Remarkable, isn't it? The Pentagon is involved in (evidently systemic) abuses and torture of prisoners, and the reaction from our alleged moral compass on the right is to ignore and confuse the issue. We have Rush Limbaugh comparing the torture to college hazing (the last I checked, "college hazing" involving deaths, chemical burns, sexual molestation or electrocution would be rewarded with prison sentences. But Rush wants to coddle criminals, it seems).

And, of course, we have Sean Hannity, claiming John Kerry, by virtue of having "admitted to Geneva Convention violations", is in no position to criticize what's going on now. This might be true -- if Kerry hadn't returned from the war a hero, and promptly blown the whistle on military officials who had ordered him and hundreds of others to engage in Geneva Convention violations, then spent the next few years working tirelessly to end the atrocities and the war. His actions likely ended the war earlier than would have otherwise been the case, and saved many lives. One wonders what Hannity's credentials are to lick Kerry's boots, much less criticize him.

But my favorite of the reprehensible tactics: "yeah, well, what about the 3000 people killed on 9/11?"

It should go without saying, but no one was not apalled and revulsed by 9/11. But there were good ways and bad ways to react to that atrocity. Good ways were to go after the perpetrators and wipe out them and their organization. Surely among the bad ways, however, was to engage in activities which would make the United States less safe and threaten to make a repeat of 9/11 more likely. The Bush administration has done exactly this. In fact, it's hard to imagine actions that would have been more wrongheaded than those promoted by the administration and its apologists in the two and a half years since 9/11.

To the right wing, losing 3000 people on 9/11 evidently justifies throwing over the principles that far more than 3000 Americans have died to instill in this country. To the right wing, 9/11 literally justifies anything -- because nothing matters to such people besides power, and 9/11 is the perfect excuse. Never again can they claim to have any sort of moral compass. They have no morality besides personal and political gain.

They're not true Americans. In fact, I think they're barely human beings. These are the guys who would have held the door for the gas chambers in World War II. For our soldiers and for the rest of us, kicking this scum of humanity out of government and off our airwaves can't come soon enough.

Those of us who hoped John O'Neill, the ex-Nixonite obsessed with his hatred of John Kerry, had decided to go home and find something more constructive to do were evidently too optimistic. He's back, bringing his crackpot Nixonian/Rhenquistic dirty tricks inclinations to bear once again.

Dubbed "Smear Boat Veterans for Bush" by Joe Conason, O'Neill's new 527 group (actually named "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth") is ostensibly organized to ensure that "ALL presidential candidates [are] totally honest and forthcoming regarding personal background and policy information that would help the voting public make an informed decision when choosing the next president of the United States." Of course, that doesn't mean that the obvious target of such sentiment, George Bush, will be on the receiving end of their attention. Which pretty much lets you know where their real intentions lie.

O'Neill claims to have rounded up a bunch of former officers who served with Kerry or knew him and now feel he would make a terrible president. Personally, I think just about anything this scion of Nixonian politics says is worthy of heavy skepticism. He hasn't been shy, for instance, about letting people bill him as someone "who served in John Kerry's unit"; what isn't mentioned is the fact that O'Neill didn't serve in the unit until after Kerry left.

There is lots of wiggle room in SBVT's claims: although they strongly imply that Kerry didn't earn all of his medals and that there are "troubling questions" regarding his service (Bush campaign-speak for "we don't actually have anything, but we want to sow doubts), they don't get specific when asked. Questions about Kerry's medals and service, it turns out, seem to have suddenly sprung up in the minds of several group members (just in time for the campaign), even though they evidently had no issues in the prior 35 years. In fact, several of them had nothing but glowing reports prior to this.

More importantly, it would be instructive to find out whether vets who have allegedly agreed with O'Neill's claims about Kerry knew with what they were supposedly agreeing, or if O'Neill lied to them. It would also be interesting to find out what they think of Bush.

