Sex Ring Republicans

by digby

I guess I’ve been living in some sort of dreamworld here in the wholesome Hollywood heartland, but I am honestly shocked at the degree of depravity and sadism that Republicans across the board seem to find normal. I don’t consider myself a prude, but damn.

The original Limbaugh reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty telling, but I figured he just represented the rich, S&M portion of the GOP constituency. And while I was a bit surprised that there was no outcry among the conservative moralists I figured it was just because they were being good soldiers in the GWOT. The Mark Foley thing has proven that they just don’t much give a damn about sexual depravity or morals at all if it threatens their political power. The House leadership in charge looked the other way but the moralists are lining up to blame a fictitious gay cabal they believe has infiltrated “their” party. Talk about moral relativism.

But I really thought that the northeastern moderates might be the last holdouts for sanity. They have always seemed temperamentally conservative in the old fashioned sense of relying on prudence and reason. Apparently not. Yesterday Chris Shays described the events at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” and denied that any torture took place. A sex ring:

“Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said according to a transcript provided by Democratic challenger Diane Farrell’s campaign and confirmed by others who attended the debate. “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.”

Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn’t doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.

“I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff,” Shays said. “The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn’t primarily about torture.”

Shays defined torture as anything that could cause mental or physical pain or sleep depravation.

I don’t know what kind of sex these GOP freaks are having, but I don’t think most of these things (from the Taguba report) are normally considered “sex,” even in Rush’s wildest S&M fantasies — certainly when they are perpetrated against prisoners against their will:

a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;

b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;

c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;

d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;

e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;

f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;

g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

What in the hell is wrong with these people? That’s not torture? That stuff is over and above the things we’ve all seen with the forced masturbation, simulated fellatio, smearing feces on prisoners and forcing them to wear women’s underwear while chained in stress positions to their cells or beds.

Characterizing what happened at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” is bizarre enough but he defends his comment the next day which means it wasn’t a slip of the tongue or a badly worded phrase. He’s thought about this and he believes it.

He said he looked at all those pictures and saw sex. Did you? I sure didn’t. But then we libertine lefties base our belief that people should be able to do whatever they like in their private lives on the bedrock principle of individual freedom, agency and rights. It’s the coercion that makes all this stuff so wrong. When somebody is coerced or forced into doing “sexual” things against their will, it can most certainly be torture. (I can’t believe I even have to make that argument.)

Furthermore, in the case of Abu Ghraib, it’s well known that what we saw in those pictures were techniques that were developed and shipped in from Guantanamo when General Geoffrey D. Miller was brought over to “straighten out” the prison and get actionable intelligence. They believed that these sexual techniques were a particularly potent way to break conservative Muslims. This stuff was common and it was pervasive — if it was a “sex ring” it was a mighty big one that went all the way to Rumsfeld and probably Bush and Cheney too.

This is exactly why you draw bright lines on torture. Chris Shays is pretty much telling the world that the only problems with what went on at Abu Ghraib were matters of inappropriate sex and, therefore, don’t violate the Geneva Conventions prohibition against torture. I’ll be anxious to hear him explain to the families of American troops in the future that they shouldn’t sweat it when their relatives are repeatedly raped or paraded around naked and forced to perform sex acts for cameras. (Hell, even being bitten by dogs or beaten with chairs isn’t torture according to him.)

Republicans apparently find these actions little more opprobrious than they find one of their friends hitting on underage boys but I would bet the families of these troops won’t see such treatment as being part of a “sex ring” and might just believe their loved one is being tortured. Shays and his pals will have to explain to them why that isn’t so.

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