DANG: First-rate photoblog A Smoky Mountain Journal, better known as SmokyBlog, is shutting down.

LAWRENCE SOLUM ROUNDS UP an interesting blogosphere debate on libertarianism and conservatism in constitutional law.

ADVANTAGE: INSTAPUNDIT! I mentioned it here last week, but now The New York Times is noticing:

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women’s pink underwear as a form of humiliation.

Bill Lockyer doesn’t mind this kind of thing! (Or worse). Neither, apparently, does Eliot Spitzer. This suggests that concern over events in Iraq is overstated, or that concern over prison conditions here is understated. Or maybe both. (Does this mean we should pull out of Pennsylvania?)

IT’S BEEN DELIGHTFUL staying offline and ignoring the news. A quick cast around the blogs, however, suggests that the rest of the world needs to chill a bit, too.

Comparisons of what happened at Abu Ghraib to My Lai, or to Algeria, are ridiculous.

My Lai was on a wholly different scale, involving the murder of large numbers of innocent women and children, not the mistreatment of prisoners. And in Algeria, the French wanted to stay, and keep Algeria part of Metropolitan France. Plus there were the (semi-insane) French colonists, the pieds-noirs, mucking up the situation. Our situation in Iraq is very different — there are no colonists, and we want Iraq to be self-governing and free as soon as possible. Comparing the two illustrates a serious lack of perspective. Or worse.

Likewise the (sometimes rather hopeful) claims from some on the left that we’ve “lost the war” here are silly too. We’ll only lose this war if we chicken out. One suspects that they desire this very outcome. Losing the war’s fine with some, if it can get Bush out of office.

That agenda is way too obvious for me to take their comments seriously. It would be wrong to minimize the misconduct at Abu Ghraib, but it would be equally wrong to maximize it. And there seems to be rather a lot of that going on at the moment.

If all this coverage is leaving you demoralized, and hopeless, and depressed, let me suggest that this isn’t an accident — it’s the goal. Don’t lose perspective, even if you have to take a few days away from the news to get it back. (LT Smash does a good job of retaining perspective without glossing over things here.)

UPDATE: Reader Lesley Wexler emails:

I’ve been pondering your Iraq posts and I think the left (at least, the reasonable left of which I consider myself to be a part) is struggling with how to convey to the public how awful Abu Ghraib is. Younger Americans just don’t really have a clear context for what’s happening. My guess is that advocates and pundits are trying to come up with recent, salient comparisons to trigger availability heuristics and thus tap into larger debates. The two frames through which Abu Ghraib is being made salient are My Lai and domestic prison abuse. I think the left is using “My Lai” as shorthand for “US wartime atrocities.” They clearly aren’t on the same scale, but the way in which they might be comparable is as a frame for the debate over whether this was the work of a few bad apples (the view of most on the right) or the inevitable/systemic result of either warfare/ prison systems (the far left) or the combination of bad
apples and a failure of leadership/training up the chain of command (the moderate left). I agree that the people who say this is My Lai are being unreasonable, but I think there’s something to be said for trying to fit Abu Ghraib into the larger debates about how and why (for lack of a better term) the banality of evil manifests itself in wartime.

Yeah, and I guess I probably fit in the category Lesley puts as “moderate left” here. I think it’s bad apples, but — as is usually the case — bad apples who get away with it because they can.

What I’m unhappy with here, though, is people who are trying to turn this event into a metaphor for the war in its entirety — and, in doing so, to exploit the genuine disgust that most pro-war people feel for this behavior and turn it into political capital. Frank Rich likes to analogize things to My Lai because he thinks that his side won in the Vietnam war.

Meanwhile, Chief Wiggles, who’s in Iraq now and who has run a military prison, has more thoughts.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Here’s an interview with the “vacationing” Benon Sevan:

Benon Sevan, the official at the centre of the United Nations’ oil-for-food scandal, has broken his silence to claim that he is being persecuted after an independent inquiry was ordered into allegations of multi-billion dollar corruption relating to the scheme.

Tracked down on Friday by The Sunday Telegraph to a five-star hotel in his native Cyprus, Mr Sevan said that he was being unfairly persecuted and vowed to “talk plenty” once the inquiry had reported back to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. . . .

When asked about Mr Sevan’s whereabouts in recent weeks, the UN would say only that he was on holiday, pending his retirement in June at the age of 66. He is due to receive a £55,000 annual pension after serving the UN for 40 years.

Now, however, those plans have changed. According to UN officials contacted by The Sunday Telegraph last week, Mr Sevan will stay in office to co-operate with the inquiry by the former US Treasury Secretary, Paul Volcker.