Finally, it should be noted that even if most of O'Neill's claims regarding former officer colleagues of Kerry are accurate, at the root the real issue appears to be problems not with Kerry's service, but with his outspoken post-war anti-war sentiment. Military officers tend towards the conservative side of the spectrum, so this wouldn't be entirely unexpected.

The bottom line is that no one has come forth with anything that demonstrates Kerry didn't serve meritoriously and heroically. Although some have tried to rewrite history, the record is clear: Kerry went into combat when he didn't have to, saved the lives of several other soldiers and earned his medals. He deserves better than the likes of the GOP smear machine; unfortunately, this sort of thing always seems to crop up when right wingers get desperate. The spirit of Nixon lives on...

Has the entire Republican Party been taken over by extremists, for whom principle is secondary to power and blind support of its leaders?

• Republicans are supposed to care about justice, law-and-order and defending the rights of victims.
  
  • Where is the Republican outrage over pictures of prisoner abuse in Iraq?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over Congressional GOP hacking of Democratic computer systems?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over the felonious outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent for political purposes?
    
  
  
• Republicans are supposed to care about honest government.
  
  • Where is the Republican outrage over George Bush lying to Congress and the American People about Iraqi WMD?
    
  • Where is Republican outrage over the administration violating the law by re-directing funds from Afghanistan to planning for war with Iraq?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over the Bush administration's circumvention of the normal bidding process to hand lucrative Iraqi rebuilding contracts to companies with direct connections to administration officials?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over George Bush lying to Congress and the American People over the cost of his Medicare programs, then bribing and threatening officials into supporting the program and/or suppressing damaging information?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over George Bush lying about jobs creation and deficit forecasts?
    
  • Why, in light of all of these things, have there been no calls from Republicans in Congress for impeachment?
    
  
  
• Republicans are supposed to care about defending the country and supporting the troops.
  
  • Where is the Republican outrage over woefully inadequate post-war planning in Iraq that has left our troops, a quarter of the number necessary to do the job, badly over-matched, without sufficient protection and vulnerable?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over the unnecessary deaths of troops in Iraq due to Bush's incompetence?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over Bush's attempted slashing of combat pay and compensation and veteran's benefits?
    
  
  
• Republicans are supposed to care about freedom from an overbearing government.
  
  • Where is Republican outrage over abuses of the Patriot Act?
    
  • Where is Republican outrage over faith-based initiatives which, it has turned out, are being handed out primarily to fundamentalist Christian groups (Jewish, Muslim and other groups need not apply)?
    
  • Where is the Republican outrage over the indefinite detention of suspects at Guantanamo bay, and claims that the administration can do the same to anyone (U.S. Citizen or no) at will?
    
  
  
• Republicans are supposed to care about fiscal responsibility.
  
  • Where is Republican outrage over an exploding deficit?
    
  • Where is Republican outrage over the out-of-control pork-barrel spending of a Republican Congress? Why no Republican outrage over a dogged refusal to undo tax cuts for the wealthiest in order to bring some form of responsibility back to the budget?
    

There are many, many more, but here are a few just to start. Add to these the utter lack of Republican outrage over Bush's blatant lies regarding John Kerry's record, and the question comes to mind: are there no real Republicans any more?

Last week, the last good rationale for us being in Iraq evaporated with the unveiling that American troops had been involved in torture and other atrocities at Iraqi prisons.

The debunking of various rationalizations for the invasion of Iraq has been a slow but steady process. It started with the alleged "danger of Weapons of Mass Destruction" -- the Iraqis were supposed to have been in the posession of over 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulism toxin and 500 tons of nerve agents. Additionally, they were supposed to have had an ongoing (or barely dormant) nuclear weapons program, and were supposed to have been involved in recent attempts to obtain materials necessary for making them. Finally, ties to al Qaeda were claimed, primarily through Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi, supposedly given "safe harbor" in Iraq after having been wounded in Afghanistan.

