I wish you would reconsider your assumption that Bush is wholly unconcerned with human rights. He’s moved our foreign policy away from the containment practices that propped up dictators to a policy that actively supports democracy. It’s not an instantaneous thing, but it’s a move in the right direction. We recently lost an important air base in Uzbekistan because we condemned that government’s crack down on protests – even though we knew that by doing so we would be asked to leave. And the Kabul base is not yet ready to handle that air traffic. Our military took pains not to destroy mosques & such, though many were used to shield terrorists. Our hesitance to break the terrorist holdouts last year, while a mistake, indicates that we did not want to be too ahrd on the insurgency. Likewise, al Sadr is still around because we let Iraqis determine how to deal with him. The procedures that have been released on how to handle prisoners and Korans does indicate a concern on the part of the military and the administration on what is and is not acceptable, whether you agree with their decisions or not. I would agree that cases of abuse have tainted our efforts, but I don’t see them as a blanket disregard for human rights. That this administration has dehumanized terrorists is no different than what we’ve done in other wars. I don’t think it means we’re racists or bad, but that is how you mobilize support for a war. And our human rights record for prisoners is not necessarily contingent on how the enemy treated our prisoners, but if you believe that, then look at the civilians that have been beheaded. In contrast, where most folks shuffled through Gitmo gained weight, ate better food than the guards and received fresh copies of the Koran, contractors in Iraq were forced to appear on video where their heads were sawed off.

In response to the missing/non existent WMDs – I don’t pretend to know what happened to them. If we accounted for their destruction in one way or another, perhaps I would change my view, but that is going to be difficult, if not impossible. Simply not finding them will forever leave a question mark in my head. I want to know what’s in the Bekka Valley or the origins of the chemicals found in Jordan last year or the ones Syria used in Sudan before I am willing to take for granted that Iraqi WMDs were destroyed and not moved. Also, I never thought that the chief WMD threat was from stockpiles but from clandestine WMD programs – dormant or active – that could be shared with terrorist groups. I linked to Stephen Hayes previously and he seems to have done the most extensive investigation on the matter. Finally, I admit to being puzzled by those who are 100% convinced that WMDs never existed or that there were no terror ties to Saddam. Believing that is one thing, thinking it is a fact is quite another.

My next comment will be on a post about Salmon or wine…..

But on the specific subject of POWs, you are just wrong–any history of WWII reveals the lengths we went to to treat prisoners humanely. Which is why, even in the context of Viet Nam, we could comment on the abuses in the “Hanoi Hilton” from the moral high ground. [I’m guessing that’s what has gotten McCain involved–but you know, just a guess from a dumb liberal here.] Even the Union under Lincoln, whom you rightly point out had vehement contemporary detractors, could point to the horrors of Andersonville to buttress its own moral authority.

The humane treatment of prisoners is [or was] one of the hard-won political legacies of the Enlightenment; this is just more evidence that Renaissance values are the Bush Administration’s real target. Funny that it takes New Testament fundamentalism to bring back Old Testament bloodlust.

That’s what I keep coming back to–you’re right that “war is hell,” but we have typically at least tried to follow the current understanding of the rules of war. Even the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaskai, may God forgive us, were carefully framed in terms of the number of US and Japanese lives would have been wasted in an assault on the home islands. What the administration has consistently done is two-fold– to dehumanize the terrorists [or anyone we call that] and give them legal status that matches their constructed identity as “The Other” so that any treatment of them is justified, and to assert that there is literally no moral or Constitutional check on the President’s conduct of war. You can be turned on by the “strong leadership” of that approach if it suits you, but do not confuse it with any traditionally American approach to war, or any understanding of Executive power consistent with the traditions of the Republic. It is a different beast altogether.

As a reminder, before the war, Saddam was a pariah among his co-religionists, reviled by Islamicists as a secular tyrant very much in the mold of Sadat and Nasser [whom you might recall they assassinated]. It was the West’s hatred of him, and especially GW II, that made him a hero–and made Iraq a potent recruting tool for miltants [as if the Intifadeh weren’t enough of one already]. I think the relevant question for your eight ball is “Can a Middle East that doesn’t export 9/11 type terror coexist with a festering sore of near-civil-war, internecine ethnic and religious division and persistent insurgency?” Or, more to the point, “Can a Middle East that doesn’t export 9/11 type terror coexist with U.S. policies that coddle Saudi dictators who continue to fund Al Qaeda and its offspring?” That’s the psychotic blindness of the whole effort of straining to find a strand connecting 9/11 and Iraq–everything about 9/11 leads straight back into the ruling class of our “dear friends” in Riyadh. The successful effort to distract the public from this proven fact is, in my mind, tantamont to treason and well beyond madness.

And a final question–would you care to tell us when the continued absence of any evidence of WMDs might sway your belief that they don’t exist? Just wondering, as I’d prefer to postpone our visit until we can agree we won’t be nerve-gassed. Again, it goes to the open question of whether you’re a member of the “reality-based community.” We just don’t argue with blind followers here.

