Weekend Funnies: The Better-Late-Than-Never Edition

Slate magazine's Dahlia Lithwick has a great article about how, in the span of two and a half years, the torture at Abu Ghraib went from a scandal that almost cost President Bush his reelection to a forgotten act now retroactively forgiven by congressional law. The money quote section-

In April 2004, Americans awoke to the reality that the U.S. military was brutalizing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The New Yorker and 60 Minutes II horrified us with the now-iconic images of Satar Jabar standing hooded on a box with wires attached to his hands and his penis, and threatened with electrocution if he fell off. They offered graphic photos of Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a collapsed prisoner on the floor with a leash, soldiers terrorizing prisoners with dogs, and a delighted Charles Graner giving a thumbs-up over the corpse of a man alleged to have been tortured to death at the prison.

At the time, we referred to Abu Ghraib as a "scandal." The images were a searing reproach to virtually any American with a soul and a conscience. With a handful of sick exceptions, people who could agree on nothing else could agree that this was an unacceptable way to treat prisoners—regardless of who they were, what they were accused of, or where they were being held.

But in hindsight, Abu Ghraib wasn't a scandal for the Bush administration. It was a coup. Because when the Senate passes the president's detainee bill today, we will, as a country, have yet more evidence that yesterday's disgrace is today's ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years...

What a sad state of affairs.