General George Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has ordered that all American troops there undergo what he calls “core values” training. There will be slideshows. According to another general, the slideshows will stress “the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield.”

My question is, Will be there a slide that says: Do not charge into private homes and shoot little babies multiple times, and then make up a story about a bomb?

So far, in my opinion, the Pentagon’s response to the atrocity in Haditha is absolutely outrageous—and the same goes for President Bush, who spouted nonsense yesterday about how troubled he was by the reports and then went on and on about the “proud” tradition of the U.S. Marines. A better response from the president, but one that we could not even hope for, would be for him to demand accountability from the top brass, to insist that he will move heaven and earth to get to the bottom of this, and that he wants a full report from the Department of Defense about every single incident since March 2003 in which Iraqi civilians have been killed by U.S. forces.

And Casey, rather than cynically showing slideshows to his forces, ought to haul all 130,000 of them in, one by one, and ask them to come clean about every incident that they have participated in or witnessed, on pain of court martial for lying. And then the rest of the one million U.S. men and women who’ve served in Iraq since 2003 ought to be grilled. Their commanders and former commanders should urge them to speak out, to become whistleblowers, to turn in their comrades who may have committed Haditha-style massacres, lone shootings, and other war crimes.

Core values? No slideshow is needed to tell the Marines not to kill babies. It’s too late for that. Now is the time for a Spanish Inquisition.

Time magazine describes the massacre in detail, Rep. John Murtha says the Marines "killed civilians in cold blood," but Al Gore is dithering. Maybe if the victims had been global-warming crusaders Gore might be more concerned. "I don't have enough evidence to see how they've handled that particular set of charges," said Gore on ABC's This Week. "I don't think we have enough information on how they have handled it." Ditto Jack Reed, the Democrat from Rhode Island, who went out of his way to find excuses to justify the Marines' murderous rampage in Haditha, serving up the canard about the supposes stress they are under. "I think the events in Haditha are an indication of the tremendous pressure that our forces are in, our Marines, our Army forces. These are young Marines, young soldiers. They are in a very hostile environment."

Well Jack, well Al. It turns out that the people of Haditha, including babies, were in a much more hostile environment.

Okay, it’s not surprising that the neoconservatives are scrambling to convince us that the massacre in Haditha is no big deal. But some of them have done so with, shall we say, a little too much enthusiasm. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC has already slammed Bill O’Reilly of Fox News for having compared the Haditha murders to the slaughter of captured German SS soldiers in World War II. Problem is, Olbermann noted with bitter sarcasm, the truth is that the SS killers slaughtered the 84 U.S. troops, not the other way around! (Thanks to Alternet, you can watch it here.)

Also on Fox, a Fox News host cited the fact that Haditha is on the cover of both Time and Newsweek this week, and asked “Are the news media rushing to judgment?” Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, had written in an editorial that there is entirely “too much liberal hand wringing” about the murders. On Fox (again, thanks to Alternet, you can watch the whole thing), he said:

Some decent liberals are spending much too much time hand wringing over this incident, which they say overshadows the decent things our troops are doing in Iraq, and a lot of the people who want us to lose in Iraq are obsessing about this story. They can barely contain their glee at this story. And I do think that for both Newsweek and Time to put this on the cover—we don’t know what happened yet, it’s one incident in a war, and how often have they put United States soldiers on the cover in the last three years? … And this is the time to put United States soldiers on the cover, with comparisons in the text to My Lai? It’s offensive really. And that’s what the U.S. media is using Haditha to do. … It’s not as bad as VN, obviously. No one is accusing Iraqi vets when they come back of being baby-killers….

Well, Bill, I for one am doing exactly that: accusing some Iraq vets of being baby killers, since that’s what the facts tell us.

Meanwhile, over at the American Enterprise Institute, Reuel Marc Gerecht blames President Bush for the fact that there aren’t more atrocities. Don’t believe me? Here’s the text:

Truth be told, however, if American forces were more aggressively engaged in a real counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq--where our primary objective would be to secure Iraqis and their homes from insurgent and sectarian threat--we would have seen more American abuses. Successful counterinsurgencies are always ugly and morally challenging. What is so sad in Iraq is that the civilian losses caused by the U.S. are not compensated by a larger American military effort to secure the country from holy warriors, insurgents and sectarian militiamen who live to slaughter innocent civilians and Iraq's chance for a more humane, democratic future. President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and their General John Abizaid, not any Marines at Haditha who ran amuck, are responsible for this far darker tragedy.

You won't find a more concise statement of potential Bush administration trickery on Iran than this, by Ned Walker, the president of the Middle East Institute:

Is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice engaged in the same kabuki dance that we witnessed in the lead-up to the Iraq war?

Despite the lessons of Iraq, there are still advocates in the administration pushing for regime change in Iran through military action. However, they recognize that unless the United States exhausts the diplomatic course, they will face extraordinary opposition to any attack. When coupled with the obvious downside of military action, which our military has been making clear, then it is not at all a slam dunk that would warrant attacking Iran. However, if diplomatic options are exhausted, then the odds of President Bush giving his assent to avoid a nuclear-armed Iran increase substantially.