Yes, I really believe Bush is patient…and competent. Why? Because I can’t think of a war that wasn’t going along miserably until it was over. There’s no doubt in my mind that if the same rubric currently used to criticize Bush was applied to Lincoln, your hatred for the latter would be ten fold what it is for Bush, especially after the Sherman and Grant campaigns at the end of the war. Throughout those 200 years of accumulating moral authority that you speak of, we’ve done far more drastic things on a far more systematic basis than anything going on at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib. Show me a war where there were not instances of prisoner abuse and I’ll give you a nickel. How is it that we kept our moral authority (a term I woudn’t choose) in those wars but not this one? And what is international law? We haven’t violated the Geneva Convention because the terrorists in Gitmo aren’t covered by it. The IHT article lays out some tricky waters that we need to navigate, but there wasn’t anything in it that was too new and would validate your use of the term “mounting evidence.” Having a relationship with Iran is inevitable and is no reason to expect disaster though it is a concern. Such negativity will encourage failure. Incidentally, the NYTimes article you linked to is not available to non subscribers.

As for the WMDs and Iraqi ties to 9/11 – I suggest Paulette exercise more caution in her accusations. Bush never made the charge that Saddam took part in 9/11, nor has such a connection been proven false. And while our intelligence was embarrassingly out of date and incomplete, the status of the unaccounted WMD stockpiles, too, remains an uncertainty. Obviously, we were wrong about several things, but sometimes you have to make decisions on things you don’t know. Proven total fabrications? Hardly. Can a Middle East that doesn’t export 9/11 type terror coexist with Saddam’s regime? My eight ball says it is unlikely.

Alas, your ticket offer is much appreciated, though if I went now, as Paulette suggests, I hope she’d be willing to pitch in for a flack jacket to keep this idiot safe. Seriously, when the time comes, I’ll take an aisle seat….coach will be fine. I’m glad to know Paulette will be there, too!

It’s true that Bush’s rhetoric matched his actions on his willingness to send other people’s children to fight this war. In fact, he was so willing that from the moment he took office he was looking for an excuse to start a war with them. Taking advantage of an unrelated, horrifying terrorist attack on American soil in order to finally get to start his little war isn’t commitment to ideals, dude. It’s the dirtiest type of opportunism.

As for the need to topple Hussein. Uhm, and why was that again? I know he gave us to reasons to start the war–something about WMDs and a link to 9/11, but those have proved to be total fabrications. So does the fact that there is no basis for this “need” to topple Hussein even factor in your twisted little world?

As for meeting you in Iraq? Jay, let’s say we buy this idiot a ticket now. We’ll come meet you for tea when hell freezes over–I mean, when Bush’s little war does anything to make this world a better or safer place.

“A president as patient as the terrorists”? Do you really believe that? Yeah, he’s patient all right– patient enough to let Bin Laden off the hook, patient enough to entirely fail to find or kill al Zarqawi. That’s not patience, it’s incompetence. If you want to argue that we “should have invaded,” that’s one thing. But if you cannot see that the invasion–and resulting occupation–are failing miserably, I don’t think I have time. Reality-based, you know? Between the very real concern that a civil war has already started in Iraq, and mounting evidence that any stable polity that evolves in Iraq will be a client state of Iran, you’ll forgive my skepticism that Iraq will turn into the Middle East’s fun new destination for American tourists any time soon. I’d offer to buy you a plane ticket to meet me there if you turn out to be correct– but I suppose if you’ve got talons you’ll have wings too.

My original comment mocked your connection between child molestation and the Administration’s war strategy. That raping children was somehow promoted or condoned by the Administration as a means to victory in Iraq struck me as plain silly. Even assuming that the president has horns, I fail to see why he would do something that would hamper the war effort, especially if you consider that his interest requires victory in Iraq. You’ll have to explain the logic of that one to me. While you’re at it, you should also explain the “raw power” that has seduced me because I haven’t seen it. Has my commission as Chief Oppressor of Tikrit been accepted already? Or is my Iraq booty check in the mail? Back to the point: nobody is saying that there was not abuse at Abu Ghraib, nor is anyone saying that the perpetrators of that abuse should not be punished (to my knowledge, at least).

As for “suspecting cant and questioning blind authority,” that’s a real hoot. Granted, my allegiance is not that hard to get. The paramount criteria are that the President be willing to fight the war and that he recognize the necessity of toppling Hussein. On both of those points, Bush’s rhetoric matched his actions. I also want a President that is as patient as the terrorists. That’s Bush, again. Everything else he’s done or will do that I find agreeable is gravy. All the fortune cookie stuff about “looking into the abyss” and “turning into the monster you’re fighting” may sound profound, but please excuse me if I don’t accept it as an absolute. I would be more than happy to argue the merits of that line of thinking a few years down the road when the fighting in Iraq has subsided – shall we say over tea in one of the freshly opened Iraqi museums? I’ll be the one with the talons instead of boots.

I take it as axiomatic that if you unhinge yourself from core values [and international law] and allow the ends to justify the means, you will become the monster you are fighting. If you look into the abyss, it also looks into you. That not novel or leftist thinking, as I know you know.

So it’s no surprise to me that Saddam’s rape rooms would have become our rape rooms. An indelible stain that we all bear? Certainly. But given the administration’s cavalier disregard for human rights in the GWOT? Not a surprise.

What is a surprise is that thinking people, people who once suspected cant and questioned blind authority, have been so seduced by the allure of raw power. I guess on some level, Abu Ghraib started when formerly thoughtful people in this country used the excuse of 9/11 to start licking the dress-up boots of “hawks” who have avoided serving in wars their whole lives. If you’ve learned to love submission at the feet of sadists like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, why shouldn’t the Iraqis in the photos enjoy their “fraternity hazing”? Once you go through that particular looking glass, there’s not really any turning back I suppose.