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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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Abu Ghraib seemed more like "assholes taking an opportunity to do sadistic shit". Rape dogs seems like the kind of thing you'd need training programs for, with like, budgets and performance evaluations.

I don't know, I doubt we will be getting solid scientific evidence on how easy it is to get a big dog without special training to mount an unwilling human who has been tied up in "receptive" position anytime soon, but per the Abu Ghraib example + other better-evidenced Israeli misconduct I certainly would not dismiss this on "these soldiers would not do such a thing" grounds.

Of course, there's no reason it couldn't be made up, either; but then if you think the NYT would make this up or eat it up from a source without properly verifying it by whatever means they have available, I would like you to apply the same degree of skepticism to press-reported atrocities even when you agree with the direction (for many here, I guess that would be Russians in Ukraine e.g. the Bucha story?).

The Israeli military uses dogs pretty extensively, this is well documented by non-controversial sources. In the context of a large detention center run by the Israeli military, I'd imagine they are particularly useful to search for contraband like drugs, or to incapacitate combative detainees in a non-lethal manner.

This seems like it could easily be a case of "assholes taking the opportunity to do sadistic shit" especially because they know the Muslim perception of dogs, and therefore it would be even more humiliating and degrading than other forms of sexual assault.

Yeah, that’s sort of my point. If you want to sexually brutalize male prisoners there’s a wealth of options easily available with a ton of precedent.

The dog thing is obviously designed to be maximally inflammatory to the intended audience; the red / green alliance of islamists and hardcore leftists and their useful idiots “fellow travelers”.

Plus of course anyone already maximally inclined to believe negative things about da joos.