watch the prisoner abuse scandal widen

[mburbank]

Yeah, I gotta say 'best ever' is kind of reaching no matter where you line up on the political spectrum, and I think Chenney knows that, and this kind of thing is what I mean about the administrations contempt for the citizenry.

I mean, you could say all sorts of stuff, you coud say Rummy has done very well under unprecedented and difficult circumstances (not that I;d say that, but you could make the argument) but to call him the best ever? That's just giving the public the finger. Plus, Chenney's quoted in todays paper as telling people to 'get off Rumsfeld case". Get off his case? What, is Chenney America's teenage son now? is he going to ask to borrow America's car keys?

And what about Rummy. He says he accepts full responsability, and that's great, but he makes it meaningless if he doesn't then step down. Full responsability? What does he mean, for what? For the torture itself? For the failure of oversight? For the atmosphere in which this all took place? He might as well say, 'yeah, I'm responsible, but I'm the best ever, now get off my case!'

By letting this drip, drip, drip, a revelation every few hours you loose any chance of regaining moral authority. Plus, even if there is no cover up at all, and even if we really cared about Iraqi human rights all along nd this isn't pattern, it's just a bizarre aberation, not getting everything on the table and firing Rumsfled makes it look like a cover up and look like we never gave a crap.

Rumsfeld says himself that he didn't get how serious this all was by reading descriptions of what was in the photos. Isn't that, all by itself, a really good reason to give him the boot? Plus, he's out there every day giving the world the impression that what's really the big problem here is that photos were taken and the world saw them. the problem isn't the photos.