Let's Look at the Big Lie of the Day Lie of the Day is: The United States has not engaged in Systemic Abuse of Prisoners during the War on Terror. As the Washington Post says, LIE. SECRETARY OF Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday described the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison as "an exceptional, isolated" case. At best, that is only partly true...A pattern of arrogant disregard for the protections of the Geneva Conventions or any other legal procedure has been set from the top, by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior U.S. commanders. Well-documented accounts of human rights violations have been ignored or covered up, including some more serious than those reported at Abu Ghraib. In the end, the latest allegations may be distinguished mainly by the fact that they have led to court-martial charges -- and by the leak of shocking photographs that brought home to Americans, and the world, the gravity of the offenses. The foundation for the crimes at Abu Ghraib was laid more than two years ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld instituted a system of holding detainees from Afghanistan not only incommunicado, without charge, and without legal process, but without any meaningful oversight mechanism at all. Brushing off his violation of the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that the system was necessary to extract important intelligence. But it was also an invitation to abuses -- and reports of those abuses have been appearing since at least December 2002, when a Post story reported on harsh "stress and duress" interrogation techniques bordering on physical torture... In response to these reports and complaints from human rights groups and foreign governments, the Bush administration pledged a year ago not to subject any foreign detainee to treatment unacceptable under the U.S. Constitution. But there is no evidence that the administration ever distributed guidelines implementing its decision to the military or intelligence agencies -- and the official investigations of Abu Ghraib show that there at least, the policy was never applied. I imagine there are more than a few sadistic Americans who get their jollies by thinking ALL Arabs terrorists and believe that hooking an Iraqi's privates up to a wire along with a few kicks in the ribs from a jackboot is the coolest thing ever... But I think most of us expect Americans to act like a Civilized People at a minimum, and to practice what we preach, especially when the preaching is the justification for the war. But make no mistake, President "Born Again" has allowed these sorts of abuses to occur out of the depths of his little crusader heart combined with a stupifying lack of attention. This is further, perhaps the concluding evidence, that the Bush Administration has not only failed to win the War on Terror, but lost it by encouraging the means upon which new terrorists are created in spades. President Miserable Failure indeed. UPDATE: Also in the Washington Post today, Phillip Kennicott writes an article whose opening paragraphs are, I believe, true and ones that we Americans need to take to heart. Get over the hubris, and contemplate the accuracy of the following: Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory -- the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities -- is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience. This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant. This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor; democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing -- becomes self-propagating.