The Abu Ghraib Panty March?

The Hyperbole Award of the Month (which I just made up), goes to Bob Dart of the Atlanta Journal Constitution for this lead in a front page article in today's (May 29th) edition of the AJC:

"Washington - They are infamous memorials to the inhumanity of war: The Bataan Death March. Stalags. The Hanoi Hilton. And now, Abu Ghraib."

My response is best summed up to an email I send to the writer of the article this morning:

I read your article today on U.S. POWs and was incredulous at your lead paragraph. Do you seriously think that history will rank Abu Ghraib to be equivalent to The Bataan Death March? Either you are seriously ignorant of history or you expect your readers to be. The Bataan Death March involved 76,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, of which 20,000 died during the 55 mile march. Prisoners were executed for having Japanese souvenirs, if they fell out because of exhaustion, or even if they asked for water. Leon Beck, a Death March Survivor, had this to say about what happened to him when asked what the Death March was like:

“It depends on the guards you had over you. Some of the guards were not too abusive and some were very abusive. They would harass you, they would make you line up at daylight, get in a column of fours, usually 100 to 125 men, in a column of fours and keep you standing at attention until the sun came up and got real hot.... They would start you double-timing until the line got stretched out. The sick, lame and lazy, we called them, fell back. Then, they'd close you up again and they might keep you standing another hour in that hot sun.... There are ways you can rest one leg and shift your weight, it's not too noticeable and you can slough off and rest a bit. But, if they caught you at it, it meant a butt stroke with a rifle or a beating over the head, and the people that fell down and didn't get up, you'd hear a shot fired and you'd look back and there lays a body behind you. But they wouldn't let you go back and take care of him, even at the artesian wells, when the prisoners would break and run for the water. They'd shoot indiscriminately into the crowd and some got shot and laid there. You couldn't go take care of them ...At night, they put us in barbed wire enclosures, just a single string of barbed wire around the trees and they'd herd you in there. There was no latrine facilities, you defecated right where you were and it got pretty bad and stinky come morning and you couldn't walk around. You had to stay there. Because of the mess, everybody was sick with malaria and dysentery....”

Now, surely what the guards at Abu Ghraib did was beyond the pale. However, it is very unlikely a reasonable person would compare Abu Gharaib with the Bataan Death March. Why did you not track down one of the survivors, and ask him if he though what he experienced compared with being forced to wear a pair of panties?
In my opinion, you do an injustice to the all of those, living or dead, who were in The Bataan Death March.

I don't know if I will get a response from Mr. Dart, but if I do I'll be sure to share it.

Update: If you want to hear about the Bataan Death march from the people who survived it, I recommend this web page, at, believe it or not, the PBS web site.

Update: I did receive an email from the writer of the article:

let's see: will history remember abu ghraib like more valley forge or more like my lai? will abu ghraib not be remembered for "inhumanity and
infamy?" come up with your own adjectives. i think any objective reading
of the story shows that the abuses of american pows endured were worse than what the iraqi prisoners suffered. i don't think the abuses are equated in the story. the comments are from former american pows -- not me -- and they've certainly earned the right to give them.

bob dart

Actually, the only part of the story I had a problem with was the lead, where Mr. Dart compared Abu Ghraib with the Bataan Death March. And nothing in the body of the article supports that statement.

Comments

[Brian Jones]

I have little doubt you will receive a response from Mr. Dart. I've gotten snotty and defensive responses every time I've e-mailed a reporter with a complaint.