The Democrats and the Left don't want humility. They want the Republicans to commit political suicide.

Of course they don't want humility. They want the Republicans to continue to act in an arrogant and insufferable manner.

The Democrats won't have to worry about holding the noose still if the Republicans continue to play with loaded weapons the way they have recently. The President has holstered his machismo recently and apologized, on behalf of the citizens of the US, for illegal and unbecoming behavior by some of our citizens. This will not give any comfort to his most implacable opponents.

Have you been watching and listening to what they are saying and asking?

Not much, no. You do that for me. I have no interest in being told what to think by the weathervane leadership of either party. For a coherent statement of the party platform, I will wait for the Democratic convention.

I did see a Democratic politician, Senator Golden Boy of the Right Lieberman on the Today Show this morning, saying that the incidents of abuse were not going to be swept under the rug, and that something has happened to the chain of command if this has been going on for so long unstopped and undisciplined. Is he enough of a Democrat to qualify?

Does anyone else see the inconsistency between making the abuse of Iraqi criminals a major three-week issue, and then saying "so what" when it's pointed out that our presence in Iraq has prevented an average of dozens of innocent Iraqis per day from suffering far worse fates?

Not here. Because:
1) The Iraqis under Saddam were at least in theory responsible for their own plight, and were responsible for making an effort to get rid of the tyrant. True, we have a very bad record of helping people throw off the yoke of tyranny when they take it upon themselves to start fighting without us, going all the way back to Hungary in 1956, so even if the Iraqis had risen (again), we may not have helped. Nevertheless, while it was their government, legally, it was their responsibility because they were a sovereign nation.

We had plenty of responsibility for Saddam being where he was, but unless we were willing to come clean in public about all the little details and our role as enabler or even accomplice, we had no dog in that fight, unless we were invited.

As soon as we threw out the former government and took over, the legal responsibility for civil and criminal law in Iraq became ours. Not Saddam's, not the Shi'ites', not the Kurds', not the Sunnis', ours. What happens on our watch is big news because we are responsible.

2. Real Iraqis are real. Real Iraqis are the subect of the current scandal. Possible alternate-history Iraqis are not real. Their situation is only speculative fiction. Their circumstances do not exist. We can't measure our real misbehavior against things that will not happen to people who they will not happen to.

Although I will consider the argument, if you will also entertain an argument concerning how many people would be better off today if they hadn't been killed, maimed, or deprived of home or livelihood in the invasion and its aftermath. Two can play the speculation game. But multiplying by a reality factor equal to zero yields the same product no matter what the other factor is.