Was checking out the news today, a local website. My wife says I should read the opinions, so I looked them over. It's a mistake cause it wastes my time. There was a piece about Bush and programs that he takes credit for when they are successful, but opposed them when they were in the making.

That's not why it's a waste of time, the reason for that are the columns I disagree with. In fact some of them are so outrageous I have to say something about it. For instance, here is an opinion article from Starnet.com....

Deroy Murdock

After the Baghdad court-martial this week of former Abu Ghraib guard Spc. Jeremy Sivits resulted in his conviction and being given the maximum sentence, it's worth asking:

Who are the inmates seen in all those photographs?

While some blameless Iraqis may have been among the abused, the detainees in Cellblocks 1-A and 1-B - where these violations occurred - include bombing and murder suspects.

The Associated Press may have been a tad sentimental May 7 when it called them "helpless prisoners."

These captives "are not held randomly. They are not held as hostages," said Capt. Mark Doggett of the Australian Army.

"These people are held because there is evidence that they are an imperative threat to the security of not just the coalition, but the Iraqi people."

Doggett, a coalition forces press officer, spoke by phone from Baghdad's Coalition Press Information Center. He stressed that high-value inmates in the U.S.-run institution are not routine lawbreakers. Iraqi bicycle thieves are handled elsewhere.

"Common criminals, as opposed to those who are involved in acts against the coalition, go through the Iraqi prison system and Iraqi court system, which are quite separate from the coalition detention operation," Doggett said.

Abu Ghraib's prisoners are lethal. While Doggett said he is "not at liberty" to name individuals behind bars nor detail why they are there, he spoke generally about why these people landed in Cellblocks 1-A and 1-B. "That's where those images were taken," he explained, referring to the ubiquitous pictures of American military guards and their Iraqi captives.

"The most common things people are being detained for include attacking coalition forces or the Iraqi people, likewise for financing attacks on forces or the Iraqi people," Doggett said.

"They could be involved in the planning of attacks. They could be involved in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices. That could mean everything from procuring the necessary materials for explosive devices, through to actually manufacturing the devices, to planting them."

Asked about the allegations against the worst suspects in 1-A and 1-B, Doggett said, "We wouldn't be able to give specifics, but we can tell you we have people in custody who have been involved in killing Americans and others from the coalition forces. I really cannot think of a worse crime than that: murder."

Doggett challenged the notion that average Iraqis stumbled into Abu Ghraib. "The perception that innocent Iraqis are being rounded up in large numbers is simply false," he said. "The coalition always conducts targeted raids based on sound intelligence."

A confidential Red Cross report on Abu Ghraib somewhat disputes this claim. As excerpted in the May 7 Wall Street Journal, the Red Cross said it believes "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake."

Still, most of them appear to have been treated correctly, and many soon were released. At Abu Ghraib in particular, the Red Cross' findings seem to confirm Doggett's description of the facility.

As the humanitarian group stated, "Ill-treatment during interrogation was not systematic, except with regard to persons arrested in connection with suspected security offenses or deemed to have 'intelligence' value."

Abu Ghraib is not just populated by Iraqis. "Out of the 7,800 or so inmates we have, I can confirm that we have an indeterminate number of foreign fighters in captivity," said U.S. Army Capt. Patrick Swan, a coalition spokesman in Baghdad. Doggett was a bit more specific.

"There are about 120 foreign fighters in the whole (detention) system, the bulk of them at Abu Ghraib." Recall, these are jihadists who traveled to Iraq from elsewhere to unleash deadly violence against Americans, U.S. allies and Iraqi civilians alike.

For legal and intelligence reasons, Doggett and Swan declined to state whether these intruders include al-Qaida operatives.

Despite the global media inferno that has raged since CBS' "60 Minutes II" first broadcast the Abu Ghraib photos on April 28, the international press has been remarkably incurious about the identities of the prisoners in those pictures and their reasons for incarceration.

Has Capt. Mark Doggett spoken with other journalists along these lines? He told me: "You are the sole person who has asked these questions."

Pretty long for a blog I know, but what the hell. What I want to do is send this guy a nastygram full of expletives that insult him and his opinion. That would do no good though, people tend to disregard stuff like that without even a cursory scan. Reminds me of the time I called the local Sprint place in NC. The closest office was over two hours away if I wanted to speak to someone in person, and this was local telephone service. I was on the phone with one of their representatives when I found this out, and started cussing at them. They hung up. I don't blame them, I would have done the same thing. Anyway, back to my point. I ended up sending my input to this Murdock guy....

It doesn't matter why these prisoners were being held. The treatment they received, as is evident in the photographs, was uncalled for. My heart doesn't bleed for these captives, but this kind of treatment is wrong no matter who they are. I'm well aware that any one of them would slit my throat in a heartbeat just for being American, but part of the American ideal is supposed to be that we don't stoop to the levels that others choose to stoop to.

Nobody asked these questions because it is irrelevant. Coalition forces have been killing Iraqi people as well, and if captured, we would justifiably scream in outrage if they were treated the way these Iraqi prisoners were treated. That is the bottom line, clouding the issue with "Who are the inmates seen in all those photographs?" is, in my opinion, irresponsible.

This is why it's a waste of my time, I've spent about half an hour on this. Nuff said......