In the deal struck with Mr Annan, Mr Sevan will continue for the next three months and be paid a token $1 (55p) a year as a consultant, while continuing to enjoy diplomatic immunity.

(Emphasis added.) Nope, no coverup here. Just your usual extension of diplomatic immunity for a retired employee who’s in a position to implicate a lot of people if he says the wrong thing in testimony!

CONTINUING TO TAKE IT EASY: Last night the InstaWife and I stayed home and watched Honey, a movie that she had been wanting to see.

The hiphop was OK from my perspective, though I kept wanting to hear some 303s in there somewhere. Jessica Alba was very cute, and otherwise I have little to say that isn’t in the Amazon reviews linked above. One thing that struck me, though, was the frequent presence of American flags in the background in scene after scene. I wonder if people will be able to spot films from this era that way?

Back later. Visit the links in the post below, and Capt. Ed, Oxblog, Daniel Drezner, Mitch Berg, and the new, Powerblog-driven Volokh Conspiracy have all been blogging up a storm this weekend, too. And this column on Iran by Pejman Yousefzadeh is worth your time.

UPDATE: The InstaWife says the movie was better than that, and notes that the Jessica Alba character is quite modern: (1) Wanting to help inner-city kids, she comes up with a project of her own, instead of putting her hand out to the government; (2) Subjected to sexual harassment, she doesn’t sue, but stands up for herself and gets even on her own; (3) Though there’s nothing anti-sex in her stance, she favors sexy creativity over crude titillation.

Good points, all.

STILL ON BREAK: But check out Stephen Green, Roger Simon, Donald Sensing, Belmont Club, and Jeff Jarvis, who aren’t, and who have lots of important stuff. And Jan Haugland has an interesting post on Iraqis handling Iraqi problems. This Lawrence Kaplan TNR piece on Abu Ghraib and blameworthiness is worth reading, too.

And in a shocking development, Michael Moore appears to have told a lie in order to get publicity! Imagine that. Back later.

I’M GOING TO FOLLOW JAMES LILEKS’ ADVICE:

Get better! Go away for a week. Blog not. You’re not a public utility! We won’t call our city councilman if the tap’s dry for a while.

Okay. Not for a week, maybe, but for a while. One quick report, though. Following up on my earlier post on photo printing, I ordered a huge 20×30 print of this photo via the Exposure Manager printing service and it came yesterday. It rules — the sharpness, and shadow and highlight detail, are just terrific. I don’t think a 35mm negative would do as well. And the price for printing this? $14.85 — cheap! I think it’ll be a while before I buy a fancy, expensive photo printer for home.

And there’s — surprise — more stonewalling from the United Nations on the UNSCAM oil-for-food scandal: “The United Nations has sent a stern letter to an important witness in the Iraq oil-for-food investigation, demanding that he not cooperate with congressional probes of the scandal, The Post has learned.”

So there you go. Back later.

ANDREW SULLIVAN says some nice things about my post on Iraq from last night, and asks, very kindly, “how does he do it?”

The answer, I’m afraid, is “at some cost.” Presently involving my health. The cold that sidelined me a couple of weeks ago has turned into either bronchitis or “walking pneumonia,” (I’m not sure which, and the doctor mentioned both) and now I’m on antibiotics and trying to rest in between grading exams. Blogging may be reduced for a while.

UPDATE: Thanks for the emails. I’m not dying or anything, though — just feeling the same moderately-crappy way I’ve felt for a while, with perhaps a slight additional wooziness from the antibiotics. I’ll be back.

Meanwhile, go read Jeff Jarvis on popularity and priorities, and the “lynch mob” forming for Rumsfeld.

This is a real scandal, worthy of real attention — but it’s now moved past reality to the point of being overhyped by people whose real goals have nothing to do with justice. Nothing whatsoever.

Longtime Rumsfeld critic Donald Sensing agrees:

Long-time readers of this blog know that I have no membership card of the Donald Rumsfeld fan club.

But the calls for his head are both idiotic and deceptive. . . .

Deceptive because Rummy is taking the fire, but Bush is the target. A more purely partisan, crass, politically-motivated campaign I have never seen. And yes, I include the Ken Starr investigation.

The Dems’ hot rhetoric will backfire, I think. Look for Kerrey’s numbers to drop.

It’s my sense that they’re overplaying their hand here.

THE TAXPROF BLOG notes that The Washington Post is joining those demanding the release of Teresa Heinz Kerry’s tax returns.

