I suggest reading this article in the WP which details the legal defense being mounted by Army Pfc. Lynndie R. England, who is the woman featured prominently in many of the Iraq torture pictures.  She's saying that she was ordered by her superiors to do the things she did.  Here's a brief quote:

"People told Pfc. England, 'Hold that leash,' told her to smile, so they can show the photos to subsequent prisoners," said Carl S. McGuire, one member of a team of Denver-area lawyers defending England.

The 21-year-old Army reservist, who was photographed holding a leash tied to the neck of a naked prisoner, faces a court-martial on 13 counts of misconduct.

"They picked her to get the smallest, youngest, lowest-rank woman they could find, and that would increase the humiliation for an Iraqi man," said Rose Mary Zapor, another member of the Denver-based legal team.

Oh, boy.  Is this believable?  Yep.  And the biggest reason is that this is the only cogent explanation that anyone has offered as to why these photographs were taken at all.  If this was just a group of six or seven "bad seeds", as the Administration and its cohorts have readily suggested, why in the world was a camera involved? 

Administration folks will say, I imagine, that the Nuremberg defense is involved here.  But throwing out the term "Nuremberg defense" doesn't mean that those who gave the orders aren't culpable--that's only a way to demonize this Pfc, right or wrong.  Not to mention that comparing what happened in Iraq--while awful--to what happened in the concentration camps is pretty darned stupid.  Some orders are different than others.

Not to defend Pfc England.

In any case, read the article and watch the spin.  This, to me, is an awfully big deal.

8:24:12 PM    comment []

A couple of things.  First, there are two things worth reading on the NYT op-ed page today:

--David Brooks has really been good lately.  He's been evenhanded, maintaining his general conservatism, but has been absolutely willing to eat crow on Iraq.  He's acknowledged the arrogance and incompetetence of the Bush Administration.  Today's column is right on, I think, regarding what has to happen--anti-Americanism as part of democracy.

--Krugman.  Ah, Krugman.  Sweet, sweet Krugman.

Second, I just want to follow up on what I wrote in brief yesterday about Rumsfeld.  Bush expressed his happiness with the Defense Secretary yesterday:

After meeting at the Pentagon with his war council, Mr. Bush emerged to face reporters and television cameras, flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney on his right and Mr. Rumsfeld on his left, and delivered an unqualified endorsement of his defense secretary.

"You are courageously leading our nation in the war against terror," he said to Mr. Rumsfeld. "You are doing a superb job. You are a strong secretary of defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude."

I'm sickened by this.  

First of all, what does it take to get the ax in the Bush Administration?  Rumsfeld was not the guy piling on with the Iraqi prisoners, but the entire basis of the chain of command is that the buck stops at the top.  And it's worth noting that Rumsfeld himself admitted his own culpability--took full responsibility.  So I'm not saying anything that's controversial.

Secondly, and more importantly, publicly saying this--basically holding up a "We Love You Don" sign for the world to see--is so incredibly brazen and stupid.  It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the severity of this situation.

Let's not discuss who's right and who's wrong--let's just talk about the facts.  These pictures are getting global play.  People across the world--enemies and friends alike--are infuriated.  We've lost the moral high ground, or at least ceded a big part of it.  How we deal with it from here will have a huge part in determining what is the lasting impact.  Can we agree on that much?  Only the most callous, sycophantic bastards would argue that this is not a big, big deal.

So isn't it important to make a big gesture?  Would it not be an important step to say "We agree that this is huge.  It was a huge mistake, a huge systemic breakdown.  We're taking it seriously, so seriously that we're going to make sure heads roll all the way at the top."  To me, this would send a signal that we want to fix it, that we understand the gravity of it, and that we are sorry.

Saying that the Defense Secretary is doing a great job (which--and I'll only briefly get into this--is itself a total lie, given the disaster that is Iraq) sends exactly the opposite message.  It sends the "Hey, buddy, sorry about that whole torture thing.  Really sorry.  We're thinking good old Donny can straighten it out, though.  Get off his back, OK?

How is it possible that the Bush Administration doesn't understand this?  How can anyone have such a pathetically misinformed view of the world that they don't understand that signals matter, that gestures matter?  The world view of this will be that Americans tortured Iraqis, and there was no fallout.  That nothing was done (because putting a few enlisted men and women on trial is not going to to the job, people). 

Why does it matter?

Because, as the Bush Administration is so eager to point out, we're fighting a war.  But it's not just a military war, as much as they'd like it to be.  It's also a public-relations war.  Telling the world that Don Rumsfeld is staying on, and even that we should thank him, is a gigantic slap in the face to the world, particularly to Iraqis and Arabs, and every slap of every size isolates the US even more.  And isolation has consequences.  Anti-americanism has consequences.  Like terrorism.

All Americans should be sickened by this.  And they should be scared.  Because the world has gotten a hell of a lot more dangerous for all of us.  And the fault lies entirely at the feet of George W. Bush.

10:07:08 AM    comment []