AUSTIN, Texas -- Let's get real. On Fox So-Called News, former Army Sgt. Tony Robinson was allowed to claim without contradiction that what happened at the prison at Abu-Ghraib was no worse than "fraternity hazing." Rush Limbaugh concurs.

            Let me speak up on behalf of the Kappa Sigs, K.A.s and even Dekes (where only "minor" branding incidents occurred when George W. Bush was the head Deke at Yale). This is straight from the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba:

            "Between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility, numerous acts of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees was intentionally perpetrated by several members of the military police guard force. ... The allegations of abuse were substantiated by detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence ... including the following acts:

            -- Punching, slapping and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;

            -- Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

I agree completely with Mr. Wasserman's arguments. Shrub's tenure as governor of Texas was remarkable for killing more people in the death chamber than any other governor. If we wonder what the conditions in the Texas prison system were, it is very likely that looking to iraq will give us some indication. These sorts of practices are marks of the "leaders" during whose term they are practiced.

Torture's back in the news, courtesy of those lurid pictures of exultant Americans laughing as they torture their Iraqi captives in a prison run by the U.S. military outside Baghdad. Apparently it takes electrodes and naked bodies piled in a simulated orgy to tickle America's moral nerve ends. Kids maimed by cluster bombs just don't do it anymore. But torture's nothing new.

            One of the darkest threads in postwar U.S. imperial history has been the CIA's involvement with torture as instructor, practitioner or contractor. Since its inception the CIA has taken a keen interest in torture, avidly studying Nazi techniques and protecting their exponents, such as Klaus Barbie. The CIA's official line is that torture is wrong and ineffective. It is indeed wrong. On countless occasions it has been appallingly effective.

AUSTIN, Texas -- For all I know, we may have just done something smart in Fallujah by hiring ex-Iraqi troops to take it over, but it's sure not what we said we were going to do when we started to go in. Then, the photos from the Abu Ghraib prison horror hit. Let's hear it for privatization again. We just cannot get a break over there.

            I think we're at a point when it's useless to continue the argument over whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. Things are going very badly in Iraq. I'm sure some of our professional patriotic bullies will denounce this as unpatriotic pessimism, harmful to the morale of the troops, etc. I think it's more important to recognize reality.

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