Somehow the outrages at Abu Ghraib reported in the Arab media long before the photographs surfaced had no role in fomenting anti-US sentiment. Somehow the torture and murders at Bagram Air Base, the details of which were well know on the streets of Kabul long before the New York Times got possession of a copy of the Army’s investigation, had no role in enflaming the mobs to riot. Somehow accounts of abuse and desecration of the Koran taken home to London, Afghanistan, and Pakistan by released detainees well and widely publicized last September did not incite the jihadists to action. Only the one line in the Newsweek article claiming that an unreleased investigatory report found one incident credible had the capacity to do that. Then we should not be surprised. It is an article of Neo-Con faith that the only reason that we lost in Vietnam was the reporting of the war by a left leaning press. No wonder, with the Iraqification program bogging down and the cost of the war in money, materiel and people going up, they are out to blame the press and not the policy for every thing that is wrong.

And things are wrong two years after Tommy Franks and the President announced mission accomplished. Don Rumsfeld’s detention and interrogation polices have put America on a par with the worst totalitarian regimes of the old cold war. We have seen nothing like since … well, since we loosened Vietnamese tongues by shoving them out the door at 3,000 feet. America’s humane moral high ground has again sunk into the moral swamp where the ends always justify the means. The way to Iraqi hearts and minds is not through the swamp.