Needlenose

Remember when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before Congress a couple of weeks ago about the Abu Ghraib torture scandal?

In a much-belated burst of candor, he told the panelists, “”There are a lot more photographs and videos that exist … If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse.”

The candor was short-lived, however, as the Pentagon/White House chickened out of releasing the newfound evidence.

Didn’t matter. The Washington Post already has it:

In a collection of hundreds of so-far-unreleased photographs and short digital videos obtained by The Washington Post, U.S. soldiers are shown physically and emotionally abusing detainees last fall in the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

The new pictures and videos go beyond the photos previously released to the public in several ways, amplifying the overt violence against detainees and displaying a variety of abusive techniques previously unseen. They show a group of apparently cavalier soldiers assaulting prisoners, forcing detainees to masturbate, and standing over a naked prisoner while holding a shotgun. Some of the videos echo scenes in previously released still photographs — such as the stacking of naked detainees — but the video images render the incidents more vividly.

Also coming soon to a cable news channel near you, I’m sure.

Get ready for the long haul, boys and girls, looks like we’ve now officially stepped into the quicksand – the Pentagon has decided that the war isn’t actually over and our 200,000 troops will need to hang around for awhile. Said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan:

“The war has not ended,” McKiernan said. “Decisive combat operations against military formations has ended, but these contacts we’re having right now are in a combat zone, and it is war, and they are members of (Saddam’s) regime that must be removed.”

Holdouts from the Saddam regime? Well it’s certainly true that there are now about 400,000 more unemployed Iraqis with military training hanging around with nothing to do and easy access to weapons, many of whom, when denied backpay, vowed to attack American forces. But this is just another typical, delusional wrong-wing simplification of the situation on the ground, given the growing power of the Shiites, who have opposed U.S. occupation from the beginning. As Abdel-Amir Ahmed, a civilian, non-Baath participating in a recent anti-American protest said:

““This is an occupation, and we don’t accept it,” said Abdel-Amir Ahmed, 49. “After a week, after a month, there will be armed resistance against the Americans. This land is sacred.”

Given this growing resistance, and the evident vulnerability of our soldiers in trying to fulfill their impossible mission, how much longer will it be before we see this Administration asking for more troops?