All I can think of is that Tom Cruise line from The Color of Money: “It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? It just gets worse and worse.”
And we may only be getting started:
HERSH: This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I’ve had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn’t want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.
There was a special women’s section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It’s much worse.
And then there’s the serious shortage of pack animals in Iraq, which – at least according to Britain’s human rights envoy to Iraq, Ann Clwyd – has driven some American soldiers to desperate expedients:
The latest allegation involved an elderly Iraqi woman said to have been abused by U.S. military guards. The woman, arrested last July, was reportedly put into a harness and forced to crawl on her hands and knees while a guard rode her donkey-style. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s human rights envoy to Iraq, Ann Clwyd, told the BBC she had investigated the allegation and believed it to be true. The woman was held six weeks and never charged.
If this keeps up, Bush may have to go back on Arab TV and not apologize all over again.
We should note that Ann Clwyd can hardly be considered a hostile witness by the coalition. Before and during the invasion, she was one of the most enthusiastic peddlers of the apocryphal story of Saddam’s shredder – the one that allegedly was fed the living bodies of the dictator’s political prisoners. On the other hand, since tangible evidence of the shredder has never come to light, we can also put her credibility down as somewhat unproven.
Then again, we may see pictures (of the donkey ride, if not the shredder) any day now.
All these PR headaches reportedly have left President Bush deeply “annoyed” with his defense secretary – although, as Maureen Dowd point out, this didn’t keep Rummy and his sidekick from partying it down at the White House Correspondents dinner last Saturday:
Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were swanning around in black tie at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night, mingling with le hack Washington and a speckling of shiny imports, like John Kerry’s former Tinseltown gal-pal Morgan Fairchild, Ben Affleck, a Victoria’s Secret model who was not Gisele and several “Apprentice” alumni who were not Omarosa.
MoDo tries, but only Fellini – or maybe Leni Reifenstahl – could really do that scene justice.
Today, however, we’re told that while President Clueless might be a bit miffed with his Supreme Generalissimo, he’s not going to do anything rash like demand his resignation:
U.S. President George W. Bush wants Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to stay in his job, the White House has said, even as the top Democrat in the House of Representatives called for Rumsfeld to resign over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
We’ve seen this tape loop before – after former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott gave his ill-considered birthday speech praising Strom Thurmond’s heroic 1948 campaign to preserve the racial values of 1848.
First we were told the president would have no comment on the Majority Leader’s poor choice of words. Then, as the firestorm grew hotter, various anonymous administration officials disclosed that Bush was “disappointed” by Lott’s remarks. Finally, after it became clear to everybody (except Lott) that he couldn’t possibly survive, the White House trotted Bush out to utter a public, albeit somewhat cryptic, rebuke, and then immediately began pushing Bill Frist as Lott’s successor.
Right now, the administration seems to be in phase two of the media trial of Donald Rumsfeld – the watch and wait phase. If the story dies down, he may survive. But if nasty S&M pictures – or, even worse, video footage – keep floating up from the MP underground, and the story refuses to go away, then the White House will have to proceed to stage three: the public presidential rebuke.
At which point I think we can open the betting on the name of the next Defense Secretary.
Update 2:30 PM ET: Under cover of the media frenzy over one set of atrocities, the coalition appears to be determined to pursue a course of action that may lead to more – attacking the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala:
Battles at Holy Najaf as U.S. Takes on Shi’te Militia
U.S. troops attacked Shi’ite militia forces around the Iraqi holy city of Najaf on Thursday, seizing the local governor’s offices and killing 41 fighters, a senior official in the U.S. occupation authority told Reuters.
In what seemed a broad move against insurgents across southern Iraq, U.S. tanks moved unopposed into the center of the nearby holy city of Kerbala, destroying offices used by the Mehdi Army militia of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
That’s bad enough, but then Bureaucrat Man Bremer had the absolute gall to issue a statement like this:
“There is no room in the new Iraq for the kind of lawless, self-interested behavior we have seen over recent weeks,” he said.
We need a new word to describe such verbal diarrhea. Hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to cut it.
