DREAM TEAM: President Bush speaks to the press about establishing an
independent investigation into intelligence failures in Iraq on February 2,
2004 in Washington, D.C. Bush is surrounded from left to right, Secretary of
State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Up until the beginning of last week, the Bush administration pretty much had its way with the American media. Whatever policy position President Bush enunciated to the American public through the press, whatever spin on events the White House promoted on any given event, was pretty much reported verbatim — without comment, philosophical reflection, or investigation as to the veracity of the information — by the American press and was printed, or broadcast, untrammeled, and edited in such as way as to preserve the imperial nature of the Presidency.
No more.
With the publication, last Monday, of the Abu Ghraib pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured by American troops internecine warfare began to break out in the once closed ranks of the Bush administration.
In the latest issue of Time, the magazine’s Washington-based reporters report that those who surround Bush are finding it increasingly difficult to present a positive message, as finger-pointing has taken the place of “keeping on message.”

Top Bush officials griped about what one called Rumsfeld’s “destructive arrogance.” Says the adviser: “You have no idea what it’s like to deal with the United States of Rumsfeld.” Colin Powell’s closest aides, like chief of staff Larry Wilkerson, were quoted in GQ magazine, saying that Powell was weary of fighting ideological “utopians” in the Administration and being forced to do “damage control” and “apologizing around the world.” Powell’s foes, perhaps in retaliation, blamed him for being slow to decide to travel to the Middle East to help quell the furor over the abuse scandal. Says a senior Bush official of the open warfare: “It is not very conducive to a healthy working environment.”

The White House will surely try to regroup, but it is appearing increasingly obvious that a wholesale purge of the senior ranks of the Bush administration will become necessary if Bush is to have any reasonable chance at a second term in office.

The Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners; click on photo for story

The fallout from the abuse, by American soldiers, of prisoners detained at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison continues.
Joe Conason, in Salon, provides insight into a report by human rights lawyers which found that the Abu Ghraib abuse was not only lawless — it was sanctioned by Pentagon political appointees.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Sternberg, in a compelling and readable column, suggests that President Bush is wrong to say prison abuse is inconsistent with the nature and temperment of Americans. Read why.
The New York Times reports on the life and current status of Pfc. Lynndie England, the female national guardsman featured so prominently in the Iraqi abuse photos.
The Times also presents a timeline, titled “Prison Abuses: Military Actions Taken and When Top Officials Knew.”
Update: ITV reports allegations of a “girl as young as 12 (who) was stripped and beaten by military personnel.” National Public Radio in the U.S. offers this audio report, by Jackie Northam, providing detail and insight into the report issued yesterday by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the coalition forces’ treatment of persons held in Iraq.
And, finally in this update on the scandal that is rocking the Bush White House …
Yale law professor Jack Balkin writes that the Bush “administration wanted secrecy. It wanted to be free of legal constraint. It wanted to do whatever it wanted whenever it wanted without ever having to be called to account for it.” Balkin goes on to suggest that in denying the prisoners in Iraq (as well as Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay) the usual protections of the Bill of Rights — including the presumption of innocence, the right to counsel, the right to know the charges against them, and the writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of their detention if they are placed in jail — the Bush administration is now “reaping what it has sown.”