Well, exactly. I had assumed that, like most Bush supporters, he would have defended the abuses, or at least sought to excuse them, and I commented sarcastically based on that assumption. When I discovered I was wrong, I thought I should correct myself.

Bush is still indulging himself in lies. ” Oh no, we don’t torture, or commit human rights abuses”.. How can you even hope to reach somebody who is so far out in La La land with their delusions and denials that reality can’t even penetrate?

Translation: He’s less of a clueless dork than Rush Limbaugh. But he still isn’t seeing the big picture.

In my reading, it was Malkin who drew a moral equivalency between the Iranian beating and Abu Ghraib, by suggesting that, if lefties were honest about their outrage at Abu Ghraib they should be equally outraged and vociferous about the Iranian incident. Because they are equivalent, presumably, and the response should be consistent.

Malkin’s point was, since the left is not raging about Iran, they are hypocritical and their outrage at Abu Ghraib must therefore be inauthentic.

The point is that the two are NOT equivalent, and that Malkin’s thesis is incorrect. One can have a different degree of moral outrage for the behavior of the United States than for the behavior of Iran. This is not to approve of Iran, but simply to hold our country to the standard it aspires to, which has made us a great nation.

Abu Ghraib elicited the response it did because it was us doing it, which is important in many different ways. Among them, the fact that we, as a nation, are supposed to reject such behaviors, that we have a history of standing in opposition to them, and that, as maha mentions above, this is our republic and we have a chance of doing something about it.

There is ample evidence that WE DON’T KNOW who is or isn’t responsible for Abu Ghraib, and until we have a complete investigation, given the rhetoric and record of this administration, it is ridiculous to assume we have punished them. (How did those hillbillies figure out these techniques that so closely match Gitmo?)

I agree with Lex, and with Malkin, I guess, that the photos from Iran are awful. I encourage the Iranian people to get busy trying to change their government to stop such atrocities. Once we’ve stopped our own government’s atrocities, maybe we can help. Maybe if Malkin pitched in, instead of sniping at us, it would happen sooner.

His was not the standard civilian Bush supporter position, but certainly is consistent with others in the military at the time. And I stand by my earlier statement: he deserves credit for calling it what it was.