The American Spectator

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Special Report

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Pardon me while I mount my high horse -- that trusty steed -- but do we really want to go there? Do we want to use Hussein's crimes as the standard? Is everything up to the chopping off of a prisoner's hand now acceptable? When I raised the objection, fellow book-liners pulled out the well-worn conversation-ending objection that "Saddam Hussein gassed his own people." So there.

"These Americans who did this will be punished," one of the amputees recently told the Washington Post. "Under Saddam, such abuses were rewarded and praised."

This Iraqi understands the issue better than some of my fellow conservatives. It is not the intensity of abuse that determines the righteousness of a civilization. It's the willingness to punish abuses.

As for the man responsible for the construction of Abu Ghraib, focal point of so much suffering for so many, one amputee, chin held high, had a message, "Look at where the person that cut off our hands is now, and look at where we are."

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Iraq