Bad Books For Stupid People
This business of using dogs to torture Iraqi prisoners actually is more depraved than is obvious, if you can believe that.
Islam has a prohibition against keeping dogs in the house or touching them. They are considered impure. I would guess that the braintrust who is putting together this new torture regime thought they were being very clever by doing something that "the ayrabs" would find particularly unpleasant.
We know that big tough American guys like Trent Lott wouldn't piss all over themselves if they were tied up naked while a 150 lb snarling German Shepard was allowed to back them into a corner and take a piece out of their flesh. They don't have a problem with dogs like those arabs do.
This is but another example of the crude, stereotypical approach we seem to have taken toward the Iraqis (and undoubtedly the Afghans, as well.) And it is likely because the "intellectuals" who planned and implemented the war don't have a clue.
Sy Hersh mentioned in his May 24th article in the New Yorker one of the many possible reasons why:
"The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was 'The Arab Mind,' a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai ... The book includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression ... The Patai book, an academic told me, was 'the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.'"
You might as well read a ZOG comic on mudpeople as read this for any true understanding. The passages on sex could have been written during Queen Victoria's reign which is, indeed, the period from which many silly, crude stereotypes about arabs and sex really got off the ground. (The funny thing is that Patai's book portrays arabs as being rigidly sexually repressed when during Victoria's time they were reviled for being scandalously oversexed. It seems that no matter what, westerners believe that arabs are all fucked up when it comes to sex. Unlike we Americans, of course, who define healthy sexuality.)
So, a bunch of second rate minds read a third rate book about people they know nothing about except what they've seen at parties where Ahmad Chalabi is holding court, and they fashion a torture regime based upon a ridiculous thesis that arabs (unlike Western he-men apparently, which is interesting in itself) are particularly uncomfortable with being herded around naked, forced to pretend to masturbate in front of women and piling themselves up in naked pyramids, among other sexually charged, homoerotic acts.
It's always interesting to see people's innermost fears and insecurities projected on to another isn't it? These neocons have some serious issues.