Excerpt from another excellent Letter to the Troops article by Stan Goff:
"[Powell] never forgot My Lai, and he has always believed that exposure of My Lai and other atrocities were responsible for the US defeat in Vietnam.

"Donald Rumsfeld shares these beliefs with Colin Powell. They are both wrong. The two phenomena that collide with this Powell-Rumsfeld orientation were and are (1) the decision of their 'enemy' never to quit, and (2) the inevitability that someone who is part of the occupation force will be confronted with these contradictions between
'the exalted image and the pseudo-event' and the real character of war -- and that this someone will expose it in an attempt to rescue his or her own humanity.

"The war in Vietnam was lost by the French then the Americans because they didn't belong there, and the resistance endeavored to do whatever was necessary to make that point. This is also the situation in Iraq....

"...All this talk of whether Military Intelligence or the mercenaries working for CACI International or the CIA or the MP commanders were responsible is diversionary bullshit so we won't see how Iraq itself has become the Stanford Military Occupation Experiment."

Connecting the Dots.
A day or two ago, I heard Daniel Shore on NPR pointing out the irony of Bush's speech about how "we have closed Saddam's torture chambers," when in reality, the same prisons and torture chambers have just reopened under new management.

Connecting Some Other Dots.
[These aren't connected with the dots above.] It occurred to me that maybe Republicans are so concerned about saving unborn children because they know that the national debt and the need for a monumental amount of environmental remediation will be passed on to children who have not yet been born. So they want to make sure there are plenty of extra children born to cover it.

This might explain why some of them are pro-life for zygotes, pro-death for criminals. It's not like the criminals will live long enough to pay much of the debt Republicans are racking up.

Listening to some pundits fill time just before Rumsfeld's testimony today, it caught my attention when one of them mentioned how this "story" has "taken on a life of its own," or become a "media frenzy" depending on how you want to look at it.

It made me realize how these media frenzies actually make a small impact on Bush's behavior. For example, Condoleeza Rice changed her plans about the conditions of her speaking in front of the 9-11 Commission because of public outcry (or at least media outcry).

Contrast this with Bush's comment about the Feb 15 protests before the war started, supposedly 15 million protesters around the world on that day, to which Bush later responded that he doesn't pay attention to focus groups. Apparently if the focus group includes the right pundits, then he'll pay attention. If it only includes the largest number of people ever assembled to protest before a war, then it's beneath him.

PS - While listening to Rumsfeld or any of these other patsies talking about the Iraq prison abuse scandal, notice how many of them emphasize that the real problem is how it can lead to lower morale of US troops, or bad world opinion. It's not so much that killing and torturing people is inherently bad, but more of a PR problem, or something that could cost American lives. Got that? The main thing to worry about in Iraq is American lives, how torturing and killing Iraqis without the proper clearance could cost American lives.

Once again, we see that these people have a PR department where their consciences should be.