What's the Difference?
In press reports of the new attrocities said to have been committed at Abu Ghraib, I have often come across this paragraph (can't find the original, but quoted here by Seymour Hersh in his second New Yorker piece):
NBC News later quoted U.S. military officials as saying that the unreleased photographs showed American soldiers “severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi prisoner, and ‘acting inappropriately with a dead body.’ The officials said there also was a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.” [emphasis added]
Can someone explain to me why it's OK to say the Iraqi guards were "raping" a young boy, but the American soldiers were only "having sex" with a female Iraqi prisoner? Is NBC or its source implying that the female prisoner gave her consent? I understand some squeemishness on the part of those who have to present this awful information to the American public, but let's call a spade a bloody shovel here: sex with a prisoner is rape, whether the victim is male or female, and whether the perpetrators are Americans or Iraqis.
8:51:49 AM 
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