It's Craptastic!

Letter to Des Moines Register from Congressman Steve King

Washington, D.C.— The Des Moines Register has called my word of choice to describe the abusive acts committed by several soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison “an embarrassment”. Words and their meaning are the business of newspapers and politicians. Words are the most effective and versatile means of precisely conveying a thought- so effective and so necessary that we invent a word where no suitable word exists.

Forty two states saw the need to pass a law against the act of “causing physical or mental harm or anxieties which may demean, degrade, or disgrace another person.” The criminal behavior outlawed by the 42 states lists: causing indecent exposure, embarrassing dress, deprivation of sleep, food, or drink, branding or marking, offensive physical contact, or other forced activity which could adversely affect the mental health or dignity of the person. All of the listed activities are alleged to have occurred at Abu Ghraib prison and all of the activities mentioned fall under the legal definition of the states that carefully chose one word to describe that activity. All forty two states listed the crime as “hazing” and prosecute it as hazing. The question of flippant usage of a word objectionable to opponents of the administration is now closed.
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Our enemies, and let’s be clear, our enemies are approximately 10% of the Islamic world, the radical jihadists. There are two ways to win this war.

One way is to identify them and kill them all. Their crimes of infamy give some justification to this approach. The fact is that 10% of 1.2 billion people are too many to kill.

At some point in the night, the guards broke a phosphorescent light stick — "the glowing finger," he called it — and poured its liquid on his body "until I was glowing and they were laughing."

"They took me to the room and they signaled me to get onto the floor," he said. One of the guards, he said, sodomized him with a nightstick.
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Mustafa Jassim Mustafa, who was in a cell opposite and above Mr. Waleed's, identified one of the guards as Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. However, he said he saw the guards sodomize Mr. Waleed with the phosphorescent light.
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"That was Ramadan, around 12 midnight approximately, when I saw them," said Kasim Medahhi Hilas, who also testified that on another occasion he saw a prison interpreter, identified as Abu Hamid, raping a young male prisoner. "The female soldier was taking pictures," he said.
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"They ordered me to curse Islam and because they started to hit my broken leg, I cursed my religion," he said, referring to an injury he previously suffered in circumstances not made clear. "They ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive. And I did what they ordered me."