GWB dismisses Amnesty Intl report as "Haters hatin' on America"

One Ninth Grade Life Sciences textbook.

How is it that he's aware of this stupid little report, but is rarely aware of critical intelligence reports?

wtf?

Basically, if he believes the talking point "The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," he has trouble accepting anything that threatens or is consistent with that notion.

The closest they've gotten to the nub of the problem yet can be seen here:

There have been abuses, some of them very serious, and our enemies have used this as a propaganda tool. This, however, is not uncommon in war. Indeed, prisoner abuse occurs in peacetime as well, in virtually all civilian penitentiaries, whether in the U.S. or abroad. Unlike our enemies, however, the United States investigates, prosecutes and punishes those responsible for instances of abuse. This is how our values can be, and have been, vindicated.

The assumption is of course that perfection is here, in otherwards that all prison abuse everywhere in the US, in peacetime or wartime contexts, is duly rooted out and punished. I find this assumption to be unwarranted.

At the least, however, they are acknowledging something they have been loathe to accept -- "our enemies have used this as a propaganda tool." The tone of the entire post shows that they consider their enemies to equally be political opponents at home as much as it is the al-Qaeda phantom, a combative mindset indeed. But they can't have it both ways -- either the abuses are reported openly and they risk the problems of propaganda or the abuses are NOT reported and therefore the whole point of making it known that we are supposedly punishing and investigating becomes moot. At this point they are hedging on the former option but only because the latter is becoming increasingly untenable.

Another telling example of the switch-in-process can be seen at Instapundit, where for the first time Glenn Reynolds flatly talks about torture evidence (as discussed here) without caveats about (paraphrasing here) 'aid and comfort to the enemy' or similar complaints about what charges and reports *have* come up before. It's essentially an acceptance in context, if still a grudging one (as his long-time sparring partner on this subject Sullivan notes, and rightly too I think, the language Reynolds uses in accepting this report is partly -- but I highly doubt entirely -- directed backhandedly at him).

This will develop but Bush's statements today give the right something to cling onto. The consequences of this -- that investigating and publicizing these charges now must become a priority by default -- seems not yet to be clear to them.

i actually wish there were something to parse there, some kind of prevarication, but i think bush actually accepts that logic.

http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=412

"The Democrats and Republicans—and most of the American public—are actually in agreement over an issue. You can see how Bush would want to put a stop to that right away."

or

"They're not stems, they're babies! And they're not cells, they're babies! And it's not research, it's babies!"

Did nobody mention the words "Death Penalty" at this point?