MORE ON ABU GHRAIB... FROM JAMES TARANTO

Why Abu Ghraib Matters
Since word surfaced last week that U.S. soldiers are under investigation for allegedly beating and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility, a lot of people have analyzed the incident in public relations terms. "As news of the disgraceful mistreatment of prisoners by American soldiers sweeps the world, our enemies celebrate a major propaganda gift," writes Ralph Peters in the New York Post. "Even our friends cannot defend the indefensible."

This complaint is somewhat beside the point. If indeed the allegations turn out to be true--and these photos certainly suggest that's likely--then America's enemies will be able to say one bad thing about us that's true. But from the standpoint of their propaganda, what difference does that make? They will say bad things about us whether true or not, and indeed they're already making preposterous statements about Abu Ghraib.

The Associated Press manages to produce an ex-prisoner, Dhia al-Shweiri, a supporter of renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who claims the abuse he suffered at the hands of his American captors was worse than what Saddam's henchmen meted out in the same prison. Here are the horrors to which America subjected him:

During his stay at Abu Ghraib, he said [he] was asked to take off his clothes only once and for about 15 minutes.

"I thought they wanted me to change into the red prison uniform, so I took off my clothes, down to my underwear. Then he asked me to take off my underwear. I started arguing with him, but in the end he made me take off my underwear," al-Shweiri said.

He said he and six other prisoners--all hooded--had to face the wall and bend over a little as they put their hands on the wall.

"They made us stand in a way that I am ashamed to describe. They came to look at us as we stood there. They knew this would humiliate us," he said, adding that he was not sodomized.

During Saddam's regime, in contrast, "he said he was given electric shocks, beaten and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back." According to him, "that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked."

The Washington Post, meanwhile, quotes a former prisoner who says the exercise routine was too demanding and the music was unpleasant:

The black sack the troops placed over his head was removed only briefly during the next nine days of interrogation, conducted by U.S. officials in civilian and military clothes, he said. He was forced to do knee bends until he collapsed, he recalled, and black marks still ring his wrists from the pinch of plastic handcuffs. Rest was made impossible by loudspeakers blaring, over and over, the Beastie Boys' rap anthem, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn."

That some ex-prisoners are bellyaching about trivia does not, of course, mean that all was well in Abu Ghraib. If real abuses are proved, then it's entirely appropriate, as Dan Senor, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, puts it, that "careers will be ended and criminal charges are going to be leveled."

Enemy propaganda notwithstanding, this underscores the fundamental difference between America and totalitarian regimes like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Evil is part of human nature, and Americans are as susceptible to it as anyone else. But in a civilized country like ours, the state uses its power to prevent and punish brutality. In a regime like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the state uses its power to inflict brutality. Those who seek to blur this distinction are acting in the defense of institutionalized evil.