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CBS' lead by Lara Logan was an Exclusive that "shocked battle-hardened soldiers." A patrol from the USArmy's 82nd Airborne stumbled across an orphanage where two dozen so-called "special needs" boys were found naked, in temperatures of 120F, shackled to their beds, starving, covered in their own filth. The government had stocked the orphanage with food and clothing: "Instead of giving it to the boys, the soldiers believe it was being sold to local markets." Sgt Mitchell Gibson recalled finding one boy: "The only thing basically that was moving were his eyeballs--flies in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nose, ears, eating all the open wounds."
Concluded Logan: "How a nation cares for its most vulnerable is one of the most important benchmarks for the health of any society."
UPDATE: Matthew Felling (text link) at the CBS blog Public Eye argues that because this story provides "an opportunity to show an accomplishment of the US military presence in Baghdad" it somehow counts as an antidote to the "sea of bad news about Iraq and the surge and rising body counts in the streets." Felling is wrong. There is no moral calculus that can turn the discovery of this orphanage into "good news." Of course it is welcome that the abuses were exposed--but their discovery in no way discounts their existence in the first place.
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