FRANK J. offers a guide to cordial political discussion.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

May 6, 2004 — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan talks grandly of “transparency” in the so-called probe of the world body’s festering Oil-for- Food scandal – but don’t believe a word of it. For he seems to be running a coverup. . . .

The latest line from Turtle Bay is that the Oil-for-Food mess isn’t really a scandal at all, just an anti-U.N. plot inspired by “right-wingers” – or, alternatively, by former Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi.

Those are shameful lies.

In fact, the Iraqi Governing Council has been probing the mess since January, when the Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada published its now-famous list of the 270 officials from 44 countries who were bribed with oil vouchers by Saddam (see above: Benon Savan).

Indeed, reports of massive corruption in the $46 billion program began years before the liberation of Iraq opened government records to inspection.

Yes. If Kofi, et al., have nothing to hide, then why are they acting so guilty?

I MENTIONED IT BEFORE, but now that it’s actually out in print and available I want to praise Michael Barone’s new book, Hard America, Soft America. I think he offers some really interesting insights into the strengths and weaknesses of American society, and into how we sometimes have trouble telling which is which.

MICKEY KAUS gave Bush’s speech on the prisoner abuse case lukewarm reviews, but Sissy Willis reports that it seems to be playing better in the Arab world. She notes praise not only from Alhurra, which is, after all, an American-supported network, but also from the far less America-friendly Al-Arabiya. As I said before, this is a disaster, but played right, this can also be a “teachable moment.”

But we have to make it so. I don’t know whether Bush’s apology was enough, and I certainly don’t think he should do, a la Bill Clinton, do it over and over again. But — especially as we see stories like these, suggesting that there were bigger issues left unresolved by the Administration — it’s important to stress what both of the Arab journalists quoted above said: that follow-through is what really matters here. This isn’t something you get rid of with a sound bite.

An Abizaid speech — followed up by swift, decisive, and obvious action — would be a good idea. Or even a Rumsfeld apology speech. It’s all very well to argue perspective and to note that it was, in fact, the U.S. military that moved first on this. But the world will be judging us, fairly or not, by what comes next.

MORE PRISONER ABUSE:

Further witnesses confirmed that the prison guards, disguised in so-called ski-masks would appear in groups of three or four. The attacks mostly happened at night. According to the details, the guards struck the prisoners with their fists and with nightsticks. Some of the victims suffered serious injuries and broken bones.

Of course, this is in a civilian prison in Germany. In fact, one of the undercovered angles to the Abu Ghaibr story is that many of the perpetrators seem to have been prison guards in civilian life, and I suspect — as previous posts here on more than one occasion suggest — far worse behavior is routinely tolerated there.

A SUCCESS FOR MULTILATERAL PROMOTION OF DEMOCRACY that deserves more attention:

Twice in six months, the United States and Russia have told corrupt, authoritarian, Soviet dinosaurs that it’s their time to shuffle off into the sunset. Each time it was against Russia’s better interests. Each time, the United States was firm in its commitment and made this commitment clear to Russia, the world, and Georgian leaders who insisted on holding back their people for personal gain. With the Ajaria situation, we also had a Georgian leader that took the world to task for its willingness to sell short Ajarian human rights and dignity for the sake of stability.

Say what you will about the Bush administration. Tell me it’s all about oil. Tell me it’s a plot to substitute fine Georgian wine with Coke. Tell me Saakashvili, a US-trained lawyer, was groomed for this role by the CIA.

I don’t care.

Bottom line: half a million people are free tonight that weren’t free this morning. Why? The Bush administration, the State Department in particular, did a fantastic job of sticking to its values and convincing Russia to stand by our side to bring freedom to Ajaria.

If that’s unilateralism and cynical manipulation in pursuit of profits, pass it on down, I want some more.

Me too. And bravo for the State Department.

ANOTHER STORY on the Thulfiqar Army that’s going after Sadr’s followers. I don’t know how dangerous they really are, but they’re certainly a concrete demonstration of the limits to his support.

JAMES LILEKS:

The minute I heard Biden refer to Rumsfeld with the magic words – “what did he know, and when did he know it?” – I knew that the Iraqi POW story had jumped the shark. Or rather jumped a pyramid of blindfolded, homoerotic sharks. It’s not the question, it’s the words: use of the Vietnam and Watergate era terms like an incarnation that will topple the current administration. I almost expect someone to ask whether there is a cancer on the presidency, a chancre, or a weeping mole. Stop it! STOP LIVING IN THE PAST!

