Spin for Sale! Get your red-hot Spin!

The conservative pundits are trying very hard to put a pretty face on the fact that their boys, Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc, have a lot of explaining to do about the Iraq abuse.

Here's the summary of the spin:

1. What the soldiers did wasn't bad.

(This is from Rush Limbaugh, essential quote: This is no different than what happens at the skull and bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?)

2. The soldiers are just isolated bad-apples. (This is from the US Government)

3. There may have been widespread abuses but that's not torture (this is initially from Rumsfeld)

4. There are many people who are guilty, but certainly not the top members of government (this is from nearly all the conservative pundits).

5. A new one for me: from Jonah Goldberg (Jonah Goldberg on CBS & Abu Ghraib on National Review Online) that the abuses are bad and that's all we need to say about it but another entity to be blamed is CBS News for showing the pictures of the abuse. In his words CBS should be ashamed for running those photos.

Wow. I kid you not. That's what this guy - who is employed as a journalist (although pundits are not exactly journalists) - says.

He tries to stave off arguments by saying:

The good reasons [for showing the pictures] are obvious. The people have the right to know. The scandal firestorm sharpens the resolve of politicians and the military to investigate and stop the abuse of prisoners. The bad is that uproar from these pictures drowns out all other messages, explanations, and journalistic "context."

Huh?

The "context" is that: "Lost is the fact that in America torturers get punished, while in the Arab world they get promotions. "

Yeah, dude, you lost it all right. If he is correct, and it's unlikely he is, then Rumsfeld and Bush will ride the rails back to the Old Republican War Criminals Home. Because, hey, they are guilty, and hey, they won't be punished.

The only reason why the country knows about these vicious crimes is because of CBS and The New Yorker.

Proof in point: Rumsfeld met with Congressional leaders last week and did not mention to them about these atrocities. See the AP story, with this quote:

[Senator. Carl Levin, D-Mich ] and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the [Senate Armed Services] committee chairman, both expressed displeasure that they had not been informed earlier.

Levin noted with "deep dismay'' that Rumsfeld and Myers had briefed the panel about Iraq in a classified session last week but did not mention the scandal the government knew was about to break in the news media.

Basically, the executive branch felt that Congressional oversight was unnecessary for the conduct of a war. That hasn't happened since the jolly days of Ollie North!

What Jonah G and the rest of his Fox New Channel types are afraid of is the truth coming out. Where will their White House access go? What about all those sweet little dreams of four more years of theft and menace?