How many have been burned, maimed, tortured, and killed in the name of what is holy? I am only slightly familiar with the Muslim faith, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor Muhammad would sanction such ungodly behavior.

My faith notwithstanding, I am no angel — but then, I neither claim nor pretend to be. So do not stand on your soapbox and tell me that we, as a Christian nation, have the God-given right to start war and that we alone are right and just because we have Jesus on our side.

The American invasion of Iraq (which I fully supported at its beginning) was instigated with lie upon lie, has realized, at best, dubious success, and has cost too many of our soldiers their lives, limbs, and sanity.

There is in Washington at this very moment, an argument on whether or not we actually (moreover, admittedly) sanction the use of torture on POWs. If this is just now an argument, for what exactly did the court-martial convict Lynddie England and the others from Abu-Ghraib?

In his book, “Chain of Command,” Seymour Hersh provides details of how President George Bush signed off on the establishment of a secret unit that was given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate “high-value” suspects, an officially “unacknowledged” program that was eventually transferred wholesale from Guantánamo to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A young girl, in a man’s world, in man’s army, was Pfc. England a willing participant? I think not, but moreover, I do not care. Who should be held accountable for the situation at Abu Ghraib? The masters of war who put our soldiers in that hell in the first place — that’s who!

Gayle Baecht