...leaving Nixon in the White House...
England's brutality is explained away not as the logical continuum of the occupation but as a contradiction to it. Increasingly, Bush's best hope is to take out the "trailer trash". They have cast not only the actions as disgraceful but the people accused of carrying them out as dispensable - collateral damage in the propaganda war at home, where the poor don't vote or contribute to any campaigns.
When Bush went on Arab television two weeks ago, he said the behaviour "does not represent the America that I know". But then, thanks to his connections, he has never had to serve in the army during a war. And England and her friends were never going to pledge for the Skull and []Bones, the elite fraternity to which both Bush and Democratic challenger, John Kerry, belonged at Yale. They are neither wealthy nor well connected - he doesn't need to know them, although the irony is that if they did vote they would probably vote for him.
So long as the buck stops with England and her colleagues, the whole episode can be reduced to soccer hooligans in uniform - the white working class (one African-American is accused, although he is featured rarely and appears in no photographs) running amok.
Like arresting the Watergate burglars and leaving Nixon in the White House, convicting only them would suggest the abuse can be understood as the sporadic acts of a few offensive individuals. The higher up it goes, the clearer it becomes that they were in fact the systemic actions of an occupying institution.
Gary Younge/Guardian UK/buzzle May.17.04
