Reap what you sow
One thing being overlooked in the Iraqi prison scandal is the atmosphere set by this administration towards prisoners of war. I rarely hear anyone mention Guantanamo Bay, where "enemy combatants" are held, maybe forever, with no regard for the Geneva Convention. There is little doubt that prisoners there have been tortured or moved to countries like Egypt where they have been tortured on our behalf.

So this is the tone that has been set. I'm curious if other countries are also allowed to declare Americans as enemy combatants if they so choose and then treat them as horribly as they want. Given the publicity given to the photos from the Iraqi prisons, the next Americans soldiers who are captured may face torture or even death. That must be of great comfort to them.

A point was made on one of the Sunday morning shows that in almost every major post-war Iraq decision, the civilian leadership --Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. -- have been wrong. Think about it. Troop levels required after the invasion. The manner in which we would be greeted by the Iraquis post-liberation. The difficulties in setting up a true democracy. The way we would be viewed around the Middle East after we toppled Hussein. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

In many cases, the civilian leadership overruled the military leadership who were serving this country while Cheney was using his influence as a former Secretary of Defense to rake in billions for Halliburton. But of course, he knew better than the military professionals who had been in the trenches all those years.

And Bush, as always, has remained gleefully ignorant to everything.

This group promised to run America like a business when they came in. They didn't tell us the business was Enron. The results for the country are nothing short of catastrophic. The way longtime employees of Enron lost their stock when the company crashed, so too have the American people lost the stock that we had held around the world. Except in this case, our stock was the moral high ground.