Andrew Sullivan has an appalling summary of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and a suggestion for the president. He should take the advice.

And on a slightly different but related topic, how is "Ghraib" pronounced, anyway? I keep hearing people (including NPR people, who are usually sticklers about pronunciation, at least if it's some trendy lefty country) saying "Grayb," with a single syllable. I'm no Arabic expert, but I'd think that it should be "Grah-eeb." Anyone know?

How Dumb Can A President Get? Responding ".... so I didn't like it one bit." just doesn't cut it as a response to the Iraqi prison atrocities done under his watch.
by Rob Kall

OpEdNews.Com

Bush's inadequate grasp of the English language, his inability to communicate screams in the face of the travesty of Iraqi prisoner tortures. Now, more than ever, the US faces the hatred, scorn and wrath of the Arab world. It takes a smart, articulate leader to respond to such horrors. Bush fails in so many ways. Bush said,

""I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated," President Bush said. "Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people. That's not the way we do things in America. And so I didn't like it one bit."

His comments are not nearly good enough. They are pathetic, thoughtless blurtings of a fool. It is a time like this that we need a leader who has the ability to communicate, to eloquently express the horror, shock, and apology that is necessary. Obviously his speechwriters weren't able to supply him with words with any resemblance to the words of a thoughtful leader. The real Bush came through with a gigantic thud.

Bush is incapable of intelligent, compassionate, responsible speech. He struggles with sentences over a dozen words. He's unable to apologize, unable to take responsibility, unable to say "you're fired."

This is another example of the leader failing to accept that the buck stops with him, that ultimately, these atrocities happened under his watch. But wait. He may be firing someone-- the general who was in charge of the prison might be suspended (though she's rotated out of the assignment, so even she may not have been disciplined.)

Watching Bush fail to respond like a competent leader when faced with such atrocities as the Iraqi prisoners experienced, it reminds us how horrible it is that the Justices Powell and Scalia and O'connor cast the key votes to place this idiot in office. It reminds us that his strongest constituencies celebrate him for his inability to string together intelligent sentences. They celebrate him for his oafish, good 'ol frat-boy charm.

But this time, when we see these shameful, awful pictures of prisoners tortured in blatant violation of all the rules, we know that Bush's inability to communicate like Reagan or Clinton, Carter, or even Nixon could, no, surely will have a profound effect upon the billion plus Arab and Muslims on this planet. Now, when the idea of American freedom, of US democracy is brought up, it will be a pathetic joke, a travesty of the true ideals. Why? Because on Bush's watch, military intelligence leaders encouraged the creation of an adverse environment that would facilitate cooperation by prisoners.

Why? Because the military reservists working as guards in the prison didn't know the most basic rules for the treatment of prisoners. The New York Times reports,

"A leading human rights group said the military should investigate whether the soldiers' superiors had ordered or tolerated the abuse.

"The brazenness with which these soldiers conducted themselves ... suggests they felt they had nothing to hide from their superiors," said Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Fhe way things w ork in Bush's Washington, it's possible that CIA Director George Tenet will be blamed for this. He seems to be the designated blame receiver for the Bush administration. But he doesn't have to worry. He's carrying on in the tradition of another spook-- J. Edgar Hoover, who had so much dirt on all the power people in Washington that he had to die to leave his job. It's clear that Tenet has enough dirt on Bush and the rest of the Bush cabinet to kill Bush's run for re-election. Even Donald Trump couldn't fire him.

Then again, it's highly likely that there are a lot of people who Bush can't fire because they'd turn on him. Matter of fact, there are so many, that Bush's cup is running over. He's no longer able to silence all the people who know what an incompetent, poorly advised, stupid, lying fool he is.

There are about six billion people on this planet who do know it. And there are about fifty percent of the people in the US who know what a total, incompetent failure Bush is. That leaves the Stupid white men right wing blue collar southerners, the right wing fascist brain-dead Christians and the greedy, short-sighted people earning over $200,000 a year who fail to see that the price they are paying to save a few thousand in taxes is the judicial and economic, spiritual and ecological health of the nation they spend their wealth in.

I cannot imagine any wealthy person who would be willing to allow a stupid, tongue-tied fool like George Bush run any company they'd have their money invested in. Maybe they'd approve of him as a marketing shill, as a PR front-man, or a person to use to make connections happen in corrupt third world countries, but not in a real position of authority. After all, Bush is a genius when it comes to interpersonal intelligence. But that specialized kind of intelligence is good for winning high school and fraternity elections, not for leading our nation, not for facing tragedy and travesty.

What can the rest of the world think of the America of Republican George W. Bush? That we're now no longer charmingly quaint, like a primitive tribe, but under George W. Bush's, Tom DeLay's and Bill Frist's leadership the US is actually virulently dangerous, a threat to the stability of the planet, a target for the millions of hornets nests of angry Muslims who see Bush as a replacement who is not much better than Saddam, and possibly worse. At least Saddam didn't have nukes and humorless Gestapo chiefs like John Ashcroft.

The stupidity of these prison tortures is unbounded. Undoubtedly, these atrocities will lead to the deaths of many more Americans-- both troops facing hostile actions and victims of terrorists newly inspired to jihad by the pictures plastered all over the electronic media.

