Don't be overanxious to grasp at this, or any conflict, as an event between opposite sides. This is overly simplistic and only partially true and leaves enough of the "rest of the story" to make a career for future Paul Harvey's.

The media is a huge part of any conflict, because the media is huge, and the appetite for information has reached gargantuan proportions.

True, partisanship is going to play a part in these events. But this partisanship is looking for some justification to drive it. We have lost a huge amount of moral capital in this ridiculous prison scandal. Don't underestimate the damage this has done, or will continue to do.

The British lost India when they mercilessly beat the Indians being led by Ghandi, as they tried to reach the sea to harvest salt. It was this brutal beating of natives that revulsed the world and cost England the moral imperitive and eventually the jewel in the crown of the Empire that was India.

It is disheartening to watch what was a spectacular military victory being eroded by a lack of political leadership. The US must seriously show we neither approve, nor condone the treatment of prisoners that the world has now seen. Throwing a few enlisted men to the wolves is not going to accomplish that. To win this war, we will have to win the moral victory. This poor Berg fellow might have been a help to showing we are not only not really the bad guys like his butchers, but when our people do bad things we will step in a punish them for doing it----and all the way to the top of the ladder.

Publius