Infomaniac: WeBlog

Overheard on the Web, and other Web links From The Herald's Research Editor

A little levity, and dead seriousness 

For a lighter side of the election madness going on, here's a site with George Bush and John Kerry pumpkin stencils. If you're getting ready to carve your pumpkin, you can express your politics at the same time.

On the other hand, here's an article that looks like essential reading: The Road to Abu Ghraib, in the Washington Monthly. By a former military man, Phil Carter, who expresses what effect the events in Iraq may have on our soldiers in the future:

Those tens of thousands of Iraqis who surrendered during the two Gulf Wars did so because they believed they would be treated better as prisoners by the United States than as soldiers by the Hussein government. But in the wake of Abu Ghraib, more future battles fought by America will have to be fought to the death. Similarly, civilians in the places where we fight can no longer be expected to greet us as liberators. For as long as the memories of Abu Ghraib linger, our soldiers will be greeted with suspicion wherever they go.
...There was a third path between living with the anachronistic laws of war and rejecting them in favor of expediency. The Bush administration rejected that path, and now, every day, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens are paying the ultimate price for its mistake.

(Via Metafilter.)

posted by liz at 1:31 PM