By Rene Ciria-Cruz
Let’s hear Dick Cheney say “enhanced interrogation” once more. Rape was among the enhanced techniques used on Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. Retired Maj. General Antonio Taguba, who did an inquiry into the prison in Iraq and was punished for doing his job well, confirmed to the Daily Telegraph the existence of photos showing U.S. interrogators raping one female and one male prisoner and sodomizing a minor with a truncheon and a light stick. Taguba confirms what journalist Seymour Hersh first intimated. Rape may not have been specifically prescribed by the Cheney-Bush administration, but authorize torture as a method of interrogation, and rape logically becomes part of the continuum of efforts to break down a prisoner’s self-esteem. You’d expect such abuses in the armed forces of a dictatorial regime. The whole affair reveals a concrete result of the Cheney-Bush administration’s authoritarian impulses that were legally rationalized by puffed up sycophants like John Yoo. Okay, Mr. Cheney, let’s hear you say rape made America more secure.