The New York Times > National > 6 Members of Elite Navy Force Sue News Agency Over Photos: “In one photo published by The A.P., …; another shows a man in white boxer shorts, with what looks like blood dripping down his chest, his head in a black hood. In another, a grinning man in uniform is apparently sitting on a prisoner. The faces of most of the prisoners are obscured, but those of their captors are not.”

So, a Navy Seal takes an awful and brutal picture and sends it to his partner who posts it on an Internet website. Let’s just stop there. At this point, whatever the AP did or didn’t do to obtain the photos is not half as much an issue as the fact they were taken and shared. Is this moral values? Does this contribute to the effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people or the so-called Arab World? What are we doing as a military that would allow this sort of behavior in the first place, let alone the photographing of it like a trophy?

[satire alert]Well men, we are fighting a war here, but we know you’ll want trophies of the hunt. Feel free to share these photos with your loved ones at home, but don’t allow any of them to get in the hands of the press. Those softies back home still think these Iraqi’s are human beings.

Apparently, the wife “put the photographs on [the Web site] as a kind of backup storage, her lawyer said, ‘and planned to go back and organize them or delete them later.’” She planned to do what? Organize them? Into what, the family scrapbook?

[satire alert] Now, here, little Johnny, is your grandfather treating another human being worse than an animal. Oh, yes, we decided at that time that they were not human. We’ve since expanded the list of non-humans, but back in those days we only had a few categories of non-humans.

Is there a justification for this sort of behavior? And what lack of shame to not feel so horrified in the first place that you would actually sue someone over this?

When are we planning to apologize to the world? I’m guessing not before 2009.