More Arab Reactions to Abu Ghraib

Thought you might be interested in a follow-up to my initial post on Omar's thoughts after the release of the first photos from Abu Ghraib (which he - and I initially - spelled Abu Gharib). Now, as with Al Qaeda and many other anglicized words, I'm not sure how the heck I'm supposed to spell it. So I'm following the convention used by whatever source I happen to be quoting at the moment for consistency's sake.

Here, Ali talks with a friend - a doctor who worked in Abu Gharib and was able to observe conditions there under the Americans. Go over and read it. A brief excerpt:

- So, you believe there’s a lot of clamor here?

-As you said these things are unaccepted but I’m sure that they are isolated and they are just very few exceptions that need to be dealt with, but definitely not the rule. The rule is kindness, care and respect that most of these thugs don’t deserve, and that I have seen by my own eyes. However I still don't understand why did this happen.

Just one man's observations, but interesting.

Omar also translated some comments on President Bush's statement from BBC Arabic for us, served up with some rather wry commentary:

I've selected some of the comments for translation and it's worth mentioning that about 40% of the total number of comments was positive (sorry, I mean they were supportive of the CIA propaganda).

-"Who reads the reactions of Iraqis will see how surprised they're by the way the Americans can prove that years of Saddam's rule and of his anti-American propaganda can be washed out by time; here we have the president of the greatest nation on earth apologizes for what a small group of pervert soldiers did. And here, the American press proves that it's free to show the truth. We lived with similar pictures for years until they became the basics of every prison's daily life and we never heard an Arabic paper point them out. These are lessons from the western culture entering the hearts of Arabs, whether the Arab leaders liked or not".

-"Sa'eed - Diwaniyah/Iraq.

Obviously this is only positive commentary, but I figured that since the lamestream media is covering the outrage-on-the-Arab-street angle pretty thoroughly, it might be nice to see a different perspective.

- Cassandra