But even in the runup to the war, many of the "WMD" claims were being questioned. Attempts to obtain materials for nuclear weapons turned out to be outright false and easily debunked. Renewed weapons inspections showed nothing of the alleged tons of chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. And al-Zarqawi, it turned out, resided in Kurdish-controlled parts of Iraq under U.S. "no-fly" rules. Further, many skeptics doubted the secular and hated Saddam would have anything to do with al Qaeda, who considered Hussein a "bad muslim".

What was worse, stories began circulating before the war that the Bush administration had set up a para-intelligence organization to "re-analyze" data on Iraq, looking for material that the intelligence agencies had "missed". Douglas Feith's "Office of Special Plans" was created in 2002 with the express purpose of finding damning evidence about Iraqi WMD and ties to al Qaeda. The message was troubling: it seemed the Bush administration wanted to hear a certain story, and when it didn't, it may have decided to change the facts.

Things only got worse after the invasion. Despite an ever-lengthening period of intensive sleuthing and early claims of success, no evidence of any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was found. David Kay, a weapons inspector sent to Iraq to dig up the weapons, finally reported in January of this year that claims about banned weapons had been just plain wrong.

A worse fate has met claims regarding ties to al Qaeda. It was revealed earlier this year that al-Zarqawi, allegedly the recipient of a surgical leg amputation in Baghdad, in fact was quite whole. What was worse, the Pentagon had received specific intelligence in 2002 and 2003 regarding al-Zarqawi's location and plans to use ricin in terrorist attacks. The Pentagon drew up plans to go after al-Zarqawi (located in the U.S.-patrolled northern section of Iraq). Yet, these plans were stopped by Bush administration officials who evidently feared getting al-Zarqawi would undermine its rationale for invading Iraq. Al-Zarqawi is allegedly responsible for over 700 deaths since the Pentagon first had plans to go after him, and supposedly has been involved in recent plans to kill tens of thousands in Jordan and elsewhere.

The other main reasons for invading Iraq have now suffered a crippling blow. Despite the lack of WMD, Bush administration officials (and Bush himself) have continued to promote "democracy", "freedom" and "a better life without Saddam" as alternative justifications for the war. Further, the invasion of Iraq was supposed to make Americans safer from terrorism, as the sowing of democracy in the arab world would help to stabilize the region (Thomas Friedman of the New York Times was a big proponent of this idea).

Yet, as the events of the last two months have shown, peans of the cornerstones of Western Civilization have yet to bring any benefits to Iraqis. A general uprising has ensued, with rival factions vying for power and a sense that the American occupation is making things worse, not better.

Worse, the Bush administration, warned before the invasion that it was committing too few troops to the post-war effort, has had its illusions rudely shattered, and the soldiers on the ground have been the ones to suffer. This has now culminated in the revelations that American soldiers have been involved in clear violations of the Geneva Conventions regarding treatment of prisoners during occupations. Torture, sexual abuse and other atrocities have come to light.

All of these things have destroyed whatever sympathy we enjoyed among moderate arabs and muslims, and have created an entirely new crop of anti-American militants. The drive to invade Iraq has made the United States far less safe from terrorism on every level imaginable. It took vital resources away from Afghanistan. It devastated needed diplomatic capital and sympathy accrued with other countries. It created a new haven for terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. It left unguarded several sources for dangerous materials (like nuclear power plants in Iraq). It tied up over 100,000 soldiers we could have used for other purposes. And it has resulted in one outrage over another in the arab world; we've truly generated more than "100 bin Ladens". The invasion has literally exceeded the worst expectations of critics of the war.

I would imagine I'm not alone in saying I don't know a good answer to this problem. George Bush shouldn't have taken us to war with Iraq; he lied to the people and Congress of the United States to do it. But the post-war aftermath has been an exercise in unmitigated incompetence. No one with this record of failure under his belt would be allowed to continue to serve as the CEO of a company, and we simply cannot afford to have George Bush as president another four years.

Whoever is president in January, 2005 will have a terrible mess to clean up. One thing's for certain, though: if it's George W. Bush, the mess won't be cleaned; it will only get worse.