Bush administration immediately propagated the notion that the " abuse " was the product of a few sadistic " hillbillies, " who took advantage of lax supervision to act on their reprehensible desires. This story was not true.