WP: George Bush as Saddam Hussein

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Comparing George Bush to Saddam Hussein is an increasingly common theme in the international online media's outraged reaction to photographs showing U.S. military police humiliating Iraqi prisoners. The anger generated by the photographs, first shown on CBS's "60 Minutes II" last week, was compounded by additional photographs published Friday in the Daily Mirror, a London tabloid, which showed a British guard urinating on an Iraqi prisoner and jabbing him in the groin with a rifle butt.


After British military officials questioned the authenticity of the photos, the Daily Mirror ran another story quoting two unnamed soldiers who said, "We stand by every word of our story."

While U.S. and British coverage has focused on President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair's denunciations of the abuses, many foreign commentators are starting to compare the U.S.-led occupation to Hussein's tyranny.



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Ehsan Ahrari, columnist for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, says the photos of Abu Ghraib undermine the Bush administration's only remaining justification for the war.

"Once it could not find weapons of mass destruction to justify its invasion of Iraq, the administration of U.S. President George W Bush claimed that the liberation of Iraqis from the most inhumane rule of a dictator was a good enough reason for taking military action against that country. Now reports of the U.S. military's abuse of Iraqi prisoners in that notorious prison threaten to deprive the United States of even that wobbly claim."





Washington Post

...Bush has treated this like it needed to be covered up. Once again, the Bush folks have been reactive rather than pro-active taking action only when under pressure and slapping the perpetrators on the wrists rather then hitting the guilty parties hard. This is a White House cover up, pure and simple. A thorough independent investigation should be started immediately.