Question: What is the implication of this headline and the related story...?

any thoughts...? needless to say, i have a few... (what, you thought maybe i DIDN'T...?)

Detainee in Photo With Dog Was 'High-Value' Suspect

When Army Sgt. Michael J. Smith faces a court-martial today on charges that he used his military working dog to harass and threaten detainees, one of the prime examples of that alleged misconduct will be a photograph of Smith holding the dog just inches from the face of a detainee. It is one of the notorious images to emerge from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Although officials characterized the other detainees who appeared in the Abu Ghraib photographs as common criminals and rioters, the orange-clad detainee seen cowering before the dog was different. Detainee No. 155148 was considered a high-value intelligence source suspected of having close ties to al-Qaeda. According to interviews, sworn statements from soldiers and military documents obtained by The Washington Post, Ashraf Abdullah Ahsy was at the center of a military intelligence "special project" designed to break him down, and was considered important enough that his interrogation was mentioned in a briefing to high-ranking intelligence officials at the Pentagon.

upon reading the first half a dozen paragraphs, i had the distinct feeling that the message was, "oh, he's a high-value detainee so OF COURSE using torture techniques would make sense..." not until 11 paragraphs in, do we get this...

Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said he found the use of dogs "disturbing."

"It's more evidence that these Abu Ghraib torture techniques were consciously developed for the purpose of gathering intelligence and not something that was dreamed up by low-ranking soldiers on the night shift," he said.

read the following (8 paragraphs in) and see what you think now...

Smith, who has been charged with dereliction of duty and maltreatment of detainees, is scheduled to be tried at Fort Meade this week. He is also accused of using his dog to threaten two other detainees and for allegedly engaging in a contest to make detainees urinate and defecate out of fear.

that is the single most horrifying description of any that i have read about what has gone on in the name of "gathering intelligence" and the "war on terror..." yes, the beatings, the waterboarding, the humiliation, the simulated sex are all horrifying in their own right, but do you have any idea the level of terror that must be induced to cause someone to lose control of their bodily functions...? do you realize that voiding of the bladder and the bowels is the body's reaction to imminent death...? do you understand that this man, smith, with the blessing of his superiors and, by extension, the united states, is accused of making a game out of terrifying someone so much that they thought they were going to abruptly die...? i am ashamed for my country...

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