Oh by the way, if we really want to "support the troops" in the mission they have been given, let's not forget that one of the post hoc "justifications" for invading Iraq has been that by "fighting the Terraists there" we would not have to fight them here. Our troops are SUPPOSED to be getting attacked by (and then killing) Terraists right now.

Now, if what we want our soldiers to do is "fight the Terraists", what better way to flush the Terraists out into the open than by pissing them off? And doing it while our soldiers are "over there" to fight them? It would seem entirely consistent with the "bring it on" philosophy of the neocons, wouldn't it, to see how many Terraists and Terraist Wannabees we could flush out, so's we could kill 'em, and if making public (in accordance with existing US statutory law and the decisions of both lower and appellate courts)photographs about conduct already generally disclosed, known to be illegal but nonetheless likely not to engender happy thoughts among the Terraist ilk, then what are the neocons all upset about?

Is this any less rational than taking a position that the existing statutory law,the lower and higher court decisions interpreting that law, the recognition that the conduct reflected in the photographs can be expected to be illegal or immoral (and we will be likely to concede that) all should be overriden and ignored just because there is a significant possibility that revelation of lawless conduct might anger some Terraists and cause them to engage in battle with US troops who were sent abroad to ferret them out and engage them in potentially dangerous battle?

The idea that our troops are being put in harm's way is a tad late to the party. Our troops are squarely in harm's way. And the harmers are already mad about the subject matter of what is in those photos. In for a penny, in for a pound, neocons. I, for one, would very much have preferred that we had only invaded Iraq for honest reasons, that our government had not engaged in reprehensible abuses of the laws of war and the vicious torture of persons secretly deemed subhuman, and that we had stopped these abominable practices some time ago and had taken steps to correct the abysmal international standing these practices have subjected my country to in the eyes of the whole world (including but not limited to Terraists and Terraist Wannabees). But I'm not willing to say that no steps toward correcting these wrongs can be tolerated for the reason that our troops might have to fight against the very people they were tasked with fighting, or that those people might still be mad, or more mad.

There must certainly come a point at which one poster's attempt to hijack a thread has gone on long enough that everyone else can only visualize said poster (no names, but the initials are "WinSmith") arriving in the doctor's office with a handkerchief on the head, and announcing: "My brain hurts!"

Truth is what is left after the lies offered in an effort to hide it have been exposed. And Krauthammer, Goldberg and their ilk now repair to these tactics, which Liz Cheney distills perfectly: we are better than the world, the world better stay the fuck out of our way.

We have been treating the world the way Liz Cheney just described is since Bush announced "if you're not with us, you're against us." The parameters and nuances of that doctrine are pretty evidently tied up in the "subject photographs" right now. As the question of "whether" we tortured has come ever closer to "whether we need to do anything about those who engaged in torture", we have watched every effort to divert attention to that question get thown against the wall, most recently with the effort to shift the "issue" from whether we did it to whether allowing people to know what we did "endangers the troops". That may have reached the end of its rope with a United States Senator exhorting the President, on Bill O'Reilly's show, to "show who runs this Country" by proposing to "classify" documents that the courts of the United States have ordered released under controlling law and after Congress has demonstrated that it may not be willing to try to rewrite that law retroactively.

So if the discussion is going to become not whether the United States has the right to torture other nations' peoples, but whether the United States' President has the unilateral authority to order evidence of such conduct classified (after losing the court battles over whether such evidence is entitled to be kept secret under American law) on the grounds that allowing other nations to know the extent of these actions might subject us to criticism, how does one justify even suggesting that this is a viable reason for shielding illegal conduct?

Only by squarely admitting that you just don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world might think is "relevant." And that's only justifiable if the rest of the world doesn't have the right to question you or your motives or your actions.

Hence, "we're better than everyone else. Shut the fuck up."

The rest is window dressing. It follows logically that the world has no right to see these photos. It follows logically that the world deserves whatever form of punishment we choose to mete out for the indignity of 9/11. And it follows that the world had best shut the fuck up and hand over the oil.

How much easier this all could have been had Liz or her buds articulated this about eight years ago. Oh wait -- "Every ten years or so, the U.S. needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." I forgot, they did. But you have to hand it to Liz, her articulation is less cryptic.