GLOBAL COLUMN© BY TED CORDOVA

Global backlash, Democrats say

The episode of American soldiers torturing or humiliating mostly civilian Iraqi prisoners, has prompted a “global backlash” of criticism against the U.S., the Democratic party noted using the issue as a powerful political argument against president Bush, who seeks reelection next November.

John Kerry, the Democratic candidate has already called for secretary of Defense to resign, in an avalanche of criticism that, even among Republicans points to Rumsfeld’ s responsibility of the military scandal.

In other words, Rummy’s name adds to the already long list of collateral victims of the Bush family private wars against the “Islamic global terrorism’.

As the Washington post reported, “US diplomats around the world have sent troubling cables back to Washington with warnings that the graphic photographs could seriously affect US standing and broader foreign policy.”

The “Move on” website, which is part of the Democratic campaign has quickly started action thru Internet and other media, “to restore America’s good name.”

Columnist Tom Friedman, in NYT, put it bluntly: "This administration needs to undertake a total overhaul of its Iraq policy; otherwise, it is courting a total disaster for us all. That overhaul needs to begin with President Bush firing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- today, not tomorrow or next month, today."

We have got to support an immediate full, and impartial investigation into allegations of torture, conveyed “MoveOn”

An angered President Bush, who had already called the action against Iraqi prisoners as an “aberration”, explained to the Arab World in TV interviews that the few soldiers behind the aberration, do do not represent the way the majority of Americans are or think. He also apologized for the abuse and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, saying the scenes of mistreatment had made Americans “sick to our stomachs”. Bush also told Jordan’s King Abdullah II: “I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.”

The great irony is that, after the failure or justifying the war against Iraq because of the WMDs- still unaccounted for-, or the threat of nuclear attacks by an alleged power of Saddam Hussein, for Bush, the best argument was the liberation of the iraqui people from repression, imprisonment and torture in, among others, the prison of Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad. It was exactly in Abu Ghraib where the sadism and abherrtions were commited by American military against iraquis.

Global History will remember George Bush tied to the name of Abu Ghraib.

BIP