Be on the lookout for the Bush administration to start fudging things regarding the abuses at the Abu Gharib prison. Specifically, watch for them to slyly insinuate that the abuses happened in a context in which Americans were being killed and defiled like the civilian contractors killed in Fallujah. If they do try to associate the abuses with Fallujah, they may have an easy time of it. This from Reuters:

For many in the sleepy town of Cumberland, home of the military company at the heart of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, the U.S. soldiers are the real victims and the Iraqis had it coming.

In bars, shops and throughout the town of 21,000 people, residents gathered on Friday to watch Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testify to Congress about the abuses that involved soldiers from their local 372nd Military Policy company.

For some, shock mingled with embarrassment over their hometown's sudden and unwelcome notoriety. For many others, sympathy for the soldiers far outweighed their concerns.

"Excuse me, if I see somebody dragging my people through the streets and hung up on a bridge -- I mean, the bible even says an eye for an eye," said retired Vietnam War veteran Robert Zalewski, 56, drinking a beer at Pete's Parkview Tavern and Grill.

"People are trying to kill you. You got to protect yourself," he said, adding the abuse by the soldiers was "half what they (Iraqis) have done to us."

Jamey Hill, a local postal worker, said the photos of naked prisoners in sexual positions, in a pile or on a leash, were nothing compared to the images of murdered Americans dangling from a bridge in the town of Falluja in March.

"I'm not happy about it (the prison abuse). I'm not very happy about having the pictures of us on the bridge either," Hill said.

The folks interviewed for this article--which never mentions that the abuses took place in the Fall of 2003, months before the Americans were killed and their bodies defiled in Fallujah--are more likely to excuse the troops, since they associate these particular \ufffdtroops with their own town. \ufffd(However, the other people quoted in the article were less generous toward the soldiers accused of abuses at Abu Gharib.) \ufffdBut as Americans continue to form and solidify their opinions about what happened last Fall, before the defilements in Fallujah, it's imperative that Democrats emphasize at every opportunity they have for talking about Abu Gharib that these abuses began last Fall, prior to when fighting escalated in November, and months before the defilements in Fallujah. \ufffd

There is no excuse for what we're learning was done by American soldiers and contractors to the Iraqis incarcerated at Abu Gharib. \ufffdBut it's vitally important Americans understand that those abuses began when the United States was not only claiming to have pacified the country and was supposedly earning the trust and respect of Iraqis; the U.S. was still claiming to embody, in our actions in Iraq, a reverence for human and civil rights and the rule of law that would inspire the Iraqis to follow our example in creating a democratic society with a government based on the inalienable civil and political rights of all its citizens. \ufffdThese ideals were ignored and perverted by some of our soldiers, and maybe even by some of their superiors among the nation's civilian leadership. We must not allow fellow Americans to erroneously and passively justify those perversions as the predictable response to any brutalities meted out against our troops and contractors by Iraqi fighters. \ufffdWe are supposed to be better than that, regardless of the context of our actions; there is no context where those abuses is acceptable. \ufffdBut the context last Fall most certainly offers no excuse for why the abuses by our soldiers could not and should not have been prevented. \ufffd

Our soldiers at Abu Gharib didn't leash up and humiliate Iraqis because contractors in Fallujah were dangled from a bridge. \ufffdThere may not have been any link between the two events, but if there was, it would be that the bodies of those contractors were defiled and dangled from a bridge because our troops were leashing up and humiliating prisoners in Abu Gharib.