What the fuck?

I've never been one for doomsday predictions about Iraq, but the images of human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib prison may very well mean that we are completely and totally fucked. I don't know why a single Iraqi would trust us now. What those soldiers did was an indescribable insult to every Iraqi we supposedly liberated and to every coalition soldier who has sacrificed for this cause. This is the great contradiction of Iraq: For all of the people who are genuinely trying to bring about a better life for the Iraqis, it won't matter at all if they think it is just a humanitarian mask for our true, selfish intentions.

What is so frustrating and sickening to me is that I know the armed forces at large shouldn't be damned by the atrocities of a few ... but I can't help wonder how many Iraqis felt exactly the same way when their country was invaded, in essence, because a group of Saudis and Afghans killed 3,000 people on Sept. 11.

...the Saddam question, though, won't go away. If in 10 or 20 years Iraq is a free and functioning country, will all of this be overshadowed by the principle point that Saddam's removal allowed it to happen?

Leslie has some brief but dead-on thoughts about this, too (no hyperlinks; May 1).

Obviously, I don't know what to make of any of this. Please feel free help me make some sense of it all.