I am pretty much raged out about the prisoner abuse scandal, but it continues to grow, as per my several uses of the phrase “tip of the iceberg” in my posts when the Abu Ghraib news was first revealed. Let’s see; the Solicitor General seems to have lied to the Supreme Court in asserting that we have not mistreated prisoners when defending the administration’s assertion of the right of indefinite detention of US citizens without due process. Guantanamo detainees and prisoners in Afghanistan have been subjected to pretty much the same treatment as those in Iraq, we learn. In a sense, so have American women in the military.

To no thinking person’s surprise, the pattern of abuse apparently emanated from deliberate, secret interrogation policy formulated at the top of the Bu**sh** administration with all due recognition of the vulnerability of Muslim men to sexual humiliation. Easy enough for the dysadministration to dismiss such claims when they are made by Seymour Hersh in that effete rag, The New Yorker; but then you get a crack Newsweek investigative team confirming and amplifying on Hersh’s story. Now the list of dubious details raising suspicions about the Nicholas Berg execution videotape has grown to fifty or more. Given that it is conceivable to many that the Administration is capable of manufacturing this to divert attention from the unpleasant facts emerging from Abu Ghraib, what are we to think of chilling reports that Bush and his cronies are ready — or perhaps we should say eager? — for terrorist attack on US targets in the leadup to the November election.