[ OUR OPINION ]
Ban dog meat sales
to prevent torture
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The Hawaii Humane Society received complaints about sales from the back of a white van in those areas, and police have begun to investigate the alleged theft and slaughtering of dogs. It is legal in Hawaii to kill and eat one's own dog, but only if the dog is put to death in a humane manner. That has not been the norm in countries where dogs end up as meals.
In South Korea, where the practice is most widespread, dogs usually are tortured -- hung by the neck with rope, beaten with pipes, bats or hammers, then electrocuted. That is supposed to tenderize and release adrenaline into the meat under the ludicrous theory that it will create aphrodisiacal qualities. Cats reportedly are boiled alive in large pressure cookers.
Prior to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, the South Korean government banned the sale of "foods deemed unsightly" -- in effect, dog meat -- but the ban has not been strictly enforced since then. Two years ago, the government persuaded the 150-member National Dog Meat Restaurants Association to drop its campaign to offer its cuisine to football fans arriving for World Cup matches.
Still, South Korea's dog meat industry is estimated to encompass 6,000 restaurants and 10 percent of the population. One report estimates that 2.6 million dogs and cats are eaten annually in Korea.
In December, the Taiwan legislature prohibited the selling of dogs and other companion animals as food, strengthening a previous law that banned the killing of dogs and cats for their skin, meat or other parts. A survey showed that shops selling dog meat still exist throughout Taiwan.
The Philippines passed a law five years ago banning the dog meat trade, but the problem persists. Police rescued 80 dogs on their way to a slaughterhouse earlier this month and have saved more than 2,000 dogs in the past four years, according to animal welfare activists.
Higher-ups should face
charges for prison abuse
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Taguba, who was born in the Philippines and reared in Hawaii, found in an inquiry earlier this year that soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company had committed "sadistic, blatant and wanton" criminal acts at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. When asked in May by Sen. Carl Levin what was the cause of the abuses, Taguba said, "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down."
Taguba strongly suggested the MPs had been influenced if not directed by military intelligence units under the command of Col. Thomas M. Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, who led the interrogation unit. Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinsky, commander of the Abu Ghraib prison at the time of the abuses, alleges that top officers in Iraq, superior to Pappas, were aware of them, but there is no proof of such complicity.
The latest inquiry, opened by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, found no culpability above Pappas, according to The New York Times. In addition to the two dozen military, civilian and CIA personnel, Fay's report will cite military medical personnel who witnessed abuse or became aware of it while giving treatment to sick or wounded detainees but did not report it to their superiors.
That assertion coincides with new findings by University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles that doctors working with the U.S. military or medics falsified death certificates to conceal homicides, hid evidence of beatings and revived a prisoner so he could be tortured further. Miles' report in The Lancet medical journal is based on congressional hearings, sworn statements of detainees and soldiers, medical journal accounts and press reports.
"The medical system collaborated with designing and implementing psychologically and physically coercive interrogations," according to Miles. Like the military and intelligence officials and the private contractors, doctors and medics should be held accountable for their roles in the abuse.
