THE ONE-FINGER VICTORY SALUTE

When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal first broke, the Bush administration struck a pose of righteous indignation. It assured the world that the problem was limited to one block of one prison, that the United States would never condone the atrocities we saw in those terrible photos, that it would punish those responsible for any abuse -- regardless of their rank -- and that it was committed to defending the Geneva Conventions and the rights of prisoners.

None of this appears to be true. The Army has prosecuted a few low-ranking soldiers and rebuked a Reserve officer or two, but exonerated the top generals. No political leader is being held accountable for the policies set in Washington that led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and at other prison camps operated by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where prisoner abuse was systemic.

How many more times must this be said before the American people will hold its leaders responsible? How long will the cover-up continue? We won't know until Election Day, when voters will be put to the test. We know public pressure to hold the Ignoramus and his top officials to account has not worked so far. We know as long as they remain in office they will do everything in their power to keep us in the dark.

As the editorial reminds us, two reports this week have revealed that for a year and a half "the C.I.A., which has a record of hiding prisoners in Iraq from the Red Cross," violated the Geneva Conventions by "secretly spirit[ing] a dozen non-Iraqi civilians out of prisons in Iraq to undisclosed locations." What makes matters worse:

To justify that operation after the fact, the same legal offices that produced the infamous paper on how to pretend that torture is legal drew up a new opinion claiming that the president has the right to decide which prisoners are covered by the Geneva Conventions and which are not.

This happened in secret, at the same time that administration officials were testifying at the Senate's Abu Ghraib hearings about the president's allegiance to the Geneva Conventions and to American constitutional values when it came to the treatment of prisoners.

Forgive the lengthy excerpt. But nobody has said it better. The editorial goes on to names names. You know who they are. You saw them under oath on television "bobbing and weaving," as Kerry has said of the White House, ducking responsibility with prevarications.

And what is the Ignoramus's answer to the American people? His "one-finger victory salute." As seen on video some years ago (click that link), it was a callow joke meant for his staff. Seen today, he's giving us all the finger.