When we've collected these luminaries in one room can we have them all shot? That must be covered in the next paragraph, right?

Friedman's rational comments are becoming much rarer recently. I think he is objectively working for a US defeat, which he sees as glorifying his UN buddies and his Eurotrash pals. I like the idea of having these guys shot. We need to start lining up the Iraqi prisoners and dealing with them definitively as well. Ditto for Fallujah and Sadr. As Napoleon said, "When you announce that you are going to take Vienna, you must take Vienna."

Are Friedman and Krugman the same person ?

It astounds me and frightens me no end to even think that the most militarily powerful nation in history, guarantor of world order and principle defender of a thousand year legacy might be checked or even defeated if enough people from the rest of the world yell: "We don't like you."

A few out of control MPs, many of them women and led by a woman interestingly enough, beat up and made fun of some POWs.

And the PICTURES! Oh, the horror of the PICTURES!

Yeah, ok, ... AND .... ?

If the center of Baghdad (or Najaf) looked like Times Square today (one year after the war), Friedman would attack the US for ruining Iraqi culture. Screamers always scream, and they scream louder when no one is listening.

Jeff:

On Jerry Pournelle's blog, he speculates that the mixed gender of the guards was a major aggrevating factor; the men trying to impress the women, and the women trying to prove they were as hard as the men.

Rush Limbaugh likened the "torture pics" to "...something you'd see at a Madonna concert. Or Performance Art done on an NEA grant."

A semi-blog, semi-editorial (Ann Coulter, I think) was especially disturbed at the behavior of the women MPs involved -- just like One of the Boys.

And another blog (from an ex-Marine, I think) claimed that the pics look more like hazing than actual atrocities, and the atrocities were probably hazing that got out of control.

Friedman's largely right. Anyone talking about flattening Fallujah and Najaf isn't taking the situation seriously. The American people simply are NOT going to go for that, nor will they stand for lining up prisoners and shooting them.

Given that, we'd better start looking for the door, and looking for the way to the door that gives us the appearance of winning, or at least salvaging a victory. Whether we do it through the U.N. or through local leaders it doesn't matter, but we better start doing it and start doing it now.

As for Rumsfeld, it's clearly too late in the game to axe him now. If Bush did that, it would confirm the fact in everyone's mind that the war was a mistake. If Rumsfeld's going to be retired, it'll be after November.

Derek:

Agreed. We're not going to flatten Fallujah and Najaf because that's not what we do. We will punish the guards deserving of punishment because what they did is not what we do. But worrying about what the rest of the world thinks, except in the most pragmatic way, is also not what we do.

Derek:

Might you not be making the mistake of assuming the world judges you on the same basis that you judge yourselves? It doesn't, but it watches a lot of American TV and has mastered the lingo.