From the earliest days of the Bush administration, then Secretary of State Colin Powell tried moving the Iraq problem to the United Nations but faced strong opposition from some in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. They were afraid he would succeed, which would make direct military intervention and regime change more difficult, if not impossible.

It was only as these individuals grew to believe that Powell didn't have a chance of succeeding that they agreed to let him try and fail, thus setting the stage for military action.

If this is true, then Rice's initiative presumes failure. There is a poison pill in the condition Rice set that "as soon as Iran fully and verifiably suspends its enrichment and reprocessing activities, the United States will come to the table."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, having staked out a position of defiance and strength, must now recant if he is to sit down with the Americans. Who will take bets that Ahmadinejad will comply?

I posted this today on the blog at Huffington Post:

The following is an unedited transcript of today’s White House press briefing by Tony Snow:

Q. There’s a controversy this week over Congressman John Murtha’s comments about Karl Rove. What can you tell us? Specifically, does Mr. Rove have a “fat backside”?
Snow: I don’t want to comment on the anatomical aspects of White House staff.

Q. Come on, Tony, It’s just a factual question. Is his backside fat, or not?
Snow: Again, I don’t think the question is appropriate.

Q. Well, how would you describe his backside?
Snow: Mr. Rove’s posterior is rotund.

Q. Well, isn’t rotund the same as fat?
Snow: I’ll leave it you in the press to parse the meaning of those words. I’m only authorized to say, his posterior is rotund.

Q. Another member of Congress, speaking of Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Valerie Plame affair and Rove’s role in that, said, and I quote, “Fitzgerald should have indicted his ass.” Doesn’t that make his backside relevant?
Snow: I don’t see whether the size of his backside has anything to do with whether his ass ought to have been indicted or not. It’s irrelevant.

Q. Well, the size is important. It’s relevant to how big the target is.
Snow: If that’s true, you’ve answered your own question. If the target was so big, if his “ass” is “fat,” as you and Mr. Murtha insist, then Fitzgerald ought to have been able to hit it. But Mr. Rove was told he is a not a target of the investigation.

Q. So you’re saying, Fitzgerald can’t even hit Rove’s big fat ass?
Snow: As I said, I’m commenting on whether his backside is fat, or not. I’m just saying, if it were, and you seem to be insisting that it is, then Fitzgerald really missed a big fat target, didn’t he?

Take a look at this piece from Linda Milazzo, who wrote an op-ed on the Miami terrorism plot. (That would be the nonexistent plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.) The funny part is the exchange between Wolf Blitzer and the sister of one of those accused in the plot. Here it is:

Should anyone in America incomprehensibly require further convincing of how feckless the United States Government is and how goofy and uninformed cable news is, here's an excerpt from an exchange earlier today between CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Marlene Phanor, sister of Stanley Grant Phanor, aka "Brother Sunni," one of Florida's supposed seven "home-grown terrorists":

Blitzer: Is your brother a Muslim?

Ms. Phanor: No, sir. He's a Catholic.

Blitzer: Does he go to church?

Phanor: Yes, he goes to church. He's a Catholic. We enter St. Mary's Catholic Church on 75th and Second Avenue.

Blitzer: Is he very political, your brother? Does he have strong political views?

Ms. Phanor: No. I can't really say that.

A few inconsequential questions later, Blitzer goes on to ask:

Blitzer: Why does the government say he [your brother Stanley Phanor] is also known as "Brother Sunni"?

Ms. Phanor: They all call themselves 'brothers'. Why, I don't know... but the whole little group calls themselves 'brother'.

Blitzer: Did you ever hear your brother being called "Sunni"?

Ms. Phanor: Yeah. That's his nickname. It's not "Sunni". It's "Sunny"... like it's a sunny day. Yeah, that's his name.

Blitzer: So the confusion is he was called Sunny and not Sunni... because as you know Sunni is one of the religious groups in Islam.

Ms. Phanor: No, I didn't know that but now that I know... no it's not for that. That's his nickname and it's spelled S-u-n-n-y... as in sunny day. That's his nickname ever since birth....

I am so tired of reading about Peter Beinart. As the boy editor of the Worst Magazine in the World, Beinart has had far more than his deserved 15 minutes of fame. For those who haven't had a chance to read his book The Good Fight, which is supposed to be a thoughtful history of Democratic anti-communist militancy combined with a call to "win the war against Muslims," I mean, "against terrorism," here is a summary of The Good Fight:

Iraq. Oops, well, I was wrong about Iraq. Sorry, Iraqis. I had good intentions though. Now forget I was wrong about that, and listen to what I have to say about the next war.

Umm, no, Peter. Okay, I agree you were wrong about Iraq. So, now get a job as a bus driver or something useful.