Shortly before the beginning of the WWII, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book titled, It Can't Happen Here. It described a US that was taken over by a corrupt president-- a dumb but folksy yokel-- with smart, duplicitous advisors. Gradually, they erased recognizable signs of democracy, justice, education and freedom. It is happening here. But it hasn't gone as far as Lewis described in his book.... yet. One test will be how the nation responds to the shame of the Abu Ghraib prison. If the stupid white men who support Bush fail to wake up after this latest slap in the face to American honor, integrity and respectability, it will be a sign that it can indeed Happen Here.

Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is editor/founder of OpEdNews.com. This article is copyright Rob Kall and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog or web media so long as this credit paragraph is attached.

Canute, this space is for posting my readers' comments, not reprinting tirades masquerading as newspaper columns. It's an abuse of my disk space and bandwidth. A link would have been more than sufficient, particularly given the brainless Bush-hating spew of which it consisted. Do it again and I'll ban you.

OK

It's interesting to note that neither the National Review nor the Weekly Standard are reporting anything on grinning American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. At Transterrestrial Musings at least the torturing is commented upon.

Really? You must read the Bizarro World edition of National Review. It's also been discussed extensively at The Corner.

And let's differentiate between "abuse" and "torture".

But I find it fascinating that after decades of real torture leading to mass graves, the Left has finally found prison practices in Iraq which they can loudly condemn.

Well, I checked out http://www.nationalreview.com and there wasn't much there on the front page. However, I should have taken a closer look at the article ARCHIVE. You're right, on monday May the third, article nr. 10 (in a non-alphabetical order) is Babbin's "Post-Saddam Crimes at Abu Ghraib". Now, where are the other articles dealing with Abu Ghraib?

And the Corner...hmm, are you sure it's been EXTENSIVELY discussed? Where are the EXTENSIVE discussions?

Abuse: The use of Canute's copy & paste key

Torture: Any cartoon by Ted Rall

Pathetic: Rush Limbaugh comparing Abu Ghraib to a Brittany Spears concert

Priceless: Some on the right downplaying the alleged warcrimes committed by the 372nd by saying "Saddam was so much worse!". Absolutly ****** irrelevent. And given that there was no evidence in the end for the "Hussain's paper shredder of doom" story, it looks as if Abu Ghraib got within an order of magnitude of it's old self. Not the way to build a democracy.

Funny, I heard most of an Arab radio interview with Bush, and his condemnation sounded unequivocal and extremely harsh to me. I don’t know what more he might have said aside from maybe, "The guilty parties will be taken out and shot" – and then he WOULD be a tyrant.

Canute: I tend to ignore long rants like the one you quoted. I might keep reading after the first “Bush is a fool” if there is actually an example or a point to be made, but by the third or fourth consecutive insult with no intervening discussion for the rationale for them, I stop.

Duncan: I agree that the common killing and torture by Saddam’s thugs should not be used as an excuse for our actions – we should be and expect to be held to a different standard. Actually, my impression is that the Neocons in the "We're there to create a Democracy" camp have made some of the strongest condemnations. But it is worth pointing out far more attention is being paid to what our people did than what happened under Saddam’s regime, often unreported because you could get shot trying to do it. When we do something bad like this, it says something about us that it DOES get this kind of attention up to and including an apology by the President.

>Funny, I heard most of an Arab radio interview
>with Bush, and his condemnation sounded
>unequivocal and extremely harsh to me. I don’t
>know what more he might have said aside from
>maybe, "The guilty parties will be taken out and
>shot" – and then he WOULD be a tyrant.

Arab world scorns Bush's TV "apology":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1210520,00.html

And your point is? I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that a reporter could find Arabs that don't believe Bush. That doesn't change what he said.

Without descending into the swamp of comments above, I don't know Arabic either, but I would have guessed that the G would have been a guttural gh sound. I have no idea what the proper transliteration is, and the sound I have in mind does not exist in English... On the two syllables, I would agree with you.

It is always fascinating to compare various transliterations with each other and with the original, and the same goes for pronunciations. It does make Googling a nightmare, though - for instance, any possible spelling of Kaddafi's name appears somewhere, and it would take the Mother of all Regexps to match them all!

>And your point is? I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell
>you, that a reporter could find Arabs that don't
>believe Bush. That doesn't change what he said.

Your president said he was sorry for what happened at Abu Ghraib -- only because he had to, after days of less adequate expressions of regret. Also, just saying sorry simply won't cut it. Shrub's "apology" comes up short. It's a passive apology - like the infamous line (by tricky dick) that "mistakes were made". I guess that saying "I'm sorry" works well domestically for shrub; it just doesn't work internationally.

Check out: "Rape Rooms: A Chronology, What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2100014/

"A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba … listed some of the wrongdoing: 'Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.' "—Seymour M. Hersh, "Torture at Abu Ghraib," The New Yorker, posted April 30, 2004"

"Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq."—Bush, remarks at "Ask President Bush" event, Michigan, May 3, 2004

Hmm, it seems to me that shrub is either knowingly not telling the truth or is out of the loop big time.

I'm not surprised that someone who uses the word "Shrub" when refering to the President won't be satisfied by anything he could possibly say. He said far more than "Sorry" and I have no doubt he is extremely angry with the immoral fools that perpretrated this.

As for pronunciation - NPR have it correct, according to Slate .