What really bastes my brisket (did I just write that? I need a beer.) is the constant desire to return us to the nadir of the post-war era. They want us to think: quagmire. They want us to think: Nixonian scandal. How inspirational. How Churchillian. I have nothing to offer the American people but blood, sweat and Billy Beer. . . .

That Biden would float the idea of axing Rumsfeld in the middle of this confliict over this tells you how seriously he takes the war. He knows what he says won’t bring victory next year. But it will get him on TV tonight, and perhaps in the Times tomorrow.

Read the whole thing.

THIS TV COMMERCIAL ON KERRY and the Iraq prison abuse case is pretty brutal. I don’t think it’s unfair, though. He may wish he’d stuck to his original, sensible statement.

I’m also amazed just how fast they can get these things out.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

Brutal, yes, but as you say, not unfair.

Glenn, the Kerry people do themselves no favors by highlighting this, as Kerry’s past has too much stuff in it along these lines.

Well, it’s harsh. But Kerry accused his fellow soldiers of war crimes — after he returned from Vietnam. That’s a lot less courage than was displayed by the U.S. soldier who complained to his superiors about abuses at Abu Ghraib, resulting in an investigation that got his commanding general relieved in January — months before this issue went public. Which is why Kerry’s latest complaints about the Administration moving “slowly” on this are so utterly pathetic. That I had just finished praising him for his earlier, more sensible remarks just makes me feel like a sucker.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, in the cold light of morning, maybe it is a bit unfair. But — and this is the point Kerry’s campaign needs to grasp — not at all unexpected. Call me crazy, but I don’t think Vietnam is a good “brand” in a Presidential election.

THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST FOR CNN:

It is too kind to call CNN’s decade of turning a blind eye to the brutality of Iraq under Saddam Hussein a failure because it was a conscious decision of the network’s senior news executives to trade favorable coverage of Iraq for access to a “hot story”. In fact, a “story” that had MADE CNN in the days when Peter Arnett was the “last man out” of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War.

CNN’s complicity – and the failure of the other news organizations described by Jordan (as well as The New York Times’ John Burns in the book Embedded) – is coming home to roost as media outlets around the world make the claim without contradiction that there is no difference between Iraq under Saddam and Iraq under U.S. occupation. Where is the CNN file footage of interviews with Saddam’s torture victims? Where are the shocking Saddam torture photos?

Despite their record of complicity in covering up years of bruatality and torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, CNN has lost no time in running endless reports on the Iraqi prison photos. Besides practically non-stop reports on the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse story, CNN’s line up has been stocked with guests booked to discuss the Iraqi Prisoner Abuse story.

Read the whole thing. He’s right — more coverage of prisoner abuse in a week than they gave Saddam’s torture and mass murder in a decade.

PROTECTING VOTERS IN AFGHANISTAN: And inspiring an interesting blog entry. Ted Rall and Micah Wright are mentioned.

ED CONE ASKS what we’re trying to accomplish in Iraq:

What does it mean to stay the course? What are our goals there, now that Saddam is gone? When are we done? Haven’t we made the point we wanted to make to other governments that might support terror?

I recommend his post, and we’re pretty much in agreement (his question isn’t rhetorical, but he’s for staying and getting it right). Here are my thoughts, for what they’re worth. There was an alternate plan (the “low hanging fruit” strategy focusing on Somalia, Sudan, etc.). But we went to Iraq, I think, for several reasons:

First, we needed to make the point Ed describes. It’s dangerous to be on our bad side, even if you’re a powerful dicatator with a large army and lots of bribed foreigners. That point has been made.

Second, we couldn’t have a powerful, rich dictator with WMD programs and terrorist connections, who hated us, operating in the region without facing serious handicaps in our efforts elsewhere. That’s taken care of, too.

Third, invading Iraq let us credibly extend that threat to other terror-supporting nations like Syria, Iran and, to some degree, Saudi Arabia. There’s no question that they feel threatened — in fact, it seems likely that they’re sending fighters into Iraq as a way of mounting a “spoiling attack” intended to make us less likely to move against them. And we appear to be returning the favor in a lower-profile way. (And, on a more overt level, the Bush Administration is putting sanctions pressure on Syria.)

Fourth, over the longer term, we felt that a de-Saddamized Iraq provided an opportunity to produce an Arab state that would be neither a theocracy nor an autocracy, but a democratic model that would undercut Arab dictatorships (a root cause of terror, you know!) and terrorists themselves throughout the region. The dictators and terrorists certainly seem worried about that, as evidenced by their efforts — and the efforts of their propaganda arm, Al Jazeera — to undercut that project.

