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Just saw the tail end of a presentation from a few days ago of Hersh speaking in front of some college group. He made an excellent point about the prison scandle.
He talked about the Arab culture and the no-no's regarding the human body, etc. He said that if you are playing tennis with guys in Egypt, you don't go into the locker room and snap towels. Each man has his own private cubicle shower and they don't present themselves naked in front of each other, etc. He said that, of course, if you want to break down an Arab, the things they did in the prison were exactly the way you would do it. BUT, he then pointed out the background of these 'few soldiers' who supposedly thought this up all by themselves. He said these people from West Virginia who used to work in pizza parlors, etc. just would not have known and understood the culture to know this and know what 'things' (which seem like frat jokes)could break these people. These are things that had to be told to them and directed by people much higher up who were educated to that culture and knew how to violate that culture.
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