Digby's Hullabaloo

It’s Not The Sex

by digby

…no matter how titillated he was by the pictures.

“It was a National Guard unit run amok,” Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable … This is more about pornography than torture.”

Uhm, no it isn’t just that sex abuse is torture, although it is, which he apparently has finally discovered. But he and Rush and many on the right see this thing as pornography which is defined as “material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement.”

Rush said, you’ll recall:

LIMBAUGH:And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.

LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.

(Apparently, it isn’t just him. I always wondered why Shays stayed in the Republican party and now I know.)

Seriously, do Republicans really think those pictures of the mentally ill patient covered in excrement or the terrified man who suffered that bloody dogbite were intended to cause sexual excitement? Where does this pornography thing come from? Did it cause them sexual excitement?

Shays said Friday he wished he had more fully explained his views at the debate.

“I was maybe not as expansive as I needed to be,” he said. “Of course, the degrading of anyone is torture. We need to deal with it.”

Shays said his debate comments reflected the disturbing photos he has seen of Abu Ghraib abuses: “Naked Iraqis, naked Americans, Americans having sex … gross and despicable pictures.”

I guess he was so overwhelmed by the male nudity and the pictures of Americans having sex (which none of the rest of us have seen) that he didn’t notice this stuff:

11:15 p.m., Nov. 7, 2003. The detainees were brought into the hard site for their involvement in a riot. The seven detainees were flexi cuffed and thrown into a pile on the floor. Soldiers then jumped on the pile, stomped on their hands and feet. CPL GRANER is depicted holding and in the process of punching a detainee. [Detainee name deleted] is detainee with writing on leg wearing the white underwear.

Maybe Republicans think that’s porno, but it sure looks like torture to me.