In the history of our country, there have been times that our government or the people serving in it have brought shame and disgrace against all of us.

Slavery, the World War II camps for Japanese Americans, the Tuskegee Experiments that used U.S. citizens as guinea pigs to study syphilis, are just a few examples.

We have others on the list.

The actions of prison guards stationed in Iraq at Abu Ghraib should join that infamous list.

The guards who committed or allowed these atrocities to be committed should be sent away for a very long time. They have done more damage to this country, our government and the efforts for peace in the Middle East than any single act in 20 years.

The pictures are atrocious.

Smiling U.S. soldiers posing next to piles of naked and humiliated prisoners.

They include bound men, hooded and nude and humiliated.

That these events were allowed to happen is inexcusable.

Then they compounded their idiocy by taking pictures and allowing them to be released.

These soldiers have undermined everything the Bush administration is trying to accomplish.

The story of this war has turned from our freeing the Iraqi people from a dictator who tortured and killed his own people, to our own people torturing Iraqi’s as well.

Our position in the Middle East was always shaky.

By freeing Iraq and cleaning up Afghanistan, then returning those countries to good, solid leadership we could have shown are good faith, that we are indeed the good guys.

But the actions at Abu Ghraib are not the actions of the good guys and the rest of the world will see that plainly.

These cruel soldiers may have just cost many of their superiors their jobs, all the way up to the Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfield.

They damaged President Bush’s agenda in Iraq and plan for the future of the Middle East.

The damage they have done to our country will be felt for generations. They have given piles of evidence to our enemies that plainly show why we are to be hated, hunted and destroyed.

The actions of those soldiers in Iraq have shamed us all.