I am a foreign correspondent who has covered several wars, mostly in Latin America, and I was often miffed to see corpses of both civilians and rebel combatants with their pants pulled down to their knees.

During the massive urban battles in El Salvador during November 1989, I saw and photographed several corpses on the streets of the capital city in that very state, many of them civilians.

We reporters started to compare notes among ourselves, and with some non-US diplomats, and it became clear that this was a generalized occurrence.

One day, I was out covering the urban combats with a local TV cameraman who had previously been in the military academy – before deciding that was not the life for him – and I asked him: Mauricio, what is up with that?

He told me that it was pretty standard practice, taught in the government military academy. To sodomize your victim just before you kill him, or as you are killing him, served dual purposes:for one, it rendered the ultimate humiliation of the perceived enemy; and, more importantly, was the ultimate dehumanization of the victim, rendering him (it) as something on a lower level of being, and thus unworthy of the perpetrators’ shame or guilt (or so the theory went).

Small wonder that my new journo pal chose to join our profession, over his previous vocation.

Did I forget to mention that the Salvadoran army was trained and directed by the US military?

***

FDL postscript: Abu Ghraib did not surprise me one bit, sadly so.

Showboy.

That’s why Watergate-gate is snark supreme.

And Watergate is the neo-con nightmare.

Mwahahaaa.

We refrain from calling African Americans “niggers”, we don’t call Jews “kikes”, nor do we refer to Mexicans as “wetbacks” or “beaners”. Well, most of us don’t. So when we refer to sex workers as “whores” or “hookers” or even “prostitutes”, we are demeaning and demonizing a group of working women (and men), and enabling them to be victimized and exploited.

Yeah, I know, I giggle at the whole idea of a bunch of rectitudinous and pompous male legislators being taken down by a sex scandal, but really, if the only way they can have sex is by paying for it, they should be the objects of our pity. Or maybe we should just consider them as upholders of the free market system at its finest.

Now on to the next post: Rush arrested!

give yourself a break – we all need one from time to time

Take Care !