Bush Through the Looking Glass

Ted Rall on the repidly growing disgust by Americans of the Bush-war Administration's use of torture (snippet):

....The Pentagon released a report finding that, despite "a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Koran dating back almost two and a half years," military investigators had confirmed five cases of desecration of Islam's holy text by American soldiers. But when Bush and his dogs took to the airwaves to bark "Only five! Only five!," even owners of multiple patriotic car magnets shrugged. An Amnesty International report that called Gitmo the "gulag of our time" and declared the United States the world's most influential torture state stuck. Even Fox News asked whether the GOP would suffer in the 2006 midterm elections as a result. Standard Bush tactics of blaming the murder and torture of Muslim prisoners on "a few bad apples" like Lynndie England are falling flat. Even people who voted for Bush and supported his wars are changing their minds about torture. What's going wrong? Where there's smoke there's fire, and most Americans know that if the Pentagon confirms five cases of trashing the Koran there are probably hundreds, possibly thousands more cases, unconfirmed by official channels but no less true. Ditto for the torture allegations. How often have you driven faster than the speed limit? What percent of the time did you receive a ticket? How many times have you fudged your taxes? Ever been audited? Now consider this: How often would you get caught if you had the federal government to cover up for you? Americans know that torture is the norm and that Bush approves of it. The more they focus on what that says about America, and thus about them, the more their revulsion will grow. It will take more than the usual pooh-pooh propaganda to distract them from their growing disgust.

Even my hard-core Republican next-door neighbor is grumbling about the war and wondering why we don't just pack up and leave Iraq. Is the tide finally beginning to turn?