The shameful and outrageous mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by a few men and women of our armed forces has shocked and humiliated this great country of ours.

It has also caused a great outcry and moral indignation around the world.

President George W. Bush has profusely apologized to the Iraqi people, as have our generals in Iraq – a truly unprecedented gesture in the history of warfare.

While we are all justified to show our moral indignation about these despicable acts against defenseless prisoners, we are nevertheless also entitled to ask this question:

Where was the moral outcry here and abroad, at the United Nations and especially in the Muslim world against the barbaric and inhuman atrocities perpetrated against dissidents during the Saddam regime, the dragging through the streets of mutilated bodies of our soldiers in Somalia and Fallujah, the throat-cutting of our journalist in Pakistan, the cheering and rejoicing by large exuberant crowds about all this and also the Sept. 11 massacre of our innocent citizens, the indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, children and worshippers in Israel by “holy warriors” – all in the name of Allah?

The few irresponsible people of our military have just handed our enemies, the Islamist terrorists and the anti-American crowd the equivalent of a psychological nuclear bomb or worse.

To be so passionately concerned about the well-being and humane treatment of our enemy prisoners – most of whom wish us nothing but death and destruction – what a country!

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston

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