There is an interesting post at RS relating an interview of specialist Lynndie England in Stern magazine.

    First she blames it on the media for the bad consequences of Abu Ghraib torture scandal :

« I guess after the picture came out, the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved.»

    Then she kind of reveal the level of her brainwashing, and how the saddistic torture process was widespread in that jail. So much that after 3 years in jail, she still thinks of it as normal wartime behavior.

Stern— Was what happened at Abu Ghraib a scandal or something that happens during wartime ?
L. England— « I'm saying that what we did happens in war. It just isn't documented," she was quoted as saying. "If it had been broken by the news without the pictures it wouldn't have been that big.»

Sometimes pictures can do better than words...
I found some photographs, from before this war, of some ancestral monuments, lying everywhere, like every inch, in the cedar country.
1) Colums of the ancient Thermae of TYRE, thermal waters, carried by aqueducts, were also heated by stones.
2) Great colums of Heliopolis, in BAALBEK, stage of famous music festivals.
3) A small amphitheater facing the sea, BYBLOS, north of Beyrouth --
The place is now most probably hit by the oil spill unleashed with surgical accuracy, in a defensive war, very near that site.
4) BAALBEK, another Temple of Heliopolis. ... (sorry if it doesn't load better than in the preview !!)

-1- ... ... -2-

-3- ...   ... -4-

I keep the words. ... and the pictures, that won't load - so much for me
For historical background, check the Kosac's digest on the rich Lebanon history.
More images on this local site.

i know there's already a post on G.W.Bush pig mantra in Germany, but all the same I want to start anew, as the pool's choices there didn't offer a chance to state that this unbelievable blunder might in fact be an astute, though verrry dark, political Joke. I'm sure Ann Coutler got it, along with J. Falwell, P. Robertson and other WH supremacists -- you really need a Revisionist insight to guess it.
In fact Mr. B. is not so much "out of touch", cause there is a common feature between the question about the Middle East unfolding Wars (and other Oriental matters) and the Barbecue meal : it's all about fresh slaughtering.
Now I'm not saying Mr B. is just comparing whatever victims in those "holly" war to the animal he is going to eat --thought i think the availability of that interpretation should have prevented a decent man from uttering it. But the joke is more sophisticated, more learned, more invasive... and much less decent you want to figure...

  There is a very revealing video of D. Cheney interview posted by C&L ; June 19. First you can enjoy how the VP escape saying he was wrong on the insurgency's strength, by charging Saddam influence for 30 years (while he was supporting him). So it's a long ??? years way for Iraqis to be ready for self-government. Meaning the Evil was even worse than the lies he had to throw to sell the idea that he knew exactly the remedy for it! He and W. Bush even had the chutzpah to present so short a war that it would be a sinn not to wage it among longing Iraqis.
   But then, in that same Video, you can see VP Cheney actually contesting the role Congress took at the end the Viet Nam war, and regreting the seriousness Congress put to investigate the Watergate spying scheme ! That means he was opposed to inquiery then, and still disagree with the Nixon impeachment, following the widespread sprouting of hidden microphones (high-tech of the time). Does that ring any phone bell ?

    After naming all the Media outlets whose headlines dare question the decency of Guantanamo Bay Special Camp, Fox anchor Bill O'Reilly goes to the Source. You could not find a closer source about the camp, namely the Head Jailer. You could not find a more objective source either, because the man really takes pain to treat prisoners as objects of study. How humans detention can resolve into, quote, a « fascinating » study ? Only a strange sense of duty can so aptly forget that the subjects of his comparisons, are primarily prisoners in his own custody -- thus barring any chances that a jailer's register could be studied for anything else than his own sick state of mind. Neither prisoners, nor jailers can be compare to anything of value, in any science.
Foxnews is airing a video interview of Col Michael Bumgarner, by B. O'Reilly, inside X-Ray camp, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Only with Bill O'Reilly, of course, can TV viewers meet "the Head Jailer" of the controversial residence. Some quotes follow.

  We recently heard of Seven hundreds and Fifty names of Guatanamo Bay fantom residents. But the initial numbers released, at the start of the "enemy combatant" special prison, was Six hundred and fifty height something, or 660 plus a few more...!
Keeping in mind the Axis of Evil rhetoric, and the demonization of muslim faith (made easy by a few terrorists claim to follow a purely islamic jihad), it becomes obvious that the initially released number of Gitmo prisoners turn around and come very close to the Apocalyptic number of the beast : 66...six !
Given the Decider's frame of mind concerning religious evangelism, the millennium propaganda of the religious right, the cheap 'christian' novels advising safe driving restrictions for "the day to come", the president stances on abortion including the taboo regarding any contraceptive solutions, plus his young aids reliance on "intelligent design" to foster resistance towards any global warming acknowledgment, against any critic of the state  of things... a simplistic religious reading is not so far fetched as a backdrop to interpret the Gitmo institution.

Let's remember when Rumsfeld recently met the Senate, trying to deflect bad news about his handling of the war in Iraq. He was eventually asked by a Democrat Senator what could be his plan for Iran..., now he has over-stretched the army in the quagmire of Iraq.
The Sec.Def. marked a long pause before answering that "there is no plan for Iran on the table". Was he really surprised by the idea of any strategy toward Iran, or did he want to stress that even a Democrat felt the need to confront that country ? Was he unsettled by the Senator inquiry, or just enjoying this strange moment where a worried Democrat argument matched exactly the position of the hawks in his administration ?
He made some Democrats come out of the bush. And maybe he could justify another Presidential war, now, upon a bipartisan consensus he could spin to "push a happy regime change", again !

Before G.W. Bush did admit learning from 'our' mistakes (while still denying anyone occured precisely), Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice did it, in London, Friday, 03-31-2006
«...I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure, but...».

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended ...his planning for Iraq, and doing so revealed an insider tip on strategic War plans, in general :

« Such plans inevitably do not survive first contact with the enemy.» ( interview by S. Hennen, in Fargo, N.D., Tuesday, April 04. - Defense Dep. transcript /WashingtonPost)

C. Rice and D. Rumsfeld played "good cop/bad cop" rough arguments, of maybe Rovian complexity, regarding their authoring of a war that didn't deliver.
Because the public needs some explanations, or at least some fuss about the Iraqi bloody mess unfolding before its eyes. So let Condie play's the soft-on-crime lawyer's part, trying to tie the hands of the courageous policeman in action, here Donald, who knows the nastiness of the culprits.
Apparently they diverge sharply about how to rate the adventure in Iraq : Condie, from London, is quoted recognizing many 'tactical' mistakes, Donald admits none ever ! Looks like the administration want to tie up the whole war debate between those two alternative voices.
But a closer look shows both articulate the same logic under different clouds.
The logic is to shift their responsibility onto untouchable fields.

    News from Dubai
To quote Paul Krugman, "The road to Dubai", N.Y.Time, March 31, 2006.
     « Imagine for a moment, a future in which America becomes like Kuwait or Dubai, a country where a large fraction of the work force consists of illegal immigrants or foreigners on temporary visas --and neither group has the right to vote. Surely this would be a betrayal of America's democratic ideals, of government of the people, by the people.»

  The Administration and the occasional moralists had it wrong. The American people critical reaction to the Dubai Port deal was not broadly based on prejudices against Arabs, or to general racism, --as first implied by Bush --interviewed "busy on the run" between two flights.
Beside showing crude lack of trust in their "stuff happens" President, Americans were probably reacting instead to what they knew or heard about the timid democratic willingness behind the opulent society of the UAE, shining like crystal amidst Middle-East's neo-chaos.