What it costs us. One of the most powerful periodicals I read last year about the damage that the invasion and occupation of Iraq had done to the United States is The Nation | Issue | December 26, 2005 : The Torture Complex (thenation.com). It's a themed issue about what the U.S. is now known for around the world in the post-Abu-Ghraib era: immoral, illegal, physical and mental abuse. The damage isn't limited to our image, of course: it's also a sort of rot from within, and ordinarily upstanding people suddenly stand on their heads and twist their tongues trying to justify something which they have always claimed to abhor. It's ugly to see someone arguing that something was TERRIBLE when the Nazis or Saddam Hussein or [tyrant of the week] did it, but... well, it's peachy keen when the U.S. kills people the same way, "because we're, like, good."

Extra-notable: a reminder that the School of the Americas has been exporting torture for years, and that there has always been denial of the immorality of that on the part of the majority of Americans - and vehement protest by a vocal, moral, minority.

How bad is it, continued. From the ordinarily lighthearted Achenblog (washingtonpost.com, 2/23/06) comes a sobering summary of the status of US intervention:

But each news bulletin is more disturbing than the last. More than 100 bodies have been found in the past day, executed. The BBC reported that a busload of 47 factory workers was stopped at a checkpoint, and all the workers were summarily murdered on the spot. The perpetrators of this massacre and other atrocities remain mysterious. War between Sunnis and Shiites could be averted if the citizens find someone else to blame for the violence, and, according to the Post story, some folks are ready to point the finger at the Americans and 'Zionists.'

The not-quite-correct Colin Powell line, explaining "the Pottery Barn Rule" (which Pottern Barn insists isn't their policy) of 'you break it, you buy it' in which the US' removal of one government makes it responsible for the country they're occupying is just as evident as Powell's warning suggested.

How bad is it? Daytime Curfew in Four Iraqi Provinces Halts Violence (washingtonpost.com, 2/24/06) is actually titled on the front page as "Relative Calm in Iraq Today." Which doesn't mean much.

She has a point: From AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Candlelight vigils stop illegal wiretapping! by Rachel Neumann:

writing letters to an administration that already knows what I think since they've been monitoring my emails and phone calls seems ridiculous.

One of the early casualties of the attack on Iraq and the related ideological war was the current US administration's decision that they are absolutely above the law, and can spy on citizens at will.

It seemed at first that there was public sentiment in favor of legal surveillance of anyone who had independent thoughts of any kind in the early days of the war, especially surveillance of the peace movement, which had predicted that the war might be a very bad thing - an unpopular, widespread sentiment. But when the Bush Administration went beyond that, civil libertarians actually woke up and got mad, including some of those in Bush's own party. How novel.

Sad landmark for the British part of the Coalition: BBC NEWS | Scotland | Funeral for 100th conflict death (news.bbc.co.uk, 2/20/06).