When even the normally staid front page of your local news-and-entertainment giveaway sheet runs that notorious color photo obtained and released by the Washington Post – a naked male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, wearing "what appears to be" ladies' underpants on his head, his arms splayed and bound behind him to a metal bed-frame in a cell – you know America has lost any shred of presumed moral rectitude in Iraq – or anywhere else.
Each day, sickeningly freakish new revelations of torture and mistreatment of Iraqi captives emerge, making it clear how our current president – apparently all-too-often kept in the dark about these crucial issues – makes such a convenient neocon hand-puppet.
Curious how the legal profession viewed this deplorable state of international affairs, I stuck my head into an Internet chat-room frequented by attorneys and their admirers. The chatters' screen-names have been changed to protect their privacy.
I got an earful:
ParaRegal: The pics surfaced in December and went to the higher-ups on the ground in Iraq ... They sent them to the Pentagon ... The Pentagon gave Rummy a briefing on it in late December ... Rummy then never told anyone higher up.
EsqEsqEsq: Still, Rumsfeld will do the Potomac side-step into something else.
ParaRegal: Bush learned about it from the press.
MsObjection: Really Para, and how is it that you have this information? Did you get this information from the press like everyone else or do you have an insider [source] we don't know about?
ParaRegal: I wasn't in that loop, or I woulda blown this sooner ... but the Pentagon yesterday said all this.
NuisanceFactor: Lemme see now. Government thugs doing the bidding of Janet Reno murdered dozens of innocent men, women and children. No calls for her resignation. No calls for her impeachment.
ParaRegal: I thought she shoulda resigned.
NuisanceFactor: A few thugs make a few Iraqis uncomfortable and they want the SecOfDef to resign. Or, like Charles Rangel, want to impeach him. Lemme see ... What is wrong with this picture?
RepTale: A few thugs? Um, those were U.S. soldiers and CIA employees.
Nuisance Factor: Oh, I see. Rumsfeld is a member of a Republican administration. Thus, the usual rules don't apply.
AvoCat: Reno is now working as a human paint-can shaker machine at a Miami True Value Hardware store.
NuisanceFactor: Rep, whether they were military or contractors doesn't matter. They were thugs who broke the rules.
AvoCat: Hire the disabled!
RepTale: And their COs were where during all this, exactly? On coffee break?
MsObjection: You think Rumsfeld should resign?
NuisanceFactor: No. One year ago, people were being tortured and murdered in that very same prison. Where was the New York Times? Where was Dan Rather? Where was Charlie Rangel?
RepTale: Hey, Rumsfeld wants another $25 billion to buy more hoods for prisoners.
AvoCat: Where was the Red Cross?
SlipandFall33: The Clinton administration sure must have been powerful – they became the objects of ad hominem often round here.
ParaRegal: But the difference between us and you is we're not gonna waste $70+ million on looking into what Rummy Knew and When he knew it ... and we're certainly not gonna look at what he does with his cigar.
RepTale: There was plenty of press.
SumMayShun: I am on the no-carb diet ... NO CHENEY; NO ASHCROFT; NO RUMSFELD; NO BUSH!!!
NuisanceFactor: Para, you seem to forget all the independent counsels who wasted hundreds of millions on investigations ordered by a Democratic controlled Congress. And how about Ray Donovan? I think $20 million or so – for nothing.
AvoCat: Well, if true, why didn't they go to the media?
RepTale: Avo, hahaha.
ProOhNo: I guess we now know why Bush didn't approve the Hague War Crimes Convention: He didn't want to be standing in the dock at Nuremburg, with no belt or shoelaces.
8_FoldPathmark: Constructive Plan: Demote Rumsfeld to landmine tester in Afghanistan.
RepTale: Right. Ghetto kid with no prospects: "Lemme see – rob 7-11? Nope. Join military? What other choice do I have?"
ParaRegal: Exactly!
NuisanceFactor: Oh really? Perhaps if colleges allowed recruiting on campus, that wouldn't be so much the case – even if your assertion was true, which it is not.
ProOhNo: "I vas jist fullowing Cheney's ORDERS!"
MsObjection: Pro ... you say the most ridiculous comments ever.
PaperTrail: Rumsfeld did the right thing not telling W., because it gave W. that great Nixonian right to claim "maximum plausible deniability."
If this is the administration's "Compassionate Conservatism" in action, they're in league with Lucifer.