Truth be told, one of the reasons why Abu Ghraib has already become such a dark page in American history is that public sentiment had already begun to turn against the war, in particular the question as to whether the U.S. was justified in starting this adventure. If Americans no longer overwhelmingly believed in The Cause, it stands to reason that actions which are the inevitable by-product of a war (including the abuse and dehumanization of the enemy) would be less tolerated. Still, the belief by some that the captives at Abu Ghraib represented the most malignant of the former allies of Saddam has been used to rationalize the behavior of their guards; surely, no one would weep if G.I.'s had treated captured members of the S.S. the same way after WW2, or if Bin Laden and friends were similarly humiliated.

That's why this story is all the more important. Between 70 and 80% of all Iraqis captured during the war were arrested by mistake, according to the Red Cross' report, and were treated in a manner that violated the Geneva Convention. The pictures we are now seeing have shown Americans an ugly side to our nature, a side that believes that because we are more powerful than our adversaries our actions must, inevitably, be morally correct. Abu Ghraib was only the tip of that iceberg; considering the way in which we treated Native Americans and the descendents of slaves, it is the flip side to an American exceptionalism which characterizes so much of the foulest aspects of our political culture.