As mentioned below, there’s some indication that we’re succeeding in this. I’d like to see elections sooner, rather than later. The Zarqawi memo, which certainly seems to have accurately predicted the terrorists’ actions, indicated that the terrorists felt that democracy and self-determination in Iraq would be devastating to their cause. And elections in Iraq so far have indicated no great support for either theocracy or a return to autocracy.

This is a process, not an event. We can turn over sovereignty June 30, and (as I hope) have elections in July, but that won’t — as I said earlier — turn Iraq into Connecticut overnight. (Then again, maybe we should aim higher. . . ). But by the standards of the Arab world, things are already improving there — charges of torture are actually newsworthy! — and as I noted earlier, the U.S. strategy seems, wisely, to be to get the Iraqis involved in solving their own problems as much as possible.

I agree with Ed that we will, and should, have troops there in significant numbers for quite a while. But their role should be, more and more, as ultimate guarantors, not day-to-day police. Iraq is, by the standards of much of the world, well-off and well-educated. Its people, though still shell-shocked by a Stalinist state, have been pretty sensible — despite early reports to the contrary, they weren’t rising up in big numbers to back Sadr and the Fallujah revolt, but rather the contrary.

The goal should be a self-governing Iraq, under a legitimate government and a reasonable constitution, as soon as possible. At least, that’s how it looks to me.

UPDATE: Reader Richard Jahnke emails:

One more thing needs to be added to your list of reasons for going into Iraq. That is this: The pre-war situation in and around Iraq was unstable and unsustainable. The 10-year-old sanctions and no-fly-zone regime was about worn out. The requirements for policing the no-fly zones were a destabilizing force in the region and the sanctions were blamed for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children each year. Demands to lift the sanctions were increasing (partly, as we now know, under the influence of massive bribes). Truly, the incomplete 1991 war needed to be ended. Either Saddam or the sanctions had to be taken down. In the wake of 9/11 and amidst Afganistan, we simply could not afford to give Saddam such a victory.

Good point.

MORE THOUGHTS on the United Nations and genocide.

WELL, NO SOONER DO I PRAISE KERRY, BELOW, than he shoots off his mouth and says something stupid. Or at least damaging and partisan.

Jonah Goldberg asks:

Why is he acting so surprised about these torture allegations? I mean isn’t this pretty trivial compared to the stuff he said he and his colleagues did in Vietnam?

It’s do as I say, not as we did, I guess. . . .

UPDATE: Michael Ubaldi emails:

Glenn, don’t be surprised that Kerry makes one statement in one place and another in another. That’s his thing, man.

Yeah. I like one of the Kerry versions. I just never know when he’ll show up.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chuck Allen emails:

I like the bit where Kerry states “And the response of the administration, certainly the Pentagon, has been slow and inappropriate…”

Slow and inappropriate?!? It was the DoD that started investigating this before anyone else knew about it. CBS didn’t break this story, the DoD did, and they started conducting a proper investigation that could lead to criminal charges under the UCMJ, which is exactly what was called for.

What would would the good Senator consider to be a better “quick and appropriate response”? Summary punishment before all the facts are in? That would be a violation of the soldiers UCMJ and civil rights. But I guess it would be alright to violate their rights, just so long as we are not violating those of Saddam’s former thugs.

Kerry’s remarks were not Presidential. And the timing issue is absolutely right. CBS wants you to think that they broke this story, but actually they came around pretty late.

This timeline of events illustrates that the DoD was on this before the press. Here’s just a bit that makes this clear:

Dec/Jan timeframe (implied various sources): A soldier, recognizing the behavior at Abu Ghraib as criminal, reports it. Army CID investigates the allegations of abuse at Al Ghraib and apparently establishes the case against most of the currently accused, including Army Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II.

Late Dec/Early Jan: The three members of the 320th MP Battalion awaiting courts martial (scheduled for late Jan) elect non-judicial punishment in lieu of court martial. They are discharged from military service, two have their ranks lowered, and all three are ordered to forfeit pay for two months. (5 – see also here)

Jan: General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way.

January. Over three months ago. Perhaps someone should tell Kerry.

MORE: Interesting coincidences.

JAMES LILEKS:

Whoa: just heard the new Kerry ad. He was born in an Army Hospital? Then he’s my choice! You know, coming from the right such an assertion – literally born into the military – would terrify some, as though the Dark Night of Fascism was truly descending.

Read the whole thing. Plus, he’s got video!

And Lileks’ Newhouse column is worth reading, too!