Throwing arabic translators out of the military because they are gay is as counter to national security or protecting our troops as you can get. Its sickening.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed (linked at my name):

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

Here is the description of Alexander from that piece:

Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. He is the author of "How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq." He is writing under a pseudonym for security reasons.

That's as direct as the evidence can get. Alexander interviewed insurgents and they told him directly what motivated them. Maybe he's on to something when he says those who advocate torture "don't count American soldiers as Americans".

On a somewhat related note, the more Lindsey Graham carries on about the photos, the more I want to find out just what he did in his stint on active duty in April 2007. I'm beginning to think he was deep into the cover-up of torture during that time. I think that an ACLU FOIA filing to get more details on what he actually did and whether he was involved in any of the "disciplinary" actions against those involved in torture at Camp Bucca and other Iraqi sites would be a very good step.

In reading your commentaries in recent months, I had been struck with the occasional tone of sarcasm you use. At first, I was a bit taken aback, but now realize there are times when the spectacle you have so clearly delineated can only be responded to by sarcasm.

On a similar note, it is required to name those who perpetuate these horrors--not merely to articulate principled and devastating arguments. And often the most effective, certainly the most apt way is in the very terms they use to vilify others.

As you have so appropriately done here.

Hasn’t New President made it clear that God has some concerns about the Gays?

Elie Wiesel tells a story that I always think of when I read things like this (thinking also of Joan Walsh, having just seen her encounter on TV about Tiller):

A story: a just man decided he must save humanity. So he chose a city, the most sinful of all cities. Let’s say it is Sodom. So he studied. He learned all the art of moving people, changing minds, changing hearts. He came to a man and woman and said, "Don’t forget that murder is not good, it is wrong." In the beginning, people gathered around him. It was so strange, somewhat like a circus. They gathered and they listened. He went on and on and on. Days passed. Weeks passed. They stopped listening. After many years, a child stopped him and said, "What are you doing? Don’t you see nobody is listening? Then why do you continue shouting and shouting? Why?" And the man answered the child, "I’ll tell you why. In the beginning, I was convinced that if I were to shout loud enough, they would change. Now I know they won’t change. But if I shout even louder, it’s because I don’t want them to change me."

Sometimes I think events get so huge all we have is our integrity and the desire not to be ashamed of ourselves: the essential harmony of who we are.

And is it not frightening to think of all those so called leaders in the senate and so forth, who will not speak up to people like these two when people are dying? The worst punishment I can think of would be to be them. And what a good thing to be someone who can speak up and shout it out like you do.

Lieberman and Graham are simply replaying the greatest hits of the Bush era, and the media still sing along, so why not? No matter that only FOX-watchers still believe this crap; they believe it even more than ever, since it's been debunked. That "proves" it, to them. Another liberal conspiracy.

As Bush once said in one of his moments of accidental honesty, "You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones we're focusing on."

So Glenn, you cite Admiral Mora saying the following:

the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

You precede this quote by saying:

Indeed, people like Lieberman, Graham and their like-minded friends who support Guantanamo clearly have massive amounts of American solider blood on their hands:

This is a very strong point to support the closing of Gitmo.

Unfortunately it also completely contradicts your argument against Obama's contention that the release of the new torture photos would harm our troops.

If Mora is right, as you seem to believe, and these "symbols" as Mora calls them, are a chief motivator of American soldier deaths in Iraq, then it's hard to see why Obama is wrong about withholding this evidence from FOIA.

Your attacks on the odious Lieberman and Graham's abuse of the troops are correct. But citing Generals, as you do, who argue that the damage the evidence of their abuses cause to the troops, only further supports Graham-Lieberman as a necessary bill.

Ironic.