Here's my Sunday morning take:

It's so obvious,  yet so earthshaking that almost no one with the possible exception of Arthur Silber realizes what's going on: there simply is no "fixing" for all of this. The human race is (or has already) split into two different species. Everything, and I mean everything, is about to phase into an entirely new dimension. Amazingly, this will not be a bad thing.

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba's report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their "extremely sensitive nature.") Taguba said that he saw "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee." The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. "It's bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women's panties," Taguba said.

If you're a neocon, you might see everything that has happened in Iraq and Gaza as exactly what Bush planned all along:

Five years ago, Middle Eastern extremists were killing Israelis and Americans. Today they are killing each other. Why is it that some people persist in claiming that Israel's and America's Middle East policy is a failure?" -- Alan Chamberlain

Never mind all that stuff about cakewalks, natives tossing flowers, getting bin Laden and missions accomplished.  Victory and success are fungible concepts; or, to borrow a page from the Rumsfeld handbook of warfare, "you define success as the results you have, not the results you wanted."

There is a good deal of grim comedy in the words if not the current deeds of the little president. Although he and his co-conspirators relish the use of the big lie (e.g. turning a dull but genuine war hero into a cowardly fraud while ignoring the slackerdom of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, who proudly fought in none of our many wars). Now in an attempt to avoid blame for the Iraq war and further confuse the world about why Iran and Syria must be destroyed, Old Rumsfeld and Old Cheney are trotting out dim, garbled images of Hitler and appeasement as they pretend that the antiwar American majority favors Islamic fascism. They pretend terrorism is a demonic person. And if we dont stop him in Tehran we'll have to stop him here. This is ludicrous; unfortunately the Junta is as ignorant of history and geography as they believe the public to be.

Ahlam Ahmed Mahmoud al Al-Jabouri, a 42-year-old mother of three, belongs to another category of imperiled citizens-turned-refugees whom no one seems to care about. She is among thousands of Iraqis who have worked in seemingly less exposed positions for the U.S. and Iraqi authorities, carrying out administrative tasks, rendering basic services or, as in Ahlam's case, doling out crucial humanitarian aid to the people of her country.

But even delivering help to the poor, the handicapped and the displaced did not spare Ahlam from being labeled a traitor by some of her fellow Sunnis. In the past two years, Ahlam has been kidnapped and tortured, was forced to flee Iraq, and lost one of her teenage sons under dubious circumstances. Although she was officially recognized for her exemplary humanitarian work by the U.S. Army more than two years ago, U.S. authorities have done little to help her, and her struggle to find safe haven continues today.

Ahlam's ordeal casts light on the depth of the resentment among Iraqis in general, and Sunnis in particular, over the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the resulting sectarian conflict that has engulfed their country in the past two years. The fact that a respected aid worker like Ahlam has faced brutal reprisal speaks volumes about the fractured state of Iraqi society.

Nowadays, Ahlam lives with her family in a drab three-story building off "Iraqi Street," the new name of the main thoroughfare of Said Azainab, a destitute neighborhood of Damascus overflowing with tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees. This capital city has lured the vast majority of the more than 1.2 million Iraqis who have fled to Syria."

Kabul, Afghanistan - Seven children were killed in a US-led coalition airstrike targeting suspected al-Qaida militants in eastern Afghanistan, a coalition statement said Monday.
...
In an operation backed by Afghan troops, jets on Sunday targeted a compound that also contained a mosque and a madrassa, or Islamic school, in the Zarghun Shah district of Paktika province. Early reports indicated seven children at the madrassa and "several militants" were killed, and two militants detained, the statement said.

Couple that with the incompetency defense and you're home free.

Besides, they were only Afghan kids. It's not like they were were real kids or anything, right?

Lot's more where they came from. Probably were taking flight lessons. Why else would they be in school on Sunday?

Coalition troops had "surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building," said Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman. He accused the militants of not letting the children leave the compound that was targeted.

I'll give you this: "do not bomb schools" will pretty much ensure that innocent children are never killed by airstrikes.  There's quibbling to be done over children at other locations, and ground attacks versus airstrikes, but the essence of your point is correct.

And if you'd please dispel my assumption, what would have our troops do if a suspected terrorist comes out of a school with a gun to a kids head, saying he'll kill the kid if he's followed or otherwise hassled?  Or perhaps this possibility is so remote as to be irrelevant?

...

I argue that it can be OK to bomb schools if it is necessary in order to beat the bad guys.  That is an absolutely critical bit of nuance that your quote disregards.  It would not have been acceptable to kill 5.9 million Jews to oust Hitler, because there was a better way to do it.

"These M.P. troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box."