The media has been covering the Abu Ghraib scandal pretty much 24-7. As it should be, considering the impact it will have on (a) our soldiers, (b) the Democratization of Iraq, (c) our relations with Middle Eastern nations, (d) our relations with the people of the region, (e) our credibility and standing overall internationally, and (f) the current political election process. Although there have been many scandals and debacles (Valerie Plame, medicare, lies about WMD, etc.) that should have been enough to cause nationwide outrage, this one is certainly as appropriate as any other, as it highlights the total lack of morality in the administration. It doesn’t care about the rights of people, nor does it see the value of a system where one presumes innocence before guilt. In this war, to this administration, everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and if we destroy some innocent lives in the process, well, you can’t make an omelet and all that stuff. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the American population stands by and watches, or not, in the exact same way that a herd of antelope grazes nearby as a lion tears apart one of their numbers (Jose Padilla): it’s OK, they didn’t get me, so I can relax now.

Guantanamo, for example, was always just a way to avoid pesky human rights issues, as was the non-classification of the prisoners so as to avoid conventions and treaties, and the hiring of “civilian contractors” has always been an uneasy, unspoken-of corner of the war, essentially mercenaries outside the purview of any system of law or justice.

One case of fallout over Abu Ghraib is that soldiers have fallen under blackout. No more free communication back home, no more emails. Not because of any direct security concerns, but because they don’t want those pesky G.I.’s sending out any more disturbing images, and as the situation gets worse, they don’t want their people to be telling any more stories if they can help it. Retrospectively, just as news cameras helped turn public opinion in Vietnam, the G.I. with a digital camera will be seen as the modern version of that news camera in the Iraq conflict. The sad thing is, because of political fallout, the troops will be cut off from a major source of positive morale. But if it’s inconvenient for Bush….

Rush Limbaugh’s usually disturbing rhetoric has become even more disturbing than usual in his defense of the humiliation, rape, torture and killing or Iraqi prisoners. He has called it no worse than ” fraternity hazings” which are “no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation” (I didn’t know that Bush had been sodomized with a plunger), and that the tactics used by interrogators were “emotional release,” “having a good time,” “blow[ing] some steam off,” “like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage,” “pretty thoughtful,” and “a brilliant maneuver.” He adds that “Nobody got hurt. Nobody got physically injured.” Good lord, do people actually take him seriously in light of what’s been released, what has been shown to be true so publicly? If so, then his listeners of that persuasion must be the most feeble-minded pushovers that you would have the misfortune of encountering.

Counterspin Central makes the very salient point that Thomas Hamill, the truck driver who was kidnaped in Iraq, was treated better by his captors than Iraqi prisoners have been treated by the U.S. Counterspin also points to this historical legal decision on the matter. I gotta add this site to my regular reading list, it’s a good one.

Bush, meanwhile, has been doing poorly in the polls, and may dip even more deeply in the weeks to come as the Abu Ghraib scandal continues to grow. The newest Gallup poll, taken before the prison scandal was full-blown, shows that 62% of the American people are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., with only 36% satisfied. While Bush’s approval polls stay floating near 50%, every specific area people were asked about Bush shows greater dissatisfaction: economy (41% approve, 56% disapprove), foreign affairs (42% approve, 53% disapprove), the situation in Iraq (42% approve, 55% disapprove). The only item where Bush got better than 50% was on his handling of the war on terror (52% approve, 45% disapprove), but if you look at the chart, you’ll see that his approval numbers are sharply dropping on that and will likely fall into the “disapprove” majority within the next two months.

This evidence is exactly what I’ve been talking about: that Bush’s overall approval ratings are not a true indicator of how people feel about Bush, but rather how much they support the presidency in general, and how they have not yet seen Kerry enough to be interested yet. But as Kerry starts speaking out more, and as the press starts covering him more–and as his new positive-tone ad campaign gets rolling–we might see Bush’s overalls dropping as Kerry’s rise.

That probably only strengthens Chickenhawk Bush’s resolve to smear Kerry’s war record, as he did McCain’s and as the GOP did Cleland’s. Here’s a post by Kevin Drum which shows how blatantly the Washington Times tried to mislead its readers into thinking that John O’Neill served with Kerry in Vietnam. The large-print quote reads, “I was on Kerry’s boat in Vietnam. He doesn’t deserve to be commander in chief” (O’Neill served on the same boat after Kerry left Vietnam, and never met him); Drum points out many things, among them that the large-print quote never actually appears anywhere in the article.

Intervention Magazine online also has good writing on the topic, starting off with a quote by Kerry: “I think a lot of veterans are going to be very angry at a president who can’t account for his own service in the National Guard, and a vice president who got every deferment in the world and decided he had better things to do, criticizing somebody who fought for their country and served.”

You might note, in a by-the-way fashion, that on a sidebar of the Intervention article, there is the following quote: ” If Bush had demanded the same level of proof of WMDs that he demands for global warming, there would be no war in Iraq.” Good one.