Don't let the Abu Gharaib picture distract you from all the other wonderful way they screwed up
A pattern of culpability in Iraq
By Helena Cobban
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. – Almost every day, additional details have emerged about the serious abuses committed by personnel in US-run prisons in Iraq. These reports are deeply disturbing. But the abuses they tell of form only the tip of an iceberg of culpable mismanagement that has characterized the Bush administration's Middle East policy for many months.
…The April events combined for a "perfect storm" of anti-US hostility. All that was before the pictures of the Abu Ghraib tortures started to appear.
The essence of any democracy is the accountability of officials to the citizens they claim to serve. The decisions this administration has made regarding key aspects of its Middle East policy have significantly harmed the interests of the US citizenry along with those of Iraqis and Palestinians. Things may still get much worse for the US - in Iraq and elsewhere. But it didn't have to be this way: There were several points in the past 15 months where culpably faulty decisions were made. Who made them? Who will be held accountable?
And how many more people - Americans and others - will be killed before the US reverses this disastrous course?
