Wake up America!

Author SG  is a retired Army Command Sergeant Major and routine Fox News Channel military pundit. Click here for information on Mr. G's Echo9 Consulting.

Unfortunately, the tawdry photos have obfuscated the many favorable reasons we are in Iraq and overshadowed the fact we have yet to define the end state.

The more press time we give these pictures and subsequent courts martial hearings the more we fuel the anti-Americanism fire spreading rapidly throughout the Middle East.  More importantly, the flippant actions of a few have derailed our cause sending the moral-high ground argument off the tracks.  Could it be possible we are failing to articulate the prison scandal as merely immature actions by several prison guards.  Pictures we have seen to date, as horrible as they may be to most human beings, are far from meeting the definition of torture.  Albeit, being naked, cold, tired, and placed in sexual poses seems incorrigible to most Americans...but, those who call these acts "torture" have little idea what torture amounts to.  During hard-cell interrogation, humiliation tactics are often in play and may be effective methods of exploitation against those from other cultures.  Wearing a hood, naked, scared, tired, humiliated, and uncomfortable is not torture.  As a graduate of the Army's S.E.R.E. (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape) course I can tell you I experienced a week wearing a hood, being confined to a wooden box 48"x48", starved, slapped, kicked, punched, hosed down in the middle of the night, naked, exhausted, etc.  Granted, my perspective may not be the norm.  These photos indicate a lack of discipline, maturity, and professionalism on the part of our soldiers.  As a career Soldier, that's personally unsettling.  The photo's themselves are not the issue - had these photos been recorded to document the activities, interrogation techniques, and condition of prisoners I'd have no qualms.  I've studied our enemy for two decades and there is no doubt in my mind that these fanatics would cut my daughters heart out, feed it to me on a paper plate, and rape my wife while forcing me to watch with the muzzle of an AK imbedded into my ear...  Wake up America, before you start criticizing how we interrogate those who wish to kill you without compunction, how about a little understanding for what's at stake and who is on the tip of the spear for this nation so we can sleep peacefully under the very blanket of freedom our great military provides.