What the hell were they thinking?

No need to link to any of the latest horrors from Iraq. Three clicks in any direction will find you all the fresh hell you require.

I was against this war from the start but I’ve kept my opinions off this blog, for the most part, to avoid getting into arguments that soak up too much time and solve nothing.

Thing is, everybody I work with, almost without exception, is against the war. And this true of just about every American newsroom not owned by Rupert Murdoch or the Moonies. And it won’t be long before they turn, too, the way things are going.

So what I’m wondering is, how did the White House and the Pentagon think they’d get this story past all us limp-wristed, bleeding-heart, pacifist, war-hating journalists? They can spin themselves till they’re blue in the face but it won’t change the fact that when scandals like this prison-abuse thing break, we’re gonna hammer them. Obvious as the fingers on my keyboard.

I’m grown up enough to understand that the point of this war is to keep George W. Bush in the White House for the full eight years, to keep the halls of Congress packed with Republicans, and to make it as easily as possible to lather-rinse-repeat this cycle in perpetuity. That’s how politics works. The thing about using wars to do this is, you’ve gotta have a plan that makes sense, that has a chance of succeeding, and is flexible enough to adapt to outrage outbreaks. Qualities of decency, mercy and humanity would be nice, but are not required; after all, it is a war.

I’m not seeing many hints that the White House or the Pentagon has a sensible plan to win the political war, much less the blood-and-guts one. But they’d better get one soon if they expect all us newsies to stick with the program.