Mike the Usurper wrote:
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs wasn't buying it. Asked about it at his daily press briefing, he referred reporters to a Pentagon statement denying the story, then added, "If I wanted to read a write-up today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champion's League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper. If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it would be the first stack of clips I picked up... I think if you do an even moderate Google search, you're not going to find many of these newspapers and truth within, say, 25 words of each other."
In "Woodstein" that's called "a non-denial denial," and means the story is likely true. Abu Ghraib is getting ready to go from a debacle to a complete disaster. IF this is true (looks likely) and IF the courts order the pictures (and VIDEO?) released (also looks likely), you can expect the Muslim world to explode. They stone people for this kind of thing.
As more and more about Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Gitmo comes out, this is turning into not "a few bad apples," but straight from the top. This is not going to go away, and it is turning the US under the prior administration into the first minor monsters of the 21st century, with Bush and Cheney standing next to Pinochet, Somoza, the Shah and Milosevic from the last.
We didn't just lose the "War on Terror," we became a first hand practitioner.
Which was the whole idea behind trying to take the high road on the values and ideals schtick. This doesn't happen (or not quite as badly) if you don't engage in this war in the first place. It doesn't happen if you don't imprison people without due process. There's a fucking reason why we put those checks in place. To prevent exactly this. Or at least, make it so it's not so prolific.
