If you haven’t heard about the latest military scandal involving photographs of U.S. soldiers physically, sexually, and mentally abusing Iraqi prisoners, then you have probably been hiding behind some rock for the past several weeks. These days, turn on any television, or pick up any newspaper, and chances are this story will slap you across the face.

Numerous photographs have shown U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners in bizarre and obscene ways. Graphic images show U.S. soldiers laughing as they point at naked prisoners, clearly enjoying their barbaric behavior. Appalling as it may be in itself, the situation is aggrandized by the fact that in the Islamic culture, any and all public displays of male or female nudity are strictly forbidden. The abused Iraqi prisoners would rather lose their lives than be subjected to such sexual degradation.

From the moment the photographs leaked to the public, a guilty President Bush and an even guiltier Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have been flipping over backwards in an effort to apologize to the rightfully outraged people of Iraq, even though they were well aware of the abuse long before the images were publicly exposed.

However, all the while they expressed their “deepest and most genuine” regrets, images of naked Iraqi prisoners were displayed in the background. As I see it, the abuse of Iraqi prisoners continues as hypocritical politicians express their worthless apologies to confused citizens.

The U.S. public has a right to the truth, but the people of Iraq have a right to their dignity. The U.S., however, mutilated this dignity with its brutal acts of perversion.

A word of advice to all the monsters pulling the strings in the White House: put an end to the ill-treatment of Iraqi prisons, give the families of the abused their deserved time to heal, but do not continue to publically exhibit such demeaning images. Every time a naked Islamic prisoner is shown on TV or the Internet, another blow is delivered to the Islamic people, faith, and culture.

The U.S. may be barbaric for its deeds, but its unrelenting disrespect of the Islamic culture is nothing short of sadistic.