I'm hesitant to get my hopes up about this... after the Plame affair, the Medicare bill misdeeds, WMD's that weren't there, revelations by O'Neill and Clarke, etc, it's possible that a good half the electorate will never "get it." But maybe, just maybe, the new scandal around torture and prisoner abuses in Iraq will finally throw a light on this administration for many of those who thus far haven't been willing to see.
I haven't yet read the Taguba report or even seen much other coverage on-air or online. But this just feels like something that strikes at the heart of Bush's "liberation" message and shows just how weak his claims of altruism really are. "Torture chambers and rape rooms" haven't been closed forever; they are, as Jon Stewart put it last night, simply under new management. And the pictures are there for everyone to see.
We've known that Iraq wasn't exactly going well. It's become clear even to many backers of the president that there isn't a plan, and in fact that the pre-war planning was horribly inadequate. But they could sell the story: America the liberator, bringing freedom--"the Almighty's gift to the world"--to benighted peoples. That story is dead now: we've shown the world, and ourselves, the depths of our own inhumanity. I don't know that this will open the floodgates; I don't claim to know how Kerry should play it. But this scandal is a dagger to the heart of the heroic vision at the center of Bush's rationale for a second term. If our system--loyal opposition, free media, informed electorate--still works at any level, it should be fatal.