Remember this?

Hey, remember Abu Ghraib prison? I just saw this Rolling Stone piece that I guess everybody else already saw by now. It's funny how articles keep getting written about it in places like Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and some bloggers keep talking about it, but it seems to have absolutely no traction as a political issue.

Maybe because there's nothing funny to be said, no good horse-race predictions or snarky comments about a candidate's hair or clothes, about something like this:

"In the files, prisoner after prisoner at Abu Ghraib describes acts of torture that Taguba found "credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses." The abuses took place at the Hard Site, a two-story cinder-block unit at the sprawling prison that housed Iraqi criminals and insurgents, not members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. In one sworn statement, Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee number 151108, said he witnessed a translator referred to only as Abu Hamid raping a teenage boy. "I saw Abu Hamid, who was wearing the military uniform, putting his dick in the little kid's ass," Hilas testified. "The kid was hurting very bad." A female soldier took pictures of the rape, Hilas said."

Sorry, Scott, but I'm still horrified by this. And one other small point - back when the story broke, I recall a bunch of folks up to and including the President saying that America would redeem itself by showing how the rule of law and accountability work in a democracy. So... still waiting. As are a whole bunch of Arabs and Muslims, whose skepticism about American intentions is not, shall we say, being challenged to this point.

More at Body and Soul and Digby. And this, from the American Journalism Review, on why the American media did such a terrible job on Abu Ghraib for so long (courtesy of The Agonist).

UPDATE: Scott offers a thoughtful personal reflection on cynicism. Here's the context, in case you missed that issue of Abu Aardvark. Hang in there, guy - personal stuff always matter more. It should. Just remember that Phoebe really does care about you. Really. Judd Nelson, I'm not so sure about.