"The sexualization of torture from the top basically turned Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay into an organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners," writes Naomi Wolfe today over at Huffpo.

She continues:

Unbelievable. The UK Guardian has the story of how Holland is trying to whitewash its role in permitting Bosnian war crimes:

Henk Kamp, the Dutch defence minister, unveiled a plaque at the barracks praising the troops who failed to act to prevent the atrocity at Srebrenica when the Bosnian Serb commander, General Ratko Mladic, seized the enclave in eastern Bosnia, separated the males from the women and children, and then organised the mass murder of almost 8,000 men over 10 days in July 1995… Mr Kamp handed out medals to 500 members of the Dutch battalion stationed at Srebrenica, which was a so-called UN safe haven, ostensibly under UN protection when it was overrun by the Serbs.

The BBC carried this story yesterday, along with a good discussion of what exactly constitutes war crimes under the Geneva Convention. It's refreshing to see mainstream media attempt for once to argue this sort of thing through rather than fall back on tired and lazy stereotypes.

According to the BBC's analysis, Hizbullah was definitely guilty of war crimes for firing missiles into civilian areas in Israel. Whether or not Israel is also guilty of war crimes in its response depends basically on two things; whether it tried sufficiently to avert civilian casualties, and whether the force of the response was disproportionate to the provocation it faced. As in all things legal, there is a big element of subjectivity to both these questions.