The letters criticizing Salon's publication of the newest Abu Ghraib photos seem to fall into three categories: 1) The photos are two years old and dredge up a story that had been almost forgotten about; 2) Their publication will further incite Muslim hatred to the West and endganger our troops in Iraq; 3)If Salon chose to publish those pictures it should also publish thone Danish cartoons; and 4)

As to the photos dredging up a forgotten story: it deserves to be dredged up and should never have been forgotten in the first place. But the new photos would have been forgotten about along with the originals had the Pentagon not persisted in its futile attempt to keep them secret. Now that thay have inevitably surfaced, the administration is forced to take its lumps once again, for both sets of photos. This is just one more example of the gross incompetence behind the planning and execution of the war in Iraq.

As to their publication inflaming Muslim opinion: these photos were originally published in a foreign newspaper, and have already been seen throughout the Muslim world. That damage has already been done, and publication in Salon or other domestic media outlets will no nothing to further inflame Muslim opinion. They do endanger the credibility of the Bush administration by showing up its incompetence even further.

The pictures might even help to moderate the tensions between the West and Muslims, by showing Americans that the issue is not black and white, that Muslims do indeed have some very legitimate grievances, grievances that the Muslim ideologues are skillfully exploiting.

There really is no correlation between the Abu Ghraib photos and those cartoons. The photos are were published to educate Americans as to what is being done in their behalf, the cartoons were intended solely as a gratuitous insult to all Muslims, and have absolutely no redeeming qualities.

Fodderfodder says: "The cartoons are proving their point: That a large number of Islamics are unable to express themselves through anything other than violence, and that, in the case of Salon and other major new organizations, that works."

What they are proving is that a large number of Islamics are able to fall victim to the blandishments of hate mongering demogogues. But is this a unique trait of Islamics? Is it any different from the large number of Americans who engaged in lynch mobs and other violence perpetrated by the KKK and other hate mongers? The arson of churches in Alabama today? Or the organized mob actions against Muslims in Australia, instigated and tolerated by that country's government? I could go on and on.

People in glass houses...

In a rare reasoned objection to those photos, rosalei says: "My concern remains that the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison appear to have stopped, while Muslim and Arab anti-Americanism continues to escalate. Although I see muzzling the press as a bad thing, and self-imposed censorship as something to engage in with great caution (though, honestly, it is a necessity for all of us to some extent), I also think publishing those photos now is like throwing gasoline on a bonfire. Do we really want to inflame the Muslim world against us even more?"

There are three arguments against that.

1. The photos do show incidents that occurred 2.5 years ago, but are we really sure that the abuses have stopped? Or has the military become better at keeping what happens there and other detention facilities secret?

2. It is the administration's own fault that the new photos are coming out now. They tried to suppress them when they should have known they would eventually surface; now that theu have the original horrors are being dredged up again.

3. The Islamic world doesn't get its information from Salon or other Western media. The newest photos were first published elsewhere, Australia I believe, and quickly disseminated throughout the Islamic world. The damage had already been done by the time Salon published them. Salon's publishing may have inflamed opinion of Americans against this administration somewhat, but that's a different matter.

"Of course, there's one man under the president who probably isn't on edge. Even if Bush and his new chief of staff wanted to dump Dick Cheney, they couldn't, at least not without the vice president's consent."

Technically Cheney can't be fired, but his influence could be effectively eliminated. All Bush needs to do is to relegate him to the role of most previous vice-presidents: attending state funerals and other ceremonial functions, and of course, settling tie votes in the Senate.

But is Cheney really under Bush? Or is it the other way around? Why else would Cheney have been given such unprecedented power from the beginning?

Tim Grieves believes it is stupid to care about what language the national anthem is sung in, and the vast majority of the responses agree. As many have noted Bush hisself has sung it in Spanish, and as Grieves points out State Department's own web site contains the official version in Spanish and other languages.

I agree that most of the objections to singing it in Spanish are demagoguery at play, including by Bush hisself. But Grieves and without exception so far the other responders, miss the main point: The current Spanish version is not a translation but a rewriting of the song, to make a different political statement. Examples: ". . . We are brothers, it's our anthem . . . It's time to break the chains . . ."

G. Sower argues that we should follow the example of the Christians, who translated the bible into multiple languages in order to spread their word. But a more correct analogy would be translating the Koran and labeling it the bible, or vice versa.

What was stupid was the politically tone deaf belief that this ploy, regardless of the merits of the political statement, wouldn't be noticed and backfire.