US soldiers turned torturers? US mercenaries committing bloody murder? Who cares?! Kitty, kitty! Here, kitty, kitty!
“Hey, you there! Remember Abu Ghraib…?”
“Kitty, kitty…; here, kitty, kitty…!”
“Abu Ghraib – you know…? Iraqi prisoners being tortured, snapshots taken:”
In the HBO documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, tracking the background to the scandal, we saw that the Americans had taken Saddam’s torture prison and turned it into a down-home, Texas-style torture prison. What remained unchanged was the Iraqis being tortured.
The programme began with that famous and overused behavioural experiment of the 1950s, in which ordinary people were asked to inflict electric shocks on invisible strangers. Many, many TV documentaries and reality shows have been based on this piece of research. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib had remarkable access to the soldiers who appeared in the photographs and the colonel in charge: the only people to be punished for offences. The documentary comprehensively proved that, far from being the sadism of bad soldiers, this was a planned programme, explicitly ordered and condoned by the chain of command that ended in the White House.
“Oh, that…!”
“Yes, that.”
“But that was ages ago, wasn’t it? Now, where’s that kitty gone? Here, kitty! Kitty, kitty, kitty…”
“Never mind that bloody cat…! Blackwater! Does that ring a bell, maybe?”
“Kitty, kitty – here, kitty, kitty…!”
“BLACKWATER, you moron…!”
“Kitty, kitty…; here, kitty, kitty…”
Blackwater…? Anyone…?!”
During the ensuing week, as Crocker and Petraeus told Congress that the surge of more U.S. troops to Iraq was beginning to work and President Bush gave a televised address in which he said “ordinary life was beginning to return” to Baghdad , Blackwater security guards shot at least 43 people on crowded Baghdad streets. At least 16 of those people died.
“Yes, very sad, of course. Now, have you seen that kitty maybe? Black and white? So cute! Here, kitty, kitty! Kitty, kitty, kitty…!”
“Oh, for crying out loud!”
“Kitty, kitty – here, kitty, kitty. Who’s a pretty kitty then…? Here, kitty, kitty…!”
“Right – I give up. But you know what? I almost hope Cheney will take over for the next eight years. Followed by Jeb Bush maybe, or Kenneth Starr.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty… Here, kitty, kitty…!”
As the “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?
Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky.
Some believe the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first woman president.
Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?
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